THREE METAPHORS FOR PRAYER
The desert
The moon and the river at night
The swiftly sailing ship
I eat dry
bread in the desert:
It tastes
like a cake of dust.
I breathe
in and out powdery clouds:
Nostrils
singe, snorting fire.
I swallow my
own saliva:
Thick
paste coats my inside throat.
How will I
sustain my journey in this land
When my
mouth is filled with sand?
I falter
inside a steel kettle, sparks popping about.
Black
footprints flame at the edges.
I am dried
up, a gourd rattling seeds.
Heat waves
deceive like the devil.
Thirsty, I
lick at a mirage with my eyes.
Twisting,
I glimpse the taskmaster sun.
Hands
astride hips, he glares mercilessly,
Glowering
white noon death rays.
The sky is
livid, a clown murderer, crimson lips, grinning.
He spills
sacksful of hot ash from above.
Multitudes,
buried alive, scratch at the insides of a wooden coffin.
Spiritless
as the burning air gone lifeless,
I am dark
as a moonless, starless sky,
Staggering
in an expanse unbounded beyond extreme sight,
Devoid of
any atom of hope,
Despair, a
universe expanding endlessly.
—Gonzalinho
da Costa
Since
centuries past the desert has long assumed the status of a practically universal
symbol for dryness in Christian prayer.
Richard J. Foster describes this dryness well and connects it to the image of the desert.
“Sometimes it seems as if God is hidden from
us. We do everything we know. We pray. We serve. We worship. We live as
faithfully as we can. And still there is nothing—nothing! It feels as though we
are ‘beating on Heaven’s door with bruised knuckles in the dark,’ to use the
words of preacher George Buttrick. Times of seeming desertion and absence and
abandonment appear to be universal among those who walk the path of faith.
“I am not
talking about a true absence, of course, but rather a sense of absence. God is
always present with us—we know that theologically—but there are times when he
withdraws our consciousness of his presence.
“But these
theological niceties are of little help to us when we enter the Sahara of the
heart. Here we experience real spiritual desolation. We feel abandoned by
friends, spouse, and God. Every hope evaporates the moment we reach for it. We
question, we doubt, we struggle. We pray and the words feel rote. We turn to
the Bible and find it meaningless. We turn to music and it fails to move us. We
seek the fellowship of other Christians and discover only backbiting,
selfishness, and egoism.
“One
metaphor for these experiences of forsakenness is the desert. It is an apt
image, for we indeed feel dry, barren, parched.”
—Richard
J. Foster, “Praying in the Desert,” July 20, 1992, Christianity Today
Saint
Ignatius of Loyola has called dryness in prayer and in the spiritual life
generally, “desolation,” and he defines it in the Fourth Rule of the Spiritual Exercises:
“I call
desolation all the contrary of the third rule, such as darkness of soul,
disturbance in it, movement to things low and earthly, the unquiet of different
agitations and temptations, moving to want of confidence, without hope, without
love, when one finds oneself all lazy, tepid, sad, and as if separated from his
Creator and Lord. Because, as consolation is contrary to desolation, in the
same way the thoughts which come from consolation are contrary to the thoughts
which come from desolation.”
Since he
defines “desolation” in contraposition to “consolation,” we should also cite
his understanding of “consolation” in the Third Rule:
“I call it
consolation when some interior movement in the soul is caused, through which
the soul comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord; and when it
can in consequence love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself,
but in the Creator of them all.
“Likewise,
when it sheds tears that move to love of its Lord, whether out of sorrow for
one’s sins, or for the Passion of Christ our Lord, or because of other things
directly connected with His service and praise.
“Finally,
I call consolation every increase of hope, faith and charity, and all interior
joy which calls and attracts to heavenly things and to the salvation of one’s
soul, quieting it and giving it peace in its Creator and Lord.”
—“14 Rules
for the Discernment of Spirits by St. Ignatius of Loyola,” August 3, 2018, Scepter Publishers
Saint
Ignatius, acknowledged master of the spiritual life, in the Ninth Rule gives
three reasons why a soul might be afflicted by desolation:
“The first
is, because of our being tepid, lazy or negligent in our spiritual exercises;
and so through our faults, spiritual consolation withdraws from us.
“The
second, to try us and see how much we are and how much we let ourselves out in
His service and praise without such great pay of consolation and great graces.
“The
third, to give us true acquaintance and knowledge, that we may interiorly feel
that it is not ours to get or keep great devotion, intense love, tears, or any
other spiritual consolation, but that all is the gift and grace of God our
Lord, and that we may not build a nest in a thing not ours, raising our
intellect into some pride or vainglory, attributing to us devotion or the other
things of the spiritual consolation.”
Paraphrasing
Saint Ignatius, we would say that the first reason is on account of the sinful
habits of the soul. This condition applies to beginners in prayer and to those
who have lapsed or fallen away in their spiritual journey toward God.
The second
reason pertains to those who are making progress in the spiritual life and are
tested by God for their spiritual good. Desolation is a trial for the
proficient, so-called.
The third
reason is to chide the soul concerning their own spiritual poverty before God,
the origin and source of all good, urging them toward a deeper condition of
humility.
The
desert, therefore, is an intermittent feature of the entire spiritual journey,
and descends upon both beginners and the proficient, for different reasons and for
diverse purposes in the spiritual life.
The desert
as a universally applicable metaphor for the spiritual life and for prayer in
particular originates in the Bible.
“…it is
only in the Middle East that a very influential mythic literature of the desert
dating from ancient times was written—the Bible. It’s a curious fact.
“…Fraught
with spiritual meaning, the desert is a central motif of the Bible, one of a
handful of the most influential works of world spirituality.”
In the
Bible, “the desert is a place and symbol of purification and revelation during
Israel’s forty-year sojourn before the nation entered the Promised Land.”
—Gonzalinho
da Costa, “Three Poems about the Desert – Analysis and Commentary,” January 17,
2019, Poetry of Gonzalinho da Costa
The desert
as a locus of purification and revelation appears not only in the Pentateuch
but also in the rest of the Bible.
Another
image of prayer that has become commonplace in Western cultural discourse,
courtesy of Saint John of the Cross, is the night, particularly the “dark
night.”
THE MOON AND RIVER AND SILENCE
Guided by
the moon,
Traveling
downriver,
I am
enraptured by silence.
All I hear
is, delicate, song of my oar
As it dips
gently, emerges,
Streamlets,
bright notes running down the edge
Of the
blade, silver spoon, glistening.
I listen
to the moon…
River,
warbling bird…
Illumined
by silence.
Crickets
dare not crack their knuckles.
—Gonzalinho
da Costa
Saint John
of the Cross’ “dark night” has been popularly misunderstood as a state of psychological
depression or the convergence in a person’s life of especially difficult and
trying events.
We will
examine Saint John’s own words to clarify and explain in what the “dark night”
essentially consists.
“We may
say that there are three reasons for which this journey made by the soul to
union with God is called night. The first has to do with the point from which
the soul goes forth, for it has gradually to deprive itself of desire for all
the worldly things which it possessed, by denying them to itself; the which
denial and deprivation are, as it were, night to all the senses of man. The
second reason has to do with the mean, or the road along which the soul must
travel to this union—that is, faith, which is likewise as dark as night to the
understanding. The third has to do with the point to which it travels—namely,
God, Who, equally, is dark night to the soul in this life. These three nights must
pass through the soul—or, rather, the soul must pass through them—in order that
it may come to Divine union with God.”
—Saint
John of the Cross, “The Dark Night,” Ascent
of Mount Carmel, Chapter 2
The “dark
night” is a period of sensual and spiritual purgation, the latter subsuming the
former.
The soul
that enters the “dark night” seeks union with God and undertakes the
mortification of the senses and of the spirit—the spiritual faculties of the
intellect and will—for this purpose, mortification which is not only active but
also passive.
Saint John
expounds the first two stanzas of his mystical masterpiece, “The Dark Night,” to
explain this point.
“One dark
night, fired with love's urgent longings—ah, the sheer grace! —I went out
unseen, my house being now all stilled.
“In
darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised—ah, the sheer grace!—in
darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.”
—Saint
John of the Cross, “Stanzas of the Soul,” The
Dark Night of the Soul, Prologue
“In this first stanza, the soul speaks of the
way it followed in its departure from love of both self and all things. Through
a method of true mortification, it died to all these things and to itself. It
did this so as to reach the sweet and delightful life of love with God. And it
declares that this departure was a dark night. As we will explain later, this
dark night signifies here purgative contemplation, which passively causes in
the soul this negation of self and of all things.”
—Saint
John of the Cross, “Explanation of the Stanzas,” The Dark Night of the Soul, Book I
The “dark
night,” consists, therefore, in the first place, in habitual sensual and
spiritual abnegation.
Saint John
gives a second reason why this passage in the spiritual life is a “dark night.”
God is darkness to the soul and indeed will always be so while the soul animates
the mortal body, because God, being pure spirit, cannot be apprehended by the corporeal
sense of sight.
True, the
soul in beatitude—in heaven—apprehends or “sees” God not in darkness but in
light, according to the capacity of the soul, but we are assured that in this
mortal life the soul always experiences God as darkness, in varying degrees.
Scripture
testifies that God is light, yes, but also affirms that God is darkness.
“He made
darkness his cloak around him.” (Psalm 18:12)
“Darkness
is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but
one.” (Psalm 113:12)
“Solomon
said, ‘The Lord intends to dwell in the dark cloud.’” (1 Kings 8:12)
A third
reason why Saint John describes this stage of the spiritual journey as a “dark
night” is because the pilgrim soul advancing towards union with God travels in
the darkness of faith.
However,
it is not a lost, undirected darkness because the soul that earnestly seeks God
is assured of spiritual guidance, according to the doctrine of Saint John.
Kevin
Gerald Culligan, O.C.D., demonstrates that Saint John of the Cross, in Ascent of Mount Carmel principally,
advances the following propositions:
- God is a
person’s principal spiritual director.
- The goal
to which God leads the human person is union with himself in perfect faith,
hope, and love.
- God
guides the human person to divine union through human nature, especially the
light of natural reason; through divine revelation, particularly as expressed
in the Person of Jesus Christ, and through infused contemplation.
- Persons
committed to seeking divine union are capable of following God’s guidance
without the aid of a human spiritual director.
The fourth
point above is worth noting because God, who is infinitely good, does not allow
the soul that earnestly seeks him to wander about in confusion and misdirection.
The infinitely good God guarantees their spiritual guidance.
About human
spiritual direction, Saint John says the following, according to Culligan:
- Spiritual
direction is a ministry in the church to help persons follow God’s guidance to
divine union.
- The
essential function of the spiritual director is to guide the directee along the
road to union with God.
- To
fulfill the role of an instrument in God’s guidance of persons to divine union
through infused contemplation, the spiritual director must possess knowledge,
experience, and skill in helping relationships.
—Kevin
Gerald Culligan, O.C.D., “Toward a Contemporary Model of Spiritual Direction,” Ephemerides Carmeliticae, Volume 31
(1980/81), pages 33-37
In the
words of Saint John of the Cross:
“God, like
the sun, stands above souls ready to communicate himself. Let directors be
content with disposing them for this according to evangelical perfection, which
lies in emptiness of sense and spirit; and let them not desire to go any
further than this in building, since that function belongs only to the Father of
lights from whom descends every good and perfect gift (James 1:17)
“…directors should reflect that they
themselves are not the chief agent, guide, and mover of souls in this matter,
but the principal guide is the Holy Spirit, who is never neglectful of souls
and they themselves are instruments for directing these souls to perfection
through faith and the law of God, according to the spirit give by God to each
one.”
—Saint
John of the Cross, “Stanza 3,” The Living
Flame of Love
In the poem,
“The Moon and River and Silence,” our assurance of God’s spiritual guidance in
the “dark night” is signified by the moon, which, among others, stands for the guidance
of the Holy Spirit.
Worth
noting is that when the Blessed Sacrament is displayed for adoration, it is
placed inside a receptacle called the luna,
derived from the Latin word for “moon” and which denotes the Roman moon goddess,
Luna. The receptacle slides into place inside the monstrance.
The river in
the same poem stands for the silent, peaceful stages of the spiritual journey.
Rivers can
be turbulent, troublesome, and dangerous, or the converse, effortless, calming,
and placid.
The mercurial
character of rivers defines the spiritual life generally and the “dark night”
of Saint John in particular. He writes:
“The soul,
if it desires to pay close attention, will clearly recognize how on this road
it suffers many ups and downs, and how immediately after prosperity some
tempest and trial follows, so much so that seemingly the calm was given to
forewarn and strengthen it against further penury. It sees, too, how abundance
and tranquility succeed misery and torment, and in such a way that it thinks it
was made to fast before celebrating that feast. This is the ordinary procedure
in the state of contemplation until one arrives at the quiet state: the soul
never remains in one state, but everything is ascent and descent.” [boldface mine]
—Saint John of the Cross, “How this
Secret Wisdom Is Also a Ladder,” The Dark
Night of the Soul, Book II, Chapter 18, 3
Saint John
teaches us that the spiritual life is not an endless desert. It is a distortion
to imagine God as the merciless taskmaster of an unrelenting ordeal. We can
take heart that the desert of purification is punctuated by oases of refreshment
and even by extended periods of tranquility and rest.
Swiftly I
sail the perfect blue water, slicing through the sea.
Clouds
charged with electricity fill broad sky vistas.
At night I
am guided by the geometry of the stars.
—Gonzalinho
da Costa
At times
it appears as if everything in the spiritual life is delightful, untroubled,
and radiant. We understand keenly, pray deeply, and act upon spiritual
challenges with the virtuous prowess of an Olympic athlete, in a manner of
speaking.
We might
describe this time as a period of prolonged consolation, to use the vocabulary
of Loyola.
The “dark
night” begins to give way to the warmth and light of an enduring dawn, which
corresponds to the higher levels of the ten-step “ladder of contemplation” of
Saint John of the Cross.
He writes
about the ninth step of the ladder as follows:
“The ninth
step of love causes the soul to burn gently. It is the step of the perfect who
burn gently in God. The Holy Spirit produces this gentle and delightful ardor
by reason of the perfect soul's union with God. St. Gregory accordingly says of
the Apostles that when the Holy Spirit came upon them visibly, they burned
interiorly and gently with love.”
—Saint
John of the Cross, “The Remaining Five Steps of Love,” The Dark Night of the Soul, Book II, Chapter 20, 4
Saint
Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order, has spoken in rapturous terms about
the spiritual joys of this state of blessedness:
“Only
those who have experienced them can know the benefits and divine exultation
that the solitude and silence of the desert hold in store for those who love
it. For here men of strong will can enter into themselves and remain there as
much as they like, diligently cultivating the seeds of virtue and eating the
fruits of Paradise with joy. Here we can acquire that eye which wounds the
Bridegroom with love by the limpidity of its gaze, and whose purity allows us
to see God Himself. Here we can observe a busy leisure and can rest in quiet
activity. Here also does God crown His athletes for their stern struggle with
the hoped-for prize: that peace which the world cannot know and joy in the Holy
Spirit.”
—Saint
Bruno the Carthusian, “Letter of Saint Bruno to Raoul-le-Verd,” c. 1090
Saint John
of the Cross conceives the Song of Songs alluding to the end of the “dark night”
and the beginning of rarefied contemplation. In his explanation of Stanza 34 of
his Spiritual Canticle, he cites the
following verses:
“See, the
winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the
time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in
our land.” (Song of Songs 2:11-12)
When winter is past, we
travel the world in the weather of a perfect summer aboard a swiftly sailing
ship, the enchantment seemingly unending.
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