…since God has designed matrimony as a Sacrament, those who are joined together possess unique, personal qualities that each should share and help transform to supernatural levels in each other. That invisible Presence that binds them together must become visible by their love for each other, their family life, their growth in holiness, their concern for the needs of others, their faithfulness and their perseverance in daily good. –Mother Angelica ‘The Living Sacrament—Matrimony’

The soul which arrives at the degrees described very often finds itself with a body tired and worn, whence it happens that if God invites her to new considerations and higher degrees she is in perplexity: she would greatly like to go further, but the labor terrifies her; and if the Beloved calls her again, she rises to go to prayer, but still with a resistance of the sensible part which deprives her of pleasure, and causes that she can scarcely think that God is with her; and as happens to those are extremely tired, she falls asleep while watching:

I sleep, and my heart watcheth:

Then turning herself towards her Beloved Who is knocking at her heart:

The voice of my beloved knocking.

And excites her to open to Him, and to recommence her prayer:

Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled:

And with the fourth degree of prayer meditate a little on My passion. Thou will find that I have my head full of that heavenly dew of my blood, and my hair steeped in blood from the nocturnal pricking of the thorns:

For my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the night.

The soul would willingly obeyed, but her lassitude makes are desire repose; which makes her say:

I have put off by garment, how shall I put in on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defiled them?

–St Francis de Sales ‘The Mystical Explanation of the Canticle of Canticles’

Artist Marc Chagall–Musee Marc Chagall