December 9th, 2017
Dark Night of the Soul, Book 2:7-14 and Reflection on Divinization
We continue our journey with St. John of the Cross as he lays out for us the process of the Dark Night of the Spirit, applying the lines of the first stanza. According to St. John, one thing that can be surely ascertained from this experience is that the Night of the Spirit, in which the soul is purged more completely such that it is “humbled, softened, and purified” in preparation for Divine Union, is that it “will last for some years” and will be marked by intense periods of suffering that are broken by periods of rest and “abundance of spiritual communication”. These intervening periods seem to the soul to last forever, and St. John suggests that this is because “possession by the spirit of one of two contrary things itself makes impossible the actual possession and realization of the other contrary thing”. Nevertheless, particularly in periods of sweetness, during which the soul experiences flashes of hope and a “foretaste” of what is to come, when it feels most secure and alert, it is “dragged down and immersed again in another and a worse degree of affliction”. In describing this, St. John also provides a glimpse of what it is that the souls in Purgatory experience, in which they suffer greatly at wondering whether they will ever go forth from it, although they already have the habit of the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.
As we can expect, St. John goes deeper: these intense periods of suffering experienced by the soul during this dark night involve a sort of “unknowing” in which the “memory is also purged of meditation and knowledge” and is “annihilated” so that it may be divinely prepared for divine union. He brings before us here that the Divine Light has the effect of “darkening” the soul, whereas a soul that is not simple or pure is actually “less dark”. This effect of a light that “darkens” seems backwards from what we might expect. He likens this to the effect of a ray of light entering through the window of a room which, if it passes out of the room through another window on the other side, has the effect of not brightening the room at all. On the other hand, if there are specks in the air of the room for the light to strike, the light is reflected off these specks and brightens the room. It is this “darkening” effect caused by the Divine Light that we hope to achieve in that the “specks” that are manifest in the soul are, so to speak, “brought to light” in order that may be purged away. These imperfections are then readily seen. Once this darkening effect is achieved in the soul by the Divine Light, the ultimate result here is, as St. John says, a “great comprehensiveness” of any particular thing, natural or divine — a “poverty of spirit” in which we are in a state of, as St. Paul says, “having nothing and possessing all things” — “able freely to share in the breadth of spirit of the Divine Wisdom”.
Commenting on the second line of the poem, “Kindled in love with divine yearnings”, St. John brings to us the analogy of the log of wood. The “divine light whereof we here speak acts upon the soul which it is purging and preparing for perfect union with it in the same way as fire acts upon a log of wood in order to transform it into itself.” The wood is assaulted by fire and passes through a number of observable stages. Those of us who have actually sat and watched a log in the fireplace or around a campfire or bonfire will recognize this image well.
1. The fire begins to dry the log by driving out its moisture and causing it to shed the water which it contains within itself.
2. Then, the fire begins to make the log black, dark, and unsightly, and even to give forth a bad odor.
3. As the fire dries the wood little by little, it brings out and drives away all the dark and unsightly accidents which are contrary to the nature of fire.
4. Finally, it begins to kindle it externally and give it heat.
1. At last, the fire transforms the log into itself and makes it as beautiful as fire.
All of this is caused in the log by the fire itself. So it is with the fire of contemplative love, before it “unites and transforms the soul in itself, it first purges it of all its contrary accidents”. Again, St. John brings us an image of how the souls are afflicted in Purgatory. One of the key points St. John is driving at here is that, as the wood grows hotter and takes on the fire in itself, it is, in effect, “enkindled”, and “enkindled in love”, even if the soul doesn’t realize it while this is actually going on. When the fire is removed, only then is it possible to “see how much of it has been enkindled” as the fire takes form and shape in the soul itself. The soul then finds itself enveloped by a passion, a hunger and thirst, for Divine Love. As St. John says, “The touch of this love and Divine Fire dries up the spirit and enkindled its desires, in order to satisfy its thirst for this Divine Love, so much so that it turns upon itself a thousand times and desires God in a thousand ways and manners, with the eagerness and desire of the appetite.” Likened to David in a psalm, “My soul thirsted for Thee: in how many manners does my soul long for Thee!” Again, the marvelous nature of what it means to be “enkindled in love with yearnings”. This is the very nature of God — consuming, enkindling, drawing and pouring forth.
In Chapter 13, St. John says that the soul, once it has gone through this process, achieves a “mystical intelligence” that “flows down into the understanding” though the will remains dry. In this state, the “presence of God is felt, now after one manner, now after another”. As Mary Magdalene sought the Lord upon discovering Him not in his tomb, or “with the yearnings and vehemence of the lioness or the she-bear going to seek her cubs when they have been taken away from her and she finds them not, does this wounded soul go forth to seek its God.” “It feels itself to be without Him and to be dying of love for Him.”
Finally, in Chapter 14, does St. John start explaining the final three lines of the first stanza. Those which refer to “happy chance” and going “forth without being observed” and “my house being now at rest”. For it was a “happy chance” that all of the lower faculties, passions, affections, and desires be “put to sleep” by God, thus enabling the soul to venture toward God “without being hindered by these affections”, as one who seeks to be united with her Divine Beloved.
St. John ends here by noting that, “none can understand it,… unless it be the soul that has experienced it”, so far be it from me to sit here before you and act as one who has experienced these things. The most I can possibly do is suggest that this is presented before us as a profound meditation. What should we be taking away from this sojourn with St. John? Indeed, what does it mean for us today, right now? There’s obviously a lot here. I want to call your attention to what I think is the key point of all of this. Recall St. John’s image of the burning log, becoming consumed by fire such that it eventually takes on the quality of Divine Fire.
It’s fortuitous that our study of the Dark Night overlaps with the season of Advent and Christmas, for indeed what St. John points us to in the Dark Night is fundamentally what is key to our salvation. What do we celebrate at Christmas, anyway? It’s the birth of Christ, the fruit of the Incarnation — Christ becoming man, taking on our humanity. But why did God become man? While there are many reasons for this (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 456-459), the ultimate reason is that God shared in our humanity so that we might become, as St. Peter asserts, “partakers in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Or more shockingly to the point, to quote St. Athanasius of Alexandria: “The Son of God became man so that we might become God” (“On the Incarnation”, 54) This is what we celebrate at Christmas. This is the “Reason for the Season”. Divinization, divine sonship, filial adoption, or as the Eastern Christians refer to it: Theosis. This is fundamentally and ultimately what salvation is all about (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 51-52, 460). This happens by grace, which is God’s own Divine Life shared with us in the sacramental life of the Church. It begins in us early, at baptism, even if for most of us it isn’t completed until later, beyond death. In baptism, we have already become new creations.
There’s a beautiful Christmas antiphon that has been set to music that expresses well what we celebrate at Christmas: an exchange between humanity and Divinity: the “O Admirabile Commercium”. Roughly translated:
O wonderful exchange:
the creator of the human race,
taking our flesh upon him,
deigns to be born of a virgin;
and, coming forth without seed of man,
bestows his Divinity upon us.
I offer this as my reflection only because I think we lose sight of this concept and its importance. How emphatically do we teach others that our salvation is essentially understood as our divinization? Indeed, it’s a great mystery, and I don’t think the wider culture really grasps what this means. Theologian Eric Sammons puts it this way: “Too often we look at Heaven as just a really great Earth: we eat whatever we want, we hang out with whomever we want, and we never get sick or hurt. But Heaven is less about what we do and more about what we become. When we enter into Heaven, we are transformed into a new creation: while keeping our human nature, we participate in the divine nature.” (See blogpost from The Divine Life)
I think we may shy away from this concept more because when it is most improperly understood, it sounds like a pagan idea: the idea that we become God. But really, we don’t become beings who radiate our own individual divine nature apart from God. What we become is solely dependent upon the one true God, for the divine life in which we partake is His. I find the truth of this idea to be extremely compelling in evangelization. This may surprise you, or perhaps not, but this idea is truly paradigm-shifting for many Catholics when they hear it. This, in spite of the fact that it shows up throughout the Catechism and is even present in the text of the Church’s liturgy.
In one of his sermons on Pentecost, our brother in the Order, Fr. John Tauler, one of the great 14th century Dominican mystics, preached the following:
What God has in himself by nature, that he now imparts to the soul by grace: the divine being, unnamed and without form or manner of existence that we can express. And now everything that is done in that soul God himself does, acting, knowing, loving, praising, enjoying… One can no more speak of this state clearly than he can speak clearly of the divine life itself. To men and angels it is far too high for expression.
Indeed, all good works we do proceed from the work of grace within us, however incomplete it may be. Grace is Divine Life. In the West, our teaching of grace and merit is rooted in this concept. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear about this (par 2006-2011):
Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us “co-heirs” with Christ and worthy of obtaining “the promised inheritance of eternal life.” … The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men.
So everything we have, everything we are, and everything we become is due to God. Let’s us meditate on this as we read St. John of the Cross. Let us meditate on this as we observe Advent and Christmas.
One final thought, lest you think I am done preaching about this. I want to leave you with a story from the Desert Fathers in the Christian East:
“Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’”
Make this your goal: become aflame and go forth, setting the world on fire! Merry Christmas!
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Chapter 