The mystic ladder of Divine love, according to Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas Step two

The second step causes the soul to seek God without ceasing. Wherefore, when the Bride says that she sought Him by night upon her bed (when she had swooned away according to the first step of love) and found Him not, she said: ‘I will arise and will seek Him Whom my soul loveth.

This, as we say, the soul does without ceasing as David counsels it, saying: ’seek ye ever the face of God, and seek ye Him in all things, tarrying not until ye find Him; like the Bride, who, having enquired for Him of the watchmen, passed on at once and left them. Mary Magdalene did not even notice the angels at the sepulchre. On this step the soul now walks so anxiously that it seeks the Beloved in all things. In whatsoever it thinks, it thinks at once of the Beloved. Of whatsoever it speaks, in whatsoever matters present themselves, it is speaking and communing at once with the Beloved. When it eats, when it sleeps, when it watches, when it does aught soever, all its care is about the Beloved, as is said above with respect to the yearnings of love. And now, as love begins to recover its health and find new strength in the love of this second step, it begins at once to mount to the third, by means of a certain degree [The word in the Spanish is that elsewhere translated ’step.’] of new purgation in the night, as we shall afterwards describe, which produces in the soul the following effects.

Dark night of the Soul By St. John of the Cross.