St. John of the Cross: Session 4

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

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

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to our time here together, turning for guidance to the Christian mystics St. John of the Cross.

How he tries to help us to discern and to cooperate with the dark night through which we pass into perfect union with God insofar as possible on this earth through love. And we began with the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, Chapter 13, where he gives some guidelines on how to discern the presence of the dark night as it begins to appear in meditation and prayer. This sense of powerlessness to be consoled or nurtured by the presence of God as a way that God weans us off our dependency on these grace but finite ways of experiencing and responding to God. That God might lead us into the beginnings of this deeper sense of an infinite union with the infinite mystery of God, beyond thought, beyond words, and so on. And then we saw how this night, as an active aspect and a passive aspect, it's passive that it happens to us, that it's an act of God, interiorly at work, in the depths of ourself. But then it's active, the ways we freely choose to cooperate with it, we assent to it, and in a way of staying open to and trusting in God in this transformative process, beyond our own understanding, beyond our own abilities.

Then we turned in the previous session, then, to in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, where he takes this active night, that is this act of cooperation, and extends it throughout the day as an attitude toward the gratification that comes to us through the senses. And since the senses are finite, and the gratification that comes to us through the senses is finite, the gratification that comes to us through the senses is infinitely less than the gratification we long for to be infinitely gratified in the depths of God. And therefore these gratifications, they rise and fall, they're part of life. But we don't land there, we don't stay there, we don't cling to those, but rather look through those things and beyond those things as a way to keep our heart freed up, to move ever closer to this infinite union with the infinite as a kind of a foreshadowing of our eternal destiny and passing through the veil of death, but beginning now and us, still on this earth, this mysterious, subtle, transformative process that's achieved through the night.

And so now we turn in reflecting on the dark night as it occurs in the senses and the appetites, as it occurs in the intellect through faith. And this is the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book Two, on the active night of faith, and actively cooperating with this passive event of how we're being transformed. And he begins with the first stanza, the same stanza that he began, Book One, with the purification of the appetites. He now presents it as the purification of the intellect through faith. The stanza reads, In darkness and secure, by the secret ladder disguised, Ah, the sheer grace, in darkness and concealment, My house being now all stilled. And then he says in Article One, Chapter One, The secret ladder represents faith, Because all the rungs, or articles of faith, Are secret to and hidden from both the senses and the intellect. Accordingly, the soul lived in darkness Without the light of the senses and the intellect, And went out beyond every natural and rational boundary To climb the divine ladder of faith, That leads up to and penetrates the deep things of God. 1 Corinthians 2, 10 So I'd like to begin there, Trying to experientially get into what he's trying to help us understand. As it pertains to God, To the awakening of mystical union. Then I want to give some practical examples Of how the same dynamic is at work In the interior dimensions of our love for each other. So first then, the ladder. This imagery helps me to see it. Imagine as in a kind of waking dream, That you're out all alone, In a vast countryside. There's a full moon out. And in the middle of this big expanse of grass, This big huge field, There's a ladder. And the ladder touches, is grounded on the earth, But it ascends up to the air higher, higher, Up to the clouds, up. It ascends up into the deep things of God. And you approach the ladder, and the rungs of the ladder Are the articles of faith, Given to us in the Creed. And so you put your foot, starting with the Creed, See, I believe in God. So you put your foot on the ladder. I believe in God.