Return!

Before the dawn wind rises,
before the shadows flee,
return! Be, my Beloved,
like a gazelle,
a young stag, 
on the mountains of the covenant.

Who will enlighten for me the mysteries of these ups and downs and explain to me the comings and goings of the Word?... The Word of God, who is God himself and the Bridegroom of the soul, comes to the soul, then leaves it at whim... One can seek him only when he is absent and call him back at the moment he goes away...

Once the Word of God is gone and until he comes back, the soul has only one voice, one continuous cry, a restless desire, a perpetual 'come back'... Perhaps the Bridegroom has left on purpose so that it can call him with more fervor and retain him better when he comes back? It did happen in fact, on a certain day, that he feigned a departure not because he had decided to go but to hear it say: 'Stay with us, Lord for evening is coming'... He wants it to hold him back when he passes by and to call him back when he is absent. He visits the soul at daybreak; then tries it by suddenly withdrawing. And if he goes away, this too is a way of giving himself... I confess, not without some indiscretion, that I have thus received the visit of the Word several times. And if he entered often into my soul I did not feel it each time. I felt his presence, I remember it; and,  at times, I was able to foresee his coming; but never have I had a precise awareness of his entering or going out;... no motion on his part announced his arrival... Yes, here is the sign of his departure: my soul is irresistibly seized with sadness until he comes back, and each time he warns my sou., which is the mark of his return... As long as I shall live, I will use in a familiar way to call him back this very phrase of the Bride: 'return!' And each time he escapes me, I will repeat this call. I will not cease to cry, as it were, after him, to proclaim the desire my heart has for him... I beg him to come back full of grace and truth, i.e., as he always is, as he was yesterday. In this he seems to me to resemble very much the gazelle and the stag: he has the eyes of a gazelle and the grace and joyful leaps of a stag."

Bernard of Clairvaux