On our faith journey, formative reading of works by spiritual masters like Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) can be likened to what happens when light passes through a prism and reveals a rainbow of colors. Such prayerful presence to texts that convey the truth about who we are and who God is evoke insights beneficial to every believer and sincere seeker.
Saint John draws us in poetry and in prose into the secret chambers of contemplative love for God. He evokes ancient longings in us for a life of uncompromising union with God, cleansed from the barnacles of willful disobedience and illumined by the light of Christ-centered love.
His poetry of prayer soars to heights of intensity that stagger our minds and enflame our hearts. He has great compassion for our being entrapped in habitual imperfections, but, by the same token, he does everything possible to free us from our sinfulness. He challenges us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “How is it that I could have been called by God to such high planes of love and still settle for the paltry promises of self-centered pride?”
The counsels of the master do not mince words, no more than do the sayings of Jesus. The pilgrimage to the mount toward which Saint John leads us is not meant for wimps but for stalwart women and men. The climb upward to liberation through abandonment to God’s loving and allowing will cannot be made by persons accustomed to sipping only the watery soup of pop-spirituality, here today and gone tomorrow.
To follow the road to freedom through obedience and restoration through renunciation, we have to feed on the solid food of faith, on the bread and wine of Jesus’ own body and blood. Many today who seek a spiritual life succumb to the propaganda of New Age gurus, who promise instant salvation through one or the other technique of self-actualization. They are prone to run from the cross as fast as fireflies from flame.
Saint John not only embraces the cross with joy; he says we can never climb to the mountaintop of union with the Divine unless we take up our cross and follow Christ with courage. Only if we live in abandoned faith, unfailing hope, and selfless love can we escape prisons of doubt, despair, self-hate, and prejudice.
To face the suffering symbolized by the cross is paradoxically to be set free from the paralyzing illusion of self-sufficiency and to see in suffering an invitation to compassion.
The night of sadness that never seems to end, the day of depletion that drags on mercilessly, the crisis that tears us asunder like cracked glass—all such occasions that stretch our faith to the limit are, in reality, our greatest teachers. We would be less able to walk in the truth of who we are without the grace of these detachments.
Outside of the dark night, Saint John says, it is virtually impossible to attain the consoling wisdom of contemplation. Sheer observation shows us that a life bound to power, pleasure, and possession as ultimates tends to keep us fixated at the level of narcissistic infancy. The disorientation caused by sin puts us on the wrong course. We may enjoy the good life in a worldly sense, but its fruits never last. All the while we are in pursuit of the wrong goals; we miss the grace and peace associated with a mature spiritual life.
Though he holds out to us the tantalizing vision of eternal joy, it is not Saint John’s place to mitigate the difficulty entailed in ascending the mount. Many are the times when we want to turn back. Reading certain portions of The Dark Night will leave us feeling as if we are in an icy shower on a frosty morning when the furnace refuses to emit heat. We may shun the cold blasts of bracing mountain air, but the master does not flinch. He invites us to run the race of faith until we cross the finish line (see 2 Tim 4:7).
Saint John’s probing analysis of our dark nights appeals as much to Carmelites in their monastery as to laity in the marketplace. Pastors and people in the pews, married and single persons, parents and teachers, executives and laborers, the well-to-do and the indigent, adults and youth face perilous times, not unlike the sixteenth-century when Saint John lived.
The “dark night” is no longer a metaphor we can take or leave, a quaint symbol or the title of an old book. It is our unique and universal reality. It is a description of our world, our neighborhood, our family life. It is about pain and loneliness, anxiety and grief.
The dark night touches every woman and man laid off from work. It affects single persons, both young and old, who are unable to pay their monthly bills. It etches its lines into the face of the woman whose husband deserts her after twenty-five years of marriage.
The dark night is friendship betrayed, trust destroyed, abuse inflicted. It is Rachel weeping for her children, Mary at the foot of the cross, Anne Frank, Edith Stein, and Etty Hillesum being transported to concentration camps and certain death.
The dark night is not distant from us; it is the child with no place to call home, the bored teenager tempted to take drugs, the parent with a list of a thousand things to do and no time to relax.
We all journey into the night in one way or another. When the rhetoric of the world no longer rings true, we know that what we need to hear are not secular slogans but the sayings of a spiritual master like Saint John of the Cross, who understands what we, too, feel and who accompanies us into the secret chambers of contemplation where desperation wanes and delight arises.
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