Argumento
The Journey's Outline
The chapter introduces the three spiritual ways—purgative, illuminative, and unitive—that the soul travels from its first service of God to the final state of spiritual marriage and the beatific vision.
The order these songs follow runs from when a soul begins to serve God until it reaches the final state of perfection, which is spiritual marriage; and so, in them, the three states or ways of spiritual practice through which the soul passes until it arrives at that state are taken up—the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive—and concerning each of them some of their properties and effects are set out. The first part deals with beginners—the purgative way. The later sections deal with those who have advanced, where the spiritual betrothal takes place; this is the illuminative way. After these, the next sections deal with the unitive way, which is that of the perfect, where the spiritual marriage takes place. This unitive way of the perfect follows the illuminative way, which belongs to those who have advanced; and the last songs deal with the beatific state, which is now the only thing the soul in that perfect state aspires to.
Read the original Spanish
El orden que llevan estas canciones es desde que un alma comienza a servir a Dios hasta que llega al último estado de perfección, que es matrimonio espiritual; y así, en ellas se tocan los tres estados o vías del ejercicio espiritual por las cuales pasa el alma hasta llegar al dicho estado, que son, purgativa, iluminativa y unitiva, y se declaran acerca de cada una algunas propiedades y efectos de ellas.
El principio de ellas trata de los principiantes, que es la vía purgativa. Las de más adelante tratan de los aprovechados, donde se hace el desposorio espiritual, y ésta es la vía iluminativa. Después de éstas, las que se siguen tratan de la vía unitiva, que es la de los perfectos, donde se hace el matrimonio espiritual. La cual vía unitiva y de perfectos se sigue a la iluminativa, que es de los aprovechados; y las últimas canciones tratan del estado beatífico, que sólo ya el alma en aquel estado perfecto pretende.
The Spiritual Canticle companion
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
Chosen Portion is the paced doorway into this collection: it portions the dense mystical treatises into one daily reading plus guided silence, exactly as the 14-day plan teaches.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
- A built-in timed stillness practice that grows from 2 minutes to 10
- Gentle progression through the tradition — the app remembers where you are on the ascent