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WORDING THE SILENCE: INITIATORY READING OF MYSTICAL TEXTS
Because this is what God is,
therefore one shall let Him enjoy Himself
in all the works of His clarity,
Sicut in celo et in terra,
always with words and with works saying:
Fiat voluntas tua. (41-45)
Om dies dit god es / daer omme salmenne sijns selues laten ghebruken / in al sinen
werken van siere claerheit / Sicut in celo et in terra | Altoes met woerden ende met
werken te segghene: / Fiat voluntas tua.
There is no concrete admonition here; it is as if Hadewijch could now allow
herself to address her reader at a more abstract level and to formulate another
core message of the Letters in its most concise form: Fiat voluntas tua. This is
the unmistakable culmination of the great enigmatic beginning of the Letters.
The message with which she leaves the addressee at a certain point: she
must open (ontpluken) her eyes herself, see God (and herself in the divine
clarity) and allow herself to have fruition (ghebruken) of God.
KNOWING BY FEELING
A quest for passages about speaking and keeping silent leads naturally to those
letters where — like in her very first one — Hadewijch states the kernel of her
mystical teaching. In Letter 17 she describes the insight, given her directly by
God, concerning the complexity of the experience in union. There is a constant
back-and-forth movement between, on the one hand, the human level where
commandments apply to ‘works’ (werken) among humans and, on the other
hand, the divine level where other commandments (actually prohibitions)
are in force, the need for ‘resting’ (rasten) in God - in other words, between
earth and heaven. The juxtaposition that permeates the structure of the text
is not a contradiction but a paradox — one must learn, by experience, how one
can find the balance between ‘working’ and ‘resting’ — there is an ineffable
level of existence, only accessible by one’s own experience, where working and
resting, human and divine, are one.
In the focus of Letter 17 Hadewijch expresses simultaneously both the apex
of the experience of union as well as the ineffability of that experience (101¬
122). Hadewijch relates that she had been taken up into the unity of God:
There He took
Him together with me
and me together with Him.
Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 125 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:16