.. The Mystical Journey of Teresa & John - A ... Our course in spirituality will lead us through some of the main spiritual Christian traditions. An overview of the characteristics of each theme will be followed by practical exercises.
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TRANSCRIPT
there's our topic for the evening uh we are doing um uh teresa of jesus uh saint john of the
cross and uh the idea of the dark knight of the soul we'll also be looking at
another aspect of this which is contemplation as a form of prayer
and also recollection which is something that is strong in carmelite spirituality
uh we'll discover what carmelite spirituality is in a second
so let's begin um
here she is teresa of jesus she was born in 1515
and she died in 1582 so uh she she was around for a
while um she was actually the first woman to be given the title doctor of the church
in the rome catholic church she uh she she merited that title uh here's the other person we're going
to be looking at this is saint john of the cross he was a near contemporary of teresa he
was born in 1542 so a little later but he died in 1591
about 10 years after teresa had died he died a lot younger
um these two figures teresa of avila
or teresa of jesus as she's sometimes called and john of the cross they're two
of the the most prominent people in um in carmelite spirituality
now two weeks ago we learned that the jesuits uh were part of this reform movement in
the roman catholic church it emphasized teaching the formation of
priests and the laity uh and it emphasized the jesuits emphasized a lot of mission work
so what we're going to be noticing now with these people is that they do what
for contemplative orders or recluse orders orders that are dedicated to
prayer and contemplation they try and reform that sort of movement within the
roman catholic church as well they felt that these contemplative orders like the carmelites like the um
carthusians and and other contemplative orders they felt that they'd become rather lacks in their practices uh and
they wanted to sort of uh dust them off and tidy them up a little bit
teresa in particular was known for this very reforming zeal about the houses of worship we'll we'll look at what she did
uh in a minute now the carmelites let's just talk about the carmelites for one second 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
out into the sea uh which the uh which the square is around uh that's showing
us the location of haifa now behind haifa down in
this direction here there's a range of mountains this is quite a mountainous part of israel and this is where you can
find mount carmel which the carmelites are named for
so the carmelite order was probably started by a group of latin hermits they
seemed 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 there it is
they settled on the slopes of mount carmel near what's called the fountain of elijah
this is near modern-day uh haifa that they were definitely there by 1200
so they're quite an old old order uh in the midst of their little hermitage that
they built on the side of the mountain here here's the fountain of elijah um
they built a little church that they dedicated to the virgin mary the blessed virgin
and in true medieval style they called her the lady of the place the lady of
the house uh the the 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
various other things so they called mary the lady of the house they were an order especially dedicated to mary we will see
why that is uh in a minute um and they followed the rule of saint
albert who was an eramite a recluse uh for solitary monks it was based on the
traditions of the desert mystics essentially and what their order was based on uh was
um silence contemplation um
fasting solitude abstinence poverty manual work
and they also emphasize this direct combat with the devil in prayer
and of course a daily eucharist here's the cave of elijah
on mount carmel that's what it looks like today so it's a little different from what it was uh
way back uh in the time of the foundation of the carmelites uh here
they all are um now they believed the carmelites did that
they were the spiritual descendants of the prophet elijah uh elijah was the greatest prophet in
the old testament you remember that the jewish tradition was that before the messiah appeared elijah would come back
first which is why we have the story of the transfiguration of elijah and moses
being on the side of jesus when he's transfigured on the mountain side so they believe that they're
following in the steps of the greatest prophet uh the sons of the prophets they were inspired in fact by that famous
passage in um in kings where it describes elijah fleeing from the wicked
king ahab and his wife jezebel he takes refuge in the desert
and then says god where are 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 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 heard in the fire but after the fire there came a still small voice
so they said they'd gone to the wilderness here on mount carmel near to elijah's place to listen for the still
small voice of god so that's in one king's i believe
the carmelites have a call primarily to the interior life what they would call a
marian life you see mary the 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 that's why marian orders a very often very contemplative orders
they and 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
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 contemplation in their prayers in their recollection
of god daily as we'll see in a little minute here's a jolly monk um on the bottom
left hand side they're smiling but we can see on the right hand side it's an extract from a bigger painting with
these people who are coming for spiritual direction uh to the to the to
the carmelites on the side of mount carmel however these carmelites on the side of
mount carmel who were founded probably in the 1100s maybe even before
they ran into a bit of trouble when the holy land was re-conquered by
the muslims in 1187. you'll remember that
godfrey de bruyne i think his name was the french crusader uh went out to the holy land
and claimed the holy land back for the christians in i believe the third crusade
um and founded the kingdom of jerusalem uh here you have a picture of the
horrible horrible stories they said that the blood was as high as um the um
the knee of the horse running through the streets when the crusaders massacred the muslims in the city of jerusalem so
they claimed it back founded a a a kingdom there that lasted for nearly
200 years but then eventually they were conquered in their turn by the great
saladin who took back the holy land for the muslims um
the last place to fall was akh this famous crusader castle here you can see
a plan of the harbour there the knights templars and all the rest of them were involved in all of this
uh so akha finally fell in about 1291 and that was the last stronghold of the
christians just before 1300 in the holy land and at that point these
carmelite brothers on the side of the mountain decided to call it a day and they
abandoned mount carmel and they moved back into the west now when they moved back west to france
and spain and italy and england uh they were looked at a little bit of scance
you see because people thought that their traditions and their eastern mystical
ways they were profoundly influenced by the eastern mystics uh they thought them too exotic
and found their order a little odd now tradition has it but an englishman
uh by the name of saint simon stock uh became the prior general of this
carmelite order in the late 1200s and he had a vision of the virgin mary in which
she gave him this characteristic thing that the carmelites wear
the brown scapular and in that vision that he had mary
promised that those who died wearing this little scapular would be saved
so there she is holding the scapula in her right hand yeah jesus is in her left
hand with a very precarious looking uh crown on the top of a baby's head there
and here's the scapular that she's holding right there
here's the traditional habit of the carmelites now you can see them they're standing at the back and there are the
ordained ones who've probably just celebrated communion which is why they've got these white albs on
over the top of them so when they came back to europe they mostly assimilated with the other
mendicant orders remember the mendicants like the franciscans and the dominicans etc
it's because the carmelites essentially they were torn between two poles partly they wanted to be recluses
and partly they wanted to be mendicants that is go out and beg for the food and
go out teaching and preaching and what have you so the carmelites have sort of lost their way
and it's into this picture that teresa of avila or teresa of jesus suddenly
comes on the scene now she was born into a devout family of
converted jews do you remember that when ferdinand and isabella reconquered spain
from the moors they inaugurated the spanish inquisition uh
during which uh christians were jews were forced to to convert to
christianity if they wanted to stay in spain many of them fled and i believe they've just been given
compensation by the spanish government all of this time later and given freedom to come back and live in spain
so she had a very privileged background she was born in 1515 as part of the spanish nobility and she
was very impressed when she was growing up with the lives of the saints and she ran away from home
uh aged seven with her brother in the hopes uh to get herself martyred
by by the moors in southern spain anyway she was interrupted by her uncle who spotted them leaving the town and and
dragged them both back home now her background led her to insist very
strongly on equality within the within the carmelite movement
so no superiority of one person because they were rich or came from a better background than in another and in spain
that was very much impressed at this time by sort of noble lineage and honor and purity of blood
that wasn't tainted by jewish ancestry or islamic ancestry this is quite a
radical position that she's adopting saying you know we we must make sure that um
that this this doesn't happen in our in our order so
um she was a little bit less tolerant of the protestants incidentally who were rising at the same time
uh um just like the medieval women that we looked at last week
what we're going to discover is that she a series of illnesses that were brought
on partially by her rigorous asceticism uh fed this deep sense of contemplative
spirituality do you remember we discovered this last week when we were looking at the medieval women like
julian of norwich and um metchild of magdeburg did we look at her
and a couple of the hildegard of bingham that they'd gone through these illnesses that had brought them into a deep
understanding of of the suffering of jesus and of the suffering of jesus's mother
um so this led to a deep sense of intimacy with jesus and a deep sense of intimacy with the virgin as well
the interesting thing about this period here she is again as a young woman
one of the effects of the growth of protestantism in europe an unlooked for
effect if you want on the roman catholic church was a deep distrust within
official catholicism of anything that looked like mental prayer
anything that looked like inward experiences of grace 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
become a luther luther and the reformers laid a huge
emphasis on on your interpretation of scripture on your being led by the
spirit on the ability of any believer to have a spiritual experience that wasn't
necessarily mediated by the church and the roman catholic church at that time uh found this a problem um and
there 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 catholics were not supposed to be reading
um i have a picture i think here somewhere we'll come back to that this man
this is francisco di osuna who was a spanish franciscan and he had some very
stern words to say about private devotions it comes as a bit of a surprise
he said if you see your wife going about visiting many churches
and practicing many devotions and trying to be a saint lock the door
and if that is not sufficient break her leg if she is young
because she can go to heaven lame from her own house without going around in
search of these suspect forms of holiness pretty astonishing
thing to say but you can see how the protestant reformation had put the wind
up certain catholic authorities thinking if you let people go away on private devotions you'll end up with those
people leaving and joining the protestants instead now teresa did not agree with this
obviously she thought that a fidelity to mental prayer to spiritual
practice of this sort is going to be the cure and not the cause of spiritual aberration she said
her writings are mostly experiential they're not systematic theology they're
not systematic works of spirituality either she's quite warm she's quite down to
earth if you want but she gives practical advice in in what she in what
she writes in in in the in the writings that we're going to look at in a little bit more detail
she encouraged a lot of um human friendship as a support network for the
people who were on this carmelite spiritual journey and she said look do not bypass jesus's
humanity to get to his divinity that's not the way you you you get to it
um she was also quite interested in developing these classification systems
to describe the stages in your spiritual life so she talked about the four waters the four wells of
water that you 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 rooms in this great interior castle
of the soul um in 1559
she felt that christ presented himself to her in bodily form even though he
remained invisible and the visions that she had of this christ lasted for two
years she also said that she was visited by a seraph
um who drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly
through her heart and it caused her terrible spiritual and bodily pain
she says this is in the vatican obviously then saint peter's it's the great altarpiece behind behind the high
altar in the lady chapel uh i saw 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 it at
times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails when he drew it out he seemed to draw my
entrails out also and to leave me all on fire with a great love of god
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 there's a close-up of her face in
ecstasy um she spent several years traveling
through spain and setting uh uh setting up these new houses of uh religious
houses uh of carmelites and on one of these journeys in 1582
that she fell ill and she died now the interesting thing about this is that the date of her death is rather odd it
occurred just at the moment when europe was making the switch from the julian
calendar to the gregorian calendar which required removing the dates october the
5th through october the 14th from the calendar there was no october the 5th
in 1582. so that means that teresa either died before midnight on october the 4th
or early in the morning of october the 15th her feast day is in fact october the
15th because they said well we adopted that calendar so that's the that's the way it goes her last words were a prayer
she said my lord it is time to move on well then may your will be done
oh my lord and my spouse the hour that i have longed for has finally come
it is time for you and i to meet one another
as she is she made a huge contribution to spirituality
in her description of the method that you could use to to attain to
contemplative prayer we'll be doing this as part of our spiritual exercise this is a sort of passive form of prayer
and in it you feel like god is doing something for you
rather than you feeling as if you're doing something or performing something for god the direction is completely the
other way round in contemplative prayer you feel that god is acting upon you
rather than that you are making up prayers as you go along or reading prayers out from a book or using your
mind and your imagination to to to ask something of god
for yourself or or for other people so the final phase of this spiritual development in it through contemplative
prayer isn't characterized by ecstasies and raptures and all of those other
things but by this sort of constant inner awareness
of of the trinity that dwells with inside you it draws you
out to serve your neighbor and the value of your spirituality isn't men
measured by your lofty spiritual experiences your mystical experiences
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 where all of this is supposed to be leading so that's a brief description of her let's look now at saint john of the
cross he was born in 1542 and a bit of a contrast to teresa of avila
john's father too was a descendant of jewish converts to christianity
his family was fairly well off but unfortunately he fell in love and
married a poor orphan girl of a of a very low class and his family entirely
disowned him so when john was born his his father had been disowned by his wealthier family
and john was born destitute essentially born in poverty and for a
brief period of time he lived in an orphanage during the time that he was an orderly
a sort of nurse in a plague hospital in spain he was able to attend classes at a very
good jesuit school that had recently been founded he was a bit of an introvert
he was a scholar he was a poet he was ordained a priest in 1567
and his first thought was that he was going to join a very strict carthusian
order remember the carthusians were founded as an offshoot of the benedictines because
the carthusians thought that the benedictines had become a little too rich and comfortable and received great
grants of land and jewels and treasure and all of the things of it the carthusians were far more strict than
the benedictines kept more times of silence they were more strict about their their diet and their and their
routine of monastic life so john was attracted to the carthusian
solitary life the carthusian silent contemplation but it was around that time that he
became a friend of theresa of avila
teresa persuaded him not to join the carthusians but instead to come along with her
and found an order for men based on her
reforms of the car of the carmelite order
so they adopted then this primitive rule of saint albert that we saw that the carmelites had adopted over there in in
israel day and night were divided between observing the liturgy of the hours
devotional reading a lot of devotional reading celebration of the mass and then
long periods of solitude so you were intended to abstain from
meat and engage in lengthy fasting from mid-september to easter
it's pretty long time during the winter too they also prohibited covered shoes
you were only allowed sandals if any footwear at all as something that distinguished them from these other
group of carmelites who were permitted to wear them theresa and john weren't happy with what
had happened to the carmelite order back in europe it became the destination for wealthy
pilgrims for instance it became a place where people would send their noble children that they
couldn't marry off in any other ways there were lots of visitors to these carmelite houses the conversation
began to get rather frivolous and the monastic order was not observed
as strictly as it might be so teresa and saint john initially began
within the carmelite order to try and reform it there but they fell foul of the other
carmelites who didn't like this reforming instinct and wanted to keep things as they were
and in fact um john was eventually captured by a group of
these non-reforming carmelites and thrown into a monastic prison and kept
there for almost a year until he was uh he managed to escape
that's what you can see in this picture uh his little room up there
so this is why you sometimes hear the expression carmelites
this means that these are the group of carmelites that split away from these other carmelites joining john of the
cross and theresa of avila and they're described as discourse because they don't wear closed shoes they wear open
shoes or no shoes at all um his imprisonment was very harsh
i think i have a picture so there we go he he was get this is by el greco this
is the place where he was imprisoned um he was given weekly lashings
uh he was kept in a tiny cell that measured only six by ten feet
he was given no change of clothing and he was given a penitential diet of water
and bread and little scraps of salted fish that's all he got to eat
while he was imprisoned he wrote a large part of his most famous poem which was called the spiritual canticle
he eventually managed to escape from from that prison and he was her um
nursed back to health by uh by teresa's nuns
uh once he was out of that prison he became the superior of a series of monasteries the pope decided
in the end to accept this discourse carmelite order which splat split off
from the other carmelites he founded many new monasteries in fact
here they are teresa and john together uh and in a period of very few years
it's estimated that he actually traveled 25 000 kilometers in
founding these 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 the summer of 1591 and
he died in a monastery in um ubaidah in spain in december of the same
year he had a skin disease called erysipolis
that can compromise your vital organs when you're elderly
not that he was i think he was about 48 when he died 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 now first of all john of the cross was primarily a poet
and so his spirituality is going to be expressed in poetic language
it's never going to be fully explainable it's never going to be fully exhaustible
actually that there's always going to be a surplus of meaning for for for others to discover
he said it would be foolish to think that expressions of love arising from mystical understanding like these
stanzas are fully explainable the spirit of the lord who abides in us
and aids our weakness as sin paul says pleads for us with unspeakable groanings
in order to manifest what we can neither fully understand nor fully comprehend
as a result these persons let something of their experience overflow in figures and
similes and from the abundance of their spirit they pour out secrets and mysteries rather than rational
explanations 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 going to give you a systematic spirituality or a systematic theology
that's not his aim so he um ground his approach to
spirituality in faith hope and charity he said rather than in the sort of
miraculous apparitions or ecstasies or states of consciousness that we normally
associate with with mysticism no idea no dogma no vision no spiritual
ecstasy no matter how profound is going to be able to communicate the full
reality of who god really is so we can never become fixated on those
things to a point when we confuse them with the divinity to which these
exercises and these prayers should be leading us so what john believes
is that dogmatic claims about god end up
hiding god as much as revealing who god is
so all of these grand dogmatic statements about incarnation or salvation or redemption or the nature of
the resurrection all of those great dogmatic statements of the christian faith he says
just cloud the mysterious reality of what god actually is it's called um
apathetic theology you can know more about god by saying what god is not than
you can by saying what god is so he said what you end up doing is living
inside this mystery that you'll never be able to fully explain or systematize or
or clothe with fixed ideas and he described this as sure insecurity
that that's what your faith should become a sure insecurity
he called it dark faith not the light faith of explanations and rationalism and
systematization but 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 so here's a bit of an explanation of how
john guides that's uh that's his own drawing there of jesus on the cross viewed from above
from god's eye point um and here's his final resting place
his relic re there his tomb in spain here it is another
wedding cake 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 people through prayer to a state of contemplation
what he's going to say we'll come back to those
he says you start in prayer with something that he calls the purgative way this is the prayer of beginners
it's a sort of busy style of praying and it uses a lot of words now
he says if you use a lot of words in your praying um [Music]
it's going to have the benefit of encouraging the encouraging the flourishing of basic virtues
it will develop in you patience and temperance and humility and kindness
and
in the end perhaps when you finished praying you're going to be left
with this feeling of emotional satisfaction will come out of
our praying thinking yeah 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 repentance filled i uh um
i was suitably rejoicing filled and put all of those things into some good words
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
that's called the purgative way which leads you eventually to the passive way of prayer
your prayer is going to slowly become simpler and much quieter
so all the busyness of the words that you've been using is going to give way to just sitting
still in god's presence that's all there is to it
you move forward through your prayer without the 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 it simple
quiet it ends in this sort of gentle and and inward awareness of god's presence
that he calls the passive way you don't need words you don't need to fill it up with anything 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 you're sitting still in the presence of
god doesn't mean that god is not doing something god is active
your contemplation is going to become so strong he says that it's going to disturb your
your psyche in some way it's going to be disturbing you may feel rapture you may
feel ecstasy you may feel vision you may feel a direct presence of god in some
way but because god is actively working on you
and not just sitting there and receiving your prayers you might experience this as pain
because we're still sinful people and when the light comes in it can sometimes hurt
and it's going to lead us to a state where we want to be radically
purified if you want in the presence of god he says now with the light and heat of
the divine fire the soul sees and feels those weaknesses and miseries which
previously resided within it unseen and unfelt just as the dampness of a log of
wood was unknown until the fire being applied to it made it sweat and smoke
and sputter so what he's saying is that when god comes into you in this in this way
it will start revealing those places in you which are not godly and you will
experience the presence of god as something that might be painful not
something that might be wonderful and full of full of
mystic ecstasy uh that's an interesting point that mystic ecstasy people think it's
equivalent to bliss or a feeling of feeling a feeling of being wonderful and and uh filled with the
presence of god but the great mystics have always said it's not always like that
sometimes your mystical experience can be extremely painful because the presence of god is revealing in you
those things that are still to be healed and touched and that is god's presence too
it's not a judgmental presence it's just the contrast of god's love
and and and compassion for you revealing those hard places that you that you
don't want to see yourself very often finally he comes to the unitative way
which is a sort of stability that comes out of this in the end what he says is that you arrive at
something that's a bit like a spiritual marriage your whole human nature becomes in
harmony with with god's nature like the state of adam and eve in paradise
you come to this sublime participation in the life of the trinity
so those are the four ways the purgative way of lots of words the passive way where your
prayer becomes simple and quiet and you simply sit in the presence of god then
the illuminative way when god makes god's presence known to you which can
sometimes be a painful thing and finally this unitative way where you
achieve some sort of stability like adam and eve experienced in in paradise
now we've looked at that let's have a little look at what we call the dark knight of the soul
now this little expression of john he invented it it's comes up very frequently in in john
of the cross's works and he uses the expression in a variety of different ways it doesn't mean just one thing he
can make it mean several things and now it's entered common parlance you
often hear people saying oh this is the dark knight of the soul or oh this covert thing it's the dark knight of the
soul and they they use it in common parlance 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 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 it still sucks but it's not as bad as i thought it was going to be so this dark night of the soul is
used in common parlance very often with not much of 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 looked at with the purgative and then the uh
the the passive and what have you it assumes two phases 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 so
props images words you're purging yourself of those things
by using them 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 leave some of those words and images
behind and simply sit in the presence of god without the need for all of this
these images and words which you've just purged if you want so what he says is that this purging
process he calls it the passive knight of the senses it's an interesting expression that he
uses to describe this secondly in stages three and four this
illuminative and then this stable stage you're not just called on to abandon
your images your mind your your your props
you're called to abandon also your spirit in prayer
your mind your rationality your your logical capacities have now
gone and you're left abandoning your soul also in the presence of god
and this is partly what he means when he says the dark knight of the soul it's a phase of prayer it begins with
purging yourself of all of these external things and then the light goes inwards and you
begin to look inwards to those places in your own soul where that purging has
got to take place as well so that god alone the trinity the life of the trinity alone uh is present
so it means turning away from reliance on your mind or your ability to control
your life while you're praying um the dark night of the soul involves
letting go of all of that but the dark knight of the soul
john also uses this to to be understood in terms of human suffering
so we feel lost we feel disorientated
we feel abandoned by family or by our friends uh we're still aware somehow of past
happiness but we're we're unable to ask for
or seek for relief from this place so god suddenly becomes unreal to us
as if god is no longer there he calls this to the dark knight of the
soul then he asks some questions he says
why has this happened why do we suddenly feel lost disoriented abandoned
alone is it because you're sick is it because of ill health
secondly could it be due to some sort of sin that that you're that's unresolved
or is it just due to apathy if you like depression perhaps
are not caring an inability to care a mood a mood that you're going through
as he understood it now he said if this feeling of of disorientation and abandonment is due to
ill health or sin or apathy eventually it's going to dissipate it
will disappear and you'll get back to good health you'll get back to your routine
the thing will pass it's all right this dark night of the soul has been produced
by these other things but he says there's a different sort of anguish of disorientation of
abandonment when you look at that feeling of abandonment or disorientation or this
dark night of the soul experience is it characterized by this sort of
pervasive inner anguish and
is there a sense of disorientation that you're experiencing in relation to yourself
when you look at yourself when you try to imagine your soul do you feel yourself disorientated do you feel
disoriented in relation to the world do you feel disoriented uh
towards god then he says if you're having those
feelings it's possible that what it it's god that's doing that to you
you're not doing it to yourself god is provoking some evolutionary spiritual change within you
now some people come for spiritual direction and they say things like um i feel like i've lost my
faith i feel like uh i uh i haven't
been doing the things that i'm supposed to be doing and it's my fault that i feel this way
and john says take take the eye out of this for a moment
it is possible it is possible that this is not your fault that you feel this way
it is possible that this is something that god is doing to you
he's causing you to feel disoriented abandoned uh
because and full of anguish because god wants to draw you closer
and this is one of the ways in which that happens so
you can't shorten that ordeal it's impossible to shorten it all you can do is to work within it it
means that you're being drawn closer together uh closer in into the divine
um it's like a dark ray he says experienced in the same way as as a
speleologist experiences this bright ray of sunshine after spending hours in a cave
so he says what happens is you're going through that dark experience and god is shining a light on
there that's dazzling you you've been made blind by light not blind by dark
but blind by 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 interesting image that he used he says
it's it's god's self-communication 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 sick we're all fallen creatures so this bright light that god is shining
in there is going to be experienced as a dark ray as as pain at first
probably because what god is doing is taking away
something that you used to rely on so much so that you were confusing that
thing with an experience of god so imagine that just for a moment
it might be a good thing in itself uh your prayer life it might be the
eucharist it might be bible reading it might be a spiritual director or mentor
that you've come to rely on some important resource that you found
to bolster your christian commitment but those things are not the same as god
that what god might do is to take away your joy in those things
your feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment in those things because you've been mistaking those
things for god and god wants you
for yourself he doesn't want you to be mistaking forms of spiritual life for god
and this this this means that this dark night of the soul something that god is doing to you
uh is drawing you more and more closely to god and and by drawing you more and more closely to
god you will be participating in the end in the inner life of the trinity and god will be dwelling inside you just as
jesus dwelt within the womb of mary
um he said that this john is telling us that this breaks in
if you like uh let me go back to a couple of pictures of him
the dark knight of the soul breaks a hole in you so that you can experience
something greater something mysterious and so he says that it gives a shape and
a meaning to your despair your despair isn't pointless your despair isn't aimless your despair isn't
meaningless and this basic teaching that he has
about this dark night of the soul experience it can be expanded into all sorts of
purifying crises that individuals and societies will inevitably be going through
you might say at the moment due to this virus we're going through a purifying crisis
or we could be that there may be 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 it when people
say your suffering is for a reason um but what they're trying to get to the heart of here uh teresa and john uh is
that this it's it's an opening within you that that is happening an opening that
god is going to come to fill so in the confusion of our own times
he's trying to provide us 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 light he says listen you already possess
everything that you need in christ so you can move forward you can move
ahead in this darkness you can be guided by faith and hope and love
don't be overly premature in trying to seek security in any ideology in a
church theological system a church structure a religious experience a
one-sided reading of the gospel all of these things 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 of these
idols all of these prejudices in the per purgative way
you'll gradually begin to discover and experience the trinity
which you will find living in your heart closer to you than your own breath
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 um
and let's think about the practice of the presence of god which is a key
um theme in carmelite spirituality recollection they call it recollection
as we've seen as we've gone through this the carmelite tradition lays a huge emphasis on mental prayer
your your prayer life your inner life recollection they say is this
recollecting or the re-situating of yourself in the presence of god
it's not about words it's not discursive 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 affective it's interior
and it's more to do with the state of your spirit rather than the state of your mind
your mind ideally is going to be stilled it's going to be quieted
those noisy voices are going to to be stilled in your head
you won't be busy reading or reciting vocal prayers instead you're just going
to be simply and lovingly present to god
that's all 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 at god you're contemplating god
you're sitting in god's presence it requires nothing of you just sitting
and the motivation of that prayer is very simple it's just love
in our close friendships or our relationships we don't always have to
find something to say my mother had this rather dreary friend
at one point um one of her lame ducks her name was was sylvia
and i remember once sylvia had come for tea or something
and my mother left me with sylvia in the front room while she went to get the
sandwiches or whatever it was and afterwards i said please don't do that again because i couldn't think of
anything to say to her i was about 11 probably and she said oh that was a companionable
silence don't worry about it i thought well still didn't make it feel any more
comfortable to me but what contemplative prayer is what what this this what we're trying to do is to
get into a state of companionable silence with god that's the idea of it
so it's you can simply be quiet together with your spouse or your friend or something
you 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 time to take the bin out or let them know that you're sorry about
being horrible to them or whatever it is um we don't come to god in contemplative
prayer because we've got a problem that needs solving or or or somebody that we want
to pray for saint teresa called it holy companionship
um just sitting in the presence of god recollecting god recollection
now it doesn't necessarily come naturally to most people and perhaps the other most famous
discussed carmelite brother lawrence of the resurrection whose picture you can
see here he popularized it he made it enormously attractive and accessible
in his little book that was called the practice of the presence of god brother lawrence was a cook in his carmelite
monastery and he found ways of recollecting the presence of god
in washing the dishes and stirring the soup and doing whatever 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 read through methodically it's a good book to pick up now and again and
practice the presence of god with it uh dorothy day thought that he was a wonderful thing too and liked his
practical spirituality so here's here's what brother lawrence says in his little book
he says first of all um
renounce the love of anything that isn't god that sounds
complicated but he said don't do it in one big dramatic gesture
it involves all it involves is keeping a vigilant watch over all the impulses
that affect your spiritual life all the impulses that drive your daily
activities keep watch over them and by keeping watch over them
the little decisions that you make during the day uh the the little gestures 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 situation secondly
practice god's presence by keeping your soul's gaze trustfully fixed on god he says
you can do this through an act of the imagination and you can do it through acting on an
impulse of love so imagine yourself constantly in the gaze of god god is
always looking at you nothing that we do nothing that we can
say can be separated or hidden from god god's gaze is always there his loving
gaze is always on you by by remembering this gods that you're
living in god's loving gaze all the time you can't go anywhere where god is not
eventually the you that that practice of remembering god's gaze
is going to blur the distinction that you'll make between time that you call prayer time and time that you call
work time everything will blur into one under under god's gaze
thirdly he says every activity that you start
every act that you perform begin that act
by an inward lifting of your heart to god no matter what it is it doesn't
really matter do for god what you ordinarily do for
yourself he says so uh wash your face in the morning there's an
act of of remembrance uh you know but whatever habit you have
when you click on a certain light or um
light up your computer or something lift it into the presence of god
so your day is going to become punctuated with these little moments of of mental
awareness of god's presence um a sort of withdrawal from from
into god's presence tiny little prayers he said that you can say in one brief moment
you can say see god i'm entirely yours i'm wholly yours
or lord make me pleasing to your heart that's another one of brother lawrence's
little prayers that you can say at any moment of the day going about any activity that you might have
fourthly he says keep persevering because
the the effort of thinking about god frequently all through your day
is going to seem really laborious at first it's going to seem like quite a heavy burden trying to remember it
but don't be discouraged if you forget um this 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 you you start thinking oh i forgot about god then i should have done it when i
switched the light on or brushed my teeth or whatever it was you said you were going to do so
he said two things confession just say sorry move on and a healthy suspicion of
long-winded prayers don't get into it with god just sort of say look i know i did that and then
practice the presence of god again and and set it to one side he said present yourself to prayer to
god like a diamond paralytic beggar at a rich man's door that's all you need to
do sit at the door sit at the door if we struggle to approach god god is
going to rush towards you god is going to run towards you and what is a small deliberate effort on
our part to remember god in this way will end up reaping a harvest of real delight
he says you're not suddenly going to become a spiritual heroine or hero
the changes that will occur thanks to this practice of the presence of god slowly gently quietly
routinely these changes that you're going to experience are probably going to be very
small and very subtle at first you'll find that you have less outbursts
of temper say you'll be willing to reach out in moments where perhaps you wanted to
give the cold shoulder or not bother with something
the benefit of all of this is to remember that you're no longer alone
you are never alone through this practice every joy every pleasurable experience
of your life is shared by god just as is every doubt every fear
every sorrow that we might have we're not alone in those things we're practicing the presence of god therefore
we never feel alone because we know that we're constantly held in god's gaze
through this practice we know what god knows and the result of this is that we fall
deeper in love with god through this simple recollection prayer
we discovered something similar didn't we when we looked at the um the jesus prayer lord jesus christ son of god have
mercy on me it was a similar sort of pr the prayer of silence if you like that the prayer
of the heart and and brother lawrence is striving to uh the same thing he's saying by this
constant awareness uh you you you realize that you're that you're in god's presence
and and surrounded by god and never outside god's gaze
um there are other famous carmelites here's one very famous one that santores de lis
you this wonderful remarkable church i think joris you went there
didn't you in the last last summer must be bringing back some happy memories uh
she was a carmelite who who who practice this presence of god in
some very simple and very direct and very endearing endearing ways
um i i rather like this quotation of hers i
now know that true charity consists in bearing all our neighbors defects not
being surprised at their weakness but edified at even their smallest virtues
that once again this vigilance and observation helps you not only become aware of the of of god's gaze on you
constantly but aware of the smallest virtues and kindness and and goodness of
other people it will shift your emphasis from the judgmental to the forgiving
uh the practice of of charity that's cultivated by this discipline of the of the practice of the presence of god
i think that was my last slide actually it was a little shorter tonight because
i didn't have as much time as i thought i was going to because of various other bits and pieces
it was a little dense too i'm sorry about that anybody got any observations or any
questions or or comments
uh yes catherine um could you tell me the relation of
[Music]
i don't
is he referring to the dispute between the two groups of carmelites that's what i'm wondering uh
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 time uh one that the old
order of the carmelites that had sort of gone to the dogs according to saint john and
saint teresa they were very much against all of these reforms and as we heard john was thrown
into a monastic prison for nine months in the middle of this dispute uh and the pope eventually gave
permission to john and teresa to found what essentially was a separate order uh
the discoursed carmelites they still called themselves carmelites but uh they
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 it's a very dramatic
you know ending to that opera when they're when they're all
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 no it would be interesting to find out and listen i like pulangi so perhaps
that would be a good listener and sure the last time the met did it i
don't know where my problem is but it would have that'd be interesting to find out yeah
i wanted to say something yes well um over at mary manny walsh which is run
by carmelites i don't know if they're just helped but they all wear shoes and one of the men's sister mary michael
with her habit and her the whole thing because she were she always wore
high spiked heels very strange and she was not
not good looking she was really ugly so it was it was really this strange thing and she was the one that went out and
did a lot of outreach because she went every place with her thank you despite rennister was walking towards mary
manning to see my mother and i couldn't keep up with her she was walking so fast that i had to
pretend that i had to stop for something because it was embarrassing
and she was in her 70s at the time oh golly yeah they make them tough yeah
yeah
there was one other thing that i that came to me while you were talking about uh this form of prayer and you mentioned
the um uh the jesus prayer of the orthodox and um i have read in 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 because it can bring you to a terrible catastrophe
and i was wondering when and i never could understand that but you mentioned here that that
sometimes the mystical ecstasy is painful and maybe that's what they're referring to something like that i think
you're right actually because i um there's this purgative way of of john
and teresa is intended to go down that particular path that the more you draw
close to god the more those things in you that are not right
uh are going to be woken up and you'll you'll be forced to to deal
with them because the light will come in and therefore it's better to have a spiritual director who can accompany you
through that through that process uh so that you you can be guided through it and and
keep your eye on the end rather than the the misery of wherever it is that you
that you've landed through through this 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
so you breathe in on the lord jesus christ son of god and you breathe out on the have mercy on me as sinner
that these breathing exercises without the help of a an experienced spiritual
director who knows about those things for some reason they believe that it's dangerous to mess with people's breath
in this way that it can produce experiences that are too 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
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 so they were very famous spiritual directors teresa and um john in fact
that's one of the things that got them in trouble uh because many priests and many laypeople went to these the founders of
this new order within the carmelite tradition instead of going to the old carmelites
and the old carmelites began to get very jealous of them and their success or
or their popularity amongst amongst people looking for direction
so i presume that as they walk people through these spiritual exercises like we've just done
um this was very much a part of what they were part of what they were doing 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 be it's not going to be a moment of extreme bliss uh at least
not at first but it might be very painful
that's interesting yeah anything else ruth hang on
yes um i i want to you know you have one picture about them about the prayer like the
purpose slice is that something like more or less like
um purgatory
you know um in the slides that i'd got oh was this it was that it was
it's a picture it's like um is it a painting
yeah this one this one yes
it's an altar
in the black color previously this one
no yeah yeah this one this one yeah
yeah have i landed on it uh that this is this is one of his bones
one of saint john of the cross is bones that has been mounted inside a glass altar for people to venerate
his body didn't survive uh whole some sometimes people are exposed whole like
this with wax faces and their clothes and things some the tradition 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 saint cardinal newman henry newman who was
just made a saint they dug him up in order to find some relics but the soil was so acidic that
his body had completely disappeared in the grave there was nothing left so sometimes there are relics that are
left and this is a relic of of john john of the cross so you if you look carefully on the
right hand side it looks like a thigh bone or something is it
just down here you can see through the glass in this area here
so i presume that's what it is and this it's part of this altar
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
that's what i'm guessing anyway that makes sense is that the same as like the
paradigm laws you know when they have uh different levels um like the prayer
uh the doctrine of purgatory um is an interesting one
the the anglican church doesn't agree with it it's a
they said it's a fond thing vague vainly invented and repugnant to the word of
god uh what the reformers said about purgatory
for a variety of reasons uh was that uh
it makes a mockery of jesus's death on the cross if jesus death on the cross
saves you it saves you right now and there's no halfway measures you're either saved or you're not
and therefore when you die you can't you know you can't be purged of things in order to get saved after death
um i think that was the main objection to it
it's it's it's an ambiguous doctrine yeah
anything else other comments yes yeah
i have two questions about
and i was wondering what is the meaning of the skull yeah
yeah sometimes you see this too in a saint teresa of avila some of her paintings also we have this
contemplation of it there could be a couple of reasons for
this and if anybody else knows a little 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 own
mortality was something that has been practiced in in the past
also um it goes through goes through phases this sort of business in the 1600s these
skulls appeared on tombs they 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 meditating on your death because you could be struck down
at any moment was a way of preparing yourself for the inevitable sort of thing
and it's a memento mori a little reminder of your own mortality
but also a reminder that of triumph over death i suppose that's why he's holding a cross in the other hand
that's that's my guess anybody got other ideas on
that makes sense
[Music]
yeah the contrast of the two
[Music]
yeah it's illegal probably too i think the tradition was that uh
jesus was crucified over the tomb of adam so the skull was supposed to be adam's skull and the blood dropped down
physically onto onto adam's skull redeeming humanity
but it is interesting juxtaposition in that particular painting isn't it that's what from 1650
so it's at the height of the skull craze
i think i saw a picture of teresa of avila with a skull too yes yeah i did yeah
oh and there's um there's a francisco with one
uh no maybe i didn't maybe it was the very first picture of
her uh where was she she's gone
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 yeah and i know yeah
i also thought it was very interesting uh the painting right after my same time
holding slow of saint john in the cell he's indoors
yes but there are two thousand above his head yeah i noticed that i wondered what that
was about yeah yeah the ray of light is piercing through i suppose
uh he's he's been imprisoned in this cell in this this monastery uh he's looking rather well on it
uh the story goes that he managed to pick the lock of his door
and escape through a tiny little window while nobody was looking
and jumped down from up there i suspect that this cloud thing it's about the ray
the dark ray and it could be a reference to his uh his um
his poetry uh and the great 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 shoved through uh from it from
a from a neighboring cell um it was a tiny hole in his cell wall
so he was able to write while he was in prison so even in the midst of prison there the
dark ray has penetrated and and um the presence of god is being practiced
yeah yeah anyone else
good i think next week we're going to be looking at a
reform piety um joris will be with us so we'll probably
both be doing a little bit uh we'll talk about that tomorrow so we'll see if we can find some
pictures and the spiritual exercise i think that i had in mind for it uh would
be the ethic of of work the spiritual
practice of work um a helpful theme just at the moment maybe
and maybe not can i skip that one
we'll make it as interesting as possible maybe we'll have wesley shouting glory to god through the bunghole of the
barrel or something that should be fun
oh look i got little squiggles on the screen again how interesting i don't know where that came from
everybody doing all right getting bored [Music]
we have some news actually from the diocese the bishop has sent out a a letter a directive he's been working
together with the other clergy and um and bishops of the of the roman catholic
archdiocese and with the other surrounding bishops uh what they've essentially said is that
at the moment five people are permitted in the church with social distancing uh in order to um perform
the services online services at the end of the month
cautious reopening can begin by the first of july
we are going to talk about that with with the with the wardens and the vestry to see what that might look like for
santa spree for instance um and obviously we will be continuing with the
streaming of everything while we still can 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'm not really very sure um
i've had a word with stephen who's on our arvestry
who's a doctor and he's come up with some good suggestions too so we do have ideas we'll have masks for everybody
we'll have plenty of hand sanitizer there will be ways of taking communion that are hygienic
and we're going on the advice of the center for disease control uh and uh the
the directives of the governor and of the bishops in consultation with others
so there's light at the end of the tunnel i will say um what's pretty amazing is that that i've
i've been noticing that in the liquor stores they don't do any social distances i'm right about that
oh dear anybody else peggy did you want to say something
oh yes um so i had a question regarding those four stages the perfective and passive
up to the eliminative i think it was yeah so i'm curious about the length of
time each of those stages take is it an individualized thing in which it happens
within a year i mean how long do these various stages take do you have any idea
well i don't think any of them is intended to produce instant results it's a long
process i think and a lifetimes process certainly to get to that final stage
and also it may be 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 back to it
uh over something else for instance so it's a tool that you can return to as
a resource at different stages of your spiritual life at other times you may find the passive
stage very very difficult for one reason or another you might find it very difficult to be
quiet uh and just rest in the presence of god especially if you're going through
something particularly difficult that lasts for a long time 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 for them in too
so you know our purgative stage continues around that and and for some people
perhaps at the moment they're going to find it easier to be in this passive mode of saying i'm too tired to do anything
else so let me just sit in the presence of god for a little bit um
i think if you do follow them as a process in a conscious way
over a series of a month or two and observe what happens as you put that
discipline on yourself you probably will find the results that that they're pointing to
it's not like the um the spiritual exercises of ignatius say
this is far more internal processes a bit more sort of visceral if you want
and for some people it it might take a lot longer and for some people this this method of prayer might
not suit them as i said at the beginning in the first sessions that we were having what we're
exploring is a whole lot of tools 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 different religious orders and different the
spiritual approaches that we can have and we we adopt one that we find is most
conducive to drawing closer to god and with this particular message the method that's a very very good question
how long does it take to get to this illuminative way and how do we know when we've got there my feeling
yeah yes yes i i'm very ashamed at some of the things that i do
and and feel the presence of god's um disappointment sometimes very keenly i i
would say uh and by 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 a bit of a rotter
[Laughter]
thank you very good thank you very much thank you thanks anyone else for now
thank you great thank you
why don't we finish with a prayer the very famous prayer of um
of of teresa of avila let us pray
let nothing trouble you let nothing affright you everything passes
god never changes patience obtains all things
whoever has god wants for nothing for god alone suffices
amen
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