Anonymity above all things, a veil of mystery always remains, yet I will say amidst professional confidentiality, regarding the tendering of care–to be of service to brother and sister, a retired priest has been assigned. I am humbled. A priest in need, God, You send my way? Mother Josephine pray for me. I open myself to the mysteries of life, worldly existence and the eternal, allowing an honest, willing heart to be shared. God allow me to be a minuscule lamp, a worm burning, amongst your mighty wonders.

Oh, Lamps of Fire,
In whose splendors the deep caverns of sense,
Which were dark and blind,
Oh, Lamps of Fire
With strange brightness
Give heat and light together to their Beloved!

…The soul gives deepest thanks to its Spouse for the great favors which it receives from union with Him, for by means of this union He has given it great and abundant knowledge of Himself, wherewith the faculties and sense of the soul, which before this union were dark and blinded by other kinds of love, have been enlightened and enkindled with love, and can now be illumined, as indeed they are, and through the heat of love can give light and love to Him who enkindled and enamored them and infused into them such Divine gifts. For the true lover is content only when all that he is, and all that there is, the greater is the pleasure that he receives in giving it. In the first place, it must be known that lamps have two properties, which are two give light and to burn.

…From this it follows that the delight and rapture of love which the souls receives in the fire of the light of these lamps is wondrous, boundless and as vast as that of many lamps, each of which burns with love, the heat of one being added to the heat of another, and the flame of one being added to the heat of another, and the flame of one to the flame of another, as the light of one gives light to another, and all of them become one light and fire, and each of them becomes one fire.  The soul is completely absorbed in these delicate flames, and wounded subtly in each of them, and in all of them more deeply and subtly wounded in love of life, so that it can see quite clearly that that love belongs to life eternal, which is the union of all blessings. So that the soul in that state knows well the truth of those words of the Spouse in the Songs, where He says that the lamps of love were lamps of fire and flames.

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.