Thus she says, “the eyes of my soul were opened and I beheld the plenitude of God, by which I understood the whole world both here and beyond the sea, the abyss, and all other things. And in this I beheld nothing save the Divine Power, in a way that is utterly indescribable, so that through the greatness of its wonder the soul cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘The whole world is full of God.’ Wherefore I understood that the world is but a little thing; and I saw that the power of God was above all things, and the whole world was filled with it.”
Here we are reminded of Julian of Norwich—“He showed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel nut. I looked thereon with the eye of my understanding and thought; What may this be? and it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made.”
“After I had seen the power of God, His will and His justice,” says Angela, again, “I was lifted higher still; and then I no longer beheld the power and will as before. But I beheld a Thing, as fixed and stable as it was indescribable; and more than this I cannot say, save that I have often said already, namely, that it was all good. And although my soul beheld not love, yet when it saw that indescribable Thing, it was itself filled with indescribable joy, so that it was taken out of the state it was in before, and placed in this great and ineffable state. I know not whether I was then in the body or out of the body. It is enough to say that all the other visions seemed to me less great than this.”
Again, “One time in Lent ... the eyes of my soul were opened, and I saw Love advancing gently towards me, and I saw the beginning but not the end. There seemed to me only a continuation and an eternity thereof, so that I cannot tell its likeness nor colour; but directly this Love reached me I beheld all these things more clearly with the eyes of the soul than I could do with the eyes of the body. This Love came towards me after the manner of a sickle. Not that there was any actual and measurable likeness; but when first it appeared to me it did not give itself to me in such abundance as I expected, but a part was withdrawn. Therefore I say, after the manner of a sickle. Then I was filled with love and a great satisfaction, but although it satisfied me, it generated within me so great a hunger that all my members were loosened; and my soul fainted with longing to attain to the All.”
I give one more, particularly interesting to English students because of its parallels with our own great mystical work, The Cloud of Unknowing: “There was a time when my soul was exalted to behold God with so much clearness that never before had I beheld Him so distinctly. But I did not here see Love so fully; rather I lost that which I had before, and was left without love. Afterwards I saw Him darkly, and this darkness was the greatest blessing that could be imagined, and thought can conceive nothing equal to this.... Here likewise I see all Good.... The soul delights unspeakably therein, yet it beholds nothing that can be spoken by the tongue or conceived by the heart. It sees nothing yet sees all, because it beholds the Good darkly; and the more darkly and secretly the Good is seen, the more certain it is, and excellent above all things. Wherefore all other good that can be seen or imagined is doubtless less than this, and even when the soul sees the Divine wisdom, power and will of God (which I have seen marvellously at other times), it is all less than this most certain Good. Because this is the whole, and those other things are but part of the whole.... But seen thus darkly, the Good brings no smile to the lips, no fervour of love to the heart; for the body does not tremble or become moved and distressed as at other times; because the soul sees, and not the body, which rests and sleeps, and the tongue is dumb and speechless. All the many ineffable kindnesses which God has shown me, all the sweet words and divine sayings and doings, are so much less than this that I saw in the darkness, that I put no hope in them.... But to this most high power of beholding God ineffably through great darkness, my spirit was uplifted three times only and no more.”
“This cloud,” says The Cloud of Unknowing, of that same Divine Dark, “is evermore between thee and thy God ... therefore shape thyself to abide in this darkness so long as thou mayest, evermore crying after Him whom thou lovest, for if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him (in such sort as He may be seen or felt in this life) it behoveth always to be in this cloud or darkness.” So Angela: “When I behold and am in that Good, although I seem to see nothing yet I see all things.” In this achievement she reaches the goal of the mystic experience, the ecstatic communion with the Absolute One.
I have called her a Franciscan mystic. If by Franciscan mysticism we mean that exquisite sense of the Divine immanence in nature, that poetic temperament, that peculiar and elusive charm, which we associate with St. Francis himself; then, perhaps, there seems little that is characteristically Franciscan in Angela. But if, looking past the special character of the Founder, we try to seize the essence of that secret he was seeking to impart, then, allowing for the inevitable development which any idea undergoes when it enters the world of change, we may regard her as a typical Franciscan of the second generation. She was indeed conditioned at all points by the Franciscan environment in which her religious life developed; that ardent society of “Spirituals,” mostly recruited from the devout laity, which sprang up in her time in the Italian cities. This society, with its advanced contemplative tradition, its demand for a close imitation of Christ, was a forcing-house of the mystical life. Angela shows her close connection with it in the character of her penitence, in her passionate devotion to the Cross and Passion, and also in the metaphysical quality of her greatest mystical apprehensions. These three outstanding characteristics, corresponding in a general sense to the three great phases of the mystical life, are again seen in the poetry in which her contemporary Jacopone discloses to us the stages of anguished contrition and of uncontrolled fervour through which he moved to the heights of union with God. These two great converts and initiates of love illuminate and explain one another: for in them we see an identical tradition of the spiritual life interpreted by different temperaments. For each the Way is an education in love, and Jacopone speaks for both of them when he says of it:
“Distinguese l’amore en terzo stato:
bono, meglio, sommo, sublimato;
lo sommo sí vole essere amato