Hadewijch quotes

Now understand the deepest essence of your soul, what 'soul' is. Soul is a being that can be beheld by God and by which, again, God can be beheld. Soul is also a being that wishes to content God ... The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own self-sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths to his liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss. (Hadewijch)

In the intimacy of the One, Those souls are pure and inwardly naked, without images, without figures, As if liberated from time, uncreated, Freed from their limits in silent latitude.

Hadewijch

They who stand ready to content Love are also eternal and unfathomable. For their conversation is in heaven, and their souls follow everywhere their Beloved who is unfathomable.

Hadewijch

All things are too small to hold me, I am so vast In the Infinite I reach for the Uncreated I have touched it, it undoes me wider than wide Everything else is too narrow You know this well, you who are also there.

Hadewijch

For earth cannot understand heavenly wisdom. Words enough and Dutch enough can be found for all things on earth, but I do not know any Dutch or any words that answer my purpose. Although I can express everything insofar as this is possible for a human being, no Dutch can be found for all I have said to you, since none exists to express these things, so far as I know.

Hadewijch

And in this unity into which I was taken and where I was enlightened, I understood this Being and knew it more clearly than, by speech, reason, or sight, one can know anything that is knowable on earth.

Hadewijch

Tighten to nothing the circle that is the world's things Then the Naked circle can grow wide, enlarging, embracing all.

Hadewijch

Where the abyss of his wisdom is, he will teach you what he is, and with what wondrous sweetness the loved one and the Beloved dwell one in the other, and how they penetrate each other in such a way that neither of the two distinguishes himself from the other. But they abide in one another in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, and soul in soul, while one sweet divine nature flows through them both and being in each other they are both one and they remain completely one -- yes, and remain so forever.

Hadewijch

The state of desire in which I then was cannot be expressed by any words or any person that I know. And even that which I could say of it would be incomprehensible to all who hadn't confessed this love by means of acts of passion and who were not known by Love.

Hadewijch

May your service of love a beautiful thing; want nothing else, fear nothing else and let love be free to become what love truly is.

Hadewijch

I saw a great eagle, flying towards me from the altar. And he said to me: "If you wish to become one, then prepare yourself." And I fell to my knees and my heart longed terribly to worship that One Thing in accordance with its true dignity, which is impossible--I know that, God knows that, to my great sadness and burden. And the eagle turned, saying, "Righteous and most powerful Lord, show now the powerful force of your Unity for the consummation with the Oneness of yourself." And he turned back and said to me, "He who has come, comes again, and wherever he never came, there he will not come." (Hadewijch)

One Pentecost at dawn I had a vision.

Hadewijch

And I was in such a state as I had been so many times before, so passionate and so terribly unnerved that I thought I should not satisfy my Lover and my Lover not fully gratify me, then I would have to desire while dying and die while desiring.

Hadewijch

For that is what it means to satisfy completely: to grow to being god with God.

Hadewijch

Thereupon he came in the appearance and the clothing of the man he was on that day when he first gave us his body, that appearance of a human being and a man, showing his sweet and beautiful and sorrowful face, and approaching me with the humility of the one who belongs entirely to another. Then he gave himself to me in the form of the sacrament, in the manner to which people are accustomed.

Hadewijch

And to that end I wished, inside me, that he would satisfy me with his Godhead in one spirit (1 Cor 6:17) and he shall be all he is without restraint.

Hadewijch

I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit.

Hadewijch

At that time I also had, for a short while, the strength to bear it. But all too soon I lost external sight of the shape of that beautiful man, and I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit, and I had a vision about the following hours.

Hadewijch