Song of Angels

Dear brother in Christ, I understand by your own speech, and also by the word of another man, that you yearn and long to have more knowledge and understanding than you have of angel’s song and heavenly sound—what it is, how it is perceived and felt in the soul, how to be sure that it is true and not feigned, and how it is made by the presence of the good angel and not by the inputting of the evil angel. These things you desire to learn from me, but, truthfully, I cannot tell you with certainty the truth of this matter; nevertheless I will show you something of my opinion in a short word.

Note well that the end and pinnacle of perfection is true union of God and the soul by perfect love. This union is truly made when the powers of the soul are reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first condition—that is, when the mind is firmly established, without changing and wandering, in God and spiritual things, and when the reason is cleared from all attention to worldly and fleshly things, and from all bodily images, figures, and fantasies of created things, and is illumined by grace to see God and spiritual things, and when the will and the affection are purified and cleansed from all fleshly, natural, and worldly love and inflamed with burning love of the Holy Spirit. This wonderful union may not be fulfilled perfectly, continuously, and wholly in this life, because of the corruption of the flesh, but only in the bliss of heaven. Nevertheless, the nearer that a soul in this present life may come to this union, the more perfect it is. For the more that it is reformed by grace to the image and the likeness of its Creator here, in this way, the more joy and bliss shall it have in heaven.