St. John of the Cross: Session 7

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. And welcome to our time together, turning for guidance to the teachings of the Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross.

In the previous session, in a sense, I'm gonna summarize the Dark Night, this transformative way of life, which is St. John of the Cross as we come to perfect union with God insofar as possible on this earth through love. And in this session, I want to move on from the Dark Night to the mystical union with God that blossoms in this night as it comes to fruition. So backing up a bit to put this into a context, and remember in the opening session on John of the Cross when we were just starting out, we spoke of his life at that point where he was ordained to the priesthood in the Carmelite Order. And he was approached by Teresa of Avila, soon to be St. Teresa of Avila, who was a cloistered nun in the cloistered, the sisters in the Carmelite Order, same order that he was in. And so she felt called to reform the Carmelite Order and return to the primitive observance of a return to simplicity, prayer and poverty. And felt asked, would he be willing to join her in reforming the houses of the men in the primitive observance? He prayed over it, discerned, called to do that. He informed the priests of his intentions to do this. They strongly objected and told him to cease and desist. He said he couldn't stop. He got called by God to do it. So they imprisoned him in a room there in the monastery, kept him in prison there for nine months with extremely harsh treatment. And during those nine months, the physical stress of it, the emotional stress, and the spiritual crisis of it in terms of the such brokenness within the church, usually the priest might assume in summer taught him scripture, theology, and ordination, preparing for ordination in the seminary. And that all kind of caved in on him to the point that he lost the ability to be sustained by the presence of God, to overcome by such loss. And out of that utter loss in darkness, there arose in him a profound experience of his soul in a mystical communion with Christ, in this love, in this mystical love. And the expressions of this unity and love poured out in him as poetry, a poem which entitled Stances Between the Soul and the Bright Room. When he escaped from the prison and showed the poem around, the people read it and were so moved by the depth and beauty of it, they asked him if he would write a commentary on it. And so he did, which is The Spiritual Canticle. So this work of John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, is a commentary on that poem.

And in that commentary, I then quoted passages from Thomas Merton's book, The Inner Experience, because that's the reason we started with Merton in this series. It's because he's a contemporary. He speaks of these things in a kind of a way that is more direct for us and more accessible to us. And so in The Inner Experience, Chapter 6, Infused Contemplation, he speaks of this union now that John of the Cross is speaking of as Infused Contemplation. In Article 6 of that chapter, Infused Contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge, this is Merton. Contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by him into the summit of the soul, giving it a direct and experiential contact with him. Mystical Contemplation is an intuition of God born of pure love. It is a gift of God. This absolutely transcends all the natural capacities of the soul.

And so what I'd like to do here is to turn to some passages in St. John of the Cross, in the Canticle to see how he speaks of this mystical union. And as the first passage that I want to share with you, I'm sharing it because I really see it as the essence of the matter, really. There's so many passages in the Canticle and in the Living Flame that are like this, but it gives some sense of how he speaks of this. He speaks of this mystical union with Christ born out of this darkness as a sweet drink of God, uses that poetic imagery. And he says in his commentary on the Canticle, this is his commentary on stanza 27, Article 6 In that sweet drink of God, that is this mystical love born out of the Dark Night, in that sweet drink of God, in which the soul is imbibed in him, she, that is the soul, most willingly and with intense delight surrenders herself wholly to him. In the desire to be totally his, and never to possess in herself anything other than him. God causes in this union, the purity and perfection necessary for such a surrender. So the soul is so moved by love, as to completely give all that she is, all that the soul is, so that there is in the soul nothing but God. She is emptied of everything but God. And then not only is there this love, but then also God is the one who empowers her and moves her to make such a self-donation of herself to God in love.