John of the Cross
4. Matthew: Healing
9. Night (pages 51-58)
Iain Matthew writes:
• ‘It is God who makes the “space”. John calls it “night”.
• ‘The symbolic quality of “night”, a symbol which speaks before we ever try to decode it: darkness, solitude, fear, the unknown, immobility, stillness, rest, peace, silence, sleep, dreams, moonlight, adventure, owls, stars, refreshment, friendship, romance, perception … if these are the resonances, then such is the journey of faith.’
‘What resonances did John find? We could highlight these: blessedness, and mystery … John’s quest for union is answered in the darkness, and it cannot but be “blessed”.’
John of the Cross writes:
So dark the night! At rest
and hushed my house. I went with no one knowing
upon a lover’s quest.
– Ah the sheer grace! – so blest,
my eager heart with love aflame and glowing.
In darkness, hid from sight
I went by secret ladder safe and sure
– Ah grace of sheer delight! –
so softly veiled by night,
hushed now my house, in darkness and secure.
Hidden in that glad night,
regarding nothing as I stole away,
no one to see my flight,
no other guide or light
save one that in my heart burned bright as day.
Surer than noonday sun,
guiding me from the start this radiant light
led me to that dear One
waiting for me, well-known,
somewhere apart where no one came in sight.
Dark of the night, my guide,
fairer by far than dawn when starts grow din!
Night that has united
the Lover and the Bride,
transforming the Beloved into him.
There on my flowered breast
that none but he might ever own or keep,
he stayed, sinking to rest,
and softly I caressed
my Love while cedars gently fanned his sleep.
Breeze from the turret blew
ruffling his hair. Then with his tranquil hand
wounding my neck, I knew
nothing: me senses flew
at touch of peace too deep to understand.
Forgetting all, my quest
ended, I stayed lost to myself at last.
All ceased: my face was pressed
upon my Love, at rest,
with all my cares among the lilies cast.
Let us liten to Loreena McKennitt (from 'The Mask and the Mirror')
Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair, I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead.
O night thou was my guide
O night more loving than the rising sun
O night that joined the Lover to the beloved one
Transforming each of them into the other.
Upon that misty night
In secrecy, beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
Than that which burned so deeply in my heart.
That fire ’twas led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where he waited still
It was a place where no one else could come.
Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely to him
He fell into his sleep
Beneath the cedars all my love I gave.
From o’er the fortress walls
The wind would brush his hair against his brow
And with its smoothest hand
Caressed my every sense it would allow.
I lost myself to him
And laid my face upon my lover’s breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the morning’s mist became the light.
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair
Iain Matthew writes:
• ‘Night carries all the weight of the Lord’s Passover.’
• ‘Night signifies that which comes upon us and takes us out of our own control; it announces that as a place of resurrection. A God who heals in darkness –this is John’s word of hope in a destabilised world.’
• ‘Contemplation: prayer where I am no longer a tourist, where sense has shifted to spirit – where plenty of insights and aspirations have given way to a less picturesque, more total form of togetherness with God.’
John of the Cross writes:
‘Contemplation is nothing but a hidden, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love’(Dark Night I.10.6).
‘The dark night is a certain flowing in of God into the human creature, which purges it of the ignorance and imperfections belonging to its very nature. God teaches it in a strange, secret way, educating it to perfect love. He does this himself;
all the creature can do is be lovingly attentive, listening, receptive, allowing itself to be enlightened without understanding how’(Dark Night II.5.1).
‘It is a great grace from God when God so darkens and impoverishes the soul that the senses cannot deceive it. And that it may not go astray it has nothing to do but to walk in the beaten path of the law of God and of the Church, living solely by faith, dim and true, in certain hope and perfect charity, looking for all its blessings in heaven; living here as a pilgrim, a beggar, an exile, an orphan, desolate, possessing nothing and looking for everything from God’(Letter to Dona Juana Pedraca).
Iain Matthew speaks of the 'Night' as 'God's love felt as pain'.
– widening, purifying, making space. God gives Himself. God makes space for Himself. This is the Night in which what is felt is my resistance to losing control, to letting go, to being consumed.
Iain Mattew writes:
‘Night assures us:
that there is somewhere to go;
that only God can take us there;
that God does intend to take us there;
that God takes us there in darkness;
and that darkness must be lived in faith.’
‘Night is taking us,
not to some soirée for the self-preoccupied élite,
but to the heart of the world’s suffering.
It declares the world’s wounds to be spaces
through which God may graciously enter.
John’s poem touches a universal chord;
it is the song of the poor Jesus on Easter morning.’
In the Easter Vigil 'Exsultet' we hear:
“This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave …
The power of this holy night dispels all evil,
washes guilt away, restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy. It casts out hatred,
brings us peace and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled with God.”
10. There is somewhere to go (pages 59-66)
Iain Matthew writes:
‘Sense means body, imagination, emotion.
Spirit: there where resources converge,
the home of choice, conscience, self.
These terms are dynamic.
Where sense is lord, the whole being is sensual,
hostage to needs of its own creation.
If the person learns to live from within, she become spiritual,
and with that her sensuality comes back home.
All this implies a journey: a surrender of sense to spirit,
and of spirit to Holy Spirit.
And because surrender feels like dying,
John calls it a night journey.’
‘John is saying that every dimension of the human person
has to strive towards God,
and, discovering the inadequacy of its striving,
must come under his transforming hand.’
11. It has to be God (pages 67-71)
Iain Matthew writes:
‘If night first tells us that there is somewhere to go,
it also announces that we cannot get there on our own.’
‘Healing has to come, and we have to learn to look for it to come.
The waiting is part of the healing.’
The journey is to God.
My guide is the Spirit of Jesus that God pours into my heart.
Engaged in this journey all my human God-given potential
is harnessed for loving.
Longing for eternity keeps my present horizon from closing in.
Only the transcendent God can take me there.
I cannot heal myself. I cannot secure my deepest longings.
The flame and the spring can come only from the heart of God.
John traces the path not so that I can predict,
but to encourage me to surrender to God's guidance
and to the gravity of his grace.
12. Healing Darkness I : An inflow of God (pages 72-76)
Iain Matthew writes:
Any suffering can become night.
For it to be night there have to be three elements.
For it to be “sheer grace”, in darkness, leading to union,
there has to be:
– an inflow of God;
– darkness – that is, the suffering, with the accent
on bewildering suffering;
– a creative response: faith, acceptance.’
John of the Cross composed 'Fonte' while in the dark prison at Toledo, deprived of the Eucharist:
How well I know the living spring that flows though it is night!
hat ever-living spring is hidden fast
and yet I found its dwelling place at last although by night.
Its origin? All that I know or see,
in the beginning from it came to be, but in the night.
Nothing on earth so beautiful as this:
heaven and earth meet here, and meeting kiss, though it is night.
Down to its deepest depths man may not go,
nor ford its flooding waters; this I know though it is night.
Light, source of light, by which all light was made,
whose brilliance never falters, cannot fade, though it is night!
So mighty and unceasing is its flow,
it waters heavens, earth and realms below, although by night.
Something I know of its almighty force,
the flowing stream that issues from this source although by night.
From these two streams wells forth another flow
yet neither stream precedes it, this I know, though it is night.
This deathless spring, hidden in living bread,
brings life to us who, lacking it, were dead, for it is night.
To all that lives: ‘Come, drink your fill!’ it calls
‘Come to this water, for the darkness falls, and it is night!’
This living spring, so very dear to me,
is here, within the bread of life I see, though it is night.
Iain Matthew writes:
‘In Fonte John shares his faith in the Eucharist. For him,
Eucharist is not simply our ritual galvanising our togetherness.
It is an act of the Trinity involving us in their togetherness.
Nor is Eucharist a merely passive object of adoration.
It is an activity of Christ powerfully
“summoning his creatures” to the water (stanza twelve).
John sees Christ here active, torrential, receiving the full force
of all that God is and unleashing its flow upon us
– the “everlasting fountain” released in the living bread
“to give us life”(stanza eleven).’
The Triune God is the fountain.
I am graced to see God present and acting in the suffering,
to look for the movement of God's Spirit.
Suffering makes me aware of my incapacity and my need
and so faces me towards the Beloved
who alone can draw me into the communion
which alone heals and fills my life.
13. Healing Darkness II – Bewildering suffering and faith (pages 77-85)
Iain Matthew writes:
• ‘Healing comes particularly in situations that take us out of our own control, in the kind of pain that is bewildering.’
The ‘mystical night’.
‘The divine approach is registering in mind and feelings,
but registering as painful contrast’
– contrast between the love we experience
and the situation we finds ourselves in.
Again, Iain Matthew: ‘John is calling that the place, not of chaos, but of transformation.’
‘In writing Night, John does not want to say,
“It’s all right, you see, because this is the explanation.”
He wants to say, “It’s not all right; it’s a mess.
But you are not alone in this. God is present in this.
Now is the time not to lose faith in God.”
This is the third element to night.’
14. Beyond Sympathy (pages 86-93)
Iain Matthew writes:
‘When the negative comes upon you,
then remember your desire to be free –
free from the personal weakness which was crippling you.
It is here that God is doing it,
and it is important not to panic or run away.’
Climbing a mountain ‘speaks of communion where the goal
is not to sink a solitary flag-pole into the summit,
but to “make an altar of oneself” there
for “a sacrifice of love”.’
‘John gives us the schemas, not to help us predict,
but to encourage us to surrender.’
‘Do not struggle for something you once had
and have now gone beyond. Instead,
“take heart, persevere patiently [don’t run away],
without pain [let God carry you];
trust in God in loving attentiveness.’
‘We may have to live as if God sustained us,
in order to discover that God does sustain us.’
We are called to trust. Not to panic but to hold on.
Not to collapse into the pain or to indulge it,
but to rely on God
and be attentive to God's presence and action in my soul.
When negative experiences come upon me (like the night),
I am to remember my longing and my need for God's inflowing life.
‘Grieve, address what can be addressed,
do not condone the sin that may be causing the situation,
but trust that the Father holds this situation in his hands,
and will turn it to blessing.’