Book of the Beloved

A Christian mystical text containing the revelation made to a young girl in a Benedictine monastery in the mountains of Austria in 1974. It is a revelation of the extraordinary quality of the love of God communicated, not through light and joy, but through a dark and powerful suffering, which she identified as the mystery of Christs cross.

The original manuscript was faithfully written down as a direct record of this experience. It takes the form of a dialogue or interaction between God as the Lover of the soul, and Maria as His Beloved. A major theme is the struggle of the Beloved to overcome the Yes buts of human nature in order to be able to say a perfect Yes to her Maker. Each dialogue moves through suffering and miscomprehension towards final happiness and liberation, prefiguring the change from death to resurrection.

The manuscript remained a puzzle to its writer for eighteen years, at which point she gained an insight into the moment of self-yielding which transforms the suffering into bliss. It was then, whilst staying in an Austrian farmhouse on a mountain-side, that she wrote the poetry which re-interprets the text, as a hymn to the Star-Love of ecstatic intensity.

Over thirty years after the original event, realising the experience may also have meaning for others, the writer worked on the manuscripts. During a period of deep reflection at her home in Scotland, she then wrote the commentaries.

She hopes that this book, a lifetimes endeavour, may prove enlightening to others as to the nature of Gods love.