The purification of the senses and the spirit in the Dark Night....continued
...Tauler, Second Sermon for Pentecost. See also the Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday, where he says: "Then there opens up a very deserted road, which is wholly somber and solitary. On this road God takes back all that He has given. Man is then so completely abandoned to himself that he no longer knows anything of God. He reaches a state of such anguish that he no longer knows whether he is on the right road. . . and this becomes so painful to him that this vast world seems too narrow to him. He has no longer any feeling of his God, he no longer knows anything about Him, and everything else displeases him. It is as if he were fastened between two walls, with a sword behind him and a sharp lance in front of him. Let him then sit down and say: 'Hail, O God, bitter bitterness full of all graces.' To love to excess and to be deprived of the good that one loves seems to him more painful trial than hell, if hell were possible on earth. All that one can then say to this man consoles him as much as would a stone. Less than anything else, he does not wish anyone to talk to him about creatures. . . . Take courage! The Lord is surely very near. Rest on the trunk of a very living true faith: soon all will go exceedingly well." This is the night and the profound emptiness which prepare the true deification of the soul. Elsewhere Tauler compares this state to that of a ship which has lost its sails and masts in a storm.
This is from Garrigou-Lagrange. Let me remind my dear readers that the only thing which gets us through this is Faith, Hope, and Willing Love.
We have faith in what we cannot comprehend or see. We have hope in what we cannot see, and we love through the will.
This process make take a short period of time or a long one. Those who cooperate and are not afraid of suffering progress much more quickly than those who do not.
God usually does not leave the soul in this state without brief moments of consolation.
To be continued....
