A Waterfall of Ineffable Delight

Beatrice of Nazarath
Brabant (Netherlands and Belgium)
(c. 1200 - 1268)

Beatrice is one of those rare individuals remembered through the ages for the beauty of her friendships.  As a Cistercian sister, she was well acquainted with the guidance of the twelfth-century Cistercian monk, Aelred of Rievaulx, in his magnificent book, On Spiritual Friendship.  Aelred influenced generations of Cistercians to trust in the intimacy of consecrated friendship, moving many of them to write lines like the following, which comes from Matthew of Rievaulx:

The winter will lose its cold, as the
snow will be without whiteness,
the night without darkness,
the heavens without stars,
the day without light,
the flower will lose its beauty,
all fountains their water, the sea its fish,
the tree its birds, the forests its beasts,
the earth its harvest --
All these will pass before anyone breaks
the bonds of our love,
And before I cease caring for you in my heart.

An artist and scholar, Beatrice received an exceptional education in the seven liberal arts, first with the Benguines (celibate women dedicated to a communal life, prayer, and service without religious vows), and later with the nuns at the Cistercian convent of Florival, where she took her vows.  She had begun to write poetry and prose during her years in the Beguignage, and her gifts flourished in the cultured environment of Cistercian women.  Here she learned also the arts of calligraphy and manuscript illumination, perhaps to copy or translate books for the community to study. 
-- Mary Ford-Grabowsky

It happens sometimes that a sweet and joyful love is awakened in the heart and swells like a great wave through the soul by itself without any effort at all on our part.  One is so powerfully moved by love, so passionately drawn up into love, so strongly taken by love, so tenderly embraced and utterly mastered by love that she surrenders herself entirely to its power.  In this embrace the soul experiences directly the radiance of the Divine, a wonderful bliss, pure freedom, ecstatic sweetness, complete overpowering by love, a waterfall of ineffable delight. She feels that all her senses are sacred and she is so totally engulfed by love and so deeply immersed in love that she is one with love, and will never cease to be love.  For the beauty of love has clothed her, the power of love has submerged her, the holiness of love has consumed her, the greatness of love has so sublimely drawn her into herself that she will always love and do nothing but acts of love.