Catholic Thought discussion
Dark Night of the Soul
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Part 2, Bks 7 thru 14
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Mod
If he had pointed to examples like this more often, I think I would understand the book better.
"it suffers great pain and grief, since there is added to all this ... the fact that it finds no consolation or support in any instruction nor in a spiritual master. For, although in many ways its director may show it good reason for being comforted because of the blessings which are contained in these afflictions, it cannot believe him. For it is so greatly absorbed and immersed in the realization of those evils wherein it sees its own miseries so clearly, that it thinks that, as its director observes not that which it sees and feels, he is speaking in this manner because he understands it not; and so, instead of comfort, it rather receives fresh affliction, since it believes that its director’s advice contains no remedy for its troubles." (VII. 3.)This chapter really struck me. In my early 20s I went through a period of what I now know was depression. I understand it now as losing my rose colored glasses. And everyone who still wore their glasses would try to cheer me by telling me to look at life's rosiness. But that just made me feel worse because I knew they couldn't see what the world really looked like without the glasses. What I really needed was someone who understood what I was seeing.
I think that's why I am drawn to this book. St. John is speaking to me and confirming that what I'm seeing is accurate. But he's also showing me that when my eyes adjust, the world will be rosier than it was with the glasses.
Mod
That's great Casey. For me it seems I can almost reach that moment of connection but alas it falls short. I don't think it's St. John's fault. There's just something I'm not getting or perhaps better put blocking me from connecting.
It has to be me because Casey's experience seems to be echoed with others. Let me share a comment in an email exchange I had with a young friend (who I will leave nameless) who fell in love with this book. Her comments to me about it was the major reason for me to nominate the book. Mind you she is not Catholic, but of late has been falling in love with Catholicism. This from her email to me about the book.
"However, the way it clicked for me was in the sense of recognition; not only do I, as a young American woman in the 21st century, recognize what he's talking about as something I've experienced and seen in my own walk as a believer, but also I love how what he talks about constellates through so much of literary history. I think you can argue for St. John of the Cross as a literary descendant of Dante's (though I don't know if he ever actually read him), and I see echoes of his ideas in Donne, Herbert, T.S. Eliot, perhaps even Auden and Yeats, and I'm sure there are others with a connection that I don't know about. He works in my mind as a sort of bridge between literature and belief."
And later in that email she says,
"In another way, this whole year has also been a dark night of the soul for me and my family (I think I've told you about all the horrible things that have happened over the past year?). But looking back and thinking and processing through it all, I've again felt that sense of kinship with St. John--of being able to look back over it and read it as God shepherding us closer to him and showing us more of his heart for us, and really feeling like I know God more intimately because of it."
She's a very bright young lady and a sensitive one. Clearly she connected with the book as Casey has. I'm wondering if anyone else reading with us has had this same connection with the book.
How could one not be moved by such touching words, and Casey’s, too. Thank you, Manny and Casey, for sharing.Bishop Robert Barron added his own perspective in the You Tube video this morning. He has a way of putting sometimes abstruse thought into accessible language, appreciated when reading a book of such depth as Dark Night of the Soul.
Mod
Here if people can't find the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMA43...
Here's a quote from the Tao Te Ching that I think sums up the idea of our ultimate spiritual aim:"Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see." (Ch 1 - 3.)
On this Good Friday, my mind turns to St. John's writing. At first, I was surprised. When I read this section of Dark Night, I was reminded why I stopped reading the first time. I struggled with the repetition and the denseness of the text. But I kept reading - although I was glad to finish. Now I think about how Good Friday is the ultimate dark night. Jesus again shows us the way. Looking over my Dark Night notes, I find I underlined the following: "Here God greatly humbles the soul in order that He may afterwards greatly exalt it;" (page 52).
St. John was referencing David in Psalm 69, 1-3 (4 is also fitting). To me, it's also a reminder of how we're brought low on Good Friday. I'm such a beginner in the ways of St. John that my immediate struggle at this moment is physical hunger. Which tells me I have a long, long way to go on this path of the soul.
One more comment: I also thought of Dark Night when watching the TV show about Mother Angelica's legacy. She spent her final years in a terrible dark night for a woman who communicated God's message to the world - she lost her ability to speak.
I think St. John's Dark Night, difficult though it is for me to read and understand, may end up a lifelong companion.
Mod
I have not been commenting much, in part because I learned of this conversation rather late, in part because this work has always puzzled me and so I wanted to get a bit deeper into it so I could understand better what it is about.I am just learning these works, and to really understand the Dark Night of the Soul I have consulted several other works, a few that I have read, and several that have been waiting on my bookshelves until retirement when I would have more time to read them. So, please push back if you don’t think I know what I am talking about! Because maybe I do not. After all, I am just learning.
Who is the intended audience? Monks and nuns, St John of the Cross wrote Dark Night of the Soul to provide his experience as a spiritual director guiding the prayer life of his monks so their prayers would be genuine. In the medieval society there were three classes, those who fought, the kings and nobles; those who worked, the peasants and serfs; and those who prayed, the monks and nuns.
Monks spent most of the day praying, Dr Wikipedia tells us the minimum hours of prayers the monks prayed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy...
Matins (during the night, at about 2 a.m.); also called Vigil and perhaps composed of two or three Nocturns
Lauds or Dawn Prayer (at dawn, about 5 a.m., but earlier in summer, later in winter)
Prime or Early Morning Prayer (First Hour = approximately 6 a.m.)
Terce or Mid-Morning Prayer (Third Hour = approximately 9 a.m.)
Sext or Midday Prayer (Sixth Hour = approximately 12 noon)
None or Mid-Afternoon Prayer (Ninth Hour = approximately 3 p.m.)
Vespers or Evening Prayer ("at the lighting of the lamps", about 6 p.m.)
Compline or Night Prayer (before retiring, about 7 p.m.)
As always among guys, there was competition in monasteries about who prayed the best and who prayed the most, and many monks prayed for extended periods between the hours. St John of the Cross warns us how even this dedication to a life of prayer can lead to envy and pride and thus lead the unwary monk down the path of imperfection if not sin.
Even today most monasteries do not have elevators, because elevators are a problem in monasteries. When two monks are standing in front of the opening door of an elevator, they usually discourse, “After you, please.” “No, after you, please.” “No, no, you must go first, I need to be the humbler monk.” The door shuts waiting for the less humble monk, and the elevator runs empty again.
So some minor allegorizing is necessary to make the author’s teachings fit the life of the layman. The first book talks how easy it is fall victim to list of vices, the capital sins, even when you think you are living a life of prayer, this can easily be adapted to be useful for the layman. Even if we cannot lead a life of pray like a monk is able to do, even if do not prayer deeply seeking to experience the blinding spiritual light of the beatific vision, which very monks truly experience, and St Thomas Aquinas only experienced at the end of his life, we can simply interpret the most obvious lesson that St John of the Cross implicitly gives to all Christians, laymen included, that we should pray more.
When St John the Cross discusses the inner life of prayer, he is constantly quoting from the Psalms. We modern Christians are spiritually lazy, we prefer to prayer the Vineyard slogans and memes, the catchy phrases, the dumbed-down prayers on PowerPoint slides, we do not want to the work to pray and understand the Psalms, we do not have the patience to concentrate and meditate on the longer Psalms that can sometimes cover several pages in our Bible.
If we want to adopt a deeper prayer life, praying the Psalms is an excellent first step. In the desert monasteries of the ancient world all monks had to read the Psalter, and if they were illiterate, they were required to learn how to read so they could read the Psalter. In Benedictine monasteries in particular, the Psalms were read, one after the other, and replaced idle conversation during the midday meal. If ancient monks had to learn how to read to read the Psalter, then it would be a simple task for the modern Christian to learn the patience to read the Psalter.
Modern technology enables modern Christian to live somewhat as the Benedictines lived, we can play a succession of MP3 files of the Psalms during our day. And we set our alarm song on our cellphone to a Rosary MP3 file.
The Dark Night of the Soul also quotes quite often Job’s prayers in the Book of Job. Job played the role of both a layman and a monk, and the Book of Job tells us the story of his Dark Night of the Soul, which is both a story of a material dark night as a layman who lost all his possessions and children in a fortnight, and as a story of a spiritual dark night as Job wrestled with God, but never cursing God, seeking the true face of God in a world of injustice.
The Dark Night of the Soul is also very similar to the Song of Songs, a story of the deep love between the lover and her beloved, an allegory of the deep love between the praying Christian and the God he loves. St John of the Cross also wrote a short canticle on the Song of Songs:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-s...
Mod
I think we discussed who the intended audience was, but I can't seem to find it. I think we said it was mostly Carmelite religious (monks and nuns) but I think he is also speaking to anyone who is devout. I don't think he's limiting. However, I don't know about competition between people in monasteries. I've never met a religious person I thought was competing for who was the most devout.
The more I read, the more Biblically based I'm finding St. John's ideas. I wouldn't have thought that at the beginning.
Anywhere there are large communities there is also peer pressure. The concept of monasteries is that the peer pressure would be more beneficial than out in the cold, sinful world. The monastic handbooks warn us that demonic forces seek to twist even this benign peer pressure into malignity, into a bad thing. An excellent description of this hidden warfare is the work CS Lewis depicting how demons seek to drag down the faithful in his Screwtape Letters. This is also a predominant theme in Dark Night of the Soul.It is misleading to compare modern monasteries to medieval monasteries, in modern times monasteries are few and scattered, in medieval times monasteries were large and numerous. To try to make this comparison you would first count on one how many monasteries there are locally, and then imagine what life would be like if there were hundreds of times more monasteries, nearly as numerous as schools and hospitals and hotels. To imagine this you would need to realize that, in medieval times, if you wanted to get an education, or if you were sick and needed a doctor, or if you were traveling and wanted a clean, quiet, safe room, you would knock on the door of a monastery. Most universities were affiliated with religious orders, most teachers were either priest or monks.
These observations by St John the Cross in Book I Chapter 1.3 contains a great spiritual truth and perhaps a glimpse into the history of the times:
When the soul who has only begun its spiritual journey, it “finds delight in spending long periods, sometimes whole nights, in prayer; penances are its pleasures; fasts its joys; and its consolations are to make use of the sacraments and to occupy itself in Divine things. In these Divine things spiritual persons often find themselves, spiritually speaking, very weak and imperfect. For since they are moved to these Divine things and spiritual exercises by the consolation and pleasure that they find in them, and since, too, they have not been prepared for them by the practice of earnest striving in the virtues, they have many faults and imperfections” in their spiritual life.
Put simply, you can pray all night, you can burn candles all day, you can fast all week, make a show of being all sad and penitential, but if you don’t show kindness and love to your neighbor all your spiritual efforts; if you don’t love your neighbor, then you don’t Love God, which others have put simply and elegantly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epArS...
The observation by St John of the Cross that many new monks have not prepared themselves for a life of prayer “by the practice of earnest striving in the virtues” is more applicable in medieval times than today, because far more young men sought admission to the monastic orders in medieval times than today. Today, if young men are uncertain about their future, they join the armed forces, and the military plays an outsized role in our culture and economy. In medieval times, the Church and the monastic orders played the dominant role in the culture and the economy. This also means that in medieval times there were few literate devout people who were not closely affiliated with monasticism and the Church.
Mod
Part 2
Chapter 7: Describes the afflictions on the soul during the dark night of the spirit..
Chapter 8: Associates Biblical passages with the dark night of the spirit.
Chapter 9: Explains how the purgative passage leads to an illumination.
Chapter 10: Describes the purgative passage with the analogy of the burning log.
Chapter 11: Explains the second line of the first stanza.
Chapter 12: Explains how the illumination of men on earth is the same as the illumination of angels in heave.
Chapter 13: Explains the divine love that enkindles in the soul from the illumination.
Chapter 14: Explains the last three lines of the first stanza.
Since I'm just putting up this section now and we're heading into the Holy Week, let's add an extra week to this read. It was supposed to end next week, and we have another eleven chapters, so let's end it with the week of April 3rd through the 10th.