Amor Divino Julia Alvarez Summary Here
She uses the Spanish phrase Amor Divino as a direct address, blurring the line between a prayer and a love letter. The speaker confesses that for most of her life, she was taught to see God as a distant king—someone to be feared, obeyed, and appeased through sacrifice. But now, in her maturity, she wants to dismantle that image. The poem’s most daring section involves a metaphorical reinterpretation of the crucifixion and resurrection. The speaker looks at her own body—specifically her hands and breasts—and sees them not as sites of sin (as Catholic doctrine often taught), but as sites of divine creation.
She declares that she will no longer ask for forgiveness for loving. She redefines sin: Sin is not the embrace of a lover; sin is the refusal to love fully. The poem pivots from confession to declaration. In the final section, the speaker merges the erotic with the Eucharistic. She imagines taking communion not as a dry wafer on the tongue, but as the taste of her partner’s kiss. She sees the act of making love as a form of prayer—a “hallelujah of the hips.”
By the time she writes The Woman I Kept to Myself , Álvarez is in her later years. The poems reflect a woman who has moved beyond institutional dogma. She no longer fears the vengeful God of her childhood. Instead, she seeks a personal, intimate, and even physical connection with the divine. “Amor Divino” is the culmination of this search—a poem where the speaker dares to speak to God not as a trembling penitent, but as a lover. The poem is written in free verse, characteristic of Álvarez’s later style, and is told from the first-person perspective of a female speaker. The tone is immediate, conversational, and startlingly direct. Stanza 1: A New Kind of Prayer The poem opens with the speaker rejecting traditional religious formalities. She states that she is tired of praying on her knees. This posture of humility, she implies, is for the “timid” and the “guilty.” Instead, she addresses God as if He were lying next to her in bed. amor divino julia alvarez summary
The poem gives permission to readers who have felt torn between their spirituality and their sexuality. It says, gently but firmly: You do not have to choose. The love you make in the dark is as holy as the prayer you whisper in the light.
Dr. Elena Martínez, a scholar of Latina religious poetry, writes: “Álvarez is not sexualizing God; she is divinizing sexuality. She argues that if God is the author of nature, then the natural human longing for touch is a reflection of the divine longing for connection with creation.” She uses the Spanish phrase Amor Divino as
She recalls how as a girl she was taught that the body was a “temptation to be overcome.” But now, she argues, if God created everything—including her skin, her curves, and her desires—then loving her own body must be an act of worship. She asks: How can divine love be separate from the love of the flesh? The speaker directly challenges the concept of original sin. She remembers confessing her “impure thoughts” as a young woman—thoughts about desire, touch, and pleasure. The priests always told her to be ashamed. But now, in her seventies, she feels a holy rage at this theft of her joy.
At first glance, the title suggests a traditional religious meditation—a pious reflection on the love of God. However, as with most of Álvarez’s work, nothing is surface-level. “Amor Divino” is a masterful subversion of Catholic iconography, blending the sacred with the sensual, and the divine with the deeply human. This article provides a comprehensive summary of the poem, unpacks its central themes, and analyzes how Álvarez redefines what “divine love” truly means. Before diving into the summary, it is crucial to understand where “Amor Divino” fits into Álvarez’s spiritual and literary journey. Born in New York City and raised in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo dictatorship, Álvarez grew up immersed in strict Catholicism. In her earlier works, such as How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies , religion often appears as a tool of patriarchal control or political oppression. The poem’s most daring section involves a metaphorical
Others have compared “Amor Divino” to the work of the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, who wrote The Spiritual Canticle using erotic imagery to describe the soul’s union with God. Álvarez acknowledges this tradition but updates it for a modern, feminist, post-colonial context. Where St. John wrote from a monastery, Álvarez writes from a woman’s bedroom. In an era of rising religious trauma discourse, where many people are deconstructing the rigid, shame-based faiths of their childhoods, “Amor Divino” offers a healing alternative. It does not abandon God. It abandons a false image of God—the punitive, body-shaming patriarch.