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It might seem odd but many of you will understand what I mean when I say I have a few friends who lived on earth a few hundred years ago. Among these is one of my personal namesakes and patrons John of the Cross whose anniversary of death (1591) and feast day we mark today.
In our era of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) growth of voice and facial recognition software, and prompted by Jesus’ conversation in today’s scriptures about the people’s lack of recognition of Elijah and others, I’m pondering John of the Cross’ growing recognition of Jesus in present and active every circumstance, especially (for him) in the suffering and persecution inflicted by his Carmelite community.
John is (with Teresa of Avila his contemporary, friend, and companion in the Carmelite reformation) well remembered for the coining of the expression “dark night of the soul.”
We might casually use this term when we are experiencing a rough time, but for John and Teresa and many others including Teresa of Calcutta in our own time the dark night was not a tough patch but an ongoing absence of the felt experience of God.
Consider for a moment this question:
If at the end of their lives John or Teresa (or Mother Teresa) had been asked, which do you prefer, the dark night or the bright light, what do you think their reply might be?
When I ask this, people usually respond that while in the beginning they resisted the dark and perferred to feel the presence of God, at they prepared for death they had grown to prefer the dark night.
I’m not so sure.
My sense is that their maturation in faith with their constant desire for the God whose presence they could not feel, enabled them to understand that whether or not they could feel the presence of God, God was present.
Perhaps John’s greatest encouragement for us is the reminder to seek and recognises Jesus in every situation and in every moment whether or not he seems to be present…
…because the heart of our Christian faith is the faith that in every moment,
in every situation,
in every gift
in every struggle
in every problem
in every person
Jesus is present.
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Take an initiative and send me a date time and place for a FFF cafe-catchups john@fff.org.nz. I’ll advertise these on each morning’s post throughout Advent.
Monday 16th December 11.00am with Gillian
Cypress Café 10.00am St Heliers Bay Road
St Heliers, Auckland
Tuesday 17 December 10.30 with Catherine
Colombus at Mitre 10 MEGA
25 Bouverie St, Petone, Lower Hutt.
Thursday 19 December 10.00am with Joan
Stumble Inn, 200 Mangorei Road
Merrilands, New Plymouth
In darkness or light this I know Ref Jeremiah 1:5
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you …
Also Psalm 139:13
The ultimate reassurance of personal recognition.
I think the dark night refers to a profound experience of divine love likened by ST Teresa of Avila to a spear. “.. I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. – .. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease,”
Everything is darkness after an experience like this.
Fr John
From memory Jesus himself on the cross shouted out “My God, MyGod why have you abandoned me” If the Son of God went through this experience then it gives us all encouragement if we experience the ‘dark night’ of the soul..
Fred