For those who desire to follow the way God has set out for them, in the second purgation, there is no escaping the Dark Night of the Spirit. Some writers may call this the third conversion, but it is the entrance into the Passion. For some mystics, this is the time of the stigmata. But, the call is the same for all of us.
This could be called the "no pain, no gain" part of life. Here is Garrigou-Lagrange. What is misunderstood by most readers and even some sisters (not at Tyburn--they get it), and some priests, is that all, even the tiniest imperfections, must be burned out of the soul by suffering.
These passive purifications happen outside our control. This type of suffering, not a result of sin, but a result of pruning, is an indication of the Dark Night. All the parts of the soul MUST be purified. So many pastors believe that their parishioners can act in ministries in the Church without this purification. Not so. In fact, the Church is weakened by either religious or lay people doing things without the necessary weaning from sin and imperfections. It is only when the soul is purified and in union with God, that real and efficacious ministry occurs. A person can be very talented and seemingly be using his gifts for the Kingdom of God, while merely doing such for himself and his own needs. The purification of the lower and higher parts of the soul needs to happen before the great outpouring of the graces of Confirmation are freed to the fullest.
In his commentary on St. John's Gospel, St. Thomas says: "In the natural vine, the branch which has many shoots yields less fruit, because the sap loses its efficacy by excessive diffusion in these superfluous shoots; therefore the vine-dresser prunes them. Something similar occurs in a man who is well disposed and united to God, but whose affection and life are excessively exteriorized in various ways; the strength of his interior life is then diminished and less efficacious in regard to the good to be accomplished. For this reason the Lord, who in this respect is like the vine-dresser, prunes His good servants and frequently cuts away what is useless in them so that they may bear more fruit. He purifies them for a long time, sending them tribulations, permitting temptations that oblige them to a holy and meritorious resistance, which renders them stronger in regard to the good. The Lord inures to war and thus purifies those who are already pure, for no one is ever sufficiently so on earth, according to St. John's statement: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us' (I John 1:8). Thus the Lord purifies His servants so that they may bear more fruit, that they may grow in virtue and be proportionately richer in good works as they are more pure.
This text from St. Thomas' commentary on St. John refers properly to the passive purifications, which the just man does not impose upon himself like mortification, but which he receives from God. Thus was purified holy Job, who declared: "The life of man upon earth is a warfare." (2) It is a time of laborious and painful service, a time of trial, like the life of a soldier. Such it was for the apostles after Christ left them on Ascension Day, and they assembled in the upper room to pray and prepare themselves for the struggles which Christ had announced to them, and which were to be crowned by their martyrdom.
The fathers of the Church and spiritual writers have often spoken in this intimate sense of the cross we must bear daily, the cross of the sensibility and that of the spirit, that the lower and the higher parts of the soul may gradually be purified, that the sensitive part may be perfectly subjected to the spirit, and the spirit to God.
To be continued...
