Friday, July 17, 2026

Course in Christianity - Carmelite Spirituality: Teresa and John

 Course in Christianity - Carmelite Spirituality: Teresa and John     https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mIg5UfHKTso&list=PL7AnQqoE9fNGTxdTDwKfC4bz7Ic5Fk5bW

 

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There's our topic for the evening. Uh we are doing um uh Teresa of Jesus, uh St.
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John of the Cross and uh the idea of the dark night of the soul. We'll also be looking at another aspect of this uh
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which is uh contemplation as a form of prayer uh and also recollection which is
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something that is strong in Carmelite spirituality. Uh we'll discover what Carmelite spirituality is in a second.
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So let's begin.
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Um here she is Teresa of Jesus. Uh she was
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born in 1515 and she died in 1582. So uh she she was around for a while.
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Um she was actually the first woman to be given the title doctor of the church uh in the Roman Catholic Church. She uh
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she she merited that title. Uh here's the other person we're going to be looking at. This is St. John of the
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Cross. Uh he was a near contemporary of Teresa. He was born in 1542, so a little later, but he died in 1591.
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Uh about 10 years after Teresa had died, he died a lot younger.
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Um, these two figures, Teresa of Avila or Teresa of Jesus as she's sometimes
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called and John of the Cross, they're two of the the most prominent people in um in Carmelaite spirituality.
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Now, two weeks ago, we learned that the Jesuits uh were part of this reform movement in the Roman Catholic Church.
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uh it emphasized teaching the formation of priests and the leoty uh and it emphasized the Jesuits emphasized a lot
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of mission work. So what we're going to be noticing now with these people is
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that they do what for contemplative orders or uh recluse orders orders that are dedicated to prayer and
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contemplation. they try and reform that sort of movement within the Roman Catholic Church as well. Uh they felt
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that these contemplative orders like the Carmelites, like the um uh Carthusians and and other contemplative orders, they
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felt that they'd become rather lax in their practices uh and they wanted to
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sort of uh dust them off and um and tidy them up a little bit. Teresa in particular was known for this very
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reforming zeal about the houses of worship. We'll we'll look at what she did uh in a minute.
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Now the Carmelites, let's just talk about the Carmelites for one second.
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What you're looking at here is a map of Israel with a little box on the top there. See that little lump that sticks
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out into the sea uh which the uh uh which the square is around? Uh that's showing us the location of Hifer. Now
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behind Hifur down in this direction here there's a range of mountains. This is quite a mountainous part of Israel and
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this is where you can find Mount Carmel uh which the Carmelites are named for.
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So the Carmelite order was probably started by a group of Latin hermits.
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They seem to have been a group of pilgrims or or maybe even a group of crusaders to to the Holy Land. And they settled on the slopes of Mount Carmel.
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There it is. Uh they settled on the slopes of Mount uh Carmel near what's called the fountain of Elijah. This is near modernday Hifer.
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The were definitely there by 1200. So they're they're quite an old old order.
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Uh in the midst of their little hermitage that they built on the side of the mountain here, here's the fountain of Elijah.
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Um they built a little church that they dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the blessed virgin. And in true medieval
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style, they called her the lady of the place, the lady of the house. Uh the the
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you know how the the medieval tapestries and all of the rest of it have pictures of the lady of the house portrayed as you know with a unicorn on her lap and
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various other things. So they called Mary the lady of the house. They were an order especially dedicated to Mary. Uh we will see why that is uh in a minute.
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Um and they followed the rule of St.
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Albert who was an Aramite, a recluse uh for solitary monks. It was based on
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the traditions of the desert mystics essentially. And what their order was based on uh was um silence,
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contemplation, um uh fasting, solitude, abstinence,
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poverty, manual work, and they also emphasize this direct combat with the
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devil in prayer. And of course, a daily eukarist. Here's the cave of Elijah uh
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on Mount Carmel. Uh that's what it looks like today. So it's a little different from what it was uh way back uh in the
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time of the foundation of the Carmelites. Uh here they all are.
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Um now they believed the Carmelites did that they were the spiritual descendants of the prophet Elijah.
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Uh Elijah was the greatest prophet in the Old Testament. You remember that the Jewish tradition was that before the
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Messiah appeared, Elijah would come back first, which is why we have the story of
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the transfiguration of Elijah and Moses being on the side of Jesus uh when he's transfigured on the mountain side. So
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they believe that they're following in the steps of the greatest prophet uh the sons of the prophets. They were inspired
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in fact by that famous passage in um in Kings where it describes Elijah fleeing
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from the wicked king Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Uh he takes refuge in the desert uh and then says, "God, where are
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you? You've disappeared." And first of all, there's a great roar of of thunder and a huge wind, a mighty wind. But it
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said the voice of God was not heard in the thunder. uh the voice of God was not heard in the mighty wind and it wasn't
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heard in the fire but after the fire there came a still small voice. So they said they gone to the wilderness here on
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Mount Carmel near to Elijah's place to listen for the still small voice of God.
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So, uh, that's in one kings. I believe the Carmelites have a call primarily to
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the interior life, what they would call a Marian life. You see, um, Mary, the
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mother of Jesus, bored Jesus inside her in her womb. And what these Carmelites are trying to do is evoke the interiority of Jesus for themselves.
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That's why Marian orders uh are very often very contemplative orders. They in
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they sort of aspire to this state of uninterrupted offering to God. A sort of continual contact with God that eventually uh leads to union with God.
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Just like Mary had a continual contact with God when she bore Jesus in her womb. That's the sort of life that they're striving for in this
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contemplation uh in their prayers. uh in their recollection of God uh daily as we'll see in a little minute. Here's a
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jolly monk um on the bottom left hand side there smiling uh but we can see on the right hand side uh it's an extract
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from a bigger painting with these people who are coming for spiritual direction uh to the to the uh to the Carmelites on the side of Mount Carmel.
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However, these Carmelites on the side of Mount Carmel, who were founded probably in the 1100s, maybe even before, they
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ran into a bit of trouble when the Holy Land was reconquered by the Muslims in 1187.
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You'll remember that uh God Freud de Buong I think his name was the French uh crusader uh went out to the Holy Land
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and claimed the Holy Land back for the Christians uh in I believe the third crusade
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um and founded the kingdom of Jerusalem Utram. Uh here you have a picture of the horrible horrible stories. They said
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that the blood was as high as um the um the knee of the horse running through
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the streets when the crusaders massacred the Muslims in the city of Jerusalem. So they claimed it back, founded a a a um a
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kingdom there that lasted for nearly 200 years. Uh but then eventually they were conquered in their turn by the great
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Saladin uh who took back the holy land for the Muslims. Um the last place to
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fall was a this famous crusader castle here. You can see a plan of the harbor there. The Knights Templars and all the
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rest of them uh were involved in all of this. Uh so Akra finally fell in about 1291 and that was the last stronghold of
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the Christians uh just before 1300 uh in the Holy Land. And at that point these
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Carmelite uh brothers on the side of the mountain uh decided to call it a day and they abandoned Mount Carmel and they
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moved back into the west. Now when they moved back west to France and Spain and Italy and England, uh they were looked
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at a little bit as scants, you see, because people thought that their traditions and their eastern mystical
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ways, they were profoundly influenced by the eastern mystics, uh they thought them too exotic and found their order a
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little odd. Now, tradition has it that an Englishman uh by the name of St.
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Simon Stark uh became the prior general of this Carmelaite order in the late
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1200s and he had a vision of the Virgin Mary in which she gave him this characteristic uh thing that the
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Carmelites wear uh um the brown uh uh scapula. And in that vision that he had,
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Mary promised that those who died wearing this little scapula uh would be saved. Uh so there she is holding the
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scapula in her right hand. Yeah. Jesus is in her left hand with a very precarious looking uh crown on the top
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of a baby's head there. Uh and here's the scapula that she's holding right there.
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Uh here's the traditional habit of the Carmelites. Now you can see them there standing at the back. And there are the ordained ones who've probably just
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celebrated communion which is why they've got these white Alps on uh over the top of them. So when they came back to Europe they mostly assimilated with
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the other mendicant torders. Remember the mendicants like the Franciscans and the Dominicans etc. It's because the Carmelites essentially they were torn
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between two poles. Partly they wanted to be recluses uh and partly they wanted to be mendicants that is go out and beg for
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the food and go out teaching and preaching and what have you. So the Carmelites had sort of lost their way
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and it's into this picture that Teresa of Avila or Teresa of Jesus suddenly comes on the scene.
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Now she was born into a devout family of converted Jews. Do you remember that when Ferdinand and Isabella reconquered
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Spain from the Moors, uh they uh inaugurated the Spanish Inquisition uh during which uh Christians were Jews
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were forced to to convert to Christianity if they wanted to stay in Spain. Many of them fled and I believe
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they've just been given compensation by the Spanish government uh all of this time later and given freedom to come back and live in Spain.
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Uh so she had a very privileged background. She was born in 1515 uh as part of the Spanish nobility and she was
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very impressed when she was growing up with the lives of the saints and she ran away from home uh aged seven with her
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brother uh in the hopes uh to get herself martyed by by the moors in southern Spain. Anyway, she was interrupted by her uncle who spotted
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them leaving the town and and dragged them both back home. Now her background led her to insist very strongly on
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equality within the within the Carmelite movement. So no superiority of of one person because they were rich or came
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from a better background than in another. and in Spain that was very much uh impressed at this time by uh sort of
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noble lineage and honor and purity of blood that wasn't tainted by Jewish ancestry or Islamic ancestry. This is
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quite a radical position that she's adopting saying, you know, we we must make sure that um uh that this this doesn't happen in our in our order.
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So um she was a little bit less tolerant of the Protestants incidentally who were rising at the same time. Uh
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uh um just like the medieval women that we looked at last week. Uh what we're going
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to discover is that she um a series of illnesses that were brought on partially
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by her rigorous aestheticism uh fed this deep sense of contemplative spirituality. Do you remember we
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discovered this last week when we were looking at the medieval women like Julian of Norwich uh and um uh Metfield
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of Magdabberg. Did we look at her? uh uh and a couple of the Hildigard of Bingan that they'd gone through these illnesses that had brought them into a deep
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understanding of of the suffering of Jesus and of the suffering of Jesus's mother. And so this led to a deep sense
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of intimacy with Jesus and a deep sense of intimacy with the Virgin as well.
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The interesting thing about this period here she is again as a young woman.
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One of the effects of the growth of Protestantism in Europe, an unlooked for effect if you want on the Roman Catholic
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Church was a deep distrust within official Catholicism of anything that
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looked like mental prayer, anything that looked like inward experiences of grace,
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anything that looked like a private interpretation of scripture. They thought you go off down that line and before you know it, you're going to
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become a Luther. Uh Luther and the the reformers laid a huge emphasis on on your interpretation of scripture, on
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your being led by the spirit, on the ability of any believer to have a spiritual experience that wasn't
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necessarily mediated by the church. And the Roman Catholic Church at that time uh found this a problem. Um, and there
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was some effort to stamp out uh a lot of spiritual books at the time. They were placed on the index of books that Roman
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Catholics were not supposed to be reading. Um, I have a picture I think here somewhere. We'll come back to that.
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This man uh this is Francesco de Osuna who was a Spanish Franciscan and he had
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some very stern words to say about private devotions. It comes as a bit of a surprise. He said, "If you see your
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wife going about visiting many churches and practicing many devotions and trying
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to be a saint, lock the door. And if that is not sufficient, break her leg if
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she is young, because she can go to heaven lame from her own house without going around in search of these suspect
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forms of holiness." pretty astonishing thing to say, but you can see how the Protestant Reformation
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had put the wind up certain Catholic authorities, thinking if you let people go away on private devotions, uh, you'll
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end up with those people leaving and joining the Protestants instead. Now, Teresa did not agree with this.
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Obviously, she thought that uh fidelity to mental prayer, to spiritual practice of this
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sort is going to be the cure and not the cause of spiritual aberration. She said her writings are mostly experiential.
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They're not systematic theology. They're not systematic works of spirituality either. She's quite warm. She's quite
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down to earth. uh if you want she gives practical advice in in what she in what
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she writes in in in the uh in the writings that we're going to uh look at in a little bit more detail. She
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encouraged a lot of um human friendship as a support network for the people who were on this Carmelaite spiritual
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journey and she said look do not bypass Jesus's humanity to get to his divinity.
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that's not the way you you you get to it. Um she was also quite interested in developing these classification systems
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to describe the stages in your spiritual life. So she talked about the four waters, the four wells of water that you
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draw from. We'll be coming back to this in a bit more detail in a minute. uh a great work was called the interior castle and she describes these these
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rooms in this great interior castle of the soul.
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Um in 1559 she felt that Christ presented himself to her in bodily form even though he
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remained invisible and the visions that she had of this Christ lasted for two years. She also said that she was
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visited uh by a serif um who drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly
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uh through her heart and it caused her terrible spiritual and bodily pain. Uh she says this is in the Vatican
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obviously then St. Peter's uh it's the great altar piece behind behind the the high altar in the lady chapel. Uh, I saw
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in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting
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it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very endrails.
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When he drew it out, he seemed to draw my endrails out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God.
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The pain was so great that it made me moan. And yet surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it.
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There's a closeup of her face uh in ecstasy.
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Um she spent several years traveling through Spain and setting uh uh setting up these new houses of uh religious
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houses of karmalites. And on one of these journeys in 1582, she fell ill and she died. Now, the
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interesting thing about this is that the date of her death is rather odd. It occurred just at the moment when Europe
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was making the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which required removing the dates
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October the 5th through October the 14th from the calendar. There was no October the 5th in 1582.
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So that means that uh Teresa either died before midnight on October the 4th or early in the morning of October the
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15th. Uh her feast day is in fact October the 15th because they said, "Oh well, we adopted that calendar, so that's the that's the way it goes." Her
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last words were a prayer. She said, "Uh, my Lord, it is time to move on." Well then, may your will be done. Oh my Lord
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and my spouse, the hour that I have longed for has finally come. It is time for you and I to meet one another.
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There she is.
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She made a huge contribution to spirituality uh in her description of the method that you could use to to
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attain to contemplative prayer. We'll be doing this as part of our spiritual exercise. This is a sort of passive form
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of prayer. Uh and in it, you feel like God is doing something for you
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rather than you feeling as if you're doing something or performing something for God. The direction is completely the
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other way round. In contemplative prayer, you feel that God is acting upon you rather than that you are making up
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prayers as you go along or reading prayers out from a book or using your mind and your imagination uh to to to
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ask something of God for yourself or or for other people. So the final phase of this spiritual development in in through
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contemplative prayer isn't characterized by ecstasies and raptures and all of those other things, but by this sort of
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constant inner awareness of of the trinity that dwells with inside you. It draws you out to serve your neighbor.
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And the value of your spirituality isn't me uh measured by your lofty spiritual experiences, your mystical experiences,
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even if you have them or not. It's going to be measured by the quality of your love for your neighbor. She said that's
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where all of this is supposed to be leading. So that's a brief description of her. Let's look now at St. John of the Cross.
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He was born in 1542 and a bit of a contrast to Teresa of Avala. Uh John's
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father too was a descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity. Uh his family was fairly well off. Uh but
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unfortunately he fell in love and married a poor orphan girl of a of a very low class and his family entirely
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disowned him. So when John was born, his his father had been disowned by his uh
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wealthier family and John was born destitute uh essentially born in poverty and for a
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brief period of time he lived in an orphanage.
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Uh during the time that he was an orderly sort of nurse in a plague hospital in Spain, uh he was able to
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attend classes at a very good Jesuit school that had recently been founded.
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He was a bit of an introvert. Uh he was a scholar. He was a poet. He was ordained a priest in 1567.
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And his first thought was that he was going to join a very strict Carthusian order. Remember, the Carthusians were
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founded as an offshoot of the Benedictines because the Carthusians thought that the Benedictines had become a little too rich and comfortable and
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received great grants of land and jewels and treasure and all of the things of it. The Carthusians were far more strict
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than the Benedictines, kept more times of silence. They were more strict about uh their their diet and their and their
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routine of monastic life. So John was attracted to the Carthusian solitary life, the Carthusian silent contemplation.
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But it was around that time that he became a friend of Teresa of Avala.
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Um Teresa persuaded him not to join the Carthusians uh but instead to come along
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with her uh and uh found an order for men based on her reforms of the car of
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the Carmelite order. Um so they adopted then this primitive rule of St. Albert that we saw that the Carmelites had
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adopted over there in in Israel. Um day and night were divided between observing the liturgy of the hours, uh devotional
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reading, a lot of devotional reading, celebration of the mass, and then long periods of solitude. So you were
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intended to abstain from meat and engage in lengthy fasting from midepptember to
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Easter. It's pretty long time during the winter, too. Um they also prohibited covered shoes.
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You were only allowed sandals if any footwear at all as something that distinguished them from these other group of Carmelites who were permitted
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to wear them. Teresa and John weren't happy with what had happened to the Carmelite order back in Europe. Uh it
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became the destination for wealthy pilgrims for instance. uh it became a place where people would send their
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noble children that they couldn't marry off in any other ways. Uh there were lots of visitors to these Carmelaite houses. The conversation began to get
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rather frivolous. Uh and the monastic order was not observed as strictly as it might be. So Teresa and St. John
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initially began within the Carmelaite order to try and reform it there, but they fell foul of the other Carmelites
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who didn't like this reforming instinct and wanted to keep things as they were.
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Uh and uh in fact um John was eventually captured by a group
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of these non-reforming Carmelites and thrown into a monastic prison and kept there for almost a year.
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uh until he was uh he managed to escape.
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That's what you can see in this picture uh the his little room up there. So this is why you sometimes hear the expression
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discalsted Carmelites. This means that these are the group of Carmelites that split away from these other Carmelites
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joining John of the Cross and Teresa of Avala. And they're described as discalsted because they don't wear closed shoes. They wear open shoes or no shoes at all.
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Um, his imprisonment was very harsh. Uh, I think I have a picture somewhere.
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There we go. Uh, he he was g This is by El Greco. This is the place where he was imprisoned.
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Um, he was given weekly lashings. Uh, he was kept in a tiny cell that measured
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only 6 by 10 ft. He was given no change of clothing and he was given a penitential diet of water and bread and
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little scraps of salted fish. That's all he got to eat. Um while he was imprisoned, he wrote a large part of his most famous poem which was called the
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spiritual canacle. Uh he eventually managed to escape from from that prison and he was her um um nursed back to health by uh by Teresa's uh nuns.
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Uh once he was out of that prison he became the superior of a se series of monasteries. The pope decided in the end
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to accept this discoust Carmelaite order which splat split off from the other Carmelites. He founded
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many new monasteries. In fact uh here they are Teresa and John together.
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uh and in a period of very few years, it's estimated that he actually traveled 25,000 kilometers in founding these
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monasteries and visiting them and and setting everything up. That's half the circumference of the earth. It's an interesting thought. Um he fell ill in
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the summer of 1591 and he died in a monastery uh in um uh Ubeda in Spain in December of the same year.
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uh he had a skin disease called uh ericipilus that can compromise your vital organs when you're elderly.
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Not that he was I think he was about 48 when he died.
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So now we've had a little look at their lives. Let's have a little look at um at Carmelite spirituality that they pioneered.
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Now, first of all, John of the Cross was primarily a poet and so his spirituality
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is going to be expressed in poetic language. It's never going to be fully explainable. It's never going to be
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fully exhaustable actually that there's always going to be a surplus of meaning uh for for for for others to discover.
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uh he said it would be foolish to think that expressions of love arising from mystical understanding like these
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stanzas are fully explainable. The spirit of the Lord who abides in us and aids our weakness as St. Paul says
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pleads for us with unspeakable groanings in order to manifest what we can neither fully understand nor fully comprehend.
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As a result, these persons let something of their experience overflow in figures and simileies and from the abundance of
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their spirit, they pour out secrets and mysteries rather than rational explanations.
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So what John of the Cross is trying to do is to pour out secrets to pour out mysteries in poetical language. He's not
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going to give you a systematic spirituality or a systematic theology. That's not his aim.
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So he um ground his approach to spirituality in faith, hope and charity.
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He said rather than in the sort of miraculous apparitions or ecstasies or states of consciousness that we normally associate with with myth mysticism.
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No idea, no dogma, no vision, no spiritual ecstasy, no matter how profound, is going to be able to
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communicate the full reality of who God really is. So we can never become fixated on those things to a point when
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we confuse them with the divinity to to which these exercises and these prayers should be leading us. So what John
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believes is that dogmatic claims about God end up hiding God as much as revealing who God is.
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So all of these grand dogmatic statements about incarnation or salvation or redemption or the nature of
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the resurrection, all of those great dogmatic statements of the Christian faith, he says, just cloud the
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mysterious reality of what God actually is. It's called um apohatic theology.
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You can know more about God by saying what God is not than you can by saying what God is.
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So he said, "What you end up doing is living inside this mystery that you'll never be able to fully explain or
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systematize or or clothe with fixed ideas." And he described this as sure insecurity.
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That that's what your faith should become. A sure insecurity.
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He called it dark faith. Not the light faith of explanations and rationalism and systematization,
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but a a mysterious faith. A faith that can't be reduced to formulas. A faith that he called dark faith. We'll explore that a little bit more in a minute.
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So, here's a bit of an explanation of how John guides that. That's uh that's his own drawing there uh of Jesus on the
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cross viewed from above from God's eye point.
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Um and here's his final resting place. Uh his relic there, his tomb, uh in Spain.
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Here it is. another wedding cake.
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Um his his works are still very much uh published and we're going to have a little look of how he's going to guide
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people through prayer to a state of contemplation.
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What he's going to say uh we'll come back to those.
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He says you start in prayer with something that he calls the purgative way. This is the prayer of beginners.
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It's a sort of busy style of praying and it uses a lot of words.
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Now he says if you use a lot of words in your praying um it's going to have the
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benefit of encouraging the encouraging the flourishing of basic virtues. It will develop in you patience and uh temperance and humility and kindness.
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And in the end, perhaps when you finished praying, you're going to be left with this feeling of emotional satisfaction. We'll come out of our
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praying thinking, "Yep, that was well done. I did what I needed to do. I prayed for the people that needed to be prayed for. I was suitably
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repentancefilled. I uh um uh I was suitably uh rejoicing filled and put all of those things into some good words.
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He says this is the beginning step of prayer when you're using words to to come to God and ask for things or repent or or or to or to express thanksgiving.
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That's called the purgative way, which leads you eventually to the passive way of prayer.
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Your prayer is going to slowly become simpler and much quieter. So all the busyiness of the words that you've been
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using is going to give way to just sitting still in God's presence.
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That's all there is to it. You move forward through your prayer without the
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need for or the promise of a definite reward from that praying. You're just in God's presence. That's all there is to
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it. Simple, quiet. It ends in this sort of gentle and and inward awareness of
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God's presence. That he calls the passive way. You don't need words. You don't need to fill it up with anything.
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You just sit in the presence of God. He says this is going to lead to another stage in your prayer life which is called the illuminative way.
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You're sitting still in the presence of God doesn't mean that God is not doing something. God is active. Your
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contemplation is going to become so strong. He says that it's going to disturb your your
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psych psyche in some way. It it's going to be disturbing. You may feel rapture.
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You may feel ecstasy. You may feel vision. You may feel a direct presence of God in some way.
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But because God is actively working on you and not just sitting there and receiving your prayers, you might
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experience this as pain because we're still sinful people. And when the light comes in, it can sometimes hurt and it's
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going to lead us to a state where we want to be radically purified if you want in the presence of
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God. He says, "Now with the light and heat of the divine fire, the soul sees and feels those weaknesses and miseries
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which previously resided within it, unseen and unfelt, just as the dampness of a log of wood was unknown until the
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fire being applied to it made it sweat and smoke and sputter." So what he's saying is that when God comes into you
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in this in this way uh it will start revealing those places in you which are not godly and you will experience the
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presence of God as something that might be painful not something that might be
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wonderful and full of full of mystic ecstasy. Uh that's an interesting point
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that mystic ecstasy people think it it's equivalent to bliss or a feeling of feeling a feeling of being wonderful and and uh filled with the presence of God.
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But the great mystics have always said it's not always like that. Sometimes your mystical experience can be extremely painful because the presence
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of God is revealing in you those things that are still to be healed and touched.
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uh and that is God's presence too. Uh it's not a judgmental presence. It's just the contrast of God's love and and
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and compassion for you revealing those hard places that you that you don't want to see yourself very often.
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Finally, he comes to the unitive way uh which is a sort of stability that comes out of this. In the end, what he says is
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that you arrive at something that's a bit like a spiritual marriage. Uh your whole human nature becomes in harmony
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with with God's nature. Uh like the state of Adam and Eve in paradise. Uh you come to this sublime participation in the life of the trinity.
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So those are the four ways. The purgative way of lots of words. The passive way where your prayer becomes
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simple and quiet and you simply sit in the presence of God. Then the illuminative way when God makes God's
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presence known to you which can sometimes be a painful thing. And finally this unitive way where you
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achieve some sort of stability like Adam and Eve experienced in in paradise.
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Now we've looked at that.
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Let's have a little look at what we call the dark night of the soul.
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Now, this little expression of John, he invented it. It's comes up very frequently in in John of the Cross's
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works, and he uses the expression in a variety of different ways. It doesn't mean just one thing. He can make it mean
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several things. Uh, and now it's entered common parliament. You often pe hear people saying, "Oh, this is the dark
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night of the soul." Or, "Oh, this COVID thing, it's the dark night of the soul." And they they use it in common
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parliament. You know, you can find all sorts of things like this on the internet if you look it up. The life of a project. This could be, you know, cleaning out the garage or something. I
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don't know. You get the dark night of the soul because it sucks and it's boring and then suddenly it'll be good to finish and then you think it's done.
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It still sucks, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. So this dark knight of the soul is used in common parliament very often with not much of
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an idea of where it came from or what John might have meant by the dark knight of the soul. That little schema that we
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looked at with the purgative and then the uh uh uh the the the passive and what have you that it assumes two phases
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that you're going to go through. After this purgative stage, God is going to call on you to begin to abandon all of those physical senses.
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So, props, images, words, you're purging yourself of those things by using them.
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And by using them, you're developing your virtues. And you're becoming more aware of the presence of God. And that is leading you to a place where you can
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leave some of those words and images behind and simply sit in the presence of God without the need for all of this
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these images and words which you've just purged if you want. So what he says is that this purging process he calls it
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the passive night of the senses. It's an interesting expression that he uses to describe this.
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Secondly, in stages three and four, this illuminative and then this stable stage,
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you're not just called on to abandon your images, your mind, your your your
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props. You're called to abandon also your spirit in prayer.
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your mind, your rationality, your your logical capacities have now gone and
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you're left abandoning your soul also in the presence of God. And this is partly
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what he means when he says the dark night of the soul. It's a phase of prayer. It begins with purging yourself
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of all of these external things and then the light goes inwards and you begin to
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look inwards to those places in your own soul where that purging has got to take place as well. So that God alone, the
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trinity, the life of the trinity alone uh is present. So it means turning away from reliance on your mind or your
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ability to control your life while you're praying. Um the dark night of the soul involves uh letting go of all of
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that. But the dark night of the soul, John also uses this to to be understood in terms of human suffering.
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So, we feel lost. We feel disorientated.
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Uh we feel abandoned by family or or by our friends. Uh we're still aware somehow of past happiness, but we're
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we're unable to ask for for or seek for relief from this place. So God suddenly
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becomes unreal to us as if God is no longer there. He calls this too the dark night of the soul.
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Then he asks some questions. He says, "Why has this happened? Why do we
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suddenly feel lost, disoriented, abandoned, uh alone?
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Is it because you're sick? Is it because of ill health?
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Secondly, could it be due to some sort of sin that that that you're that's unresolved?
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Or is it just due to apathy, if you like, depression perhaps, a a not
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caring, an inability to care, a mood, a mood that you're going through, as he understood it. Now he said if if this
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feeling of of disorientation and abandonment is due to ill health or sin or apathy
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eventually it's going to dissipate. It will disappear and you'll get back to good health. You'll get back to your
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routine. The thing will pass. It's all right. This dark night of the soul has been produced by these other things. But
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he says there's a different sort of anguish of of disorientation of abandonment.
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When you look at that feeling of abandonment or disorientation or this dark night of the soul experience,
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is it characterized by this sort of uh pervasive inner anguish?
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Um, is there a sense of disorientation that you're experiencing in relation to yourself when you look at yourself, when
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you try to imagine your soul? Do do you feel yourself disorientated?
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Do you feel disoriented in relation to the world? Do you feel disoriented uh towards God?
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Then he says, if you're having those feelings, it's possible that what it's it's God
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that's doing that to you. You're not doing it to yourself.
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God is provoking some evolutionary spiritual change within you.
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Now, some people come for spiritual direction and they say things like, um, I feel like I've lost my faith. I feel
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like uh I I haven't been doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing and
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it's my fault that I feel this way. And John says, take take the eye out of this
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for a moment. It is possible. It is possible that this is not your fault
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that you feel this way. It is possible that this is something that God is doing to you. He's causing you to feel
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disoriented, abandoned, uh um because and and um full of anguish because God
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wants to draw you closer. And this is one of the ways in which that happens.
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So you can't shorten that ordeal. It's impossible to shorten it. All you can do
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is to work within it. It means that you're being drawn closer together uh uh closer in into the divine.
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Um it's like a dark ray. He says experienced in the same way as as a
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speliologist experiences this bright ray of sunshine uh after spending hours in a cave.
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So he says, "What happens is uh you're going through that dark experience and God is shining a light on there that's
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dazzling you. You've been made blind by light. Not blind by dark, but blind by
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light. And this dark night of the soul in fact is a bright light of God that is that is shining in. It's a it's a very
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interesting image that he used. He says it it's it's God's self-communication
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this dark night of the soul and it's going to be experienced as painful at first because we're all ill. We're all
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sick. We're all fallen creatures. So this bright light that God is shining in there is going to be experienced as a
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dark ray as as as pain at first probably because what God is doing is
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taking away something that you used to rely on so much so that you were
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confusing that thing with an experience of God. So imagine that just for a moment. It might be a good thing in
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itself. uh your prayer life. It might be the eukarist. It might be Bible reading.
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It might be a spiritual director or or mentor that you've come to rely on. Some important resource that you found uh to bolster your Christian commitment.
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But those things are not the same as God.
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that what God might do is to take away your joy in those things, your feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment in those
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things because you've been mistaking those things for God. And God
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wants you uh for yourself. He doesn't want you to be mistaking forms of spiritual life for God. And
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this this this means that this dark night of the soul, something that God is doing to you uh is drawing you more and
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more closely to God. And and by drawing you more and more closely to God, you will be participating in the end in the
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inner life of the Trinity. And God will be dwelling inside you just as Jesus dwelt uh within the womb of Mary.
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Um he said that this John is telling us that this breaks in if you like. Uh let
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me go back to a couple of pictures of him.
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The dark knight of the soul breaks a hole in you so that you can experience something greater, something mysterious.
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And so he says that it gives a shape and a meaning to your despair. Your despair
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isn't pointless. Your despair isn't aimless. Your despair isn't meaningless.
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Uh and this basic teaching that he has about this dark night of the soul experience. It can be expanded into all
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sorts of purifying crises that individuals and societies uh will inevitably be going through. You might
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say at the moment due to this virus uh we're going through a purifying crisis or we could be uh that there may be
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things that we are going to have to learn from this that could have been learned no other way. I know that's a specious way of pointing it and I hate
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it when people say your suffering is for a reason. Um but but what they're trying to get to the heart of here, Teresa and
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John, uh is that this it's it's an opening within you that that is happening. An opening that God is going
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to come to fill. So in the confusion of our own times, he's trying to provide us
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with a spirituality that will help us to keep our bearings in the middle of all of this. It's going to help us to travel
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light. He says, "Listen, you already possess everything that you need in Christ."
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So you can move forward. You can move ahead in this darkness. You can be guided by faith and hope and love. Don't
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be overly premature in trying to seek security in any ideology, in a church theological system, a church structure,
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a religious experience, a one-sided reading of the gospel. All of these things,
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don't don't reach for certainty too soon because you will confuse those things for God. As you learn to let go of all
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of these idols, all of these prejudices in the pur purgative way, you'll gradually begin to discover and
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experience the trinity which you will find living in your heart closer to you than your own breath.
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So now we've looked at this a little bit, let's begin to think about a spiritual exercise that will help us to understand it a bit more.
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Um, and let's think about the practice of the presence of God, which is a a key um theme in Carmelaite spirituality.
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Recollection, they call it recollection.
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As we've seen, as we've gone through this, the Carmelite tradition lays a huge emphasis on mental prayer. Your the
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your prayer life, your inner life, recollection, they say, is this recollecting or the resituating of
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yourself in the presence of God. It's not about words. It's not discursive.
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It's not about formal prayers that you will read out loud or ones that you'll make up out of your own head. It's
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affective. It's interior. And it's more to do with the state of your spirit rather than the state of your mind.
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Your mind ideally is going to be stilled. It's going to be quieted. Those
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noisy voices are going to to be stilled in your head. You won't be busy reading or reciting vocal prayers. Instead,
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you're just going to be simply and lovingly present to God. That's all
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there is to it. Be present to God. Don't worry about filling it all up. You're not thinking about God. You're looking
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at God. You're contemplating God. You're sitting in God's presence. It requires nothing of you. Just
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sitting and the motivation of that prayer is very simple. It's just love.
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Um you in our close friendships or our relationships, we don't always have to find something to say.
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My mother had this rather dreary friend at one point. Um one of her lame ducks. Uh her name was uh was Sylvia.
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Um, and I remember once Sylvia had come for tea or something and my mother left
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me with Sylvia in the front room while she went to get the sandwiches or whatever it was. Uh, and afterwards I
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said, "Please don't do that again." Because I couldn't think of anything to say to her. I was about 11 probably. And
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she said, "Oh, that was a companionable silence. Don't worry about it." I thought, well, still didn't make it
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feel any more comfortable to me. But what contemplative prayer is, what what this this what we're trying to do is to
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get into a state of companionable silence with God.
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That's the idea of it. So, it's you can simply be quiet together with your spouse or your friend or something. You
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don't have to fill every moment with chatter and words to let them know you love them or let them know that it's
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time to take the bin out or uh let them know that you're sorry about being horrible to them or whatever it is. Um
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we don't come to God in contemplative prayer uh because we've got a problem that needs solving or or or or somebody
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that we want to pray for. Uh St. Teresa called it holy companionship.
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um just sitting in the presence of God, recollecting God, recollection.
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Now, it doesn't necessarily come naturally to most people. And perhaps the other most famous disc Carmelite,
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Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, whose picture you can see here, uh he popularized it. He made it enormously
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attractive and accessible uh in his little book that was called the practice of the presence of God. Brother Lawrence was a cook in his Carmelaite monastery.
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Uh and he found ways of recollecting the presence of God uh in washing the dishes and stirring the soup and doing whatever
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else he was doing in there. This is a very popular book still. You can find it very easily. Once again, it's not necessarily a book that you're going to
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read through methodically. It's a good book to pick up now and again and um practice the presence of God with it. Uh
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Dorothy Day thought that he was a wonderful thing, too, and liked his practical spirituality.
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So, here's here's what brother Lawrence says in his little book.
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He says, "First of all, um, renounce the love of anything that
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isn't God." It sounds complicated, but he said, "Don't do it in one big dramatic
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gesture." It involves, all it involves is keeping a vigilant watch over all the impulses that affect your spiritual
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life, all the impulses that drive your daily activities. keep watch over them.
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And by keeping watch over them, the little decisions that you make during the day, uh the the the little gestures
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that you make, the things that you say to other people, just keep thinking of God in the middle of that and saying, "I love God in the middle of this
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situation." Secondly, practice God's presence by keeping your
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soul's gaze trustfully fixed on God. He says you can do this through an act of
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the imagination. Uh and you can do it through acting on an impulse of love. So
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imagine yourself constantly in the gaze of God. God is always looking at you.
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Nothing that we do, nothing that we can say c can be separated or hidden from God. God's gaze is always there. His loving gaze is always on you.
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By by remembering this God's that you're living in God's loving gaze all the time. You can't go anywhere where God is
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not. Eventually the you the that that practice of
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remembering God's gaze is going to blur the distinction that you make between time that you call prayer time and time
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that you call work time. Everything will blur into one under under God's gaze.
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Thirdly, he says every activity that you start, every act that you perform,
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begin that act by an inward lifting of your heart to God. No matter what it is, it doesn't really matter.
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Do for God what you ordinarily do for yourself, he says.
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So, uh, wash your face in the morning.
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there's an act of of remembrance. Uh you know, whatever habit you have when
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you click on a certain light or um light up your computer or something, uh
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lift it into the presence of God. So, your day is going to become punctuated with these little moments of of mental
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awareness of God's presence. um a sort of withdrawal from from into God's
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presence. Tiny little prayers he said that you can say in one brief moment. Uh you can say, "See God, I'm entirely
1 hour, 48 seconds
yours. I'm wholly yours." Or, "Lord, make me pleasing to your heart." That's another one of Brother Lawrence's little
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prayers that you can say at any moment of the day going about any activity that you might have.
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Fourthly, he says, "Keep persevering because the the effort of thinking about
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God frequently all through your day is going to seem really laborious at first.
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It's going to seem like quite a heavy burden trying to remember it. But don't be discouraged if you forget um this
1 hour, 1 minute, 27 seconds
desire to be present to God and offering these moments to God frequently uh throughout the day. Uh, it could easily become a moment of anxiety, couldn't it?
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You you start thinking, "Oh, I forgot about God then. I should have done it when I switched the light on or brush my teeth or whatever it was you said you
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were going to do." So, he said two things. Confession, just say you're sorry and move on, and a healthy
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suspicion of long- winded prayers. Don't get into it with God. Just sort of say, "Look, I know I did that." and then
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practice the presence of God again and and set it to one side. He said, uh, present yourself to prayer to God like a
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dharm paralytic beggar at a rich man's door. That's all you need to do. Sit at the door. Sit at the door. Uh, if we
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struggle to approach God, God is going to rush towards you. God is going to run towards you. And what is a small
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deliberate effort on our part to remember God in this way will end up reaping a harvest of real delight.
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He says you're not suddenly going to become a spiritual heroine or hero.
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the changes that will occur thanks to this practice of the presence of God slowly, gently, quietly, routinely.
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These changes that you're going to experience are probably going to be very small and very subtle at first. Uh
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you'll find that you have less outbursts of temper, say, uh you'll be willing to reach out in moments where perhaps you
1 hour, 3 minutes, 7 seconds
wanted to give the cold shoulder or not bother with something.
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Um, the benefit of all of this is to remember that you're no longer alone.
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You are never alone through this practice. Every joy, every pleasurable
1 hour, 3 minutes, 26 seconds
experience of your life is shared by God. Just as is every doubt, every fear,
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uh, every sorrow that we might have, we're not alone in those things. We're practicing the presence of God.
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Therefore, we never feel alone because we know that we're constantly held in God's gaze through this practice. We
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know what God knows. And the result of this is that we fall deeper in love with
1 hour, 3 minutes, 56 seconds
God through this simple recollection prayer. We discovered something similar, didn't we, when we looked at the um the
1 hour, 4 minutes, 5 seconds
Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me. Uh it was a similar sort of pray, the prayer of silence, if you like, the the prayer of
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the heart. And and brother Lawrence is striving to the same thing. He's saying by this constant awareness, uh you you
1 hour, 4 minutes, 22 seconds
you realize that you're that you're in God's presence and and surrounded by God and never outside God's gaze.
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Um there are other famous Carmelites.
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Here's one very famous one, Santores de Lizu. This wonderful, remarkable church.
1 hour, 4 minutes, 42 seconds
I think Joris, you went there, didn't you, in the last last summer. Must be bringing back some happy memories. Uh
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she was a Carmelite who who uh who practiced this presence of God in some very simple and very direct and very
1 hour, 4 minutes, 58 seconds
endearing endearing ways. Um um I I rather like this quotation of
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hers. I now know that true charity consists in bearing all our neighbors defects, not being surprised at their
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weakness, but edified at even their smallest virtues.
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uh that once again this vigilance and observation helps you not only become aware of the of of God's gaze on you
1 hour, 5 minutes, 26 seconds
constantly but aware of the smallest virtues and kindness and and goodness of other people. It will shift your
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emphasis from the judgmental to the forgiving uh the practice of of charity that's cultivated by this discipline of
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the of the practice of the presence of God. I think that was my last slide.
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Actually, it was a little shorter tonight because I didn't have as much time as I thought I was going to because of uh various
1 hour, 5 minutes, 57 seconds
other bits and pieces. It was a little dense, too. I'm sorry about that.
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Anybody got any observations or any questions or or comments?
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Uh yes, Katherine. Um, could you tell me the relation of
1 hour, 6 minutes, 18 seconds
this all that you've told us about the Carmelites to to um to the opera dialogues of the
1 hour, 6 minutes, 26 seconds
Carmealites of Plunk that story? You know that story? Oh, I I I don't know the story. Were all beheaded?
1 hour, 6 minutes, 35 seconds
They were they were Is he referring to the dispute between the two groups of Carmelites? That's what I'm wondering.
1 hour, 6 minutes, 44 seconds
When it says dialogues, I I've got to go back and look at that opera now and see because uh it was a pretty horrible
1 hour, 6 minutes, 53 seconds
time. Uh one that the old order of the Carmelites that had sort of gone to the dogs according to St. John and uh uh St.
1 hour, 7 minutes, 3 seconds
Teresa uh they were very much against all of these reforms and as we heard John was thrown into a monastic prison
1 hour, 7 minutes, 11 seconds
for nine months uh in the middle of this dispute. Uh and the pope eventually gave permission to John and Teresa to found
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what essentially was a separate order uh the discalsted Carmelites. They still called themselves Carmelites but uh they
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were a separate order from the old Carmelite order. I don't know if the old Carmelite order still exists. I should have researched into that and found out about it, but there we go.
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It's a very dramatic, you know, ending to that opera when they're when they're all
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And does he end up using some of John's poetry in in in the opera and things like that? Or you've just opened this up for me to look into it. I should do that.
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Yeah, it would be interesting to find out. And listen, I like Pulank so perhaps that would be a good listen.
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And through the last time the Met did it, I don't know where my problem is, but they would have. That would be interesting to find out.
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Yeah. What? Yeah. I wanted to say something. Yes.
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Well, um, over at Mary Manny Walsh, which is run by Carmelites. I don't know if they're disc, but they all wear shoes. And one of the nuns, Sister Mary
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Michael, with her habit and her the whole thing, but she wore she always wore high spiked heels.
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It was very strange and and she was not not good-looking. She was really ugly.
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So, it was it was really this strange thing. And she was the one that went out and did a lot of outreach, but she went every place with her spike. The spite
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ran into her was on walking towards Mary Manning to see my mother and I couldn't keep up with her. She was she was walking so fast that I had to pretend
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that I had to stop or something because it was embarrassing. She was in her 70s at the time.
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Oh golly. Yeah, that they make them tough. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe she thought I was being discussed.
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There was one other thing that I that came to me while you were talking about uh the this form of prayer and you
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mentioned the um uh the Jesus prayer of the orthodox and um I have read in
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several books about the Jesus prayer that it's a that it's a very dangerous prayer to do on your own that you should only do it under spiritual direction
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because it can bring you to a terrible catastrophe.
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And I was wondering uh when and I never could understand that but you mentioned here that that sometimes the mystical
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ecstasy is painful and maybe that's what they're referring to something like that. I think you're right actually because I um this this purgative way of
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of John and Teresa is intended to go down that particular path that the more you draw close to God, the more those
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things in you that are not right uh are going to be woken up and you'll you'll
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be forced to to deal with them because the light will come in. And therefore it's better to have a spiritual director
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who can accompany you through that through that process uh so that you you can be guided through it and and keep
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your eye on the end rather than the the misery of wherever it is that you that you've landed through through this
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practice. I think also they they believe that through the Jesus prayer people pick it up and then suddenly decide yes I'm going to do breathing with it. uh so
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you breathe in on the Lord Jesus Christ son of God and you breathe out on the have mercy on me a sinner uh that these
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breathing exercises without the help of a an experienced spiritual director who knows about those things for some reason
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they believe that it's dangerous to mess with people's breath in this way uh that it can produce experiences that are too
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heavy for you to carry at the particular moment that they might come on and so a director will say I think you're ready now for this next stage
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this is what you might expect if you do it. These are the things to look out for. Come back and tell me what you've experienced.
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So they were very famous spiritual directors, Teresa and um John. In fact, that's one of the things that got them
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in trouble. Uh because many priests and many lay people went to these the founders of this new order within the
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Carmelaite tradition instead of going to the old Carmelites and the old Carmealites began to get very jealous of
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them and their success or or or their popularity amongst amongst people looking for direction. So I presume that
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as they walk people through these spiritual exercises like we've just done um this was very much a part of what they were a part of what they were doing
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and warning people that the purgative way might lead eventually to the illuminative way which may not be everything that you're expecting it to
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be. It's not going to be a moment of extreme bliss. Uh at least not at first it might be very painful.
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[Music]
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That's interesting. Yeah. Anything else, Ruth? Hang on.
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Yes. Um I I wonder, you know, you have one picture about um about the prayer like the per uh purgatory.
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That slice is that something like more or less like um purgatory
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like like a like um paradise loss or something like that you know with that which which one was that Ruth?
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It's very very um was it early?
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Yeah, very early, you know. Um in the slides that I'd got. Oh, was this it? Yeah. Was that it?
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No, it's it's a picture. It's like a um Is it a painting? The prayer. Yeah, this one.
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This one? Yes.
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Can you explain a little bit about that one?
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Uh it's an altar. Uh no, not that one. The one with um in the black color previously.
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This one? No. Oh dear. Yeah, this one. This one? Yeah.
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Yeah. Have I landed on it? Uh th this is this is one of his bones. One of St.
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John of the Cross's bones that has been mounted inside a glass altar for people to venerate.
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Uh his body didn't survive uh whole.
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Some sometimes people are exposed whole like this with wax faces and their clothes and things. Some the tradition
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is that if people die in an odor of sanctity, their body doesn't corrupt. Um but occasionally uh somebody who has been made a saint, say uh St.
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Cardinal Newman, Henry Newman, who was just made a saint. Uh they dug him up in order to find some relics, but the soil
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was so acidic that his body had completely disappeared in the grave.
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There was nothing left. Uh so sometimes there are relics that are left. And this is a relic of of John uh John of the
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cross. So you if you look carefully on the right hand side, it looks like a thigh bone or something. Is it just down
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here? You can see through the glass in this area here. Mhm.
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So I I presume that's what it is. And this it's part of this altar.
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Uh where it is, I don't know, but perhaps it's only exposed at certain times and it's in this thing at the top.
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That's what I'm guessing anyway. That makes any sense.
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Is that a category? Is that the same as like um paradigm laws, you know, when they have a different levels um like the
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prayer uh the doctrine of purgatory
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um is an interesting one. The the the Anglican church doesn't agree with it.
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It's a they said it's a fond thing vague vainly invented and repugnant to the word of God.
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Uh what the reformers said about purgatory for a variety of reasons uh was that uh you're it it makes a mockery
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of Jesus's death on the cross. If Jesus's death on the cross saves you, it saves you right now. And there's no halfway measures. You're either saved or
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you're not. Uh and therefore when you die, you can't, you know, you can't be purged of things in order to get saved
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after death. Um, I think that was the main objection to it. Uh, it's it's it's an ambiguous doctrine.
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Yeah. Anything else? Other comments? Yes.
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Yeah. Hi. I have two questions about some two of your two of the uh paintings early on of St. John.
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Yeah. One is with him holding a skull and I was wondering what is the meaning of the skull? What? Yeah.
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Yeah. Sometimes you see this too in uh St. Terresa of Avilla some of her paintings also we have this
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contemplation of it. Um there could be a couple of reasons for this and if anybody else knows a little
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bit more about this do feel free to chip in. Uh the tradition of meditating on a skull like this to remind you of your
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own mortality uh was something that has been practiced in in the past. Uh also
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um it goes through goes through phases this sort of business. In the 1600s these skulls appeared on tombs. They
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appeared in paintings. They appeared in all sorts of different places. People suspected it was due to the the last flowering of the great plagues. Uh this
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meditating on your death because you could be struck down at any moment uh was a way of preparing yourself for the
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inevitable sort of thing. Uh and it's a momento mori a little reminder of your own mortality.
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Uh but also a reminder that of of triumph over death. I suppose that's why he's holding a cross in the other hand.
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That's that's my guess. Anybody got other ideas on that?
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Yeah. Yeah. Like to the cavalary. Yes.
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Like the cavalary hisians also like this skull.
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Oh skull. Mhm.
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And I don't know. I find Particularly on this picture, it's interesting to see together.
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Yeah. The contrast of the two Adam all this imagery you see sometimes under a crucifix. Sometimes you have a
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crucifix and on the foot of the crucifix you have a skull.
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[Music]
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I think it's part of the same thing like how it has disappeared. I guess now it's quite difficult to find a skull.
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[Music]
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Yeah, it's illegal probably too.
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I think the tradition was that uh Jesus was crucified over the tomb of Adam. So the skull was supposed to be Adam's
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skull and the blood dropped down physically uh onto onto Adam's skull redeeming humanity. But it is
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interesting juosition in that particular painting, isn't it? That's what from 1650.
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So at the it's at the height of the skull craze.
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I think I saw a picture of Teresa of Avala with a skull, too. Yes. Yeah, I did.
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Yeah. Oh, and there's um there's Francesco with one.
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Uh oh, maybe I didn't. Maybe it was the very first picture of her.
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Uh where was she? She's gone.
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No, perhaps it was when I was looking for pictures, but there was a picture of her kneeling and praying and on a little table above her, there was a there was a skull there, too.
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And Nigel, yeah, I also thought it was very interesting uh the painting right after the one of
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St. John holding a skull of St. John in the cell. He's indoors. Yes.
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But there are two clouds above his head.
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Yeah. I I noticed that and I wondered what that was about.
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Yeah. Yeah. The ray of light is piercing through. I suppose uh he's he's been imprisoned in this cell in this this
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monastery. Uh he's looking rather well on it. U the story goes that he managed to pick
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the lock of his door uh and escape uh through a tiny little window while nobody was looking and jump down from up
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there. I suspect that this cloud thing, it's about the ray, the dark ray, and it
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could be a reference to his uh his um his poetry uh and and the the great
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spiritual work that he wrote where this dark ray appears. And he wrote most of that in prison. Apparently, he had the paper that he was able to write on
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shoved through uh from a from a from a neighboring cell. Um it was a tiny hole in a cell wall. So he was able to write
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while he was in prison. So even in the midst of prison there the dark ray is penetrated and and um the presence of God is being practiced.
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Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else?
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Good. I think next week we're going to be looking at uh uh reform piety.
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Um Joris will be with us. So we'll probably both be doing a little bit. Uh we'll talk about that tomorrow. Uh so we'll see if we can find some pictures.
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And the spiritual exercise I think that I had in mind for it uh would be uh
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the ethic of of work, the spiritual practice of work.
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Um a helpful theme just at the moment. Maybe and maybe not. I might skip that one.
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We'll make it as interesting as possible. Maybe we'll have Wesley shouting glory to God through the bung hole of the barrel or something.
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That should be fun. Oh, look. I got little squiggles on the screen again. How interesting. Don't know where that came from.
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Everybody doing all right? Getting bored? Yeah. Not at all.
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We have some news actually from the dasis. the bishop has sent out a a letter of directive. He's been working
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together with the other clergy and um and bishops of the of the Roman Catholic Arch Dasis and with the other
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surrounding bishops. Uh what they've essentially said is that at the moment five people are permitted in the church
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with social distancing uh in order to um perform the services online services. uh
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at the end of the month uh cautious reopening can begin uh by the 1 of July.
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We are going to talk about that with with the with the wardens and the vestri to see what that might look like for
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Santa Spree for instance. Um and obviously we will be continuing with the streaming of everything while we still
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can. Uh it may be that there's a time when we can allow 10 people in the church maximum, but how we're going to arrange that I I'm not really very sure.
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Um I've had a word with Steven who's on our um our vestri who's a doctor and
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he's come up with some good suggestions too. So we do have ideas. We'll have masks for everybody. We'll have plenty
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of hand sanitizer. There will be ways of taking communion that are hygienic. uh and we're going on the advice of the
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center for disease control uh and uh the the directives of the governor and of the bishops in consultation with others.
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So there's light at the end of the tunnel. I will say pretty amazing is that that I' I've been
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noticing that in the liquor stores they don't do any social distancing. Right about that. They're all open.
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They're all open. Yes. You should say it's a liquor store and it Oh, we could couldn't wait. Yes. Liquor.
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Port is served. That's it.
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Oh dear. Anybody else? Peggy, did you want to say something?
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Oh yes. Um, so I had a question regarding those four stages, the purgative and the passive up to the illuminative, I think it was.
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Yeah. So I'm curious about the length of time each of those stages take. Is it an
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individualized thing in which it happens within a year? I mean how long do these various stages take? Do you have any idea?
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Well I I don't think any of them is intended to produce instant results.
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It's a long process I think and a lifetime's process certainly to get to that final stage. And also it may be
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that it goes through a sort of cycle. So you may think you're done with the purgative way but you might have to come
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back to it uh over something else for instance. So it's a tool that you can
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return to as a resource at different stages of your spiritual life. At other times you may find the passive stage
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very very difficult for one reason or another. You might find it very difficult to be quiet uh and just rest
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in the presence of God. Especially if you're going through something particularly difficult that lasts for a long time
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um like we're going through at the moment. We've got plenty of people to pray for, plenty of words to use to pray
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for them in too. Uh so you know our our purgative stage continues around that and and for some people perhaps at the
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moment they're going to find it easier to be in this passive mode of saying I I'm too tired to do anything else so let me just sit in the presence of God for a
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little bit. Um I think if you do follow them as a process in a conscious way
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over a series of a month or two uh and observe what happens as you put that
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discipline on yourself you probably will find the results that that they're pointing to. uh it's not like the um the
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spiritual exercises of Ignatius say this is far more internal process is a bit more sort of visceral if you want and
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for some people it it it might take a lot longer and for some people this this method of prayer might not suit them it
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it as I said at the beginning in the first sessions that we were having what we're exploring is a whole lot of tools
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and for some people some of them are going to be useful for other people they're not going to be useful. That's why there are so many
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different religious orders and different spiritual approaches that we can have and we we adopt one that we find is most
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conducive to drawing closer to God. And with this particular meth method, that's a very very good question. How long does it take to get to this illuminative way?
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And how do we know when we've got there? Uh my feeling Yeah. Yes. Yes.
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I I'm very ashamed at some of the things that I do and and feel the presence of
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God's um disappointment sometimes very keenly, I would say. Uh and by
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practicing the presence of God, sometimes that does lead to me saying, "Well, Nigel, you're not as nice as you think you are, are you? Actually, you're
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a bit of a roter."
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[Laughter]
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Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. Anyone else for now?
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Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you.
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Why don't we finish with a prayer? The very famous prayer of um of uh of Teresa of Avila.
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Let us pray.
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Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing afright you. Everything passes. God never changes.
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Patience obtains all things.
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Whoever has God wants for nothing, for God alone suffices.
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Amen.

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Course in Christianity - Carmelite Spirituality: Teresa and John

 Course in Christianity - Carmelite Spirituality: Teresa and John     https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mIg5UfHKTso&list=PL7AnQqoE9fNGTxd...