Hadewijch - The Complete Works, Published by Paulist Press - The
Classics of Western Spirituality
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About Hadewijch

Belonging to the early thirteenth century, Hadewijch brings us a
spiritual message of extraordinary power. She was endowed in no less
degree than St. Teresa of Avila with the gifts of visionary
mysticism and literary genius. She felt herself strongly a woman, as
can be seen from her choosing to join the women's movement of her
day, that of the Beguines, who dedicated themselves to a life of
true spirituality without taking the veil.

Hadewijch understood that she was called to communicate to others
the profound knowledge of the things of God granted to her in her
mystical life. She directed her apostolate to some younger Beguines,
and early all her writings, both prose and poetry, were intended for
them.
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From the Spiritual Letters of Hadewijch

Loving God With His Own Love

God be with you! And may he teach you the true ways that belong to
high Love.

For your part be vigilant and discerning in what you are doing,
attentive to yourselves and your quest, and firm in your faith.
Provided you seek in truth -- following not your emotional
attraction but God's will -- you shall obtain everything for which,
in his love, he has destined you.

You must also live in joyful hope and strong confidence that God
will allow you to love him with that great love wherewith he loves
himself, Three and One, and wherewith he has eternally sufficed to
himself and shall so suffice eternally.

In contenting him with that love, all the denizens of heaven are and
shall be eternally engaged. This is their occupation, which never
comes to an end; and the incompletion of this blissful fruition is
yet the sweetest fruition. According to this, men on earth must
strive for it with humble hearts and realize that, as regards such
great love, and such sublime love, and this never-contented Beloved,
they are too small to content him with love. Oh, this never-
completed work must stir every noble soul like a storm, causing it
to cast aside all superfluity and all that is either unlike or less
than that which can content Love.

If two things are to become one, nothing may be between them except
the glue wherewith they are united together. That bond of glue is
Love, whereby God and the blessed soul are united in one- ness. To
this lofty surrender, holy Love at all times exhorts the noble,
proud souls who are willing to understand it and cast away all
things for the sake of Love, as he himself cast away all when he was
sent by his Father, and when he finished the work Love had commanded
him to do.....

Serving With Wisdom

May God be to you vast and eternal Love, and may he give you the
wise life and the excellent virtue through which you may content his
holy Love.

Work to this end every moment without sparing. Always be fervent in
humility and serve with wisdom. May God be your help and your
consolation in your whole being; and may he teach you the veritable
virtue by which we render Love the most honor and justice. God must
teach you that well-pleasing oneness which he offered to his Father,
when as Man he lived for him exclusively and purely. And may he
teach you the holy oneness he taught and prescribed for his holy
friends, who for the love of God rejected all alien consolation. And
may he also make known to you, in truth and reality, that sweet and
delightful union the experience of which he still gives to his dear
friends who conform to his holy sweet love above all things.....

Oh, it is truly fitting, if anyone belongs exclusively to his
Beloved, that his Beloved, in return, belong exclusively to him! As
the Bride says in the Song of Songs: "My Beloved to me, and I to
him!" (Song 2:16). Oh, to whom else should anyone belong exclusively
but to his Beloved? For all that anyone does for another, unless as
one beloved for the other Beloved, is estranged from Love. But only
what comes from the Beloved is sweet and welcomed in all respects.

If you wish to experience this perfection, you must first of all
learn to know yourselves: in all your conduct, in your attraction or
aversion, in your behavior, in love, in hate, in fidelity, in
mistrust, and in all things that befall you. You must examine
yourselves as to how you can endure everything disagreeable that
happens to you, and how you can bear the loss of what gives you
pleasure; for to be robbed of what it gladly receives is indeed the
greatest sorrow a young heart can bear. And in everything pleasant
that happens to you, examine yourselves as to how you make use of
it, and how wise and how moderate you are with regard to it. In all
that befalls you, preserve your equanimity in repose or in pain.
Continually contemplate with wisdom our Lord's works; from them you
will learn perfection.