For each other are these lovers wounded, for each other these lovers bleed, and each to the other is joy unspeakable and unforgettable. From the wafer of the holy Eucharist, the Lamb looks out upon me “with such sweet eyes that I never can forget.”
“His eyes in my eyes; His heart in my heart,
His soul in my soul,
Embraced and untroubled.”[595]
No need to say that in the end love draws the Soul to heaven’s gate, which the Lord opens to her. All is marvellous; but, far more, all is love: the Lord kisses her—what else than love can the soul thereafter know or feel.[596]
Mechthild, of course, is what is called a “mystic,” and a forerunner indeed of many another—Eckhart, Suso, Tauler—of German blood. With direct and utter passion she realizes God’s love; also she feels and thinks in symbols, which, with her, never cease to be the things they literally are. They remain flesh and blood, while also signifying the mysteries of God. Jesus was a man, Mechthild a woman. Her love not only uses lovers’ speech, but actually holds affinity with a maid’s love for her betrothed. If it is the Soul’s love of God, it is also the woman’s love of Him who overhung her from the Cross.
CHAPTER XX
THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY
The Testimony of Invective and Satire; Archbishop Rigaud’s Register; Engelbert of Cologne; Popular Credences
The preceding sketches of monastic qualities and personalities illustrate the ideals of monasticism. That monastic practices should fall away, corruptions enter, and when expelled inevitably return, was to be expected. The cause lay in those qualities of human nature which may be either power or frailty. The acquisitive, self-seeking, lusting qualities of men lie at the base of life, and may be essential to achievement and advance. Yet a higher interpretation of values will set the spiritual above the earthly, and beatify the self-denial through which man ultimately attains his highest self, under the prompting of his vision of the divine. The sight of this far goal is given to few men steadily, and the multitude, whether cowled or clad in fashions of the world, pursue more immediate desires.