SPIRITUAL CANTICLE

St. John of the Cross

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Prologue to the Spiritual Canticle

This commentary on the stanzas that deal with the exchange of love

between the soul and Christ, its Bridegroom, explains certain matters

about prayer and its effects. It was written at the request of Mother

Ana de Jesús, prioress of the discalced Carmelite nuns of St. Joseph's

in Granada, in the year 1584.

*PROLOGUE*

1. These stanzas, Reverend Mother,1 were obviously composed with a

certain burning love of God. The wisdom and charity of God is so vast,

as the Book of Wisdom states, that it reaches from end to end [Wis.

8:1], and the soul informed and moved by it bears in some way this very

abundance and impulsiveness in her words. As a result, I do not plan to

expound these stanzas in all the breadth and fullness that the fruitful

spirit of love conveys to them. It would be foolish to think that

expressions of love arising from mystical understanding, like these

stanzas, are fully explainable. The Spirit of the Lord, who abides in us

and aids our weakness, as St. Paul says [Rom. 8:26], pleads for us with

unspeakable groanings in order to manifest what we can neither fully

understand nor comprehend.

Who can describe in writing the understanding he gives to loving souls

in whom he dwells? And who can express with words the experience he

imparts to them? Who, finally, can explain the desires he gives them?

Certainly, no one can! Not even they who receive these communications.

As a result these persons let something of their experience overflow in

figures, comparisons and similitudes, and from the abundance of their

spirit pour out secrets and mysteries rather than rational explanations.

If these similitudes are not read with the simplicity of the spirit of

knowledge and love they contain, they will seem to be absurdities rather

than reasonable utterances, as will those comparisons of the divine Song

of Solomon and other books of Sacred Scripture where the Holy Spirit,

unable to express the fullness of his meaning in ordinary words, utters

mysteries in strange figures and likenesses. The saintly doctors, no

matter how much they have said or will say, can never furnish an

exhaustive explanation of these figures and comparisons, since the

abundant meanings of the Holy Spirit cannot be caught in words. Thus the

explanation of these expressions usually contains less than what they

embody in themselves.

2. Since these stanzas, then, were composed in a love flowing from

abundant mystical understanding, I cannot explain them adequately, nor

is it my intention to do so. I only wish to shed some general light on

them, since Your Reverence has desired this of me. I believe such an

explanation will be more suitable. It is better to explain the

utterances of love in their broadest sense so that each one may derive

profit from them according to the mode and capacity of one's own spirit,

rather than narrow them down to a meaning unadaptable to every palate.

As a result, though we give some explanation of these stanzas, there is

no reason to be bound to this explanation. For mystical wisdom, which

comes through love and is the subject of these stanzas, need not be

understood distinctly in order to cause love and affection in the soul,

for it is given according to the mode of faith through which we love God

without understanding him.

3. I will then be very brief, although I do intend to give a lengthier

explanation when necessary and the occasion arises for a discussion of

some matters concerning prayer and its effects. Since these stanzas

refer to many of the effects of prayer, I ought to treat of at least

some of these effects.

Yet, passing over the more common effects, I will briefly deal with the

more extraordinary ones that take place in those who with God's help

have passed beyond the state of beginners. I do this for two reasons:

first, because there are many writings for beginners; second, because I

am addressing Your Reverence, at your request. And our Lord has favored

you and led you beyond the state of beginners into the depths of his

divine love.

I hope that, although some scholastic theology is used here in reference

to the soul's interior converse with God, it will not prove vain to

speak in such a manner to the pure of spirit. Even though Your Reverence

lacks training in scholastic theology, through which the divine truths

are understood, you are not wanting in mystical theology, which is known

through love and by which these truths are not only known but at the

same time enjoyed.

4. And that my explanations - which I desire to submit to anyone with

better judgment than mine and entirely to Holy Mother the Church - may

be worthy of belief, I do not intend to affirm anything of myself or

trust in any of my own experiences or in those of other spiritual

persons whom I have known or heard of. Although I plan to make use of

these experiences, I want to explain and confirm at least the more

difficult matters through passages from Sacred Scripture. In using these

passages, I will quote the words in Latin,2 and then interpret them in

regard to the matter being discussed.

I will now record the stanzas in full and then in due order quote each

one separately before its explanation; similarly, I will quote each

verse before commenting on it.

THE END OF THE PROLOGUE

Stanzas between the Soul and the Bridegroom

Bride

1. Where have you hidden,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag

after wounding me;

I went out calling you, but you were gone.

2. Shepherds, you who go

up through the sheepfolds to the hill,

if by chance you see

him I love most,

tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

3. Seeking my Love

I will head for the mountains and for watersides,

I will not gather flowers,

nor fear wild beasts;

I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

4. O woods and thickets,

planted by the hand of my Beloved!

O green meadow,

coated, bright, with flowers,

tell me, has he passed by you?

5. Pouring out a thousand graces,

he passed these groves in haste;

and having looked at them,

with his image alone,

clothed them in beauty.

6. Ah, who has the power to heal me?

now wholly surrender yourself!

Do not send me

any more messengers,

they cannot tell me what I must hear.

7. All who are free

tell me a thousand graceful things of you;

all wound me more

and leave me dying

of, ah, I-don't-know-what behind their stammering.

8. How do you endure

O life, not living where you live,

and being brought near death

by the arrows you receive

from that which you conceive of your Beloved?

9. Why, since you wounded

this heart, don't you heal it?

And why, since you stole it from me,

do you leave it so,

and fail to carry off what you have stolen?

10. Extinguish these miseries,

since no one else can stamp them out;

and may my eyes behold you,

because you are their light,

and I would open them to you alone.

11. Reveal your presence,

and may the vision of your beauty be my death;

for the sickness of love

is not cured

except by your very presence and image.

12. O spring like crystal!

If only, on your silvered-over faces,

you would suddenly form

the eyes I have desired,

which I bear sketched deep within my heart.

13. Withdraw them, Beloved,

I am taking flight!

Bridegroom

Return, dove,

the wounded stag

is in sight on the hill,

cooled by the breeze of your flight.

Bride

14. My Beloved, the mountains,

and lonely wooded valleys,

strange islands,

and resounding rivers,

the whistling of love-stirring breezes,

15. the tranquil night

at the time of the rising dawn,

silent music,

sounding solitude,

the supper that refreshes, and deepens love.

16. Catch us the foxes,

for our vineyard is now in flower,

while we fashion a cone of roses

intricate as the pine's;

and let no one appear on the hill.

17. Be still, deadening north wind;

south wind, come, you that waken love,

breathe through my garden,

let its fragrance flow,

and the Beloved will feed amid the flowers.

18. You girls of Judea,

while among flowers and roses

the amber spreads its perfume,

stay away, there on the outskirts:

do not so much as seek to touch our thresholds.

19. Hide yourself, my love;

turn your face toward the mountains,

and do not speak;

but look at those companions

going with her through strange islands.

Bridegroom

20. Swift-winged birds,

lions, stags, and leaping roes,

mountains, lowlands, and river banks,

waters, winds, and ardors,

watching fears of night:

21. By the pleasant lyres

and the siren's song, I conjure you

to cease your anger

and not touch the wall,

that the bride may sleep in deeper peace.

22. The bride has entered

the sweet garden of her desire,

and she rests in delight,

laying her neck

on the gentle arms of her Beloved.

23. Beneath the apple tree:

there I took you for my own,

there I offered you my hand,

and restored you,

where your mother was corrupted.

Bride

24. Our bed is in flower,

bound round with linking dens of lions,

hung with purple,

built up in peace,

and crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

25. Following your footprints

maidens run along the way;

the touch of a spark,

the spiced wine,

cause flowings in them from the balsam of God.

26. In the inner wine cellar

I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad

through all this valley

I no longer knew anything,

and lost the herd that I was following.

27. There he gave me his breast;

there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge;

and I gave myself to him,

keeping nothing back;

there I promised to be his bride.

28. Now I occupy my soul

and all my energy in his service;

I no longer tend the herd,

nor have I any other work

now that my every act is love.

29. If, then, I am no longer

seen or found on the common,

you will say that I am lost;

that, stricken by love,

I lost myself, and was found.

30. With flowers and emeralds

chosen on cool mornings

we shall weave garlands

flowering in your love,

and bound with one hair of mine.

31. You considered

that one hair fluttering at my neck;

you gazed at it upon my neck

and it captivated you;

and one of my eyes wounded you.

32. When you looked at me

your eyes imprinted your grace in me;

for this you loved me ardently;

and thus my eyes deserved

to adore what they beheld in you.

33. Do not despise me;

for if, before, you found me dark,

now truly you can look at me

since you have looked

and left in me grace and beauty.

Bridegroom

34. The small white dove

has returned to the ark with an olive branch;

and now the turtledove

has found its longed-for mate

by the green river banks.

35. She lived in solitude,

and now in solitude has built her nest;

and in solitude he guides her,

he alone, who also bears

in solitude the wound of love.

Bride

36. Let us rejoice, Beloved,

and let us go forth to behold ourselves in your beauty,

to the mountain and to the hill,

to where the pure water flows,

and further, deep into the thicket.

37. And then we will go on

to the high caverns in the rock

which are so well concealed;

there we shall enter

and taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates.

38. There you will show me

what my soul has been seeking,

and then you will give me,

you, my life, will give me there

what you gave me on that other day:

39. the breathing of the air,

the song of the sweet nightingale,

the grove and its living beauty

in the serene night,

with a flame that is consuming and painless.

40. No one looked at her,

nor did Aminadab appear;

the siege was still;

and the cavalry,

at the sight of the waters, descended.