Dialogue 1: The Ascent of Mount Carmel

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to Turning to the Mystics. This is our first dialogue for the season. And today, Jim and I will be reflecting on his first meditation.

And Jim, I wanted to start by asking you, why did you choose that particular piece of St. John's work to reflect on?

James Finley (0:43)

Yes.

You know, this reflection, which is the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, Chapter 13

I chose it because this is really where he begins giving us insights into ways we tend to pray before the onset of the dark night. So this is kind of a way to say the devout Christian or the sincere spiritual person might pray each day, you know, prior to the onset of the dark night. And that's why I chose it, because this helps us to... He also then shows how the dark night begins to occur, which can be quite confusing at first in three signs. And so it's a nice experiential introduction with how it occurs in prayer. And then in subsequent sessions, we'll see how it spreads out into all of life. It becomes an habitual underlying thing that affects all of life, this finding our way to perfect union with God in a passage through a dark night, which emerges with this infinite love, this union with the love of God. So that's why I chose it.

Kirsten Oates (1:56)

Thank you. I re-listened to the introduction as well before this dialogue session, and I was struck by, at the very end of the introduction, where you go through the things that St. John of the Cross assumes.

And so I just wanted to reflect a little bit on that in relation to prayer. So he's assuming a certain experience in prayer or a certain commitment to prayer.

James Finley (2:23)

Yes.

Kirsten Oates (2:23)

Is that right?

James Finley (2:24)

Yes. Let's talk about that. Let's reflect on that together. We can dialogue about it.

I think what he assumes is he's speaking to the sincere Christian person, like sincerely wanting to respond to Christ, follow me. And to found our life upon Christ's life, and which is our faith, the measure of which is love. And this involves then not just experiencing God's loving presence in our life in a relationship with other people, but experiencing God's loving relationship with us in our heart in prayer. And so, what are the qualities of the way the sincere Christian person prays, and how they're accustomed to experiencing God's presence in prayer?

And as a kind of like a rendezvous with God, like this we might say. And I think what he's assuming here, what he's saying is that our experience of God on this earth comes to us through faith.

So we hear God loves us, and through the power of the Spirit who dwells in our hearts, we're empowered to experience and know that God does love us.

So that in prayer, and here I think he would typically assume too, which we were talking about in Teresa, some with Merton, where we would begin then with this Lectio. That is, we would open the scriptures or open to a passage in the Gospels, and we would listen to Jesus speaking personally to us or the scriptures, whatever the spiritual voices we turn to, and we would see that as God's voice speaking personally to us in the moment that we're praying. Now when we do that and experience that, then we respond to God in a dialogue, a meditatio.

And that meditatio leads to a response of love, like help me with this, be faithful to this. The key thing for John of the Cross is that these are finite ways of experiencing and responding to the infinite presence of God.

And they're efficacious unto holiness, but they're finite in that it's our belief, our insight, our consolation, our aspiration, our inspiration, our ministry, efficacious unto holiness. That's what he's assuming. He's also assuming that when we die, it won't be like this. When we pass through the veil of death, we'll pass through into an infinite union with the infinite presence of God. As one with God, as God is one with God, in our nothingness without God, as a life of glory, and that ultimate destiny of intimate union, infinite union with the infinite mystery of God beyond thought, beyond images, beyond this. What starts to happen in our journey starts becoming mystical is even though we're still on this earth, God begins to grant us a kind of a foretaste of an infinite union with God when we're still in the body, we're still in time. Now each mystic introduces this, there's different ways this taste can happen to us. For Teresa, we call them the first three mansions, which is Lectio Meditatio in prayer. In the fourth mansion, it comes as the quiet. The time has come to love more and think less. And in that quiet, you begin to realize your heart's being enlarged to divine proportions. It goes from there. For Merton, it began in such simple moments as turning to see a flock of birds descending or knowing love in your own heart, and you're quickened from within with a sense of a oneness. And then it goes from there. For John of the Cross, he doesn't present it as beginning in those ways. He presents it as a deprivation of consolation. So you go to your place of prayer and you open the scriptures, you're very devout, you look forward to the rendezvous, you find nurturance in it. And you're not nurtured.