We are at home talking about products but not about #affections, #sorrow and #sex.

https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/why-power-and-wealth-stop-caring?r=1vlkkg

Shepherds, you who go
up through the sheepfolds to the hill,
if by chance you see
him I love most,
tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 2

Commentary

The soul in this stanza desires the advantage of intercessors and intermediaries with her Beloved by begging them to bring him word of her grief and pain. This is the trait of a lover: When she herself cannot converse with her loved one, she does so through the best means possible. The soul wants to take advantage of her desire, affections, and moanings as messengers that know so well how to manifest to the Beloved the secret of the lover’s heart. She entreats them to go, crying:

Shepherds, you who go

She calls her desires, affections, and moanings “shepherds,” because they pasture the soul with spiritual goods—a shepherd or pastor is one who feeds or pastures—and by means of these yearnings God communicates himself to her and gives her the divine pasture. Without them, he communicates little to her.

“You who go,” is like saying, you that go out through pure love. Not all the affections and desires reach him, but only those that go out through true love.

up through the sheepfolds to the hill,

She calls the hierarchies and choirs of angels “sheepfolds.” Through them, from choir to choir, our moanings and prayers go to God. She refers to God as “the hill,” because he is the supreme height and in him, as on a hill, one has a view of all things and of both the higher and the lower sheepfolds. Our prayers rise up to him through the angels who offer them to him, as we said. The angel told Tobias: When you were praying with tears and burying the dead, I was offering your prayer to God [Tob 12:12].

These shepherds can also be the angels who carry not only our messages to God but also God’s messages to us. They feed our souls, like good shepherds, with sweet communications and inspirations from God—they are the means by which God grants them—and they protect us from the wolves, which are the devils.

Whether, then, these shepherds refer to the affections or to the angels, the soul longs that they all be helps and intermediaries with her Beloved.

Saint John of the Cross

Spiritual Canticle, stanza 2, nos. 1–3

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: British photographer Sue Edmondson captures this image of a young lamb in Lancashire asleep in its farmer’s arms. Image credit: Sue Edmondson / Adobe Stock (Stock photo)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/20/juan-sc2n1ff/

#affections #angels #God #help #messengers #pastor #prayer #shepherd #SpiritualCanticle #StJohnOfTheCross

“#Heaven is a place of #joy! …#ministers of the #gospel do well to live in that light and raise the #affections of God's people to live in that hope. Living in a world under the curse of #sin, plagued by fighting without and fear within, is wearisome and can be deflating. But the prospect of being in a place of relentless and unmarred joy will certainly buoy our spirits and give ballast to our souls.”

- John Van Eyk, “Heaven, a Place of Joy,” in The Banner of Truth Magazine, No. 710, p. 21.