So for the memory; even in prayer I must not seek to remember this or that person, or “intention,” but go direct to God, in whom the object of my petition, if it is to be granted, will be found.  I go, not to my friend, and take him up to God; but to God, and there, if He wills it, find my friend.  Even what is good, in memory, must be rejected, because of the tendency to rest upon it; just as a similar tendency is felt, to rest upon the vision—imaginative or intellectual—which, at the moment; fills me with divine delight.  In this way, even the will has to be “mortified,” and reduced (St John of the Cross says it seems) to silence.  Whatever grace, whatever help or spiritual success or communication God gives to me, is but new material for renunciation, until assuredly, since sense, memory, intelligence, and will, are one after the other transcended by the soul as it climbs its Carmel in the night, we well may ask, What, after all, is left?  –‘Upon God’s Holy Hills: the Guides of St Anthony of Egypt, St Bruno of Cologne, St John of the Cross’ by C.C.Martindale

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.

Poem written by St john of the Cross, formatted according to the display on my Hoopla phone app.

For I know well the spring that flows and runs, although it is night.

That eternal
Spring is
Hidden, for
I know
Well where
It has its rise,
Although it is night.

I do not know
Its origin,
Nor has it one,
That every
Origin has
Come from it,
Although it is night.

I know that
Nothing
Else is so
Beautiful,
And that the
Heavens
And the earth
Drink there,
Although it is night.

I know well
That it is
Bottomless
And no one is
Able to
Cross it,
Although it is night.

Its clarity is
Never darkened,
And I know
That every
Light has
Come from it,
Although it is night.

I know that its
Streams
Are so brimming
They water
The lands of hell,
The heavens
And earth,
Although it is night.

I know well
The stream
That flows
From this spring
Is mighty
In compass
And power,
Although it is night.

I know the stream
Proceeding from
These two,
That neither of
Them in fact
Precedes it,
Although it is night.

The eternal
Spring is hidden
In this living
Bread for
Our life’s sake,
Although it is night.

It is here
Calling out
To creatures;
And they
Satisfy
Their thirst,
Although in darkness,
Because it is night.

This living spring
That I long for,
I see in
This bread of life,
Although it is night.

St John of the Cross. Euclid, Ohio.

Oh, lamps of fires,
In whose splendors the deep caravans of sense which were dark and blind
With strange brightness
Give heat and light together to their Beloved!

It must be understood that this enlightenment of splendor is not like a material fire which, with its burst of flame, enlightens and heats things that are outside it, but is like one that heats things that are within it, as is the soul in this state. For this reason, the soul says: ‘In whose splendors’: that is to say, it is ‘within’—not ‘near’ but ‘within’—its splendors, in the flames of the lamps (Divine infusion), the soul being transformed into flame. And so we shall say that it is like the air which is within the flame and is enkindled and transformed into fire, for flame is naught else but enkindled air; and the movements made by this flame are not simply those of air nor simply those of fire, but of air and fire together, and the fire causes the air that is enkindled within it to burn. –St John of the Cross ‘Living Flame of Love’

…this Divine burn of love heals the wound which has been inflicted in the soul by love, and with each application it becomes greater. For the healing of love is to hurt and wound once more that which has been hurt and wounded already, until the soul comes to be wholly dissolved in the wound of love. And in this way, when it is now completely turned into a wound of love, it regains its perfect health, and is transformed in love and wounded in love. So in this case he that is most severely wounded is most healthy, and he that is altogether wounded is most healthy. –St John of the Cross ‘Living Flame of Love’