Dark Night 30-The Enclosure of God

My comments in blue...

I shall tell what Jeremias felt about it, which, since there is so much of it, he describes and bewails in many words after this manner: ‘I am the man that see my poverty in the rod of His indignation; He hath threatened me and brought me into darkness and not into light. So far hath He turned against me and hath converted His hand upon me all the day! My skin and my flesh hath He made old; He hath broken my bones; He hath made a fence around me and compassed me with gall and trial; He hath set me in dark places, as those that are dead for ever. He hath made a fence around me and against me, that I may not go out; He hath made my captivity heavy. 

The enclosure is really seen and felt. One becomes more constricted in movement and freedoms. One can no longer do what one wants to do but only rest in the daily awareness that one is in God's Mysterious Will. The fence is the denial of self.

Health may becomes a limitation, or poverty, or loss of friendship. Unhappiness in a job, or the lack of promotion, or the thwarting of plans can be this fence. Anything can be a fence which God uses to try the soul and the heart. One can only say, "Thy Will be done."

Yea, and when I have cried and have entreated, He hath shut out my prayer. He hath enclosed my paths and ways out with square stones; He hath thwarted my steps. He hath set ambushes for me; He hath become to me a lion in a secret place. He hath turned aside my steps and broken me in pieces, He hath made me desolate; He hath bent His bow and set me as a mark for His arrow. He hath shot into my reins the daughters of His quiver. 

And, one is derided, as, sadly, there are more snobs in the Catholic world than those who are open to understand one who has been denied all by God. This is why more young people understand me than those in their late middle age. Those older ones only see the failures and the fences. They do not want to see what is really happening to the soul. Such a journey is threatening. 

If one wants to lose friends in the middle class, just tell them you are poor. 

I have become a derision to all the people, and laughter and scorn for them all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness and hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath broken my teeth by number; He hath fed me with ashes. My soul is cast out from peace; I have forgotten good things. And I said: “Mine end is frustrated and cut short, together with my desire and my hope from the Lord. Remember my poverty and my excess, the wormwood and the gall. I shall be mindful with remembrance and my soul shall be undone within me in pains.”’127

To be continued....