In St. John of the Cross’s commentary on his poem “The Spiritual Canticle,” he reflects on Stanza 36.
That is: That I be so transformed in your beauty that we may be alike in beauty, and both behold ourselves in your beauty, possessing then your very beauty; this, in such a way that each looking at the other may see in the other their own beauty, since both are your beauty alone, I being absorbed in your beauty; hence, I shall see you in your beauty, and you will see me in your beauty, and I shall see myself in you in your beauty, and you will see yourself in me in your beauty; that I may resemble you in your beauty, and you resemble me in your beauty, and my beauty be your beauty and your beauty my beauty; wherefore I shall be you in your beauty, and you will be me in your beauty, because your very beauty will be my beauty; and thus we shall behold each other in your beauty.
At this point, near the end of his poem, it shifts from a description of the intensifying of spiritual marriage to the beatific vision.
This is such a poetical description of this increasing love. Still, as a programmer, I can’t help but see this as a feedback loop, Infinite recursion, and a stack overflow of love. Even my abstract thinking of this is not immune to pondering how apt this is as a description of continuing following in love with Jesus. A description of sanctity that is continuously nourished by the bridegroom.
Previous stanzas describe the process of detachment that has led up to this point, where the soul is divided by nothing, nada, as John would say. So a form of “divide by zero” that is not an error.
The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross – ICS Publications
