THESE stanzas describe the career of a soul from its first entrance on the service of God till it comes to the final state of perfection -- the spiritual marriage. They refer accordingly to the three states or ways of the spiritual training -- the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, some properties and effects of which they explain.
The first stanzas relate to beginners -- to the purgative way. The second to the advanced -- to the state of spiritual betrothal; that is, the illuminative way. The next to the unitive way -- that of the perfect, the spiritual Marriage. The unitive way, that of the perfect, follows the illuminative, which is that of the advanced.
The last stanzas treat of the beatific state, which only the already perfect soul aims at.
NOTE
THE soul, considering the obligations of its state, seeing that "the days of man are short;"[11] that the way of eternal life is straight;[12] that "the just man shall scarcely be saved;"[13] that the things of this world are empty and deceitful; that all die and perish like water poured on the ground;[14] that time is uncertain, the last account strict, perdition most easy, and salvation most difficult; and recognizing also, on the other hand, the great debt that is owing to God, Who has created it solely for Himself, for which the service of its whole life is due, Who has redeemed it for Himself alone, for which it owes Him all else, and the correspondence of its will to His love; and remembering other innumerable blessings for which it acknowledges itself indebted to God even before it was born: and also that a great part of its life has been wasted, and that it will have to render an account of it all from beginning to the end, to the payment of "the last farthing,"[15] when God shall "search Jerusalem with lamps;"[16] that it is already late, and perhaps the end of the day:[17] in order to remedy so great an evil, especially when it is conscious that God is grievously offended, and that He has hidden His face from it, because it would forget Him for the creature,-the soul, now touched with sorrow and inward sinking of the heart at the sight of its imminent risks and ruin, renouncing everything and casting them aside without delaying for a day, or even an hour, with fear and groanings uttered from the heart, and wounded with the love of God, begins to invoke the Beloved and says:
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