St John of the Cross

Feb222023

Little Sufferings

The embracing of suffering, I am convinced, must be reduced to the simple. The daily little sufferings. Suffering is not only the tragic events of loss, death, and disease. The little sufferings are holding our tongue and thoughts when we receive unpleasant words. Disciplining our thoughts, uniting them with the Cross, when we observe the world horribly conflicting with our beliefs. When others do not recognize our discernment, nor care to hear our opinions, we remain at peace. When others are convinced we are inferior, it causes no harm. When God infuses consolations of wisdom, we do not use them as a means of drawing attention. We can worship hidden amongst the crowd. We are content to remain quiet—no festering or harboring bitter resentful thoughts when others seek control. We cease arguing in our head, suffering the reality that we are small, mediocre in a world of highly intelligent people. Faith is not about being a superior individual. We are at peace with ourselves, comprehending multitudes possess higher IQs, competently able to do things we are unable to do. We lose the need to see ourselves as something special. Comparing and contrasting are eliminated. It is enough to recede into the love and mercy of God, grateful for the opportunity of life.

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For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.

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Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.

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The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.

St John of the Cross

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Feb172023

Spiritual Canticle

XXXV

In solitude she lived,
And in solitude built her nest;
And in solitude, alone
Has the Beloved guided her,
In solitude also wounded with love.

XXXVI

THE BRIDE

Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

XXXVII

We shall go at once
To the deep caverns of the rock
Which are all secret,
There we shall enter in 

St John of the Cross

St John of the Cross Adoring

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Feb032023

Infusion

When God sees that they have grown a little, he weans them from the sweet breast so that they might be strengthened, lays aside their swaddling bands, and puts them down from his arms that they may grow accustomed to walking by themselves. . . . This usually happens to recollected beginners sooner than to others since they are freer from occasions of backsliding and more quickly reform their appetites for worldly things. A reform of the appetites is the requirement for entering the happy night of the senses [initial contemplative prayer]. Not much time ordinarily passes after the initial stages of their spiritual life before beginners start to enter this night of sense [initial contemplative prayer]. And the majority of them do enter it, because it is common to see them suffer these aridities…. We could adduce numerous passages from Sacred Scripture, for since this sensory purgation [initial contemplative prayer] is so customary we find a great many references to it throughout, especially in the Psalms and the Prophets. But I do not want to spend time citing them, because the prevalence of the experience of this night should be enough. –St John of the Cross ‘Dark Night of the Soul’

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Jan272023

Decreasing in order to Increase

Consequently, it is at the time they are going about their spiritual exercises with delight and satisfaction, when in their opinion the sun of divine favor is shining most brightly on them, that God darkens all this light and closes the door and the spring of sweet spiritual water they were tasting as often and as long as they desired. . . . God now leaves them in such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their discursive imaginings. They cannot advance a step in meditation, as they used to, now that the interior sense faculties are engulfed in this night. He leaves them in such dryness that they not only fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works, as they formerly did, but also find these exercises distasteful and bitter. … This change is a surprise to them because everything seems to be functioning in reverse. 

St John of the Cross ‘Dark Night of the Soul’

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Jan222023

Higher call

Saint John of the Cross probes more forcefully here the need for a purification. The satisfaction that meditation had been providing, which is now painfully absent, may have been feeding a certain self-seeking in prayer. God begins to draw the soul away from a “lowly” manner of prayer that was to some degree rife with subtle tendencies of self-absorption. Meditative prayer may have become over time an effort to arrive at pleasing experiences for the self. Now God begins to strip this self-seeking from prayer by leaving the soul in dissatisfaction. In the view of Saint John of the Cross, a direct action of God, while concealed and secret, is implicitly present in the struggles that the soul undergoes at this time. These are not primarily struggles with a personal incapacity for prayer itself or a breakdown in general spiritual life. Rather, God is secretly at work emptying the soul in silent prayer for the sake of a greater encounter in faith with himself. The emphasis in the following passage from The Dark Night is on God’s watchful, overseeing role in the transitional period into contemplative prayer. The trials of that time are meant, not to impede prayer with insurmountable barriers, but to lead it to a new depth. The words in this passage of Saint John of the Cross begin with a sharp comment on meditative prayer. It is not that he is dismissive of this practice; it has its place in the formative period of spiritual life. But he is insistent that it is a type of prayer that must be forsaken with the advent of contemplative graces.

“Since the conduct of these beginners in the way of God is lowly and not too distant from love of pleasure and of self, as we explained, God desires to withdraw them from this base manner of loving and lead them on to a higher degree of divine love. And he desires to liberate them from the lowly exercise of the senses and of discursive meditation, by which they go in search of him so inadequately and with so many difficulties, and lead them into the exercise of spirit, in which they become capable of a communion with God that is more abundant and more free of imperfections. (Dark Night of the Soul)”

Father Donald Haggerty “St John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation”

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Jan212023

Prayer a means, not the end

…many people who approach prayer seriously enough to commit time to a daily prayer of meditation do not realize how seriously God takes the soul. What begins possibly to happen-the commencement of contemplative graces in prayer-is a sign that God does not seek just a devout form of prayer from a soul, whatever that might mean. He longs for the soul to give itself to him, so that he in turn can give to the soul a fuller gift of himself. The discussion of contemplative prayer is never simply to aid a soul in the advancement of prayer. That goal is always subordinated to the more primary purpose of interior prayer in opening a door within our soul to a progressive union of the soul with God.  —Father Donald Haggerty from “St John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation”

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