What happens when someone who has passed from a state predominantly of friendship with God into the almost mad, boundless love of God which manifests itself in the cloister as Saint John of the Cross described or which manifests itself in the world through a loving gaze upon others as if they were, or had behind them, our Lord himself – what happens when such a one falls into either serious sin or into such venial sins that the predominantly contemplative experience is lost?

I can only offer something tentative, but it is based on my own experience.

I think, quite simply, he is no longer happy. How could he be happy? He knew a foretaste of heaven in suffering divine things on earth (which is what we are made for in heaven). He let it go, even if he is still in a state of grace. He chose a path of his own. He let go of the things God – rather against or over and above his own human abilities – was giving him.

As in the Gospel, “The last state of that person is worse than the first” (Mt 12:45 NRSV).

That’s not to say he can never go back. With God all things are possible. Indeed God still loves the once-contemplative dearly.

But it is to say that he will not be happy until he does go back – or rather, until God leads him back and he accepts. Once the threshold is crossed and the foretaste of heaven is had, nothing else will satisfy.

Of course, nothing else will ever satisfy; it’s true of us all. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

The difference with the once-contemplative soul is that it knows and suffers it.