#iainmatthew — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 6 December: Iain Matthew, OCD

On a cold night in early December, [Saint John of the Cross’s] chaplaincy in Avila was raided. The young man was taken away for interrogation and chastisement. Then he disappeared.

On hearing of this arrest by friars opposing her reform, Teresa feared the worst. She wrote to King Philip: ‘I would be happier if [he] had fallen into the hands of Moors – they might show [him] more pity.’

But for once, her personality failed to produce results.

Unknown to his friends, John was being taken across the freezing Sierra Guadarrama to the city of Toledo. There he was incarcerated first in a jail, then in a tiny closet, with little or no light, and left.

Toledo can be very cold in winter, asphyxiating in summer. For John, solitary confinement was to mean malnutrition, regular flogging (causing wounds, which stayed with him for years), putrid clothing, and lice.

With this went a kind of psychological torture. His captors apparently feigned conversation at the door of his cell, leaving their phrases to foment in his mind. They hinted that he would get out in a coffin. They said the reform—his life’s work—had fallen apart.

All this does seem to have affected John’s mind. As he ate his scant ration, he had to cope with the fear that it was poisoned. He had to cope, too, with the constant insinuation (the walls of his dungeon told him this if nobody else did) that he was a rebel—he, whose religious culture was built on obedience. And he confessed that what pained him deeply was the worry that Teresa and the others would think he had deserted them.

It was all happening together: physical and emotional abuse; a whirl of anxiety in his mind; and, in his relationship with God, darkness. At the time when, if ever, he needed to feel the divine presence, his God seemed distant, even alien, and John felt himself a stranger. His later writings will bear out what contemporary witnesses suspected: ‘During the time they had him in prison, he suffered great inner dryness and affliction’; ‘at times [the Lord] withdrew and left him in inner darkness along with the darkness’ of his cell.’

Father Iain Matthew, O.C.D.

The Impact of God, chapter 2

Matthew, I 1995, The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd, London.

Featured image: Toledo con nieve is a photograph from Spain by Javi. It comes from Adobe Stock (Asset ID 407750521).

#iainMatthew #prison #stJohnOfTheCross #stTeresaOfAvila #torture

We can abide in [Christ’s] love because his love abides. The resurrection, the gaze of the risen Christ, God’s self-lavishing presence at the centre of the person, this ensures the possibility of contact, ensures that in ‘being with him’, something is taking place.

What John calls ‘contemplation’ is a special instance of this, a powerful impress of the resurrection on the world. It is special, not as esoteric, but as manifesting the reality of prayer with particular intensity.

When he spoke about the bewilderment that goes with night, he was thinking particularly of the loss of the familiar at the onset of contemplative prayer [cf. The Ascent II, 8; Dark Night I, 8]. But in itself, this night of prayer means positive growth. It is the gaze of Christ laying claim on the person at increasingly deep levels. It is a more total communication of God.

Father Iain Matthew, O.C.D.

Chapter 20, “Prayer, a ‘Being With’ ”

Note: In his address to the International Congress on Memory and Hope in St. John of the Cross on 9 May 2019, Father Iain said: “In this John of the Cross helps me to believe that God exists. He helps me to believe that death is not the end, that there is more to life than biology. He helps me to trust that God loves us and means to bring us to eternal life in heaven. In short, he helps me to believe that Christ is risen.”

Upon the death of her husband in 1901, the widow of United States President Benjamin Harrison commissioned Tiffany Studios to create a window in his memory. The design shows Michael, the Angel of the Resurrection, signaling the dead to rise at Christ’s second coming. In keeping with the romanticism of the time, Tiffany’s heroic angel is dressed in the chain mail suit of a crusading knight and seems like a figure from Sir Walter Scott’s novels. Image credit: Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields (Public domain)

Matthew, I 1995, The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd, London.

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/08/iain-resurr/

#contemplation #death #eternalLife #eternity #faith #heaven #IainMatthew #loveOfGod #resurrection #risenChrist #StJohnOfTheCross