The vast emptiness

O lamps of fire bright-burning
with splendid brilliance, turning
deep caverns of my soul to pools of light!
Once shadowed, dim, unknowing,
now with their strange new-found glowing
gives warmth and radiance for my Love’s delight.

These caverns are the soul’s faculties: memory, intellect, and will. They are as deep as are the boundless goods of which they are capable, since anything less than the infinite fails to fill them.

It is noteworthy that when these caverns of the faculties are not emptied, purged, and cleansed of all accretions, they do not feel the vast emptiness of their deep capacity.

Any little thing that adheres to them in this life is sufficient to so burden and bewitch them that they do not notice the lack of their immense goods, nor know their own capacity.

It is an amazing thing that the least little thing is enough to so encumber these faculties, capable of infinite goods, that they cannot receive these infinite goods until they are completely empty.

• St John of the Cross