#spiritual-canticle — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 4 March: St. John of the Cross

These stanzas, Reverend Mother [Anne of Jesus], were obviously composed with a certain burning love of God. The wisdom and charity of God is so vast, as the Book of Wisdom states, that it reaches from end to end, and the soul informed and moved by it bears in some way this very abundance and impulsiveness in her words. As a result, I do not plan to expound these stanzas in all its breadth and fullness that the fruitful spirit of love conveys to them. It would be foolish to think that expressions of love arising from mystical understanding, like these stanzas, are fully explainable.

Since these stanzas, then, were composed in a love flowing from abundant mystical understanding, I cannot explain them adequately, nor is it my intention to do so. I only wish to shed some general light on them, since Your Reverence has desired this of me. I believe such an explanation will be more suitable. It is better to explain the utterances of love in their broadest sense so that each one may derive profit from them according to the mode and capacity of one’s own spirit, rather than narrow them down to a meaning unadaptable to every palate.

As a result, though we give some explanation of these stanzas, there is no reason to be bound to this explanation. For mystical wisdom, which comes through love and is the subject of these stanzas, need not be understood distinctly in order to cause love and affection in the soul, for it is given according to the mode of faith through which we love God without understanding him.

Saint John of the Cross

Prologue to the Spiritual Canticle

Note: Anna Lobera Torres was born at Medina Del Campo (Valladolid, Spain) on 25 November 1545. She was received in 1570 into the first monastery of the Discalced Carmelites at Avila by St. Teresa herself, and later accompanied her to Salamanca and Beas. It was in returning to Granada to found a monastery, that she obtained from St. John of the Cross a commentary on the Spiritual Canticle, which he dedicated to her. After several migrations and misfortunes, in 1604, together with Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew, she founded monasteries in France and Belgium. She died in Brussels after a few years of great interior and physical suffering, on 4 March 1621. She was beatified by Pope Francis on 29 September 2024.

John of the Cross, St 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, rev. edn, Kavanaugh, K & Rodriguez, O (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Detail of a portrait of Anne of Jesus after Hieronymus Wierix. Image credit: Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (Public domain)

Quote of the day, 12 January: St. John of the Cross

Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me moaning?
you fled like the stag
after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.

The Spiritual Canticle, stanza 1

The soul’s chief aim in this verse is not to ask for sensible devotion, in which there is neither certain nor clear possession of the Bridegroom in this life, but for the manifest presence and vision of his divine essence, in which she desires to be secure and satisfied in the next life.

The bride of the divine Song of Songs had this very idea when, longing for union with the divinity of the Word, her Bridegroom, she asked the Father: Show me where you pasture and where you rest at midday [Song 1:7]. In requesting him to disclose his place of pasture, she wanted him to reveal the essence of the divine Word, his Son. For the Father does not pasture anywhere else than in his only Son, for the Son is the glory of the Father. And in begging that he show her his place of rest, she was asking to see that same Son.

The Son is the only delight of the Father, who rests nowhere else nor is present in any other than in his beloved Son. He rests wholly in his Son, communicating to him his essence at midday, which is eternity, where he ever begets him and has begotten him.

When the soul, the bride, cries: “Where have you hidden?” she seeks this pasture, the Word, her Bridegroom, where the Father feeds in infinite glory, and she seeks the flowering bosom where he rests with infinite delight of love, deeply hidden from every mortal eye and every creature.

Saint John of the Cross

The Spiritual Canticle, st. 1, no. 5

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: This stained glass window, depicting the Baptism of Christ, was crafted around 1900 by master stained glass artist Édouard Didron. It is located in bay 21 of the Basilica of Notre Dame in Beaune, France. The artwork employs the grisaille technique, where painted images are fused to the glass. Image credit: GO69 / Wikimedia Commons (Some rights reserved).

#BaptismOfTheLord #bride #bridegroom #delight #HeavenlyFather #hidden #SonOfGod #soul #SpiritualCanticle #StJohnOfTheCross

“Nescivi” (Cant 6:11, Vulgata). “I no longer knew anything.” This is what the “bride of the Canticles” sings after having been brought into the “inner cellar” (Spiritual Canticle, 26:14).

It seems to me that this must also be the refrain of a praise of glory on this first day of retreat in which the Master makes her penetrate the depths of the bottomless abyss so that He may teach her to fulfill the work which will be hers for eternity and which she must already perform in time, which is eternity begun and still in progress (cf. Heaven in Faith, 1).

“Nescivi”! I no longer know anything, I do not want to know anything except “to know Him, to share in His sufferings, to become like Him in His death” (Phil 3:10).

“Those whom God has foreknown He has also predestined to become confirmed to the image of His divine Son”(Rom 8:29) the One crucified by love. When I am wholly identified with this divine Exemplar (cf. Ruysbroeck), when I have wholly passed into Him and He into me, then I will fulfill my eternal vocation: the one for which God has “chosen me in Him”, “in principio” (Eph 1:4), the one I will continue “in aeternum” when, immersed in the bosom of my Trinity, I will be the unceasing praise of His glory, Laudem gloriae ejus (Eph 1:12).

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

Last Retreat, First Day, no. 1
16 August 1906

Note: Saint John of the Cross’ commentary on the Spiritual Canticle (stanza 26, no. 14) is as follows:

On the other hand, the elevation and immersion of the mind in God in which the soul is as though carried away and absorbed in love, entirely transformed in God, does not allow attention to any worldly thing. The soul is not only annihilated with respect to all things and estranged from them, but undergoes the same even with respect to herself, as if she had vanished and been dissolved in love; all of which consists in passing out of self to the Beloved. Thus the bride, in the Song of Songs, after having treated of the transformation of her love in the Beloved, refers to this unknowing, in which she was left, by the word, nescivi (I did not know) [Cant 6:11, Vulgata].

In a way, the soul in this state resembles Adam in the state of innocence, who did not know evil. For she is so innocent that she does not understand evil, nor does she judge anything in a bad light. And she will hear very evil things and see them with her own eyes and be unable to understand that they are so, since she does not have within herself the habit of evil by which to judge them; for God, by means of the perfect habit of true wisdom, has destroyed her habitual imperfections and ignorances that include the evil of sin.

Elizabeth of the Trinity, S 2014, I Have Found God, The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity Volume 1: Major spiritual writings, translated from the French by Kane, A, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Adobe Stock (stock photo, also available on Freepik)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/15/sabeth-last1/

#abyss #eternity #HolyTrinity #LaudemGloriae #prayer #retreat #SpiritualCanticle #StElizabethOfTheTrinity #StJohnOfTheCross #StPaul #transformation

Shepherds, you who go
up through the sheepfolds to the hill,
if by chance you see
him I love most,
tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 2

Commentary

The soul in this stanza desires the advantage of intercessors and intermediaries with her Beloved by begging them to bring him word of her grief and pain. This is the trait of a lover: When she herself cannot converse with her loved one, she does so through the best means possible. The soul wants to take advantage of her desire, affections, and moanings as messengers that know so well how to manifest to the Beloved the secret of the lover’s heart. She entreats them to go, crying:

Shepherds, you who go

She calls her desires, affections, and moanings “shepherds,” because they pasture the soul with spiritual goods—a shepherd or pastor is one who feeds or pastures—and by means of these yearnings God communicates himself to her and gives her the divine pasture. Without them, he communicates little to her.

“You who go,” is like saying, you that go out through pure love. Not all the affections and desires reach him, but only those that go out through true love.

up through the sheepfolds to the hill,

She calls the hierarchies and choirs of angels “sheepfolds.” Through them, from choir to choir, our moanings and prayers go to God. She refers to God as “the hill,” because he is the supreme height and in him, as on a hill, one has a view of all things and of both the higher and the lower sheepfolds. Our prayers rise up to him through the angels who offer them to him, as we said. The angel told Tobias: When you were praying with tears and burying the dead, I was offering your prayer to God [Tob 12:12].

These shepherds can also be the angels who carry not only our messages to God but also God’s messages to us. They feed our souls, like good shepherds, with sweet communications and inspirations from God—they are the means by which God grants them—and they protect us from the wolves, which are the devils.

Whether, then, these shepherds refer to the affections or to the angels, the soul longs that they all be helps and intermediaries with her Beloved.

Saint John of the Cross

Spiritual Canticle, stanza 2, nos. 1–3

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: British photographer Sue Edmondson captures this image of a young lamb in Lancashire asleep in its farmer’s arms. Image credit: Sue Edmondson / Adobe Stock (Stock photo)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/20/juan-sc2n1ff/

#affections #angels #God #help #messengers #pastor #prayer #shepherd #SpiritualCanticle #StJohnOfTheCross

Beneath the apple tree:
there I took you for my own,
there I offered you my hand,
and restored you,
where your mother was corrupted.

THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE, STANZA 23

COMMENTARY

The Bridegroom explains to the soul in this stanza his admirable plan in redeeming and espousing her to himself through the very means by which human nature was corrupted and ruined, telling her that as human nature was ruined through Adam and corrupted by means of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Paradise, so on the tree of the cross it was redeemed and restored when he gave it there, through his passion and death, the hand of his favor and mercy, and broke down the barriers between God and humans that were built up through original sin. Thus he says:

Beneath the apple tree:

That is: beneath the favor of the tree of the cross (referred to by the apple tree), where the Son of God redeemed human nature and consequently espoused it to himself, and then espoused each soul by giving it through the cross grace and pledges for this espousal. And thus he says:

there I took you for my own, there I offered you my hand,

That is: There I offered you my kind regard and help by raising you from your low state to be my companion and spouse.

and restored you, where your mother was corrupted.

For human nature, your mother, was corrupted in your first parents under the tree, and you too under the tree of the cross were restored. If your mother, therefore, brought you death under the tree, I brought you life under the tree of the cross. In such a way God manifests the decrees of his wisdom; he knows how to draw good from evil so wisely and beautifully, and to ordain to a greater good what was a cause of evil.

Saint John of the Cross

The Spiritual Canticle: Stanza 23, nos. 2–5

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/06/08/quote-of-the-day-9-june-st-john-of-the-cross/

#AdamAndEve #faith #JesusChrist #redemption #sacrifice #SpiritualCanticle #StJohnOfTheCross #theology #wisdom

You considered
that one hair fluttering at my neck;
you gazed at it upon my neck
and it captivated you;
and one of my eyes wounded you.

THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE, STANZA 31

you gazed at it upon my neck

The soul makes this affirmation to show that God not only values this love of hers because he sees that it is alone, but also cherishes it because he sees that it is strong.

With God, to gaze at is to love, just as to consider an object is to value it. She repeats the word “neck” in this verse, in speaking of the hair—”You gazed at it upon my neck”—because, as we mentioned, this is why he loved her so much; he saw that her love was strong.

Thus it is like saying: You loved it on seeing that it was strong, without cowardice or fear; and alone, without other loves; and fluttering about quickly and fervently.

and it captivated you

Oh, how worthy of utter admiration and joy! God is taken captive by a hair! The reason this captivity is so estimable is that God wished to stop and gaze at the fluttering of the hair, as the preceding verse asserts. And as we pointed out: For God, to gaze at is to love.

If in his infinite mercy he had not gazed at us and loved us first—as St. John declares [1 Jn 4:10, 19]—and descended, the hair of our lowly love would not have taken him prisoner, for this love was not so lofty in its flight as to be able to capture this divine bird of heights.

But because he came down to gaze at us and arouse the flight of our love by strengthening and giving it the courage for this [Dt 32:11], he himself as a result was captivated by the flight of the hair, that is, he was satisfied and pleased.

Such is the meaning of the verses: “You gazed at it upon my neck and it captivated you.” It is indeed credible that a bird of lowly flight can capture the royal eagle of the heights if this eagle descends with the desire of being captured.

Saint John of the Cross

The Spiritual Canticle, stanza 31, nos. 5, 8

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: This detail from a pen and ink drawing of Christ is attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as (il) Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666). It comes from the collections of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Image credit: Rijksmuseum (Public domain)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/11/juan-sc31/

#bird #captivity #gaze #God #hair #joy #love #SpiritualCanticle #StJohnOfTheCross