Sometimes love wounds us with the mere consideration of the multitude of those who condemn the love of God; so that we faint away with grief for this, as did he who said: My zeal hath made me pine away: because my enemies forgot thy words. [313] And the great S. Francis, thinking he was not heard, upon a day wept, sobbed and lamented so pitifully, that a good man hearing him ran as if to the succour of one who was going to be slain, and finding him all alone asked him: why dost thou cry so hard, poor man? Alas! said he, I weep to think that Our Lord endured so much for love of us and no one thinks of it: and having said thus he took to his tears again, and this good man sobbed and wept with him.

 But, however it be, there is this admirable in the wounds received from the divine love that their pain is delightful, and all that feel it consent to it, and would not change this pain for all the pleasures of the world. There is no pain in love, or if there is pain it is well-beloved pain. Once a Seraph, holding a golden arrow, from the head of which issued a little flame, darted it into the heart of the Blessed Mother (S.) Teresa; and when he would draw it out, it seemed to this virgin that he was tearing out her very entrails, the pain being so excessive that she had only strength to utter low and feeble moans; but yet a pain so dear that she would have wished never to be delivered from it. Such was the arrow of love that God sent into the heart of the great S. Catharine of Genoa in the beginning of her conversion, after which she became another woman, dead to the world and things created, to live only to her Creator. The well-beloved is a bundle of bitter myrrh, and this bitter bundle again is well-beloved, which abides dearly placed between the breasts, [314] that is, the best-beloved of all the well-beloved.