VISIO QUARTA, cap. LXXVIII
The Seasons of the Soul
Human life mirrors the earth's seasons, flourishing in youth and fading in old age.
A person is brought to full bloom by flourishing through boyhood and youth, and later inclines toward barrenness through old age, just as the earth is adorned by flourishing through the greenness of summer, and later turns pale through the cold of winter.
Sweetness of a Single Heart
A soul united in good will delights in God's justice and flourishes in the virtues and examples of Christ.
When the soul has so overcome the body that it consents to itself with a single heart in good will, and takes delight in good works as in the sweetest food, that person says in heavenly longing: 'How sweet the words of your justice are to my throat, which are far sweeter than honey to my mouth'; and so one lives in innocence with childlike simplicity, without any taste for the flesh. The soul, then, fills this person with its desires for a long time, until ascending from virtue to virtue it grows strong, and flourishes in good works and in the examples the Son of God left to humanity, because, undefiled by the malice of sinners, it rejoices and is adorned in him.
Winter's End and the Soul's Ascent
Death ends all works, but a soul adorned with lifelong good works ascends joyfully before God, awaiting reunion with the body.
And just as in the cold of winter the greenness, bloom, and ripeness of all fruits fail, so through death a person fails in all their good and bad works. But a person who has happily completed good works in boyhood, in youth, and in old age — their soul, bright with those same works and adorned, as it were, with precious stones, ascends before God, and the body that was worked through it scarcely waits so that they may dwell together in a joyful home.
The Body's Affections as Parable
The kidneys and the earth's fruitfulness are questioned as signs of the soul's shifting interior affections.
What do the strength or the unruliness of the kidneys, and the richness of the earth — which when kept within measure bears fruit, but when immoderate bears empty fruit — what do these signify in the shifting affections of the soul?12
Read the original Latin
Et homo in puerili et in juvenili aetate florendo perficitur, ac postmodum per senectutem in ariditatem inclinatur, sicut et terra in aestate per viriditatem florendo decoratur, et postmodum in hieme per frigus in pallorem vertitur. Cum enim anima corpus suum ita superavit, ut simplici corde in bona voluntate sibi consentiat, et bonis operibus velut dulcissimo cibo delectetur, homo ille in coelesti desiderio dicit: « Quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia justitiae tuae, quae etiam ori meo multo dulciora melle sunt; » et sic cum puerili simplicitate sine gustu carnis in innocentia vivit. Anima vero hominem istum desideriis suis tandiu imbuit, quousque de virtute in virtutem ascendendo virescat, et in bonis operibus et exemplis quae Filius Dei hominibus reliquit floreat, quia livore peccatorum impolluta in ipso gaudet et decoratur. Et sicut in frigore hiemis viriditas, floriditas et maturitas omnium fructuum deficiunt, sic homo per mortem in omnibus bonis et malis operibus deficit. Homo autem qui in pueritia, in juventute et in senectute bona opera feliciter complevit, anima ipsius cum eisdem operibus lucida, et quasi pretiosis lapidibus ornata coram Deo ascendit, et corpus, quod per eam operabatur, ut in jucunda mansione simul habitent vix exspectat.
Quid fortitudo vel petulantia renum, et pinguedo terrae, quae moderata uberes, immoderata inanes fructus producit in diversis animae affectibus significent.
Notes
- 1 ↩The sentence is structured as a rhetorical question (interrogative pronoun quid), but the final verb significent is subjunctive. The sense is interrogative: 'what could these things signify?' The kidneys and earth function as allegorical images within the vision, pointing to interior forces and attachments.
- 2 ↩Renum (kidneys) rendered literally as the vision's allegorical vehicle; petulantia captures wantonness or insolent impulse rather than mere playfulness.
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