The Ascent of Mount CarmelChapter XIV. Explanation of the second line of the stanza

With anxious love inflamed.

Now that I have explained the first line of the stanza, which relates to the sensual night, and described what the night of sense is, and why it is called night, and have also shown how we are to enter it in the active way, it remains for me here to treat of its wonderful properties and effects, which are described in the following lines of this stanza. I touch but lightly upon them, as I promised in the prologue, and pass on at once to the second book, which describes the other, the spiritual, division of this night.

2. The words of the soul then are, ‘with anxious love inflamed.’ The soul has passed out and gone forth in the dark night of sense to the union of the Beloved. For, in order to overcome our desires, and to deny ourselves in all things, our love and inclination for which are wont so to inflame the will that it delights therein, we require another and greater fire of another and nobler love—that of the Bridegroom—so that having all our joy in Him, and deriving from Him all our strength, we may gain such resolution and courage as shall enable us easily to abandon and deny all besides. It was necessary, in order to subdue our sensual desires, not only to have this love for the Bridegroom, but also to be on fire therewith, and that with anxiety. For the fact is, that our sensual nature is influenced by such vehement desires, and attracted by sensible objects, that if our spiritual nature were not on fire with other and nobler anxieties—anxieties for that which is spiritual—we should never overcome our natural and sensible satisfactions, nor be able to enter on the night of sense, neither should we have the courage to remain in the darkness, in the denial of every desire.

3. The nature and varieties of these anxieties of love, which the soul feels in the beginning of the way of union, the carefulness and the contrivances it employs that it may go forth out of its own house, which is self-will, into the night of the mortification of the senses; how easy, and even pleasant, these longings for the Bridegroom make the toils and dangers of that night—this is not the place to explain, neither, indeed, can it be done; for these things are rather to be felt and meditated upon than matters for description: so I shall pass on to the explanation of the other lines in the following chapter.