Because the soul is purified in this forge like gold in the crucible, as the Wise Man says [Wis. 3:6], it feels both this terrible undoing in its very substance and extreme poverty as though it were approaching its end. This experience is expressed in David's cry: Save me, Lord, for the waters have come in even unto my soul; I am stuck in the mire of the deep, and there is nowhere to stand; I have come unto the depth of the sea, and the tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in crying out, my throat has become hoarse, my eyes have failed while I hope in my God [Ps. 69:1-3]. God humbles the soul greatly in order to exalt it greatly afterward. And if he did not ordain that these feelings, when quickened in the soul, be soon put to sleep again, a person would die in a few days. Only at intervals is one aware of these feelings in all their intensity. Sometimes this experience is so vivid that it seems to the soul that it sees hell and perdition open before it. These are the ones who go down into hell alive [Ps. 55:15], since their purgation on earth is similar to what takes place there. For this purgation is what would have to be undergone there. The soul that endures it here on earth either does not enter that place, or is detained there for only a short while. It gains more in one hour here on earth by this purgation than it would in many there.
St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Book 2, Chapter 6, pt. 6
Commentary: Many people will find this text troubling because we want to avoid pain, discomfort and suffering at all costs. When we begin to see the troubling aspects of our lives as teaching points or, in St. John's view, points of purification, we begin to climb to new vistas of spiritual growth. We have to go down before we can go up. Christians outside of the first world understand this principle of spiritual growth; first world Christians, having often been saved from any suffering and pain, shrink from this understanding and remain spiritually impoverished their entire lives.
(c) 2011 Ronald Friesen
Ron,
ReplyDeleteI dislike this quote and the one below. They drive wedges between me and Christianity, not closer. I would be a failure or a devil to the original authors no doubt, a lowly moralist. No doubt I make the point for you, which may be why the third world evangelical African movement arising from the third world has such momentum now.
Thanks for posting these, interesting reading even if I don't like it.