VISIO TERTIA, cap. XIX
The Body's Balance and the Soul's
Just as balanced humors yield bodily health and clear understanding, so rightly ordered thoughts — honoring both neighbor and God — keep the soul calm, keen, and set on heavenly joys.
So if the humors I have been speaking of are neither too dry nor too moist, but are balanced and blended in a fitting, even measure throughout a person's body, that person stays healthy in body and lively in understanding—whether directed toward good or toward evil. This also means that if a person's thoughts are not too harsh in their severity or too slippery in their ease, but are composed rightly and decently—honoring both what is due to other people and what is due to God—they leave that person calm in body through gentleness and keen in understanding, so that they do not lean to the right or the left chasing the world's favor but, upheld by many virtues, long for the heavenly joys, as it is written in the Song of Songs: 'How beautiful are your steps in your sandals, daughter of the prince.'✦
Beautiful Steps on the Journey
The soul that delights in good works and yearns toward God displays beautiful footsteps by placing mortification of the flesh at its feet and loving God above self.
This is clear to the understanding: you who delight in your heart in good works, yearning toward God, through whom you hold the hope of eternal life, which shines out to you in joy—displaying the most beautiful footsteps on the journey of the Son of God before all others, as when the sun rises—since you place the mortification of the flesh on your feet, as it were, covering the nakedness of your sins, wherever in a good will you love God more than yourself.✦
Daughter of the Prince of Peace
The soul is called daughter of the Prince of Peace, who overcame the serpent and reconciled God and humanity; angels proclaimed this peace at the Incarnation, rejoicing that God united himself with earth.
And then the soul, too, is called the daughter of the prince—namely, the prince who is called the Prince of Peace, who also, overcoming the ancient serpent, freed his people and washed away all the enmity that existed between God and humanity in his own blood.✦ The angels proclaimed this peace to humanity in the human form of the Son of God, and they rejoiced greatly in it, because God had so united himself with the earth that people could see him in human form, and the angels behold him as both human and God perfectly.✦
Opening the Heart to the Spoken Word
All who fear and love God are called to open their heart's devotion through the Word spoken — Christ himself — for the salvation of bodies and souls.
So then, everyone who fears and loves God should open the devotion of their heart with these words, and use them for the salvation of the bodies and souls of humanity—not, indeed, from a human being, but through me, who am the Word spoken.✦
Read the original Latin
Quod si praefati humores nec supramodum sicci, nec supramodum humidi, sed aequali et congruo modo temperati per membra hominis diffunduntur, in corpore suo ille sanus permanet, et in scientia sive ad bonum sive ad malum vigens. Quod significat etiam quia si cogitationes hominis nec nimis in feritate durae, nec nimis in facilitate lubricae sunt, sed quod tam secundum hominem quam secundum Deum in honestate morum bene et decenter compositae existunt, ipsum in corpore per mansuetudinem quietum, in scientiaque subtilem reddunt, ita ut nec ad dextram nec ad sinistram favorem mundi fugiens declinet, sed quamplurimis virtutibus suffultus, ad coelestia gaudia anhelet, ut in Cantico canticorum scriptum est: « Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui in calceamentis, filia principis. » Quod sic intellectui patet: Tu qui in corde tuo delectaris bonis operibus ad Deum anhelando, per quem spem aeternae vitae habes, quae tibi in gaudio resplendet, velut cum sol exoritur, pulcherrimos gressus in itinere Filii Dei caeteris exhibens, cum mortificationem carnis quasi in calceamentis tibi imponis, nuditatem videlicet peccatorum tuorum tegens, ubi in bona voluntate Deum magis quam te diligis. Et tunc etiam anima filia principis dicitur, principis scilicet illius qui Princeps pacis vocatur, qui etiam antiquum serpentem superans, populum suum liberavit, et omnem inimicitiam, quae inter Deum et hominem fuit, in sanguine suo abluit. Pacem istam angeli in humanitate Filii Dei hominibus nuntiabant, et de ipsa multum gaudebant, quoniam Deus terrae ita se adjunxerat, ut eum homines in humana forma conspicerent, et angeli ipsum hominem et Deum perfecte vident. Omnis itaque homo qui Deum timet et diligit, verbis istis devotionem cordis sui aperiat, eaque et ad salutem corporum et animarum hominum, non quidem ab homine, sed per me qui sum prolata sciat.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Song.7.1 — Return, return, O Shulammite, return, return, that we may gaze upon you. Why would you gaze upon the Shulammite as upon the dance of the two camps?
- ↩Song.7.1 — Return, return, O Shulammite, return, return, that we may gaze upon you. Why would you gaze upon the Shulammite as upon the dance of the two camps?
- ↩Isa.9.6 — For the increase of his government and for peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
- ↩Luke.2.14 — Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.
- ↩John.1.1;John.1.14 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John.1.14 — And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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