| 82. "In falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love " | ||||
BUT here showed our courteous Lord the moaning and the mourning of the soul, signifying thus: I know well you will live for my love, joyously and gladly suffering all the penance that may come to you; but in as much as you livest not without sin you wouldest suffer, for my love, all the woe, all the tribulation and distress that might come to you. And it is sooth. But be not greatly aggrieved with sin that falls to you against your will. | ||||
And here I understood that [which was shown] that the Lord beholds the servant with pity and not with blame. For this passing life asks not to live all without blame and sin. He loves us endlessly, and we sin customably, and He shows us full mildly, and then we sorrow and mourn discreetly, turning us to the beholding of His mercy, cleaving to His love and goodness, seeing that He is our medicine, perceiving that we do nought but sin. And thus by the meekness we get by the sight of our sin, faithfully knowing His everlasting love, Him thanking and praising, we please Him: I love you, and you love me, and our love shall not be disparted in two: for your profit I suffer [these things to come]. And all this was shown in spiritual understanding, saying these blessed words: I keep you most surely. | ||||
And by the great desire that I saw in our blessed Lord that we shall live in this manner, that is to say, in longing and enjoying, as all this lesson of love shows, thereby I understood that that which is contrarious to us is not of Him but of enmity; and He wills that we know it by the sweet gracious light of His kind love. If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not showed me. But this was showed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love. For in the Beholding of God we fall not, and in the beholding of self we stand not; and both these [manners of beholding] be sooth as to my sight. But the Beholding of our Lord God is the highest soothness. Then are we greatly bound to God [for] that He wills in this living to show us this high soothness. And I understood that while we are in this life it is full speedful to us that we see both these at once. For the higher Beholding keeps us in spiritual solace and true enjoying in God; [and] that other that is the lower Beholding keeps us in dread and makes us ashamed of ourself. But our good Lord wills ever that we hold us much more in the Beholding of the higher, and [yet] leave not the knowing of the lower, to the time that we be brought up above, where we shall have our Lord Jesus to our meed and be fulfilled of joy and bliss without end. | ||||