Today is a feast of a wonderful Doctor of the Church, the great Carmelite, St. John of the Cross. He was dear to St. Teresa of Avila and with her sought the reformation of the Order. His mystical experiences are chronicled in The Dark Night of the Soul. Myself, I find some of his thought a most difficult path to holiness for his way of the 'nada' or nothing and of that total detachement seems incongurous to my married life. But the Dark Night of the Soul, I think, is a very wonderful and mostly understandable chronicle of the spiritual journey and of its phases. So many do not understand, for example, that aridity is part of the journey!
Ave Maria!
Here is some excepts from some of his existing poems:
Reveal your presence to me
and kill me by your gaze and beauty.
See how the suffering
of love is only cured
when you-or when your face-is near…
My soul-no longer bound-is free
from the creations of the world;
above itself it rises hurled
into a life of ecstasy,
leaning only on God. The world
will therefore clarify at last
what I esteem of highest grace:
my soul revealing it can rest
without a place and with a place.
Although I suffer a dark night
in mortal life, I also know
my agony is sIight, for though
I am in darkness without light,
a clear heavenly life I know;
for love gives power to my life,
however black and blind my day,
to yield my soul, and free of strife
to rest-living darkly with no ray.
Love can perform a wondrous labor
which I have learned internally,
and all the good or bad in me
takes on a penetrating savor,
changing my soul so it can be
consumed in a delicious flame.
I feel it in me as a ray;
and quickly killing every trace
of light-I burn my self away.
