Reflections: St John of the Cross-Carmelite Mystics

The Carmelite Mystics is a series of reflections presented by Fr Steven Payne, OCD during Lent 2022 for the Cathedral of St Matthew in Washington, DC.

1) St Teresa of Jesus (Avila) 2) St John of the Cross 3) Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection 4) St Thérèse of Lisieux

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um and uh um we're talking as we'll see

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about uh um about what he has to tell us regarding the presence of god uh in our experience in

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our world and i'd like to begin with an opening prayer uh john of the cross is often

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wrongly thought of as being anti-world anti-material negative toward

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pleasure and all of that but i think this gives you a quite different impression if you if you

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listen to this prayer he wrote taken from the sayings of light and love a prayer of a soul

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taken with love he says you will not take from me my god

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what you once gave me in your only son jesus christ in whom you gave me all i

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desire hence i rejoice that if i wait for you you will not delay

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mine are the heavens and mine is the earth mine are the nations the just are

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mine and mine the sinners the angels are mine and the mother of god

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and all things are mine and god himself is mine and for me because christ is my

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and all for me what do you ask then and seek my soul

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yours is all of this and all is for you do not engage yourself in something less

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nor pay heed to the crumbs which fall from your father's table go forth and exult in your glory hide

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yourself in it and rejoice and you will obtain the supplications of your heart

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almighty father you endowed john of the cross with a spirit of self-denial and the love of the cross

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by following his example may we come to the eternal vision of your glory we ask

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this through our lord jesus christ your son who lives and reigns with you in the holy spirit

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one god forever and ever amen

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so let me introduce the topic in these presentations as i say in the

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in the others we're we're guided by professor vernon mcginn's understanding of mysticism as

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that part or element of christian belief and practice that concerns the

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preparation for the consciousness of and the effect of what the mystics themselves have described as a direct

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and transformative presence of god now he favors using this term presence

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rather than union because he says a lot of the mystics of the christian tradition don't use the union language

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so much but they talk a lot about god's presence and how it is transformative and so

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that's a more useful category when we think of mystical spirituality in the

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christian tradition and it fits well with carmelite spirituality because

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carmelites look to elijah as their spiritual father and

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as you may know from scriptures when elijah first appears he he says as

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the lord lives in whose presence i stand and that's thematic of his whole ministry that elijah lives

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in the presence of god and carmelites have always felt themselves called also

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to live in that presence so we're looking at these carmelite mystics for what they can tell us about living in

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god's presence today but you might object and say well

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how can we expect that from john of the cross he's better known for what he says about god's felt

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absence than god's presence he's after all the saints associated with the dark

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knight and he's famous for insisting that no image or thought or feeling no

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matter how holy gives us god as god is he's the one who talks about

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annihilating our appetites and embracing the cross so how can he tell us about god's

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presence well actually when you read him carefully you see he tells us again and

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again that god is often most present to us in those moments of apparent absence

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and for john jesus himself provides the best example of this

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because we know that he was most united to the father's will at the very moment he felt most abandoned on the cross when

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he's saying my god my god why have you forsaken me jesus is closest to god at

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that moment to the father he's so united to the father's will

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and still even during his lifetime some carmelites were intimidated by john's reputation for severity

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until they actually got to know him for example if he was assigned as the superior of a house he was coming fresh

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and nobody knew him in that house they were fearful at first when he got there they saw that he wasn't

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the harsh person that they they feared so let's say a few words about the kind

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of person that he was give a little biographical sketch

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john was born in 1542 in the little town of pontiveros in castillo in spain

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and you can see it there in the middle of the the map of spain uh madrid is kind of right in the center there and to

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the northwest is avila and to the northwest of avila is ponte veros and

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the size decreases as you go in that direction madrid is obviously the the

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biggest of those and avila's is medium size and fontiveros is a very small

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place and he was born into a poor family he was the last of three sons of gonzalo de

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jepez and catalina alvarez the story goes

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though we don't know if it's 100 accurate but the john's father had come from wealthy cloth

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merchants uh in toledo which is if you look at the map again you see madrid to

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the south west of madrid is toledo what we would say toledo

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here in the states um they say possibly of jewish ancestry because it tended to

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be jewish people who were involved in cloth selling and so on

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cloth merchants at that time uh but in any case when john's father met catalina

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he fell in love with her and he decided to marry her even though the family uh

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didn't approve and so he was disinherited for marrying john's mother

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and after that they had no financial resources they had to scrape out a living as poor weavers

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and john's father and middle brother died they say perhaps of malnutrition

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when john was very young again you have some pictures of fontiveros there and there's that statue

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of john of the cross right in the middle of the little town uh square or triangle there in the center of town

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so unlike teresa john from an early age knew extreme poverty teresa was raised in

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relatively comfortable circumstances but john also learned from his parents

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what it meant to sacrifice everything for love because that's what his parents had done

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in marrying each other so eventually now with with uh two sons

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left uh francisco who was john's oldest brother and and john the youngest

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catalina his mother had to move to to support them and she moved to the market town of medina del

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campo where john was able to attend the nearby catechism school for poor children and

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orphans so medina was a market town so there were more possibilities for for an income

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um there john was a teenager he got a job as a kind of orderly in what was called the

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plague hospital hospital hospital de las muebas

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but actually many of the patients there were dying of venereal disease it's a market town people from all over are

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coming there you know what happens and uh it was

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there though doing that kind of work for for the sick that he he developed this this

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tremendous and tender concern for those who were ill and that was manifested

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through his whole life people commented on the fact that when any friar in the community got sick he couldn't do enough

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for them he would he would go to extreme lengths to try to help them make them comfortable and so on

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and part of his job was begging alms for the hospital

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and i suppose with the kinds of patients that he was dealing with there he saw what it meant

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what kind of bad consequences can happen when your desires are not tamed when you when you

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disorderly desire can lead to all kinds of problems but the patron of the hospital liked

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john very much and he allowed him in his spare time to go to the new jesuit collegio collegio uh in in medina which

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was at the level of high school let john go there in his spare time and he offered to sponsor him for the

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seminary if john would come back as a chaplain to the hospital and that would have been a perfect job

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that would have had a secure income he could have supported his mother and so on but for reasons we we don't really

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know because john didn't leave us an autobiography he decided to join the carmelites in in

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medina people speculate that it was because of their marian devotion john had a great

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devotion to mary and he knew that the carmelites were known for their marian devotion

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and after his novitiate in medina he was sent to the house of studies in salamanca

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which had the university of salamanca which was the great university in spain at that time so they had classes in the

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monastery and classes at the university and we understand that he was an outstanding

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student and he may have already received permission as a student to to live the

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carmelite rule without mitigation whatever that meant at the time there were a lot of

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there was reform movements kind of bubbling under the surface of people wanting to live uh the the carmelite

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life the carmelite rule more strictly and so on so john apparently had permission to do

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that this is a stat above is a statue of him in front of the carmelite monastery in

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salamanca which still survives and behind him you see the the salamanca

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cathedral which is quite splendid and below you see one of the the typical classrooms

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there at the university of salamanca there with you see a carmelite sitting toward the front

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there in the front row closest to to us

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but apparently we're told he would he was unsatisfied he's doing well in studies he probably

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could have had a great academic career but teresa tells us in the book of foundations that when she first met him

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he came to to he came to back to medina to say his first mass and

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she was there making a foundation in medina del campo she was looking for recruits for male

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recruits for her reform she she had started she was in medina she was founding her

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second house for the for the nuns and she had gotten the idea that to help

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the nuns it would be good to have some carmelite friars following the same way of life so she's looking for some some

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volunteers she arranges to meet john and she heard that he was planning to transfer to the

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carthusians but teresa tells him well wouldn't it be good if you could get what you're

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looking for without having to leave our lady's order so probably we're assuming that john was

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looking for a more prayerful prayerful life teresa says well join my reform and you

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can have what you're looking for the question always is did he really find it because as soon as he joined

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teresa's reform and given his talents he was given many responsibilities

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he would eventually be superior and formation director and part of the provincial administration and so on and

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so on so uh you know in a way he ended up having a very busy life as

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part of teresa's renewal movement so john joined this group that would

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later become known as the discounts discounts meaning literally without shoes because going barefoot or in

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sandals was a was a sign of reform or stricter observance and john as i say served in many

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capacities novice master student master and so on

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but as this discounts movement grew it started attracting some men who had

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little knowledge or concern for the carmelite authorities and and so

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tensions began to grow between teresa's group and the regular carmelite friars

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and that that comes to a head and john is caught in the middle of this

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it hits home to him when he's assigned uh as confessor to the monastery at the incarnation in avila that was the

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monastery that theresa had originally entered and to which she belonged before she left to start her her reform at

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saint joseph san jose in avila but she was called back there to be the prioris

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and and there was some resistance to that when she was called back because the sisters there were afraid

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that she was going to try to impose her reform on them but

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she handled it very well and one of the things she did was she asked john of the cross to come stay there and be

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spiritual director and confessor for the nuns in the community because she had such a high regard for him

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now that didn't sit too well with the other carmelite friars the regular carmelite friars who were there in in

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avila already uh you know what why was john there it was their responsibility

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to be chaplains to uh to those nuns john was there under obedience as i recall

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he'd been sent there by the the papal nuncio had actually assigned him um but uh um

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the friars um you know through various developments and so on they they

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came to the conclusion that john was being disobedient and so they kidnapped him and took him to the monastery prison

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in toledo for alleged disobedience and in the picture above you see um

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the bridge there and and the tower at one end of the bridge and behind it those though that uh wooded area up

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above that's where the carmelite monastery was at the time so it was very close to the wall and uh

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we'll see when john escapes i mean he was very lucky not to fall down over the wall and into the river

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but this time of imprisonment lasted almost nine months and it was a time of great

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suffering and interior darkness for him he was being accused of being a rebel he

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was told that teresa's project had collapsed and therefore he should abandon the reform and so on uh he

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wasn't getting any real news from outside um and it was uh

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the physical sufferings i think didn't bother him as much as the psychological feeling that he had been abandoned by

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everyone even by god um but one of the things that john did uh

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you know the room that he was kept in was like a little closet with very little light a little slit in in the

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wall to let in light during the day and so on um so what's he going to do when he's in

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that prison well he starts composing poetry and uh

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toward the end of his time there he was given a paper and and penned by uh

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one of the friars uh was a little more kindly to him so he could write down these verses that were coming to him

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that he was composing and so when he escaped he took that with him

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it was a very dramatic escape near the feast of the assumption i believe um and

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and you could see it wasn't i mean that's not a photograph in the upper left there but uh he had to climb out a

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window and climb down uh on a rope ladder that he made out of his blanket and so on that wasn't long enough and he

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had to kind of just drop into the darkness not knowing whether he would fall all the way down

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down below that you see on the wall of the city is is the is a verse from the dark knight poem

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um that uh that that was the spot at which john would have climbed down on a dark night

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fired with love's urgent longings ah the sheer grace i went out without being seen my house

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being now at rest that's how the poem begins

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and the poetry that he had written people now regard as some of the finest

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in the spanish language once he escaped he was sent down to andalucia in the south where he was

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given a lot of administrative duties also to be out of the thick of the the turmoil uh safe safely away from it and

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he was also giving a lot of spiritual direction and conferences to the to the discounts carmelite nuns and friars

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so as he was doing that he would sometimes write out little sayings or maxims for them to help them

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remember his conferences and his teaching and those were later collected in what's called the sayings of light

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and love that's something we have in his own handwriting which you see in the background there

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and sometimes he would share his poems with the the nuns and the friars and of

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course they they could tell that those it was beautiful poetry but they would

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ask him to explain it further and so he started writing out commentaries and those

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developed into the major prose treatises that we have today there are four of them what's called the ascent of mount

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carmel the dark knight the spiritual canticle and the living flame of love all of them

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are structured as commentaries on on poems

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um i'm abbreviating a great deal here but just as i mean there was much that

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happened between now and and his death but uh toward the end of his life he was

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caught up in another controversy and this time it was among the discounts themselves john didn't approve of the

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kind of harsh way they were going after some people and he was apparently being sent off to a

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kind of missionary exile in mexico when he got sick and he died at the relatively young age of 49

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and he left behind him those texts for which the church declared him a doctor

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in 1926 so john is a is the first of our carmelite doctors of the church

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and it's worth remembering that all of these writings that he did even though he's a doctor of the church he didn't

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write for academics or for other theologians

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or for the spiritually elite he wrote them for friars and nuns and even sometimes for laypeople

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the the commentary on the living flame of love which talks about the highest stages of the mystical journey was

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written for a pious lay woman that he was directing ana de penalosa

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what did john look like well there was apparently a portrait painted

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of him during his lifetime but people aren't sure which one it was and some of these images you see here are candidates

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the pictures would be old enough to have been uh done at the time

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but one somebody who knew him described him this way he was a man in body of

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medium size therese teresa i should say often

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teased him about being small in stature but great in the eyes

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of god so medium size of grave and venerable countenance somewhat swarthy and of good

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features his bearing and his conversation were peaceful very spiritual and full of profit for

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those who listened to and talked with him and this he was so outstanding and helpful that those who came in contact

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with him men and women came away made spiritual full of devotion and with a

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love of virtue so he had a he had a stroke he made a strong impression even though he was kind of shy and quiet

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he made a strong impression on people john was also an artist his famous

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drawing of christ on the cross was based on a vision that he experienced during the time as a chaplain at the

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incarnation monastery in avila he was praying in a loft overlooking the sanctuary and he had this vision of

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christ and it's it's a very unusual perspective from above as if it were god

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the father's uh looking down on on on christ and the the christ on the cross

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there is is really wracked with pain i mean he's just in agony

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the body is hanging forward lifeless contorted supported only by nails

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and that image though has has inspired other artists most notably salvador dali

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you've probably seen his famous uh um christ of saint john on the cro saint

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john of the cross that painting now um the body on the cross there is is not at all tormented

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the way that uh john's is but but the perspective is from above like in in john of the cross

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john also had other artistic skills he designed an aqueduct that they had in their monastery down south that in

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granada a place called los martires you can still see it there if you go to the park of los marters in grenada

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and in segovia where his his body is buried uh he designed the inner cloister

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of the of the monastery where you see those arches and so on he designed that patio and cloister

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and it's not surprising then that among the attributes of god what what really caught john's attention was beauty

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there's a famous passage in his commentary on on the spiritual uh canticle and the line about let us go

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and behold ourselves in your beauty and he says you know in in the paragraph commenting on this he says let us behold

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ourselves in your beauty and your beauty will be my beauty and you will behold your beauty and me and my beauty and so

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on and it goes on like that and uses the word beauty dozens of times in a single

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paragraph john seems to go into a kind of rhapsody about god's beauty

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now how to read john of the cross now one of the reasons that john has

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this reputation for being severe and scary even beyond some of his extreme

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statements is that uh early on after he died

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the some of the early discounts carmelite biographers made jon out to be

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very harsh and severe that was a time when the leadership among the discounts carmelites was

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putting the stress on observance observance strict observance and so on and so they wanted a john john of the

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cross who could be a kind of a model of that that's what they emphasized in the biographies

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and it's true that you know sometimes john says things in a very stark way

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he does tend toward an all-or-nothing approach you know he'll say to reach satisfaction in all desire satisfaction

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and nothing toto inada all or nothing all and nothing and even saint teresa famously teased

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him for his apparent extremism she she and some friends including john

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of the cross had had written little commentaries on some words she'd heard in prayer seek yourself and me and then

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the way this game worked was theresa was supposed to write a kind of a critique of what they had written you know very

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pungent uh satirical so she writes of what john of the cross had submitted she said seeking god would

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be very costly if we could not do so until we were dead to the world god

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delivered me from people so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation no matter what so

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that she was that's what she was teasing john about that he wanted to make everything contemplation right away

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now but i think if you know if john seems extreme sometimes it's not the extremism

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of a religious fanatic but of a passionate lover you know they see it up above there are the words with what

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procrastinations do you wait since from this very moment you can love god with all your heart

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you remember that when teresa recruited john of the cross for her reform he

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agreed to join with the provision that he didn't have to wait too long john was not one for for waiting around when it

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came to uh you know growing in the spiritual life he says in the opening words of the

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ascent of mount carmel that that it's written to explain how to reach divine union quickly

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so to me it's as if john were saying well yes of course you can go to god at

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a slower and an easier pace but why would you want to you know john is as as

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the poem says fired with love's urgent longings for the divine beloved

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so you know john has that eagerness to get us to union with god as quickly as possible

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but if you want a more balanced view of john than you get from some of the early biographies you might want to look at

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some of the more recent ones like richard hardy's biography of john of the cross man and

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mystic it's brief it's up to date and it's very readable and it brings forward

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the you know the human john that you can identify with more there's also a much larger coffee table

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book down below which may be harder to get called god speaks in the night and that's got a lot of material and

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pictures of the places where john was and articles by by some of the best

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experts up-to-date experts on on john of the cross and we're going to be coming out with a translation of this kind of

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definitive biography of john and the cross by jose vicente rodriguez ics publications should be publishing that

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within it within the next year so and if you read his letters they they

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also give a helpful glimpse of john's pastoral concerns and his sensitivities when writing to his directs so that that

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compassionate side of john comes out there then it's it's often noted that

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john's primary mode of expression his first mode was his poetry and the the prose

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commentaries try to unpack its meaning but the in the poetry comes first so

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most introductions to john lacrosse's works nowadays recommend that you start with the poetry

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to get a sense of john's passion his tenderness his love of beauty and his

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humanity so i would encourage you if you want to read john to to start with the

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poems and uh interestingly that bernard mcginn the great expert on mysticism who i i

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mentioned at the beginning when he comes to talk about john of the cross he he starts with some of john's

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lesser-known versus the so-called romances

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it's called romances because of the form of of the poem like it's that was this like a sonnet or limerick and so on it

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was the structure of the poem that made it a romance but in fact it also is a kind of a romance between god and

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creation it's a it's a poetic meditation starting from those first words of john's gospel

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in the beginning was the word and so uh it starts within the trinity and the

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father is is speaking to the son and the father wants to give the son a bride and

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the son wants to bring that bride back to the father and so god the father creates the whole

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universe to be a bride for the son and the son becomes incarnate in order to

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embrace that bride and return with her to the father so you i mean whereas john

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ordinarily writes about the individual soul and god here he's got a much broader

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cosmic perspective he's talking about all of creation is part of that love

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story between the father and the son the love that is the holy spirit

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and it's interesting and people have noted that there's no mention in this poem about original sin

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but you get the perspective rather that the whole purpose of creation is to make

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incarnation possible so that i mean that the the whole reason for creation is is

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so that it can be a bride of christ and christ will unite himself to that bride

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and the two will become one flesh and he will become part of that creation by taking on humanity

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and then returning it to to the father and so in that perspective of the romances

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our individual spiritual journey is part of that larger destiny of all creation

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that we're all called to participate in our own way in a loving union with god

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and so you might want to start with the romances to get a sense of john's positive tone and his broader

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perspective regarding the longer treatises um

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it's important to remember that when john is writing he's focusing primarily on how to live the first and the

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greatest commandment which is to love god with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength and what would that

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mean that's what john is is focusing on really but he certainly knew that you can't

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separate the second commandment from the first and i like to think that if if he had

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continued writing if he hadn't died so young and if he'd gone on to talk about how we love our neighbor he would have

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given us a very thorough treatment of that as well that would have been equally

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important i think but that's a useful question when you're reading john of the cross to ask well

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he's talking about how i should relate to god but also what does this have to say to the way i relate to other people

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how do i reach that same degree of selfless love in my care for my neighbor

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because that the same issues about attachment dryness personal transformation and so

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on that john describes in terms of our prayer life also come up in all the other areas of life our interpersonal

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relationships our work and so on and many spiritual writers have explored

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that like thomas green this book that i have their darkness in the marketplace he talks about the same dynamic of

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darkness and light that john of the cross talks about in prayer also happens in relation to our vocation and our

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ministry and so on among the longer treatises uh a lot of

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people recommend starting with the spiritual canticle or the living flame of love because if you start with the

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ascent i mean john soon gets bogged down in divisions subdivisions and so on and

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there's good stuff there but you can you kind of feel like you're losing the threat

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um whereas in the in the in the uh the catechol it's the love story but the

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bride is going out in search of a bridegroom and they find each other and they're united and so on and so you can

32:33

follow that narrative more easily uh and the the the flame too is is uh is

32:39

shorter and and uh more appealing in that sense

32:45

even though i mean john really teaches the same thing in all his treatises he just uses different images or different

32:52

master plans and what he has to say there are some good overall

32:57

introductions to john and the cross one of the most popular is is this one the impact of god uh written by father ian

33:04

matthews and so but you know if you find others that you like well and good

33:13

so um let me

33:20

hold on for one second here

33:30

so let's talk about what john of the cross has to say on about the presence of god

33:41

if we compare john of the cross's culture with ours i mean in contemporary western secular culture we tend to think

33:48

of the visible material world around us as what's most obviously real what we

33:54

can see and touch what we can measure and so on the spiritual realm

33:59

is somehow removed and hard to access so for many westerners prayer is something

34:05

you turn to only when modern technology doesn't work after you've exhausted all

34:10

the medical treatments then you turn to prayer and we deal with the everyday world from

34:16

monday to saturday and then we try to access the spiritual realm for an hour on sundays uh that's a

34:23

caricature but i think it's kind of the uh somewhat uh the world we live in here in the west

34:31

but in 16th century spain catholicism was the state religion nobody seriously

34:37

questioned the existence of god at least not openly and so in that world the reality of god

34:43

and of the spiritual realm is is taken as something obvious um and so the

34:49

crucial question for john of the cross is is not whether god is near to us or present to us but whether our hearts are

34:56

far from god and his concern is that our hearts too

35:02

easily become attached not to god as god is but to idols shaped by our own

35:08

limited ideas and feelings and desires

35:14

so even though john often uses this imagery of journeying and searching like

35:19

the bride going out looking for her beloved uh it's very clear that the one we seek is already present to us though

35:26

we're not aware of it we don't um realize that near the beginning of the

35:32

spiritual category he's talking to the bridegroom who's saying you know oh where have you hidden my beloved and

35:38

left me moaning well he says to the bride oh then soul most beautiful among all

35:44

creatures so anxious to know the dwelling place of your beloved so you may go in search of him and be united

35:50

with him now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret in inner

35:57

room and hiding place there is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and

36:03

hope is so close to you as to be within you or better that you cannot be without

36:09

him i mean and this is like what saint teresa tells us with the image of the interior castle that god dwells at the

36:16

very center of the soul we're the ones who tend to be outside um

36:21

so john's advice is enter within yourself

36:27

so john imagines the the bride asking well if if this one whom my soul loves is

36:33

within me why don't i experience him or find him and john says the reason is that that he remains concealed and you

36:40

do not also seek to conceal yourself in order to find and experience him

36:46

seek him in faith and love without desiring to find satisfaction in anything or delight or desiring to

36:52

understand anything other than what you ought to know you know we're not finding god within

36:59

because we're not really seeking him there we're chasing after other things

37:04

because and we have to let go of those other things because those lesser things in which we're looking for consolation

37:10

are not god they're not the one we seek so you know we need faith to lead us to

37:17

the place where god is hidden

37:23

in the living flame of love we we read those famous words uh the soul center is god now when john says that he doesn't

37:30

mean the the physical center so much as the gravitational center like you know

37:35

the image he uses is of a rock when you drop it it's going to seek its center which is the center of the earth and you

37:42

know if you drop it down a well it's going to go as far down as it can because its center is in the center of

37:48

the earth its gravitational centered there um i mean where it's being attracted

37:55

so it's it's not i mean that that center of the rock is not within itself but it's outside of itself it's what it's

38:01

being drawn toward but what that means though is that we're always already in relationship to

38:07

god and god is like that gravity that is constantly drawing us to himself even

38:13

when we don't uh conscious consciously think of it so god's grace and presence are already

38:20

working on us whether we're consciously aware of it or not

38:27

and perhaps the the clearest explanation of john's understanding of god's presence comes in

38:33

in the commentary on the line reveal your presence in the spiritual canticle

38:38

john writes that god's presence can be of three kinds first is his presence by essence

38:45

in this way he's present not only in the holiest souls but also in sinners and all other creatures with this presence

38:52

he gives them life and being should this essential presence be lacking to them they would all be annihilated thus his

38:59

presence is never wanting to the soul this presence is never wanting to the soul so even the devils even i mean

39:06

everything by the very fact that god sustains it in existence that sustaining presence is

39:12

there without it we would be nothing we would fall into nothingness so in that sense god is always present

39:21

sustaining all of his creation the second is his presence by grace in

39:26

which he abides in the soul pleased and satisfied with it not all have this presence of god

39:33

those who fall into mortal sin lose it the soul cannot naturally know if it has this presence so um

39:40

you know if uh baptized uh if we're baptized if we're in a state of grace

39:45

uh we we have god's presence by grace uh we can't always be sure of that i

39:51

mean that was part of the teaching of the the council of trent that we can't be certain uh logically certain that

39:57

we're in a state of grace we can be confident if we if we're trying to to live a good life and and

40:04

so on take advantage of the sacraments but we can't be absolutely sure so grace isn't always something that you can you

40:10

can introspect and tell directly whether you're in a state of grace the third is his presence by spiritual

40:17

affection for he says for god usually grants his spiritual presence to devout souls in many ways by which he feel he

40:25

refreshes delights and gladdens them yet these many kinds of spiritual

40:31

presence just as the others are all hidden for in them god does not reveal himself as he is so he's saying this

40:37

third kind of presence we sometimes feel god close to us uh i mean we don't always feel that uh even

40:44

when god is very close to us but uh i mean that's something we're longing for is to be able to not just to know to

40:51

know that god is present if we're in a state of grace but to actually feel that in our heart and to have that sense of

40:58

god's nearness but but that's not that's not a guarantee in this life

41:05

so without god sustaining presence at every moment we wouldn't even exist and god's present by grace in every

41:12

baptized christian whether we feel it or not uh if we haven't turned a serious sin and

41:18

and both of those are more foundational than the felt sense of god's presence which comes and goes uh and as i said

41:25

before john john says that god is often most present when we feel that presence the

41:30

least like jesus on the cross so john writes that neither the sublime communication nor

41:38

the sensible awareness of his nearness is a sure testimony of his gracious presence nor our dryness and the lack of

41:45

these a reflection of his absence so

41:51

of course we would all like to experience that feeling of god's presence but the most important thing is to is to is to

41:58

to be in a state of grace to have our wills conform to to god's will

42:05

so if god's always present to us whether we feel it or not how do we allow this presence to pervade us and transform us

42:12

well john is going to say we we need to remove the obstacles whatever

42:18

blocks god's gracious self-communication from permeating our lives because god always is there wanting to

42:26

give himself to us we're the ones that stand in the way of that because god's grace is always self-communicating

42:36

now how do we open that i mean what what is it that's blocking well um

42:41

john explains it this way all our natural capacities of mind and

42:46

heart and memory and so on they're all grounded in sensory experience but there's a problem there when it

42:53

comes to god because god can't be sensed so i mean you know i can

43:01

love ice cream i can i can love a beautiful sunset and so on because i can see those things and and i can see them

43:08

directly and my will and i know what that is and my will is attracted to it and so on and i can remember it but what

43:14

about god uh i can't sense god i can't remember god as god is because i've never seen

43:21

god and what i've loved is is a certain image of god that i have

43:26

but um that's all by my natural capacity we have this possibility of a kind of

43:33

indirect knowledge of god where we can you know we can infer that the creator of the world must be

43:39

intelligent powerful and good and so on the way when you look at a at a beautiful painting you can say well the

43:46

painter must be very uh brilliant and talented and so on

43:52

but that's not a direct knowledge of the painter that's an indirect knowledge by looking at some of the products that the

43:58

painter has produced and so it is with god we have that naturally speaking we have that indirect knowledge of god

44:06

but what happens then is that typically uh we come up with inadequate or misleading ideas or images of god based

44:14

on our natural experiences our experience of our own parents or other authority figures in our life

44:21

and so on that you know god is is a cosmic policeman because i know what a policeman is or something and god

44:28

has laws and so on so maybe god is like that or maybe god is like my kindly uncle or maybe god is like a great fire

44:35

and so on but of course none of those images are adequate you see some of these uh up above their very american

44:42

jehovah there with this with red white and blue and stars and stripes and so on

44:48

or i suppose this is a jesus for kids is that jesus is my coach

44:53

i doubt that jesus ever really played soccer uh theology tries to get a handle

44:58

on god but obviously uh never an adequate one

45:05

and also our wills are not naturally capable of loving god as god is because

45:10

naturally speaking we can't know god as god is and so these defective notions we have

45:16

lead to a kind of a limited love of god for example we fear the vengeful god of

45:22

our own imaginations and john extends that to memory too and

45:29

nowadays people would say that we're often imprisoned by our unhealed and unredeemed natural memories

45:36

of what we imagine god to be or imagine god to have done you know why did god do this to me

45:42

it's based on my impression of what god should do and so on and that may not be an

45:48

adequate idea hold on one second

45:54

so our natural capacities are are limited um

46:00

and that wouldn't be a problem if we could set a way set aside our natural way of operating when appropriate and

46:06

just open ourselves to god's self-communication which john says is given especially in

46:12

contemplative prayer you know when we're open to contemplative prayer god enlightens our minds and flames our

46:19

wills without using particular images or feelings or thoughts and so on

46:24

but the problem is that when we're holding on to uh these these limited uh ideas and feelings and so on

46:32

what satisfies our natural desires uh then we're blocking that from happening we're clinging to the products of our

46:39

own natural knowing and willing and remembering so we hold on to those things which

46:45

block the transforming love and grace that god wants to give us

46:52

so john has often use this image of of the sun shining on a dirty window that the sun

46:59

is like god wanting to give us grace wanting to give us god wanting to enlighten us and so on but we have all

47:07

the smudges in the way that block the light from coming through and once those are removed the light will shine through

47:14

without any problem um so uh you know it's it's it's it's not like we

47:20

have to purify ourselves and then wait for god to do something no i mean it's it's that we have to get the blocks out

47:26

of the way and and it will happen uh we become divinized john says once the

47:32

blockages of our disordered appetites are removed

47:37

so how do we grow then uh well there are many writers who talk

47:42

about the harm caused when we don't moderate our physical appetites uh our desire for worldly benefits

47:49

they'll write about the dangers of gluttony and lust and sloth and pride and so on uh

47:56

and we know well enough how an excessive preoccupation with food and drink and money and social prestige and

48:03

so on how that can hold us back from being faithful disciples of christ i mean jesus tells us

48:10

that much in the gospels you know don't worry about tomorrow don't keep up riches for yourselves and so on

48:17

but where john excels is in explaining how even seemingly good and pious things

48:22

can become obstacles if we cling to them possessively or if we give them too much

48:28

importance so he talks at the beginning of the treatise on the dark knight he talks

48:34

about kind of the spiritual version of the seven capital sins you know spiritual

48:40

anger and spiritual greed and so on so he talks about those religious forms

48:46

of the seven capital sins for example he talks about beginners who quote feel

48:51

so fervent and diligent in their spiritual exercises and undertakings that a certain secret pride is generated

48:59

in them that begets a complacency with themselves and causes them to judge others harshly

49:05

and to avoid any confessor or spiritual guide who doesn't approve of their spiritual uh of their spirituality

49:12

you know i'm i'm so i'm so caught up with the love of god and so on that i must be really best

49:19

buddies with god he's you know he's we he and i are best friends and what's wrong with those other people who don't

49:25

feel the same fervor that i do and so on uh or forms of what he calls spiritual

49:30

avarice or greed uh you know always wanting to to hear more pious talks or

49:36

to read more inspirational books or have more holy pictures and so on we go from one devotion to the next and so you know

49:44

this is why we want we want to hold on to all these things or spiritual gluttony

49:50

he talks about these extreme practices that people get involved in because in the early stages beginners

49:57

get so much pleasure from them um that you know they they

50:03

they kind of wallow in whatever gives them that that spiritual pleasure at the beginning

50:08

or they go running from one prayer method to another looking for that satisfaction or they're always trying to

50:14

squeeze some consolation out of out of uh receiving the eucharist or celebrating the liturgy and so on john

50:21

talks about them having a kind of spiritual sweet tooth so well you see the pictures down below there there's

50:27

the guy has kind of gone overboard with the rosaries or the person up above doesn't have the

50:33

patience to kind of wait for god's time on how to how to get peace inner peace

50:41

the point is that what we we have to do what we can to overcome our faults and to grow in virtue but we

50:48

have blind spots and we we lack self-knowledge i mean we we are you know

50:54

others can see these limitations in us which we don't see uh it's difficult

51:00

for us to recognize these things as failings because to us they seem so spiritual and we assume that anyone who

51:07

criticizes me or doesn't approve of my religiosity just doesn't understand

51:13

maybe they're not as holy as i am what's wrong with having so many inspiring books or spending all my time at prayer

51:19

and so on and john would say we're like young persons in the infatuation stage and um

51:26

you know we we only seeing things through the distorted prism of our own desire and projection of you know young

51:34

people in love romeo and juliet they think the other person will satisfy all their needs and they dismiss any

51:40

outsider who raises questions you know um see but love is blind and lovers cannot

51:46

see the pretty follies that they themselves commit you know

51:51

of course this person i love is the most wonderful person in the world has no faults and so on why i'm seeing them

51:57

through the lens of my own projections and desires

52:02

and that's why according to john of the cross that passive purifications are needed um

52:09

and that may involve losing a sense of god's presence for a time but uh you know you don't realize how much you're

52:16

you're hanging on to or controlled by uh this thirst for for spiritual consolation

52:22

until the consolations are taken away just as you know you don't really begin

52:28

to love another person truly until the honeymoon honeymoon's over and a lot of times couples will you know

52:34

when when they get past that initial infatuation they'll think oh we're not we're no longer in love with each other

52:41

no i mean you're no longer infatuated with each other that's the opportunity to really move into love because now you

52:48

can see each other more clearly more realistically you can you can accept the other person

52:54

as they are not as you want them to be it's the beginning of a deeper and more

52:59

authentic love you know as this quote there says

53:04

infatuation is when you find someone absolutely perfect love is when you realize they aren't perfect and it

53:10

doesn't matter well of course god is perfect but god is not as i imagine god to be as we grow in the

53:17

spiritual life we find out god is much more mysterious much more uncontrollable

53:23

than than we ever imagined so john gives us an itinerary

53:28

of how we grow in the spiritual life and grow toward full human integration and he doesn't use teresa's seven

53:36

dwelling places or four waters he goes back to this classic threefold division

53:41

that you find going back into the church fathers of of the purgative illuminative and

53:48

unitive way of beginners proficience and the so-called perfect

53:53

now perfect is a relative term there perfect just means you you've been uh you've overcome some of the major

54:01

blockages to god's self-communication and i can't go into the details of this

54:08

here and it shouldn't be treated as a rigid mold in which we all have to fit i mean

54:13

you can't necessarily figure out exactly where you are on this itinerary

54:19

and but i think it's it's it's kind of intuitively plausible because we use this this

54:26

this division in other areas of life as well if you sign up to for a language

54:32

course in spanish for example well they're going to ask you well do you want the beginner level or the

54:37

intermediate level or the advanced level or if you go skiing to a ski lodge and

54:43

you say well i want to go out on the slopes well do you want the beginner slope the intermediate slope or the

54:48

advanced slope and and so we're used to to uh to understanding

54:54

how that works um but what's important here is john's view

54:59

that god is already present god is already communicating uh

55:05

but we're not ready to receive god fully because of our scattered attention and disorder desires

55:12

and so this healing process usually works kind of from the outside in from the more exterior to to the more

55:18

anterior so

55:23

in other words when we first set out on the spiritual journey we typically have to struggle with the more external

55:29

failings and bad habits you know if you've got a drinking problem or carousing or lying or outbursts of rage

55:36

or whatever it is some of these major things that we need to deal with first of all

55:42

and that early conversion is is very much helped by the fact that we we've got this sudden new enthusiasm for

55:48

spiritual activities um that it's giving us something of the same pleasure we used to get in our other activities less

55:55

admirable um you know if i used to enjoy spending all night in the bar well now i'm getting that same uh kick from

56:03

spending all night at a prayer vigil uh and so on that so i mean that helps to

56:08

wean me toward more more positive uh uh endeavors and activities um and so i

56:16

mean it's a good thing for beginners to have that kind of honeymoon phase when everything seems wonderful and and we

56:22

very enthusiastic but eventually that honeymoon ends and our familiar way of

56:28

praying seems boring and that initial infatuation with god dries up and we

56:33

have to face the challenge well have i been in this for the consolations of god

56:38

or for the god of the consolations am i going to persevere now in following god

56:43

even though i'm not getting the same of fireworks and

56:49

good feelings out of it that i used to get this is what john calls the passive night of sense and where we're

56:56

challenged to let go of all of that that we were so busy about before in our our

57:02

spiritual activities and just kind of quiet down stop looking so much for spiritual

57:07

excitement and move into a more contemplative way of relating to god so john is going to have these passive

57:14

nights between each of these major stages that we talked about here we're talking about the passive night of sense

57:20

meaning that that sensory consolation that we used to get from our spiritual activities uh has kind of dried up and

57:28

it's not as exciting for us as it used to be and now our but are we going to stick with it

57:34

i i think when i give that gave this live i told the story about i was at a reception once at

57:40

a community that was celebrated contemplative community celebrating an anniversary and i was seated at a table

57:46

with a very young religious and an old benedictine oblate and the young religious was going on and on about how

57:52

wonderful religious life is and every day it's exciting and and the people are

57:58

great it's holy and just so so uh so wonderful

58:03

and at some point the the oblate kind of leaned across the table and said uh you

58:08

haven't been in religious life very long have you and so that was that that awareness that

58:14

i mean the honeymoon does end eventually it's good well it lasts but it won't last forever

58:20

so if we persevere we get to the the middle stage this illuminative way of proficience what we would call the

58:26

intermediate stage here um where where we have a similar simpler

58:32

humbler steadier uh relationship with god we no longer expect great

58:37

consolations all the time we're content just to be with the lord quietly think of spouses who've gone through the

58:44

honeymoon phase and and the the end of the honeymoon but now they just like sitting together quietly they don't have

58:50

to be talking all the time or doing exciting things together they just enjoy each other's presence

58:57

and this is the beginning of contemplative prayer you know without all of the previous mental activity without all of the

59:03

buzzing thoughts and feelings but just that kind of quiet rest in god listening to whatever god wants to communicate

59:11

and as we continue to grow this prayer is going to become more and more profound

59:17

and it's going to tap into deeper levels of our consciousness now when john talks about this he he

59:22

describes this as the period when people may experience visions and voices and special graces and so on

59:30

of course those can happen at any time but uh particularly here as we're kind of going deeper into our into our

59:37

presence with god our awareness uh but also because you know we we may have

59:43

done something about our worst exterior faults but the underlying roots of our

59:49

egoism and our selfishness and so on have not been completely removed

59:54

and there's the danger now that if we're having more deeper experiences and so on we may

1:00:00

become more attached to those and start using them for our own selfish ends i

1:00:06

think of the example of kind of gurus and and spiritual leaders who who obviously have are you know are somewhat

1:00:13

spiritually advanced they've spent years in meditation they've acquired certain

1:00:18

spiritual gifts we might say but they use their contemplative talents for their own

1:00:23

self-aggrandizement or to control their followers and so on because they haven't dealt with the deeper underlying issues

1:00:30

of their own egos their own uh thirst for power and so on

1:00:36

and that's why john will say in some cases a much more profound purification is needed before you go on to the final

1:00:43

stage what john calls the passive night of spirit where our whole life and our

1:00:48

whole being is shaken to the root and here john uses the powerful image of fire and kindling a damp log of wood now

1:00:56

if you've ever gone camping and you've had to go search for for wood for the fire you pick up these logs and they may

1:01:02

look fine but they've been lying there for some time and there's probably all this dampness inside them and so on and

1:01:09

so as as they begin to catch fire all of the inner dampness and impurity is

1:01:14

driven to the surface and there's smoke and there's hissing and so on it looks like uh things are getting worse this

1:01:21

log is getting uglier but that's really only so that the impurities can be burned away

1:01:27

and until the law gradually becomes totally enkindled and so beautiful and you can

1:01:33

no longer distinguish the wood from the fire and that's the way that the holy spirit

1:01:38

works on us during this this well all the passive nights but particularly this passive night of spirit

1:01:46

it's as if the spirit were examining all the hidden recesses of our souls like shining a bright light

1:01:52

on on us and and revealing these sinful attitudes this resistance to god that we

1:01:58

weren't even aware of that we don't even like to admit that we're ashamed of and so on but there um it's coming to light

1:02:05

now and we may feel ashamed and humiliated rejected by god and other people

1:02:11

but all of this is just so that that secret darkness within us can be uncovered

1:02:17

purged healed and and transformed into light and

1:02:23

this is what uh most uh contemporary readers associate with the phrase dark night of the soul

1:02:30

now john john never actually uses the phrase dark night of the soul that's the title that was put on on the treatise

1:02:37

after his death he does talk about the dark night of sense the dark knight of spirit and so on he doesn't really talk

1:02:44

about dark night of soul but he does talk about the the passive night of the spirit when when everything

1:02:50

is is in crisis when our whole world is turned upside down it's not just that our prayer seems dry

1:02:57

everything in life is gone haywire we don't know what's going on

1:03:03

the world sort of falls apart whether that's purely interior or whether it's

1:03:10

triggered by external circumstances like a terrible divorce or death of a loved one or loss of a job or unjustly

1:03:17

imprisoned and so on um some people notice that it's in some ways this passive night of this of the

1:03:23

spirit is like a clinical severe clinical depression but an important difference is that

1:03:30

someone who's going through this passive night of the spirit can still be highly functional and wants to move forward to

1:03:37

a new self they're not wanting to go back to the old self that they used to have they want to they want to keep

1:03:43

growing um so that you know that i heard one director saying that

1:03:48

when somebody's in clinical depression and you're trying to counsel them you can end up feeling depressed yourself

1:03:54

when somebody's going through a passive night of the spirit they they're still

1:04:00

lifting other people up um you think of someone like mother mother teresa of calcutta

1:04:06

that we know now that she was going through for years a terrible interior darkness

1:04:12

but she was still able to to to smile to be highly functional to to go all over

1:04:18

the world preaching her message and founding communities john paul ii put it this way in his

1:04:24

apostolic letter masters of the faith he said the mystical doctor appeals today to

1:04:30

many believers and non-believers because he describes the dark knight as an experience which is typically human and

1:04:37

christian our age has known times of anguish which have made us understand this expression

1:04:43

better and which have furthermore given it a kind of collective character so we talk about the whole society going

1:04:50

through a dark night the term dark knight is now used of all of life and not just a phase of the

1:04:56

spiritual journey the saints doctrine is now invoked in response to this unfathomable mystery of human suffering

1:05:04

physical moral and spiritual suffering like sickness like the plagues of hunger

1:05:10

like war injustice solitude the lack of meaning in life the

1:05:15

very fragility of human existence the sorrowful knowledge of sin the seeming

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absence of god are for the believer all purifying experiences which might be

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called night of faith to this experience saint john of the cross has given the symbolic and

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evocative name dark knight he does not try to give to the appalling problem of suffering and answer in the

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speculative order but in the light of the scriptures and of experience he discovers and sifts out something of the

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marvelous transformation which god affects in the darkness since he knows

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how to draw good from evil so wisely and so beautifully so john isn't giving us a theoretical

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answer to the problem of sin and evil but he's showing that god can use it to

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to help us grow so those who negotiate this radical purification of the passive night of

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spirit enter into what john and others call the unitive way of the perfect that

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is those who've reached a certain deep level of profound and human integration

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their minds and hearts are now conformed to god so they no longer experience that inner turmoil and struggle that mark

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their earlier life you know their desires are in in harmony now they want what god wants they're not feeling torn

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in a thousand directions they they have this deep inner peace combining a stable

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awareness of the constant presence of god now within at least in the background there that sense that god is

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always with me now and at the same time a total availability to the needs of those around them

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teresa says martha and mary walk together of course i think people who reach this stage have

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imperfections they have good days and bad days and so on but those are now sort of just on the surface because

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they've reached this profound inner peace and loving union with god which which

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is stable and permanent now for john those who reach this stage are are already experiencing a preview

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of the next life where they will share profoundly in the in the dynamic inner life of the

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trinity because going through this process we're transformed into the likeness of our brother friend and

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savior jesus christ so you know for john heaven is not going to be just

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us being over here gazing on the beatific vision over there but we'll be

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caught up into the very inner life of the trinity he says you know breathing out to

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god the the same spirit that the father breathes out to the son and the son breathes to the father and sharing in

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the creative love of the trinity and far from destroying our human nature

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and our individual character we don't become sort of holy robots here this unitive way seems to perfect us it makes

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us fully into what god always wanted us to be uh and and you can see that uh in our in

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our saints i mean the four i'm talking about uh teresa john of the cross brother lawrence therese

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they they all have reached some union with god but their personalities are very distinct you

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would never confuse them because they they become now what god always wanted them to be

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individually um and you can take that what john says about uh how we how we grow in in prayer

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uh and apply it to other areas of life we go through the same maturation process

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in other areas for example in in a relationship when a couple falls in love they go through

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that infatuation stage and so on then comes a disillusionment when they realize that the other is not everything

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they imagined the fireworks fizzle out they may think you know we're not in love anymore but if they persevere

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they can come to a deeper and more honest love which is not based on how the other one fulfills my needs but on a

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mutual care for the other and care for them as they really are so like contemplative prayer that i mean

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the relationship may not need a lot of words but just simply presence and listening to each other and this can

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deepen into the kind of profound union of heart and mind that you see in in long married couples

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in religious life in vocations we typically start out with a lot of enthusiasm like up above there a

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profession ceremony a lot of idealism that sustains us in the beginning and helps us to adapt everything is exciting

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and interesting at first but the enthusiasm wanes things become routine

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we're maybe even disillusioned and scandalized that the community isn't perfect that the members of it don't

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live up to the ideals some people at that point choose to leave because they're disappointed

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but if you manage to persevere into whether that transition you reach a greater stability in your vocation

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where you're there not because it's always thrilling but because we believe this is what god wants for us whether

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it's easy or hard and if we're lucky and we persevere over the long

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haul maybe we reach a point in our religious vocation of great inner peace and wisdom

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in work and ministry there's the same dynamic i'm sure we all know people who

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who are never satisfied with their current job they always start off a new position with great enthusiasm

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but when the excitement initial excitement passes away they get bored they're off in another direction

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in that book i showed earlier thomas green's darkness in the marketplace he uh he talks about the difference

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between working for god uh and doing god's work he uses martha and mary to

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talk about that martha is busy about many things and they're all good things so she's doing good works for god she's

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uh she's working for god but is she doing god's work is that what uh is that

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what god wants her to be doing at that moment and similarly we can be doing lots of

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good deeds with great enthusiasm at the beginning but what happens when it becomes boring and frustrating

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if we immediately abandon the ministry because it's no longer personally satisfying

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someone could ask as they do maybe of our prayer life was i in it for the sake of the satisfaction i got or for the

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sake of those i serve was it for my own pleasure or or for

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their sake and if we persevere because we believe this is what god wants us to do regardless of the difficulty then

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we're focusing on doing god's work

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and finally i wanted to mention that various writers today are exploring how the the same dynamics that john

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describes can apply to people and and social groups that groups can also go through an

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initial excitement stage and idealism and so on and then there's an inevitable disillusionment a lot of groups start

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out with full of high ideals and then comes the hard part do they disband do they commit for the

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long haul are they willing to do what's right even if they don't see satisfactory results

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you'll also see many articles today describing the covid pandemic and other

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crises as a kind of national or even a global dark night of the soul painful

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but purifying us in some way hopefully leading to a better future that we can't

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fully imagine right now god can lead us through that to

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something to something better so to conclude then uh i think what john is talking about

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is is what it really means to stand in the presence of god for him it's not just a once for all here i am lord

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but god's presence is dynamic it's constantly drawing us constantly purifying and transforming us through a

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gradual process at every human and spiritual level into the likeness of his son and we may not become rich or famous

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or successful in the eyes of this world but if we cooperate if we allow the

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spirit to work in us little by little we become christified

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and although john doesn't use that word we become to use his words we become by

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participation what christ is by nature and what greater goal can there be for a

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christian than that so i i show you these uh

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reflection questions since we're not live in this you can look at them and reflect on them yourself

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uh and see see if you uh find them helpful

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and i wanted to uh to close with uh reading through one of his best-known

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poems this is the dark knight poem on which the the the treatise is based and and then i i have a couple of

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resources to share with you but let's just uh prayerfully now read through this

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one dark night fired with love's urgent longings

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ah the sheer grace i went out unseen my house being now all

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still in darkness and secure by the secret ladder disguised

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ah the sheer grace in darkness and concealment my house

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being now all stilled on that glad night in secret for no one

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saw me nor did i look at anything with no other light or guide than the

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one that burned in my heart this guided me more surely than the

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light of noon to where he was awaiting me him i knew so well

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there in a place where no one appeared o guiding night o night more lovely than

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the dawn o night that has united the lover with his beloved transforming the beloved in her lover

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upon my flowering breast which i kept holy for him alone there he lay sleeping

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and i caressed him and i caressing him there in a breeze from the fanning cedars

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when the breeze blew from the turret as i parted his hair it wounded my neck with its gentle hand

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suspending all my senses i abandoned and forgot myself

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laying my face on my beloved all things ceased i went out for myself

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leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies

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saint john on the cross pray for us now i have here again and you can see

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this uh on the video unfortunately because this will be a zoom recording you won't be able to click on the links

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there but you can find these by googling uh the name of the artist and the title

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of the song these are all settings in in english and in spanish of the dark

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knight poem musical settings which you might enjoy listening to

1:16:44

the various styles for example there's a flamenco version there's a

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there are some classical uh settings and so on um

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so i leave that to you if you would like to listen to any of these for your own prayer it's such a beautiful poem and i find it

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it helps me sometimes to listen to music when i'm praying and finally um

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if you're looking for other resources you can you can go to the center for

1:17:15

carmelite studies there's an upcoming lecture on titus bransma who a carmelite

1:17:20

who's going to be beatified or i'm sorry canonized by pope francis in may uh you

1:17:27

could find out more about him but you'll also find other carmelite resources there's the carmelite institute of north

1:17:32

america there's ics publications which publishes the writings of john of the cross and

1:17:38

other carmelite mystics in english and carmelite media has also

1:17:44

material on the carmelites and there are many others i just couldn't fit them all into into a short little

1:17:50

list here but let me then stop the share

1:17:56

and so we're back to uh this uh screen and i just want to say thank you for listening and i'm glad for the

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opportunity to to present this material on john and the cross i hope you have the chance to watch some of the other

1:18:08

videos as well and uh god bless you and uh um and

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let's ask saint john on the cross to pray for all of us amen thank you and goodbye