Death is strong, for it can rob us of the gift of life. Love too is strong, for it can restore us to a better life. Death is strong, for no one can withstand it. Love too is strong, for it can conquer death itself, soothe its sting, calm its violence, and bring its victory to naught. Love is as strong as death because Christ’s love is the very death of death. Hence it is said: “I will be your death, O death! I will be your sting, O hell!” Our love for Christ is also as strong as death, because it is itself a kind of death: destroying the old life, rooting out vice, and laying aside dead works. We lay aside the likeness of the earthly person and put on the likeness of the heavenly person [Christ]; we love him as he loved us. For in this matter “he has left us an example so that we might follow in his steps.”

That is why he says: “Set me as a seal upon your heart.” It is as if he were saying: “Love me as I love you. Keep me in your mind and memory, in your desires and yearnings, in your groans and your sobs. Remember the kind of being I made you. How far I set you above other creatures. Remember  not only how much I have done for you but all the hardship and shame I suffered for you. Yet look and see: Do you not wrong me? Do you not fail to love me? Who loves you as I do? Who created and redeemed you but I?”

Lord, take away my heart of stone, a heart so bitter and uncircumcised, and give me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a pure heart. Take possession of my heart and dwell in it, contain it and fill it. Set the seal of your likeness upon my heart! In your mercy set your seal upon my heart, “God of my heart and God who is my portion forever!”

–Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury (d.1190), Treatise 10.204