Liberated Soul

“I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.”

“(The liberated soul) has no emptiness in her which would not be completely filled by Me, which is why she cannot host either care or memory, and so she possesses no semblance of them. And yet … piety and courtesy are not departed from such a Soul, as long as there is time and place.”

“(The liberated soul) loses her name, for she rises in sovereignty. And therefore she loses her name in the One in whom she is melted and dissolved through Himself and in Himself. Thus she would be like a body of water which flows from the sea, which has some name, as one would be able to say Aisne or Seine or another river. And when this water or river returns into the sea, it loses its course and its name with which it flowed in many countries in accomplishing its task. Now it is in the sea where it rests, and thus has lost all labor.

This Soul is imprisoned and held in the country of complete peace, for she is always in full sufficiency, in which she swims and bobs and floats, and she is surrounded by divine peace, without any movement in her interior, and without any exterior work on her part.

These two things would remove this peace from her if they could penetrate to her, but they cannot, for she is in the sovereign state where they cannot pierce or disturb her about anything.”
“This is right, says Love, for her will is ours. She has crossed the Red Sea, her enemies have been drowned in it. Her pleasure is our will, through the purity of the unity of the will of the Deity where we have enclosed her. Her will is ours, for she has fallen from grace into the perfection of the work of the Virtues, and from the Virtues into Love, and from Love into Nothingness, and from Nothingness into clarification by God, who sees Himself with the eyes of His Majesty, who in this point has clarified her with Himself. And she is so dissolved in Him that she sees neither herself nor Him, and thus He sees completely Himself alone, by His divine goodness.”

“He will be of Himself in such goodness which He knew of Himself before she ever was, when He gave her … Free Will, which He cannot take from her without the pleasure of the Soul. Now He possesses [the will] without a why in the same way that He possessed it before she was made a lady by it. There is no one except Him; no one loves except Him, for no one is except Him, and thus He alone loves completely, and sees Himself completely alone, and praises completely alone by His being Himself.”

“This Soul … is at rest without obstructing the outpouring of divine Love. (The liberated soul) no longer seeks God through penitence, nor through any sacrament of Holy Church; not through thoughts, nor through words, nor through works; not through creature here below, nor through creature above; not through justice, nor through mercy, nor through glory of glory; not through divine understanding, nor through divine love, nor through divine praise.”

“(The liberated soul) has nothing to sin with, for without a will no one can sin. Now she is kept from sin if she leaves her will there where it is planted, that is, in the One who has given it to her freely from His goodness.”

“She is dissolved by annihilation into that prior existence where Love has received her.

Such Souls … possess as equally dear, shame as honor, and honor as shame; poverty as wealth, and wealth as poverty; torment from God and his creatures, as comfort from God and His creatures; to be loved as hated, and hated as loved; to be in hell as in paradise, and in paradise as in hell; and in small estate as in great, and great estate as small … They neither will nor not-will anything of these prosperities nor of these adversities.”

“She has fallen into certainty of knowing nothing and into certainty of willing nothing. And this nothingness … gives her the All, and no one can possess it in any other way.”

~ Marguerite Porete was a 14th century French mystic who authored a book entitled “The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls and Those Who Only Remain in Will and Desire of Love”. This book was condemned by the French Inquisition as being heretical. Marguerite Porete was asked to recant. When she refused to respond to her inquisitors, she was condemned to death. On 1 June 1310 she was burned at the stake in Paris…

Porete’s vision of the Soul in ecstatic union with God, moving in a state of perpetual joy and peace, is a repetition of the Catholic doctrine of the Beatific Vision, albeit experienced in this life and not in the next. Where Porete ran into trouble with some authorities was in her description of the Soul in this state being above the worldy dialectic of conventional morality and the teachings and control of the earthly church. Porete argues that the Soul in such a sublime state is above the demands of ordinary virtue, not because virtue is not needed but because in its state of union with God virtue becomes automatic. As God can do no evil and cannot sin, the exalted/Annihilated soul, in perfect union with Him, no longer is capable of evil or sin.

Although this concept is found in the catechism, certain Church authorities nevertheless claimed that it smacked of amorality.
Interestingly, two hundred years later St John of the Cross expressed an almost identical view of the nature of the Soul’s union with God in his The Ascent Of Mount Carmel i.e. that once united with God the Soul’s will becomes that of God’s, but was not denounced as a heretic. Although the Mirror is now embraced as an important piece of Christian mysticism it is unlikely Porete will ever enjoy the renown or acceptance John now receives from the Catholic Church…

Porete’s status as one of the greatest of Medieval Mystics has grown in recent decades, placing her alongside Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch as one of the most visionary exponents of the Love Mysticism of Beguine spirituality.”
~ Western Mystics