There are three couches in Canticles:[584] the first signifies the soul’s state of penitence; the second its state of warfare; the third the state of those made perfect in the vita contemplativa. On the first couch the soul is wounded, on the second it is wearied, on the third it is made glad. The saintly Liutgard sought her Beloved perfectly on the couch of penitence, and watered it with her tears, although she never had been stung by mortal sin. On the second couch she sought her Beloved, battling against the flesh with fasting and endeavour; with poverty and humility she overcame the world, and cast down the devil with prayer and remedial tears. On the third couch, which is the couch of quiet, she perfectly sought her Beloved, since she did not lean upon the angels or saints, but through contemplation rested sweetly only upon the couch of the Spouse. This couch is called flowery (floridus) from the vernal quality of its virtues; and it is called “ours” because common to husband and wife: in it she may say, “My Beloved is mine and I am His,” and, “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is towards me.” Why not say that? exclaims the biographer, quoting the lines:
“Nescit amor Dominum; non novit amor dominari,
Quamlibet altus amet, non amat absque pari.”
Thenceforth her spirit was absorbed in God, as drops of water in a jar of wine. When asked how she was wont to see the visage of Christ in contemplation, she answered: “In a moment there appears to me a splendour inconceivable, and as lightning I see the ineffable beauty of His glorification; the sight of which I could not endure in this present life, did it not instantly pass from my view. A mental splendour remains, and when I seek in that what I saw for an instant, I do not find it.”
A little more than a year before her death the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to her, with the look as of one who applauds, and said: “The end of thy labour is at hand: I do not wish thee longer to be separated from me. This year I require three things of thee: first, that thou shouldst render thanks for all thy benefits received; secondly, that thou pour thyself out in prayer to the Father for my sinners; and thirdly, that, without any other solicitude, thou burn to come to me, panting with desire.”[585]
The religious yearning which with Liutgard touches sense-realization, seems transformed completely into the latter in the extraordinary German book of one Sister Mechthild, called of Magdeburg.[586] The authoress probably was born not far from that town about the year 1212. To judge from her work, she belonged to a good family and was acquainted with the courtly literature of the time. She speaks of her loving parents, from whom she tore herself away at the age of twenty-three, and entered the town of Magdeburg, there to begin a life of rapt religious mendicancy, for which Francis had set the resistless example. Sustained by love for her Lord, she led a despised and homeless life of hardship and austerity for thirty years. At length bodily infirmities brought her to rest in a Cistercian cloister for nuns at Helfta, near Eisleben, where ruled a wise and holy abbess, the noble Gertrude of Hackeborn. Here Mechthild remained until her death in 1277. For many years it had been her custom to write down her experiences of the divine love in a book which she called The Flowing Light of God, in which she also wrote the prophetic denunciations, revealed to her to be pronounced before men, especially in the presence of those who were great in what should be God’s holy Church.[587]
“Frau Minne (Lady Love) you have taken from me the world’s riches and honour,” cries Mechthild.[588] Love’s ecstasy came upon her when she abandoned the world and cast herself upon God alone. Then first her soul’s eyes beheld the beautiful manhood of her Lord Jesus Christ, also the Holy Trinity, her own guardian angel, and the devil who tempted her through the vainglory of her visions and through unchaste desire. She defended herself with the agony of our Lord. For Mechthild, hell is the “city whose name is eternal hate.” With her all blessedness is love, as her book will now disclose.
Cries the Soul to Love (Minne) her guardian: “Thou hast hunted and taken, bound and wounded me; never shall I be healed.”
Love answers: “It was my pleasure to hunt thee; to take thee captive was my desire; to bind thee was my joy. I drove Almighty God from His throne in heaven, and took His human life from Him, and then with honour gave Him back to His Father; how couldst thou, poor worm, save thyself from me!”[589]
What then will love’s omnipotence exact from this poor Soul? Merely all. Drawn by yearning, the Soul comes flying, like an eagle toward the sun. “See, how she mounts to us, she who wounded me”—it is the Lord that is speaking. “She has thrown away the ashes of the world, overcome lust, and trodden the lion of pride beneath her feet—thou eager huntress of love, what bringest thou to me?”
“Lord, I bring thee my treasure, which is greater than mountains, wider than the world, deeper than the sea, higher than the clouds, more beautiful than the sun, more manifold than the stars, and outweighs the riches of the earth.”