What Would You Do In Heaven?

 There had been so many interpretations of the DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL that I deemed it an accountability to post what ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS wrote about it with utmost sincerity of heart in the light of the purest Grace that had been made available to man to understand heaven’s mysteries.

His writings had been quoted and misquoted a great number of times, perverted to infuse some truth into some subtle lies that seek only to deceive people.  Let none be fooled or misguided. 

• The dark night of the soul is a journey of the spirit, a journey of  love towards her greatest LOVE, who is GOD, a personal God that helps us along the difficult path of learning what it really means and what it really takes to be able to love fully.
• The dark night of the soul is not about the eradication of the personality, but the transformation of the soul into a living likeness with Christ.  This likeness is unto a perfection of the capacity to give and receive love, and not to become mindless zombies with no personality of its own.
• The dark night of the soul is not a meaningless state of confusion and depression because of sin or of rebelliousness, but of submitting one’s soul upon God’s hands, as a clay is submitted unto the hands of the Master Potter.  The soul is thus like the clay and becomes a master work of art, but it remains to be a creation of the Potter.
• The dark night of the soul is a not a void or an empty place we are thrust into whenever we reach a spiritual depression after self-seeking spiritual ecstasies that leave us addicted from one encounter to another.
• The purpose of the dark night is not the “spiritual high” of awareness or knowledge after we have been purged of our impurities, but a deeper loving intimacy with God.  In this way, the dark night became a test of one’s faithfulness to that love even if the soul in no way receives the usual joys it experiences when one is in the presence of her greatest Love.  

Having said the above points, we may now proceed to an excerpt of what St. John of the Cross wrote:

[...]

Continue Reading

“For when the spirit and the sense are pleased,
every part of a man is moved by that pleasure to delight according to its
proportion and nature. For then the spirit, which is the higher part, is
moved to pleasure and delight in God; and the sensual nature, which is the
lower part, is moved to pleasure and delight of the senses, because
it cannot possess and lay hold upon aught else, and it therefore lays hold upon
that which comes nearest to itself, which is the impure and sensual.”

Contrary to recent belief, gluttony does not refer
only to excessive want of material things but also to the extreme want
of even the most spiritual things when such things are sought for as
ends in themselves for the mere delight of it, as a drug that is used again and
again in order to give pleasure to the one seeking it.

“WITH respect to … spiritual gluttony, there is
much to be said,…For many of these, lured by the sweetness and pleasure
which they find in such exercises, strive more after spiritual sweetness
than after spiritual purity and discretion, which is that which God regards and
accepts throughout the spiritual journey.”

“Therefore, besides the imperfections into which the
seeking for sweetness of this kind makes them fall, the gluttony which they
now have makes them continually go to extremes, so that they pass beyond
the limits of moderation within which the virtues are acquired and wherein they
have their being. For some of these persons, attracted by the pleasure which
they find therein, kill themselves with penances, and others weaken
themselves with fasts, by performing more than their frailty can bear,
without the order or advice of any, but rather endeavouring to avoid those whom
they should obey in these matters; some, indeed, dare to do these things even
though the contrary has been commanded them.”

It is such that even the “religious” may fall into the
trap of spiritual gluttony, a state where the pleasure of spiritual experience
replaces the purity and simplicity of one’s love for God.

It is such also that many people in today’s generation,
people practicing and seeking “spirituality” outside of religion may fall into,
unaware that the escape from material things does not automatically render that
one accepts the many evils that spiritual things may lead to if not placed in
their proper order.

If one cannot be trusted of earthly things, how then also
to be trusted of the things of heaven? 
If one is already tempted by the luster of gold, how could one possibly
escape the temptations of the spirit world which are far more glorious and
overwhelming to the human soul?

“Such persons expend all their effort in seeking
spiritual pleasure and consolation; they never tire therefore, of reading
books; and they begin, now one meditation, now another, in their pursuit of
this pleasure which they desire to experience in the things of God. But
God, very justly, wisely and lovingly, denies it to them, for otherwise this
spiritual gluttony and inordinate appetite would breed innumerable evils. It
is, therefore, very fitting that they should enter into the dark night,
whereof we shall speak, that they may be purged from this childishness.”

(Quotations taken from the DARK NIGHT, St. John of the
Cross)

This article was written by Jocelyn Soriano at http://itakeoffthemask.com
You are free to republish this article as long as the original author is cited and a link back to the site www.itakeoffthemask.com is provided.

Continue Reading