Set us on fire, burn us, make us new and transform us, that nothing besides thee may live in us. O wound very deeply our hearts with the dart of thy
love.... O that we were sick of love.... and by an heavenly excess may be
transported into an heavenly love, that we may imbrace Christ, who is the
Lord from heaven, with a love like himself. ----- Nor do we desire onely the
pleasures of love, and the joyes of thy union, but that we may become
generative and fruitful, far be it from us to love thee like a harlot, and not like
a wife: O let us desire union with thee, and to bring forth fruit unto thee. 216
Clearly this validates the importance of conjugal love, desire, and joy for Ambrose
and occupies a significant component of his teaching and experience of spiritual
marriage that will be examined in detail in chapter 5. However, for now its
exuberance is descriptive of the deep and burning desire to be filled only with the fire
of divine love and for any impurities to be purged so as to increase both the
experience of this divine love and to bear fruit that is faithful and glorifying to this
spiritual marriage.
It is often difficult to grasp the depth and richness of a person’s spiritual
teaching and experience when it is atomized. Since Ambrose’s instruction on
spiritual marriage is so dynamic it is helpful to examine it in a more integrated
manner. In describing the nature of the soul’s love to Christ Ambrose proclaims “it is
the souls rest or reposal of it selfe in the bosome of Christ, with content unspeakable
and glorious, being perswaded of her interest in that Song of the Spouse, I am my
welbeloveds, and my wel-beloveds is mine. This, O my soul, is the nature of thy love
to Christ.”^217 As this meditation turns to Psalm 1:6-7 he declares, “[w]e return unto
our rest, because the Lord hath dealt bountifully with us, when sweetly we repose our
selves in the lap of our Saviour with content unspeakable, and full of glory.”^218 This
(^216) Ambrose, Media (^) (1657), 465. (^)
(^217) Ambrose, Media (1657), 224.
(^218) Ambrose, Media (1657), 224, cf. 208 for another example within his meditation on
heaven.