I am beginning to realize how small the group of Catholics it is that want to reach perfection. Most people who have discussed this with me only want comfort.
If one seeks comfort, one will never become perfect. The last few days, I have approached the Dark Night in popular and modern terminology and metaphor. Today, I return to John of the Cross. His words must be taken seriously by those who want to see God.
My highlights are in blue.
The fourth kind of pain is caused in the soul by another excellence of this dark contemplation, which is its majesty and greatness, from which arises in the soul a consciousness of the other extreme which is in itself—namely, that of the deepest poverty and wretchedness: this is one of the chiefest pains that it suffers in this purgation. For it feels within itself a profound emptiness and impoverishment of three kinds of good, which are ordained for the pleasure of the soul which are the temporal, the natural and the spiritual; and finds itself set in the midst of the evils contrary to these, namely, miseries of imperfection, aridity and emptiness of the apprehensions of the faculties and abandonment of the spirit in darkness. Inasmuch as God here purges the soul according to the substance of its sense and spirit, and according to the interior and exterior faculties, the soul must needs be in all its parts reduced to a state of emptiness, poverty and abandonment and must be left dry and empty and in darkness. For the sensual part is purified in aridity, the faculties are purified in the emptiness of their perceptions and the spirit is purified in thick darkness.
This is the hardest part to explain as well as understand-the real darkness of the Dark Night. It is as if all one knew and understood before count as nothing. The aridity of the sensual means that nothing or few things bring one pleasure. In fact, life is devoid of pleasure.
The faculties which are memory, the intellect and will no longer are trustworthy resources and one relies less and less on memory and intellect. The heart is also pained in a cloud of abandonment.
But none of this matters, as God is in control of the process of cleansing the soul, the heart, the mind.
5. All this God brings to pass by means of this dark contemplation; wherein the soul not only suffers this emptiness and the suspension of these natural supports and perceptions, which is a most afflictive suffering (as if a man were suspended or held in the air so that he could not breathe), but likewise He is purging the soul, annihilating it, emptying it or consuming in it (even as fire consumes the mouldiness and the rust of metal) all the affections and imperfect habits which it has contracted in its whole life. Since these are deeply rooted in the substance of the soul, it is wont to suffer great undoings and inward torment, besides the said poverty and emptiness, natural and spiritual, so that there may here be fulfilled that passage from Ezechiel which says: ‘Heap together the bones and I will burn them in the fire; the flesh shall be consumed and the whole composition shall be burned and the bones shall be destroyed.’121
Sometimes one feels nothing, the nada. Sometimes waves of pain of loss rush through one. The losses are the old ways of thinking and doing. All that one did on one's own must be destroyed so that the pure will of God may be done. Undoing is a good word, and at this time, some people see the sins of their past, of their youth and need to confess those things one did not see the seriousness at the time. A good confessor is a necessity-one who understands this process. I know one in Surrey and one in Dublin.
Herein is understood the pain which is suffered in the emptiness and poverty of the substance of the soul both in sense and in spirit. And concerning this he then says: ’set it also empty upon the coals, that its metal may become hot and molten, and its uncleanness may be destroyed within it, and its rust may be consumed.’122 Herein is described the grave suffering which the soul here endures in the purgation of the fire of this contemplation, for the Prophet says here that, in order for the rust of the affections which are within the soul to be purified and destroyed, it is needful that, in a certain manner, the soul itself should be annihilated and destroyed, since these passions and imperfections have become natural to it.
Strong words and scary, as none of us want to be annihilated. But, it is the sin and tendencies to sin which are annihilated. Desires for things and people other than God are also destroyed, until one only desires God and His Will.
6. Wherefore, because the soul is purified in this furnace like gold in a crucible, as says the Wise Man,123 it is conscious of this complete undoing of itself in its very substance, together with the direst poverty, wherein it is, as it were, nearing its end, as may be seen by that which David says of himself in this respect, in these words: ’save me, Lord (he cries to God), for the waters have come in even unto my soul; I am made fast in the mire of the deep and there is no place where I can stand; I am come into the depth of the sea and a tempest hath overwhelmed me; I have laboured crying, my throat has become hoarse, mine eyes have failed whilst I hope in my God.’124 Here God greatly humbles the soul in order that He may afterwards greatly exalt it; and if He ordained not that, when these feelings arise within the soul, they should speedily be stilled, it would die in a very short space; but there are only occasional periods when it is conscious of their greatest intensity.
Thankfully, this is true, otherwise we would die-this level of intensity would overwhelm one.
At times, however, they are so keen that the soul seems to be seeing hell and perdition opened. Of such are they that in truth go down alive into hell, being purged here on earth in the same manner as there, since this purgation is that which would have to be accomplished there. And thus the soul that passes through this either enters not that place125 at all, or tarries there but for a very short time; for one hour of purgation here is more profitable than are many there.
St. Teresa of Avila was shown her place in hell if she did not follow God's Will in the renewal of the Carmelites. She became horrified, but begged for God's grace.
These visions are not night terrors but a reality of the loss of God, which can happen so easily.
Indeed, one must beg for grace.
To be continued....
