Abide – John of the Cross

Welcome everyone, and welcome to Abide.

I invite you to find a place of prayer, where you can pull away a bit. Maybe your prayer

stance is standing, maybe it's sitting, maybe the best posture for prayer for you lately is

walking. So, find your space.

And I was so encouraged as I was reading the Gospel of Mark today, about finding a place

of prayer, and that Jesus gently meets us there. So, hear these words from the Gospel of

Mark, chapter seven, verses thirty-one to thirty-five.

“Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and

into the region of Decapolis. There, some people brought to him a man who was deaf and

could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hands on him. After he took him

aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears, and then he spit and

touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and, with a deep sigh, said to him,

‘Ephatha,’ which means be opened. At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue

loosened, and he began to speak plainly.”

And I was just touched by this story because Jesus is in this crowd, and this man is brought

to Him. And what Jesus does first is he takes the man aside, away from the crowd, which

just tells me about how Jesus longs to have these personal one-on-one moments with His

children. He wants to look at them in the face. And He wants to take in our whole frame. He

wants to sense how we're doing. And He wants us to be able to focus and look at Him. And

so, this is a time of prayer where we get to be taken away from the crowd, away from

responsibilities for a moment, away from the noise.

And where Jesus gets to place His hand upon us. In this story, Jesus places His fingers in

the man's ears.

And so, at this time, as you sense Jesus pulling you away into this safe space, where do you

need Jesus to touch you? Where do you need Jesus to gaze upon you? Would you like your

eyes to be open because you feel like you're in a dark place? Do you need your ears

opened so you can hear Him? What about your heart? Is it closed? Is it clinging? Is it

hurting?

We take this time to be drawn out of the crowd, allowing Jesus to gaze at our full selves.

And us to gaze at Him, and allow Him to gently place His hands on us. And to open

different spaces in us where we need an opening, ‘Ephatha.’

And as we've pulled ourselves away from the crowd, Jesus being with us, today we get to

journey with Saint John of the Cross. And you'll soon learn that He is just like a romantic,

through and through. And so, he would be so drawn to Jesus embracing him. I think he

would be, he would easily be the kind of man that would want to lay on Jesus's chest, and

hearing His heartbeat. And so, we're going to be guided by a saint that is not afraid to long

for deep intimacy with our Saviour, with the Beloved.

And so, as we settle into this place, we're going to take some nice deep breaths in and out

together, and I'm going to read you a piece of St. John of the Cross's work, to start. Just a

small poem to get us warmed up to his language, and even be open to connecting with

God, our Saviour, with his language, vocabulary, heart.

So, let's just begin with an inhale. And an exhale. Hearing these words, this poem entitled

‘The Essence of Desire.’

“I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted. Because of all the desires I have ever

known, just one did I cling to, for it was the essence of all desire, to hold beauty in my

soul's arms.”

Breathing in. Exhaling out.

“I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted. Because of all the desires I have ever

known, just one did I cling to, for it was the essence of all desire, to hold beauty in my

soul's arms.”

And lastly, let's take another inhale. And exhale.

So, we are in the presence of Jesus, and our friend, our companion, and our guide today,

St. John of the Cross. This saint was a Spanish saint, and he was born in 1542 and died in

1591. And allow me to read his story from our precious little book, ‘Stories of the Saints,’ by

Kerry Wallace. So, here is the story of John of the Cross.

“John's father was from a rich family of silk merchants. But when he married John's

mother, a penniless orphan, his family disowned him. So, to make their own living, John's

father and mother worked together as weavers. But when John was only three years old, his

father died. John's family lived in one of the richest cities in Spain. But without John's father

to help support them, they were so poor that one of John's older brothers died from

starvation. His mother moved her little family from town to town, always searching for

better work. And when John was fourteen, he started to work, himself, at a hospital, for

people who were sick with diseases no one knew how to cure. But John always loved to

learn, and when he was grown, he joined the Carmelite monks who sent him to study at the

University Salamanca. John's plan, after his hard childhood, was to spend the rest of his

life in quiet prayer. But when he was twenty-five, he met a nun named Teresa. She was old

enough to be his mother, and she was determined to reform the Carmelite Order. The

Carmelites were supposed to be poor monks and nuns who begged for whatever they

needed. Their abbeys were supposed to be simple homes, where they could leave the

world behind and devote themselves to God. But instead, their abbeys had become more

like palaces, filled with wealth and distractions. And the monks and nuns were more

devoted to their own comfort than they were to prayer or to each other. Teresa wanted to

start a new movement of nuns and monks who cared more about God and about one

another than accumulating fine things. To show that the spiritual world mattered more to

them than the physical world, they wore sandals, even in the winter, so people had started

calling Teresa's followers ‘The Barefoot.’ Teresa gave John an abandoned house outside

Salamanca and asked him to start the first new group of barefoot monks. It grew like

wildfire. So many men joined John that they had to move into a town to find a larger house.

John started another monastery, and then another, and he met with nuns and anyone else

who came to him, counselling them about their life with God. But not all the Carmelites

were pleased to see the explosive growth of the barefoot monks. So, one night, some

jealous monks broke into John's room and kidnapped him. They locked him up in a tiny cell

in a monastery in Toledo, in a room that was only ten feet by six feet, and so dark that John

had to stand on a bench to read his prayers by the light that slipped in from the room next

door. And they only gave him a tiny amount of water and bread and some small scraps of

fish to eat. Several times a week, the monks led John out of his cell and asked him if he'd

changed his mind about his new monasteries. ‘No, I haven't,’ John always told them. And

every time he refused to waver, all the monks lined up in a row, as each of them filed by

John, every single one of them hit him with a whip. Back in his cell, John wrote poems in his

head, and his guards snuck him pieces of paper so that he could write down his poems.

And even though there was no window in John's cell, when he wrote, the other monks

sometimes saw a strange light pouring out from under his door. Nine months after John

was kidnapped, he pried his cell door off its hinges and snuck into a room next to him,

where he climbed out a window using a rope he'd tied from bed sheets. The only thing he

took with him were the poems he had written. When John's feet hit the ground, he had no

idea where he was. But as he ran for cover, a dog trotted by, heading away from the

monastery. ‘That dog must know its way home,’ John thought. So, he followed it through

the wild land around the monastery and all the way to the next town. When he found his

way back to Teresa and the nuns, John was starving and broken from his beatings. But even

as they nursed him back to health, he never stopped writing. During that time, he wrote

some of the most beautiful poems he had ever written, which were also some of the most

beautiful poems ever written in the Spanish language. Finally, the Pope allowed the

barefoot monks and nuns to separate from other Carmelites. The next year, John's old

friend, Teresa, died. But John kept on with his work and writing. He continued to found

monasteries, and he travelled thousands of miles each year to meet anyone who wanted

to talk with him about God. When people were suffering, other people sometimes told

them that God must have abandoned them. But John wrote that people didn't suffer

because God had left them. Instead, they could find God in the midst of their suffering.

‘The only real joy comes from God,’ John wrote. ‘So seeking happiness in this world is like a

starving person trying to eat air.’ Most of all, John wanted people to know God's love. ‘Who

has ever seen people learn to love God by harshness?’ he asked. ‘Where there is no love,

put love, and you will find love.’”

Allow John, and the story, and his life to just fill your space, wherever you are, that private

space that Jesus has called you into.

As with the other saints, we always pay attention to the origin story of how this saint grew

up. We see how John's life started out, with a lot of sorrow, with the death of his father and

his brother. He then had to work, and was working in a hospital with people that were sick

and dying. But, it says here, that he always loved to learn, and he got to go to school. And in

that time period, he met Teresa, who we studied together in our last podcast, Teresa of

Avila. He met her, and it changed him. And Teresa and John began to work together to

refine the Carmelite order, which had seemed to grow in a way that they didn't find was a

pure way to live for God, as we heard in our story.

"The monks and nuns were more devoted to their comfort than they were to prayer or to

each other." That can happen to us all, can it? In our Christian communities, or even in the

places we work,or even in our friendships, that it starts to get more about our own comfort

and maybe the things of the world than it is about prayer or about serving. So, it's an

interesting observation that Teresa had, and that John and her were able to convert, and

bring it back to the simplicity that it began.

But, we read later, that John became quite famous and everyone was wanting to follow in

his footsteps. It's said here in the story, “So one night some jealous monks broke into

John's room and kidnapped him.” And he's then in the basement of the monastery, being

beaten, given very little food, and treated poorly by people who were meant to be his fellow

Christian brothers.

And so, I just want to pause here to just acknowledge that many of us have pain around our

friendships with clergy, our friendships with pastors, or the church fellowship. There's

been damage, and confusion, and disappointment on all sides. And I just want you to

become aware of your own challenges with this. Challenges of loving God, and loving the

church, and serving, and how that can get really complicated. And there can be a lot in

that. And so, we can just take this moment with John and Jesus, for that matter, who are

very much hurt by the ones who were meant to be friends and following God together. And

so, if you're holding on to any of that hurt, this is a good time to just express that to God and

to this wonderful saint, who underwent so much pain.

And we see in the life of Jesus and in the life of John, that even in the midst of being hurt

and physically, mentally, spiritually beaten down, that this did not cause them to disown

God or to fully doubt God. And so, they were able to separate the institution, or the way in

which God was presented to them, and love and serve and follow God, the greater, the

greater good.

It says in our story, “Back in his cell, John wrote poems in his head, and his guards snuck

him pieces of paper so that he could write them down.” And so, this is when we can sink

into a little bit of John's work, like the story said, one of the most famous Spanish poets.

And I want to read you one of his most famous poems, entitled ‘The Dark Night.’ And it's,

let's see here, eight stanzas long.

“On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—

I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—

In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me,

Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday

To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me— A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,

Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,

There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a

breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks;

With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved.

All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.”

In this book, ‘Dark Night of the Soul,’ the editor, P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, writes this

about this poem, ‘Dark Night.’ “The poem seems to have been inspired by the Song of

Songs, in the Bible, and presents the Christian as a lover, passionately seeking divine

union with Christ. In his explication of the poem, St. John of the Cross attempts to show

that the soul must become emptied of self, purified of the last traces of earthly dross,

before it can be filled with God. In this way, the earnest yearner after God may own nothing,

but possess everything. The soul's indescribably sublime union with God.”

Now, I realise this poem is one to not understand, at first. There's many books that have

chapters for each stanza, so this is just dipping our toe in his work. But as we read in our

final part of the story of St. John, it said, “When people were suffering, other people

sometimes told them that God must have abandoned them. But John wrote that people

didn't suffer because God had left them. Instead, they could find God in the midst of their

suffering. ‘And the only real joy comes from God,’ John wrote. ‘So, seeking happiness in

this world is like starving a person trying to eat air.’ Most of all, John wanted people to know

God's love. ‘Who has ever seen people learn to love God by harshness?’ he asked. ‘Where

there is no love, put love, and you will find love.’”

And so, John lived different parts of his life in deep darkness and trial. And he uses those

conditions to deepen this love, beautiful language, with Jesus, his Saviour. And this poem,

‘The Dark Night,’ is also translated in a way of the ascent to Mount Carmel, it's called. And

it's basically talking about our journey to union with God.

And so, in our final moments of prayer, I just want to have us envision ourselves with Jesus

and with John. And we're going to walk up a mountain together. We're going to see what it's

like to walk with them. And as we go, keep releasing things that we're clinging to or that are

weighing us down from our deep union with God.

So imagine we're heading up this hill together, and we have these earthen vessels on our

backs, as John says. But you can imagine it being like a backpack. And as we start

climbing, feels good at first, but then we feel challenged. The earthen vessel, or that

backpack, starts to feel heavy. And the heaviness can come from where we place our

identity, whether it's in our good works or the outcome of our good works. Maybe it's in our

relationships or the lack of relationships we long for. Or even our desire to control our own

lives.

And so, in this moment, just sit with Jesus, with John, and just begin to empty out some of

that weight from your bag, weight from your earthen vessel. Release it to Jesus.

And then we get to get up again, and our bag feels lighter. We get to keep climbing, and it

gets a bit steeper as the weight in our bag fills up again, with possible expectations we have

upon God or on others, for our lives. Or maybe we just have a desire for a comfortable life,

and for ease, and not having to work hard. Or maybe we are just feeling impatient with life,

and with our own personal growth, and it's weighing us down.

And so, we pause again, we open our bag, we release the heaviness to Jesus.

We get back up again, we start walking, heading up into the hill with a light bag, once again.

And this is an image of how it feels to walk with Jesus, and how we are on this journey. And

it's a journey of self-emptying.

As Gloria Hutchinson writes, “John's approach to prayer is a gradual, determined, and

difficult self-emptying. A soul that is heavy with desires for persons, possessions,

knowledge, fame cannot soar. And there's nothing wrong with created beings and things.

The problem lies in our desire for them apart from, and in competition with, our love of

God."

And so, I invite you, friends, to return back to that first image that we started with, of Jesus

resting his hands possibly upon our heart, upon our ears, upon our minds, upon our

bodies.

And we're going to close with this beautiful poem from John, as we started. Knowing that all

our desires are met in Jesus. Here are these words as our closing prayer.

“I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted. Because of all the desires I have ever

known, just one did I cling. For it was the essence of all desire, to hold beauty in my soul's

arms.”

I pray that we would all go in peace. To have the courage to continue the ascent of Mount

Carmel. To have the courage to live in darkness and suffering, knowing that Christ is

intimately there with us. And to continue the pursuit of emptying of self and filling with

God. And in all this, we say, Amen.