For I am sick with love

59. 

For I am sick with love

What is the appropriate love of God?  Is it that you should love God so powerfully that your soul is bound up with the love of God and is constantly captured by it, as if one was sick with lovesickness, as when your consciousness is not freed from the love of your beloved but you think of your beloved at all times when you lie down and when you rise up, when you are eating and when you are drinking.  The love of God should be even more than this to the hearts of Godlovers, it should be present constantly, as we are commanded, “you shall love Adonai, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.” This is what Solomon expressed metaphorically, saying, “For I am sick with love.”  The entire Song of Songs is an allegorical description of this love.

Maimonides