Here’s an excerpt from a sermon by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs. He describes the snatching away of life’s snares that occurs for a soul in ecstasy. It is ‘the death that does not take away life but makes it better’.What do you think the beloved will receive in heaven, when now she is favoured with an intimacy so great as to feel herself embraced by the Arms of God, cherished on the Breast of God, guarded by the care and zeal of God lest she be roused from her sleep by anyone till she wakes of her own accord.
Well then, let me explain if I can what this sleep is which the Bridegroom wishes His beloved to enjoy, from which He will not allow her to be awakened under any circumstances, except at her good pleasure. This sleep of the bride, however, is not the tranquil repose of the body that for a time sweetly lulls the fleshly senses, nor that dreaded sleep whose custom is to take life away completely. Farther still is it removed from that deathly sleep by which a man perseveres irrevocably in sin and so dies. It is a slumber which is vital and watchful, which enlightens the heart, drives the heart, drives away death, and communicates eternal life that does not stupefy the mind but transports it. And, I say it with out hesitation, it is a death, for the apostle Paul in praising people still living in the flesh spoke thus: ‘For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’.
It is not absurd for me to call the bride's ecstasy a death, then, but one that snatches away not life but life's snares, so that one can say ‘We have escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers’. In this life we move about surrounded by traps, but these cause no fear when the soul is drawn out of itself by a thought that is both powerful and holy, provided that it so separates itself and flies away from the mind that it transcends the normal manner and habit of thinking; for a net is spread in vain before the eyes of winged creatures. Why dread wantonness where there is no awareness of life? For since the ecstatic soul is cut off from awareness of life though not from life itself, it must of necessity be cut off from the temptations of life. How good the death that does not take away life but makes it better; good in that the body does not perish but the soul is exalted.
Men alone experience this. But, if I may say so let me die the death of angels that, transcending the memory of things present, I may cast off not only the desire for what are corporeal and inferior but even their images, that I may enjoy pure conversation with those who bear the likeness of purity.
This kind of ecstasy, in my opinion, is alone or principally called contemplation. Not to be gripped during life by material desires is a mark of human virtue; but to gaze without the use of bodily likenesses is the sign of angelic purity. Each, however, is a divine gift, each is a going out of oneself, each a transcending of self, but in one, one goes much farther than in the other.
Consider therefore that the Bride has retired to this solitude, there, overcome by the loveliness of the place, she sweetly sleeps within the Arms of her Bridegroom, in ecstasy of spirit. Hence the maidens are forbidden to waken her until she herself pleases.
