Some simple nun might ask, ‘How do you know that God did so plenarily enter into you, if you were conscious of nothing whatever?’
‘My daughter,’ replies the saint, ‘I know it by an infallible certainty (una certidumbre) that God alone bestows.’[[287]]
After this nothing remains to be said.
Fourth Degree:—The Prayer of Rapture, or Ecstasy. This estate is the most privileged, because the most unnatural of all. The bodily as well as mental powers are sunk in a divine stupor. You can make no resistance, as you may possibly, to some extent, in the Prayer of Union. On a sudden your breath and strength begin to fail; the eyes are involuntarily closed, or, if open, cannot distinguish surrounding objects; the hands are rigid; the whole body cold.
Alas! what shall plain folk do among the rival mystics! Swedenborg tells us that bodily cold is the consequence of defective faith: Theresa represents it as the reward of faith’s most lofty exercise.
Were you reading, meditating, or praying, previous to the seizure, the book, the thought, the prayer, are utterly forgotten. For that troublesome little gnat, the memory (esta maraposilla importuna de la memoria), has burnt her wings at the glory. You may look on letters—you cannot read a word; hear speech—you understand nothing. You cannot utter a syllable, for the strength is gone. With intense delight, you find that all your senses are absolutely useless—your spiritual powers inoperative in any human mode. The saint is not quite certain whether the understanding, in this condition, understands; but she is sure that, if it does, it understands without understanding, and that its not understanding cannot be understood. Time of this beatific vacuum,—very long, if half an hour; though obviously a difficult point to decide, as you have no senses to reckon by.
Remarkable were the effects of the rapture on the body of the saint. An irrepressible lifting force seemed to carry her off her feet (they preserve the right foot in Rome to this day): it was the swoop of an eagle; it was the grasp of a giant. In vain, she tells us, did she resist. Generally the head, sometimes the whole body, was supernaturally raised into the air! On one occasion, during a sermon on a high day, in the presence of several ladies of quality, the reckless rapture took her. For in vain had she prayed that these favours might not be made public. She cast herself on the ground. The sisters hastened to hold her down; yet the upward struggling of the divine potency was manifest to all. Imagine the rush of the sisterhood, the screams of the ladies of quality, the pious ejaculations from the congregation,—watching that knot of swaying forms, wrestling with miracle, and the upturned eyes, or open-mouthed amazement, of the interrupted preacher![[288]]
The state of rapture is frequently accompanied by a certain ‘great pain’ (gran pena), a sweet agony and delicious torment, described by Theresa in language as paradoxical as that which Juliet in her passion applies to the lover who has slain her cousin—
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feathered raven! wolfish-ravening lamb!