One needs St.
John’s commentaries on his poetry. One needs all the
help one can get in understanding the passive time of purgation.
Do not kid yourselves that you have been purified is there
is any inclination to sin left in your soul.
One thinks, “Ah, with all this pain and suffering, I must be
moving out of the Dark Night.” Then, something happens and one’s predominant
faults rears their ugly heads. Like monsters under the bed which only come out
at night, these faults only are seen for what they are in the Dark Night.
One could get discouraged. One does. God, however, does not
leave one in discouragement, but allows the virtue of humility to crowd out
peevishness and impatience.
Growing in humility is a great sign of being in the Dark
Night.
One no longer talks about one’s self.
One can listen patiently to others.
One can listen to God and speak with a new authority which
only comes with suffering.
Authority is a gift of the Dark Night. Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta had this authority. So did Venerable Fulton J. Sheen. This authority
comes with the territory of intense sorrow for sin and the awareness of one’s
total dependence on God Alone for virtue.
One can look at St. David’s life as if in allegory. He was a
warrior king. He created Jerusalem , the City of Peace as the capital. He
overcame his own sins and his enemies. Yet, God did not let him build the
temple. Because David was a man of war, a man of action, the Temple had to wait until Solomon, the man of
peace and wisdom was on the throne.
So, too, is the soul in the Dark Night. The soul, in passive
purgation, is involved in the great battle against sin and concupiscence. But, the temple, the place of peace and
purity must come only after the purgation of the enemy of self. Once peace
enters into the soul, once God visits the soul in love and creates a longing
for union, then the Temple
can be built.
In the Illuminative
State , the Temple is visited by the shekinah glory. The
Holy Spirit is finally released in the soul, as He has been held back by the
barriers of self-love and sin.
I am astounded how many Catholics do not understand that
there is no life of the virtues without purgation. The habit of the virtues,
painstakingly worked on for years, now becomes a great flowering of gifts. St.
John writes, “Let us rejoice in the communication of
the sweetness of love, not only in that sweetness we already possess in our
habitual union, but in that which overflows into the effective and actual
practice of love, either interiorly with the will in the affective act, or
exteriorly in works directed to the service of the beloved.”
As I have noted on this blog before, would the Church not be
truly powerful and a different Church if all Catholics let themselves
graciously follow the path of perfection to this Illuminative State
We have not seen power in the Church because of the lack of
generosity on the part of the laity, clergy et al.
Finally, God raises up the soul in a glory, which is
appropriate for this side of the grave.
This earthly state of perfection is not the full union the soul will
experience in the Beatific Vision and the soul knows this, thus adding to the
knowledge of the lack of perfect union, and the great desire for real, complete
union, which only happens after death.
In The Spiritual
Canticle, as Kavanaugh notes, St. John’s
poem may be divided into four stages of the Illuminative
State moving into the Unitive State
1) The
anxious longing and the searching by every means;
2) Encounters
of loving union and the urgent desire for complete freedom from inner and outer
impediments;
3) The
full union, the mutual and total surrender and gift of self;
4) The
aspiration to glory.
To be continued….
