A meditation from St. Catherine

When we look into ourselves and see there such a marvelous strength as is this fire, the Holy Spirit, we become so drunk with love for our Creator that we completely lose ourselves. We live as if we were dead, feeling within ourselves no creaturely love or pleasure, since our memory is already filled with love for our Creator. Our understanding does not reach out to see or grasp at any created thing apart from God, but sees and understands only our own nothingness and God’s goodness to us. And we see that this infinite goodness wants nothing but what is good for us. Now our love for God has become perfect, since we no longer hold or understand anything but God. And now there is no holding back the swift course of desire. We run untrammeled and unbound, for we have cut off and thrown aside every weight that might have impeded our running. And we are so yoked with Christ that we love ourselves for God, and God for God, and our neighbors for God.

It is to this perfection…that you have been invited. You have been drawn by the Holy Spirit from a worldly life, bound with the cord of holy true obedience, and led to eat honeycombs in the garden of holy Church. - Saint Catherine of Siena

This is such an important Solemnity - the 'last and greatest day of the feast' - of Paschaltide.  The fire of Divine Love rushes upon the Church ... the garden of Holy Church.  

 A garden enclosed, my sister, my bride,

a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed!

Your branches are a grove of pomegranates,

with fruits of choicest yield:

Henna with spikenard,

spikenard and saffron,

Sweet cane and cinnamon,

with all kinds of frankincense;

Myrrh and aloes,

with all the finest spices;^*

A garden fountain, a well of living water,

streams flowing from Lebanon.

Awake,^* north wind!

Come, south wind!

Blow upon my garden

that its perfumes may spread abroad.

Let my lover come to his garden

and eat its fruits of choicest yield. - Song of Songs