Experiencing union

God speaking to St. Catherine:

When they reach perfection I relieve them of this lover's game of going and coming back. I call it a "lover's game" because I go away for love and I come back for love -- no, not really I, for I am your unchanging and unchangeable God; what goes and comes back is the feeling my charity creates in the soul.
(p. 147)

To such as these it is granted never to feel my absence. I told you how I go away from others (in feeling only, not in grace) and then return. I do not act thus with these most perfect ones who have attained great perfection and are completely dead to every selfish impulse. No, I am always at rest in their souls both by grace and by feeling. In other words, they can join their spirits with me in loving affection whenever they will. For through loving affection their desire has reached such union that nothing can separate it [from me]. Every time and place for them is a time and place of prayer. For their conversation has been lifted up from the earth and has climbed up to heaven. In other words, they have shed every earthly affection and sensual selfishness and have risen above themselves to the height of heaven by the stairway of virtue...
(p. 145)

... shedding the blindness of selfish love {the soul} remains in the sunlight of Christ crucified in whom it knows both God and humanity. Beyond this knowledge, because of the union [with me] that she has realized, the soul rises to a light acquired not by nature nor by her own practice of virtue but by the grace of my gentle Truth who does not scorn any eager longing or labors offered me.

And so the light runs on, all of you showing it forth, now one way, now another. But the inmost feeling, the ineffable sweetness and perfect union -- you cannot describe it with your tongue, which is a finite thing! ... Oh how lovely, how lovely beyond all loveliness, is the dwelling place of the soul's perfect union with me! Not even the soul's own will stands between us, because she has become one thing with me.
(pp. 180-181)

For the soul is never so perfect in this life that she cannot become yet more perfect in love... Not that you would advance to another stage once you had reached that final [state of union with me]. But you can make that very union grow in whatever kind of perfection you choose with the help of my grace.
(p. 166)

This is how those souls behave who have reached the final stage of which I have told you. Because they return continually to the valley of self-knowledge, their exaltation and union with me is never blocked.
(p. 194)

St. Catherine of Siena speaking to God:

O eternal God, light surpassing all other light because all light comes forth from you! O fire surpassing every fire because you alone are the fire that burns without consuming! You consume whatever sin and selfishness you find in the soul. Yet your consuming does not distress the soul but fattens her with insatiable love, for though you satisfy her she is never sated but longs for you constantly. The more she possesses you the more she seeks you, and the more she seeks and desires you the more she finds and enjoys you, high eternal fire, abyss of charity!
(p. 273)

©1999 by Deb Platt