Lifestyle and Language

Dark Night of the Soul: A Masterpiece in the Literature of Mysticism by St. John of the Cross

(E. Allison Peers)- Kindle ed. -

Progress on my Lenten Reading List continues!

St. John of the Cross is one of the great Catholic authors of all time; he is not a St. Augustine or a Thomas a Kempis, but if you want to face the issue of the role of mystical theology in your life you can’t get around him. That is saying way to little, but perhaps much from where I am standing.

Back on 6 February 2011, I wrote something about an observation made by Hans Urs von Balthasar in an article on theology and sanctity in “I: The Word Made Flesh” (part of a new English edition,1989, Ignatius Press, of a work by him from 1960, entitled “Explorations in Theology”). In my review, I did not mention that in that article by von Balthasar the Spanish Mystics and especially St. John of the Cross took it on the chin, as having contributed to the rupture he described between personal holiness and doing theology. He did so by basically blaming the Spaniards for having articulated, if you will, a distinction between theology and what we call spirituality. This broadside at the Spanish Mystics has haunted me ever since I read it last summer and pushed me this Lent to attempt the “bitter pill” of finally reading the “Dark Night of the Soul” all the way through.

No doubt the “bitter pill” thing will raise an eyebrow or two, but that’s how I see it. I have to say that it is very clear to me that I did not miss my calling to monastic life. I enjoy visiting monasteries; I am thoroughly convinced they may even hold the key once again to saving past civilization and promoting a new synthesis. It’s just not my thing personally.

I am grateful now for the reading, but St. John of the Cross won’t make my ideal hand library. My problem is that his world is off the beaten path of Catholicism, even if what St. John describes as the “dark night” (either of the senses or of the soul) offers profound insights into what holiness or intimacy with God is all about:

“All this, says Divine Scripture, took place by night, when Jacob slept, in order to express how secret is this road and ascent to God, and how different from that of man’s knowledge. This is very evident, since ordinarily that which is of the greatest profit in it—namely, to be ever losing oneself and becoming as nothing—is considered the worst thing possible; and that which is of least worth, which is for a soul to find consolation and sweetness (wherein it ordinarily loses rather than gains), is considered best.” (Dark Night)

It is different from but, perhaps, complementary to Lorenzo Scupoli’s description of the path to holiness through spiritual combat. For me, Scupoli is and will remain more accessible also for the Catholic rank and file.

The issue, in part, is with the lifestyle (seemingly) which sets the stage for the destitution of the dark night and contemplation. I’ve made a week’s retreat in a cell at a monastery most observant of the Rule of St. Bruno… no thank you! Even in the nice little guest cell the good Benedictine nuns provided me in Martinique about a year and a half ago, the confinement brought with it general arthritic pain/trauma from head to toe. It is, of course, much more than that; it is the monastery or hermitage as the setting or forecourt of a mystical sort of prayer unto contemplation.

“First, it describes this dark contemplation as “secret,” since, as we have indicated above, it is mystical theology, which theologians call secret wisdom, and which, as Saint Thomas says, is communicated and infused into the soul through love. This happens secretly and in darkness, so as to be hidden from the work of the understanding and of other faculties. Wherefore, inasmuch as the faculties aforementioned attain not to it, but the Holy Spirit infuses and orders it in the soul, as says the Bride in the Songs, without either its knowledge or its understanding, it is called secret.” (Dark Night)

As much as I love and respect Pope St. Gregory the Great, when he speaks of missing the quiet solitude of the monastery, I cannot see it (once a year, maybe, but not for life). I think that his contemplation in the midst of the world as the Bishop of Rome, without the solitude, was what was so fruitful for the life of the Church. No doubt the study and quiet of the monastery is the rock foundation, the treasury from which he drew forth an abundance for the Church. Serious studies, the ordered life of prayer and study through years of seminary is what nurtures a priestly vocation and prepares a man to be another Christ for the world (not “adventure” or an apprenticeship in the world of work). The aridity or pain outside the monastery comes from being yoked to the Church, from those moments of disarray when the studies and prayer are forged into a new and more profound synthesis after the mind of Christ and His Church in the crucible of suffering ourselves and suffering with our people. The silence or nakedness of the dark night is too distant and analogous to what the shepherd’s life must be about. From the life of St. Patrick we know of all the prayers he said as a boy slave tending flocks on the hillside. Prayer always sustained Patrick’s life and ministry, but his gift to Ireland later in his life was framed in other and very different terms.

Nevertheless, I don’t think either Gregory or Patrick could have made heads or tails of the Dark Night of the Soul in terms of the mission entrusted to them; Gregory’s calling as Roman Pontiff had to be lived out in the midst of the world and of all sorts of activities demanding contact and even a measure of conflict with others. Patrick’s missionary apostolate was certainly powered by his communion with Christ, but the slipping off into the dark imagery seems a stretch.

What Bernini captures, as a sequel and reward to her “dark nights”, in his famous sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila in ecstasy as the angel pierces her heart with a silver arrow, or what St. John of the Cross might have known during one of his imprisonments at the hands of confreres less than enthused by his ideas of Carmelite reform, that I can surely appreciate. Their lifestyle just doesn’t fit me and cannot be the experience par excellence of intimacy with God in Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit that is meant for all who follow Christ. It would be similar to St. Paul’s words about speaking in tongues, where he states clearly that this phenomenon as not for everyone.

“But there is a question which at once arises here—namely, since the things of God are of themselves profitable to the soul and bring it gain and security, why does God, in this night, darken the desires and faculties with respect to these good things likewise, in such a way that the soul can no more taste of them or busy itself with them than with these other things, and indeed in some ways can do so less? The answer is that it is well for the soul to perform no operation touching spiritual things at that time and to have no pleasure in such things, because its faculties and desires are base, impure and wholly natural; and thus, although these faculties be given the desire and interest in things supernatural and Divine, they could not receive them save after a base and a natural manner, exactly in their own fashion.” (Dark Night)

Don’t let me discourage you from reading the great mystics! I hope you have enjoyed the coupe (among many) beautiful quotes I have lifted from St. John of the Cross. In looking at St. John’s poetry even in English translation, I marvel. Maybe if St. John had said that this is only a point on the canvas of a life lived in work and study, that it plays no more of a quantitative role in the life of a monk or a hermit than it does in the life of a person in the world? If he had said that days for him were filled with hard work, study and classical prayer, then all I’d have to grapple with are my own reservations about finding in the Canticle of Canticles a light for my sentiments toward the God I love without peaking through the lattice or swarming over youthful physical attributes which have already seen their day.

He’s beautiful, but my romance and many others, though no less intense, is well a bit more restrained or, let’s just say, happy in its understatement. Enjoy!

1.     On a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!— I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

2.     In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised— oh, happy chance!— In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

3.     In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me, Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

4.     This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me— A place where none appeared.

5.     Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6.     Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone, There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7.     The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks; With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8.     I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies." (Dark Night)

A Reflection for the 2nd Sunday of Lent

Book Club (Part II):

“The Spiritual Combat”

by Lorenzo Scupoli (Scriptoria, 2009)

            For an old confessor and counselor, I would have to say that for me the genius of Lorenzo Scupoli as displayed in his classic work, “The Spiritual Combat”, is patent. There, in both his practical and theoretical discussion of how to root out vice and struggle for virtue, or a virtue in a one by one uphill fight, he has singled out strategically the virtue of “patience” to illustrate his teaching in the book, not once, but he does so again and again. His definition of patience, however, has not so much to do with putting up with others or even with ourselves, but in having a clear idea of what we can expect of life (That may account for the good old Italian exclamation used even yet today “pazienza!”, which punctuates a lot of circumstances where English might provide an expletive).

Some would add to this analysis of the spiritual struggle centered on patience or to this approach to life the qualifying phrase: “if we choose to walk with Jesus”, but the point can fairly be made that patience, without ifs, ands or buts as described by Scupoli, yes, is part of what is involved in Christian perfection, but perhaps more importantly or by way of context is equally what we as integral human persons must be about if we are to face life as it is in the real world. I can expect and even demand this kind of patience from anybody regardless. In life, we are called or challenged not just to renounce the proverbial “champagne and caviar diet”, but to say “no” to beer and pretzels too, if we would be something other than self-serving or mere casualties to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune here on this earth.

How many people come and say, in effect, “Father, I deserve better from God! Why doesn’t He give me a break? Why doesn’t He answer my prayers for healing? (deliverance from trials, loneliness, or fill in the blank as you see fit)”. “Scupolian patience” looks at life quite differently. No doubt the old master would probably have more to say to such complaints from suffering or tried souls than to piously invite the person to a new and deeper sharing in the mystery of the Cross of Christ. Isn’t the admonition to “life without pretense” applicable here? I cannot help but think of the Book of Job and God’s teaching to Job toward the end of the book (Job: Chapters 38-41) before justifying him in the presence of his so-called friends and restoring to Job with surfeit the material prosperity which the world of Job’s time deemed to be the incontrovertible sign of God’s favor. Yes, indeed, there is much more, in terms of life, here at stake than the call to Christian perfection.

The whole truth about life and human existence as taught to us by God and His Church would banish both the fatalists and the Pollyannas. Charles Dickens’ work “Great Expectations” traces a character or two overcome because life didn’t go according to plan. Scupoli would probably be more determined and insist that beyond pointing out the tragedy of living life disappointed, disillusioned or in despair, in point of fact, life had better not go according to my individual plan or expectations. First question and response from the old catechism: Why did God make me? He made me to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this life, so as to be happy with Him in the next…

Scupoli insists that Christian perfection is indeed a victory over ourselves but that rigorous mortification itself is not its key or even essential component. He says “… it is not your duty to will and perform that which is in itself more excellent, but that which God before all else strictly desires and requires of you.” (p. 4) Scupoli spends himself to describe “four very safe and highly necessary weapons, that you may win the palm, and be finally a conqueror in this spiritual conflict – these are:

Distrust of Self. . . . . . I.

Trust in God. . . . . . . . . II.

Spiritual Exercises. . . III. (for our understanding, for our will, for governing our senses, for growing in virtue)

Prayer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV.” (pp. 4-5)

What moved or provoked me to this return to my book club intervention from Saturday, March 5, 2001 was the 2^nd Reading (Year A) from Mass for this the 2^nd Sunday of Lent:

“With me, bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News, relying on the power of God who has saved us and called us to be holy – not because of anything we ourselves have done but for his own purpose and by his own grace. This grace had already been granted to us, in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time, but it has only been revealed by the Appearing of our savior Christ Jesus. He abolished death, and he has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News.” II Timothy 1:8-10

I think it fair to say that Lorenzo Scupoli did not “whip up anything in his own little kitchen”; his teaching in “The Spiritual Combat” stands within the tradition and bears no small resemblance to St. Paul’s exhortation to Timothy and to us. We have everything to be gained by enriching our Lenten reading with the approved authors of today and also of once upon a time. 

Book Club Material

“The Spiritual Combat”

by Lorenzo Scupoli (Scriptoria, 2009)

“Spiritual Combat Revisited”

by Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory (Ignatius, 2003)

            This is the one time so far in my life when I really wished I were part of a book club or where I was half-tempted to organize one. I would love to have not only blog comment input on why one of the spiritual best sellers of the last half millennium passed me by until age 60, but I’d love to hear what others have to say about both of these books. I’d want to ask the members of my club about their reading and make with them a plan for re-launching Scupoli. The Spiritual Combat by Lorenzo Scupoli should be on that same “active shelf” of a Catholic’s hand library together with The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.

   

I’ve asked folk younger than me: “Have you ever heard of The Spiritual Combat by Lorenzo Scupoli?” and gotten reactions similar to my own after my last reread on retreat of St. Francis de Sales “Introduction to the Devout Life”. St. Francis recommends Scupoli as an authority and now that I have finally found and read the book for the first time and not the last, I can see why. After a couple of Google Searches, I would have probably given up on the book as hopelessly out of print had I not stumbled upon Fr. Robinson of the Toronto Oratory’s book and found there even more encouragement, discovering more of the de Sales link to the book and also of Blessed Cardinal Newman’s enthusiasm for Scupoli.

        

Fr. Robinson quotes a London, Burns and Oates edition of 1963. Amazon actually offers a couple English editions, but I am glad I happened upon the Scriptoria choice which is less antique and eminently readable in English.

        

Fr. Robinson succeeds well in describing the importance for the spiritual life of Scupoli’s work by mining the riches of St. Francis de Sales and Blessed Cardinal Newman. He analyses and confronts contemporary disenchantment with the central motion of Scupoli’s book, namely struggle to attain virtue for love of God and the longing to be with Him in His Kingdom. In his Epilogue, Father Robinson respectfully confronts the criticism which Hans Urs von Balthasar leveled at St. John of the Cross, as contemplative or mystic author par excellence, the “remarkable lacuna in St. John’s thought, the yawning gap where the Church should be” (p. 282). Perhaps here Fr. Robinson offers his own answer to my search for an explanation to the half century or more “eclipse” of Scupoli?

“Whether or not this criticism can be sustained in the case of St. John of the Cross, it certainly does give expression to the suspicion that the spiritual life is essentially a selfish one. It is thought to be selfish, that is, both in the sense that it is an isolated and introverted cultivation of the self as well as in the sense of its having no interest in, or concern for, other people. Neither of these understandings of selfishness can be taken as applying to either St. Jane Frances or St. Francis. At the center of the most fundamental relationship of all, that is, between the soul and God, there is (for both of them) the presence of the beloved other; a beloved loved indeed, in God, and not in the place of God, but loved and served as what God has created and God loves.” (p. 282)

“If we today, with some right, demand a more open and less constricted way to divine intimacy, then we must also relearn the Gospel lesson, repeated by the saints and prophets of the spiritual life, that the pearl of great price does not come cheap. We will have to learn to make the words of the dying saint (St. Jane Frances reflecting on the spiritual dialogue in Ostia between St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica) our own: “And that is meant for me.” (p. 283)

For now I’ll stop at that with the firm purpose not to bury Jonathan Robinson’s book in my hand library and to come back very soon to “The Spiritual Combat”. It is my hope, in the not too distant future, to encounter folk who, when I ask about Lorenzo Scupoli will respond with a smile and tell me something of their dialogue with an old friend who has, I am convinced, much to say that would fill some if not most of the “yawning gaps” in the spiritual direction of the last 50 years!

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