Flame, living flame, compelling,
yet tender past all telling,
reaching the secret center of my soul !

Since this flame is a flame of divine life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of God’s life, and it wounds and stirs it so deeply as to make it dissolve in love. What the bride affirmed in the Canticle is fulfilled in the soul. She was so moved that her soul melted, and thus she says: “As soon as He spoke my soul melted.”[Ct. 5:6] For God’s speech is the effect He produces in the soul.

• St John of the Cross. The Living Flame of Love.