The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Talking about agonisingly beautiful I was reminded of the amazing sculpture "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa". It is almost too beautiful, too perfect, for perfection and beauty go hand in hand.  Teresa of Ávila lived in the 1500's and the sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is meant to represent her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel and she described it as follows:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

I suppose it was a vision. I do not think I have ever had a vision unless the angel on the chimney stack beyond my childhood bedroom window counts. I do have dreams, some very vivid. But what was its source? She and doubtless my Catholic friends claim it was God. Fundamentalist Christians might say it was the devil. Or was it a very fertile imagination fueled by her closeted lifestyle and possibly too much cheese the night before.

We have very little understanding of the human brain. The E&T magazine quotes theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku as saying the human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe. Some say that religious experiences (and dreams) are 'only' an artefact of the brain's inner workings, a sort of side effect.

Pain accentuates beauty. Rather like basking in a hot shower after returning from a long, arduous and cold run. Pain and its resulting suffering and endurance, then, are too oft despised gifts without which we would become wimps. 

These coronavirus restrictions are a bit painful. We will not be overcome by evil, but will overcome evil with good.