More on the choice of following Christ

Two, if not the greatest evils, of our times are the mad pursuits of comfort and the avoidance of suffering at all costs. Immorality provides a symptom of this headlong rush away from the Cross.

Only those who fall in love with Christ and willingly accept suffering of any kind will enter the Kingdom, as those who avoid pain deceive themselves regarding sin and judgment.

Now, the pursuit of comfort is more of a problem with those in the West, and I am particularly thinking of the Americans and the English, than some other cultures, which cannot avoid less than perfect conditions. Satan lies to us, tempting us to believe that we deserve comfort.

On the contrary….and those few who allow God to take them in to the transforming union, have also faced great suffering.

The suffering of the soul in the Illuminative and then, the Unitive stages is a different type of suffering. It is the suffering of the absence of complete union with God.

St. John of the Cross uses the term “contemplation” at these stages and again, I warn the laity against those false teachers, be they nuns or priests, who think they are teaching contemplation, when this is a direct gift of the last stages of perfection.

I have tried to wean people away from this term, as it is misleading. Contemplation comes in the Dark Night, as a darkness and moved into a peaceful, clear knowledge of God, as He is revealing Himself in the Trinity.

Contemplation comes in the Tranforming Union.

Here is a little summary of this process from St. John. He is referring to the bride of Christ.

“First, her soul is detached and withdrawn from all things.

Second, the devil is conquered and put to flight. Third, the passions are subjected

and the natural appetites mortified.  Fourth and fifth, the sensory and lower part is reformed, purified, and brought into conformity with the spiritual part. The sensory part not only offers no obstacle to the reception of these spiritual blessings, but is even accommodated to them since it participates according to its capacity in the goods the souls now possesses…

The bride sets all this perfection and preparedness before her beloved, the Son of God, with the desire that He transfer her from the spiritual marriage, to which He desired to bring her in this Church Militant, to the glorious marriage of the Triumphant. May the most sweet Jesus, bridegroom of faithful souls, be pleased to bring all who invoke His name to this glorious marriage. To Him be honor and glory, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in saecula saeculorum. Amen.”

I am not going to write more on the sacred movements of the Transforming Union, as there is always a danger that people will think they are farther ahead then they really are on the road to perfection.

St. John helped many lay persons and nuns with his poetry and commentaries. I shall return to him again soon, but take a break from the heady wine of the Illuminative and Unitive States.

Again, the timing of the Dark Night is completely personal. I know some people who have gone through this stage for many years. And, obviously, many of the saints took no time at all in the mysterious state of darkness.