#thedarknight — Public Fediverse posts

A Few more Hot Wheels that I picked up over the past week or so.... Ok, There is a Jada Fast and Furious Crown vic too....

At least three of these cars I didn't have already thou.... The Color Shifters I had, but the package was slightly damaged, so I saw this one and the package is very nice.

#HotWheels #Diecast #Jada #Batman #Batmobile #ColorShifters #TheDarkNight

Quote of the day, 17 August: St. John of the Cross

So dark the night! At rest
and hushed my house, I went with no one knowing
upon a lover’s quest
– Ah the sheer grace! – so blest,
my eager heart with love aflame and glowing.

In darkness, hid from sight
I went by secret ladder safe and sure
– Ah grace of sheer delight! –
so softly veiled by night,
hushed now my house, in darkness and secure.

Hidden in that glad night,
regarding nothing as I stole away,
no one to see my flight,
no other guide or light
save one that in my heart burned bright as day.

Surer than noonday sun,
guiding me from the start this radiant light
led me to that dear One
waiting for me, well-known,
somewhere apart where no one came in sight.

Dark of the night, my guide,
fairer by far than dawn when stars grow dim!
Night that has unified
the Lover and the Bride,
transforming the Beloved into him.

There on my flowered breast
that none but he might ever own or keep,
he stayed, sinking to rest,
and softly I caressed
my Love while cedars gently fanned his sleep.

Breeze from the turret blew
ruffling his hair. Then with his tranquil hand
wounding my neck, I knew
nothing: my senses flew
at touch of peace too deep to understand.

Forgetting all, my quest
ended, I stayed lost to myself at last.
All ceased: my face was pressed
upon my Love, at rest,
with all my cares among the lilies cast.

Saint John of the Cross

Poetry, 2 — The Dark Night (Translation by Iain Matthew, OCD)

Note: On which night did Saint John of the Cross escape from his prison cell in Toledo? Scholars differ, but one night during the Octave of the Assumption is the safest guess. Some propose the night of August 17th-18th as the most likely date. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD writes:

Taking advantage of a new jailer who was kinder and more lenient, John managed to get paper and ink so as to write down his poems. He also had the opportunity, during a daily reprieve from his cell, to familiarize himself with the monastery surroundings. Then, one hot night in August, after being held prisoner for nine months, emaciated and close to death, John chose life and undertook a dangerous escape he had plotted during the short periods out of his cell. He had discovered a window that looked down on the Tajo river, and underneath the window was the top of a wall. But, of course, there was a lock on his prison door. He solved that problem by loosening the screws of the lock while his jailer was absent. When the friars seemed to be asleep and the house all still, he pushed hard on the door of his prison and the lock came loose. This enabled him to leave his prison and find his way in the dark to the window. By means of a kind of rope made out of strips torn from two old bed covers and attached to a lamp hook, he escaped through the window onto the top of the wall. The wall encircled the monastery and its garden, so he walked around the top of it until he came to what he thought was the street side. There he jumped from the wall, only to find himself in another bad predicament. He had landed inside the courtyard of the Franciscan nuns of the Conception monastery that was adjacent to that of the Carmelites. Fortunately, in one corner of the nuns’ garden he found that the stones in the wall could be used as steps, allowing him to climb over the wall to the city street and to his freedom. Some claimed his escape was miraculous.

The new jailer, Fray John of Saint Mary, later gave this testimony concerning the daring escape:

The servant of God took the handle of an oil lamp and wedged it between the timber and the brick. Tearing some old blankets into strips, he tied one strip to the lamp handle, fastened the others end to end, and added an old tunic—or part of one—at the bottom. Even then, his makeshift rope ended about ten feet above the ground. Worse still, it hung over such a dangerous spot that, unless he dropped straight down, or if he slipped, he would plunge over a precipice. The recent construction had left everything in disarray.

Historian Peter Thomas Rohrbach, OCD continues the story:

On the other side of the monastery wall that August night in 1578, John was lost in the unfamiliar city of Toledo. He slept the rest of the night in a hallway, and in the early morning asked directions to the convent of Discalced nuns in the city from a startled passerby. Presenting himself at the convent, disheveled, almost collapsing from fatigue, he said to the nun behind the grille: “Daughter, I am Father John of the Cross, and I escaped from prison last night. Tell the mother prioress.” Anne of the Angels, the prioress, cleverly contrived to have him admitted into the nun’s cloister for the purpose of hearing the confession of a sick nun. A few minutes after she had brought him into the cloister a group of Calced friars arrived at the convent, demanding to know if their escaped prisoner were hiding on the premises. “It would be a miracle if you were to see any friar here,” she slyly answered. Nevertheless they searched the church and the parlors, and they apparently mistrusted the prioress, for they commissioned constables to patrol the area all day. In the evening the prioress called upon a friend of hers, Peter Gonzalez de Mendoza, a canon of the cathedral and administrator of the hospital of Holy Cross, who spirited John away from the convent, hiding him in his carriage. He brought the saint, who was now disguised in a black cassock, to his hospital where he secretly took care of him for two months until he was strong enough to travel.

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.

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

Rodríguez, J.V. 2015, San Juan de la Cruz: la biografía, 2nd edn, San Pablo, Madrid.

Rohrbach, P 1966, 2015, Journey to Carith: The Sources and Story of the Discalced Carmelites, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Translation from the Spanish text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Featured image: Alcazar of Toledo Illuminated by a Starry Sky. Image credit: tanaonte / Adobe Stock, asset no. 429809606.

Quote of the day, 4 June: Jessica Powers

On a dark night
Kindled in love with yearnings—
Oh, happy chance!—
I went forth unobserved,
My house being now at rest.

— St. John of the Cross

How does one hush one’s house,
each proud possessive wall, each sighing rafter,
the rooms made restless with remembered laughter
or wounding echoes, the permissive doors,
the stairs that vacillate from up to down,
windows that bring in color and event
from countryside or town,
oppressive ceilings and complaining floors?

The house must first of all accept the night.
Let it erase the walls and their display,
impoverish the rooms till they are filled
with humble silences; let clocks be stilled
and all the selfish urgencies of day.

Midnight is not the time to greet a guest.
Caution the doors against both foes and friends,
and try to make the windows understand 
their unimportance when the daylight ends.
Persuade the stairs to patience, and deny
the passages their aimless to and fro.

Virtue it is that puts a house at rest.
How well repaid that tenant is, how blest
who, when the call is heard,
is free to take his kindled heart and go.

Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.
(Jessica Powers)

The House at Rest (1984)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Kylemore Abbey in Pollacappul, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, photographed by Kevin Bosc. Published March 30, 2020, and made available through Unsplash under the Unsplash License.

Me parece que #TheLastOfUs está sendo o que o #thedarknight foi no vídeo game. Quebrando a curva de adaptação merda das coisas.
Está excelente!

Me parece que #TheLastOfUs está sendo o que o #thedarknight foi no vídeo game. Quebrando a curva de adaptação merda das coisas.
Está excelente!

As the Egyptians pressed hard behind the Israelites, Moses told them, “you have only to be still.” In 'The Dark Night,' St. John of the Cross proclaims that he found “sheer grace” in darkness, hiddenness, and stillness.

Read our Day 2 meditation!
🟣 https://carmelitequotes.blog

#StJohnOfTheCross #novena #prayers #devotional #meditations #grace #darkness #hidden #stillness #TheDarkNight #Egypt #Israel #Moses #catholic #Carmelite #quotes #contemplation

As the Egyptians pressed hard behind the Israelites, Moses told them, “you have only to be still.” In 'The Dark Night,' St. John of the Cross proclaims that he found “sheer grace” in darkness, hiddenness, and stillness.

Read our Day 2 meditation!
🟣 https://carmelitequotes.blog

#StJohnOfTheCross #novena #prayers #devotional #meditations #grace #darkness #hidden #stillness #TheDarkNight #Egypt #Israel #Moses #catholic #Carmelite #quotes #contemplation

As the Egyptians pressed hard behind the Israelites, Moses told them, “you have only to be still.” In 'The Dark Night,' St. John of the Cross proclaims that he found “sheer grace” in darkness, hiddenness, and stillness.

Read our Day 2 meditation!
🟣 https://carmelitequotes.blog

#StJohnOfTheCross #novena #prayers #devotional #meditations #grace #darkness #hidden #stillness #TheDarkNight #Egypt #Israel #Moses #catholic #Carmelite #quotes #contemplation

St. John of the Cross Novena, Day 3: Cleansing

Reading

If you desire that devotion be born in your spirit and that the love of God and the desire for divine things increase, cleanse your soul of every desire, attachment, and ambition in such a way that you have no concern about anything. Just as a sick person is immediately aware of good health once the bad humor has been thrown off and a desire to eat is felt, so will you recover your health, in God, if you cure yourself as was said. Without doing this, you will not advance no matter how much you do.

Sayings of Light and Love, 78

Scripture 

This is what we have heard from him, and the message that we are announcing to you: God is light; there is no darkness in him at all. If we say that we are in union with God while we are living in darkness, we are lying because we are not living the truth. But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light, we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth; but if we acknowledge our sins, then God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from everything that is wrong. To say that we have never sinned is to call God a liar and to show that his word is not in us.

I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s. We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments. Anyone who says, “I know him,” and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth. But when anyone does obey what he has said, God’s love comes to perfection in him. We can be sure that we are in God only when the one who claims to be living in him is living the same kind of life as Christ lived.

1 John 1:5-2:6

Meditation

“Cleanse your soul,” writes Our Holy Father Saint John of the Cross. This is the medicine, the remedy he prescribes to those who are sin-sick and desire health and wholeness in Christ. Cleansing the soul of all that is not God enables us to grow in devotion, the desire for the things of God, and to grow in the love of God.

What are we cleansing? Desire. Attachment. Ambition. St. John of the Cross leads us on an examination of conscience with these three points.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) provides a veritable smorgasbord of theological and catechetical delights upon which we may feast in its article on the Tenth Commandment. (CCC 2534-2557) “The tenth commandment concerns the intentions of the heart,” and that goes precisely to the heart of the teaching of St. John of the Cross. Although the teaching of the Catechism rightly focuses on “coveting the goods of another” (CCC 2534), St. John would caution us to examine our disordered desires for another’s spiritual goods, not simply temporal goods. Who among us has not desired or envied someone else’s contemplative spirit, prayerful attitude, or Christlike zeal?

The Catechism says that “the sensitive appetite leads us to desire pleasant things we do not have” (CCC 2535). But Our Holy Father John of the Cross explains how his teaching encompasses more than just the senses: “God gathers together all the strength, faculties, and appetites of the soul, spiritual and sensory alike, so the energy and power of this whole harmonious composite may be employed in this love” (Dark Night II, 11:4).

Love: that must be our true ambition. First, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; then, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Lk 10:27). St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus went one step further, praying: “You know, Lord, that my only ambition is to make you known and loved” (Pri 8). If we are willing to do some regular housekeeping, we will progress—step by step— toward the desired state of having “no concern about anything”, just like an infant in its mother’s arms (cf. Ps 131:2).

Saint Raphael Kalinowski, a Discalced Carmelite friar from Poland who learned about the Carmelite order by reading the lives of the saints during years of forced labor in the salt mines of Usole, Siberia, has some housekeeping suggestions for us. May the beauty and depth of his words bring us a message of hope and encouragement as we read and understand the teaching of Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross.

As the raging sea seems to feel displeasure at all that pollutes it, and desires to expel from itself anything foreign, so that the beauty of the mysteries it holds might appear to view in all clarity, so the soul does not tolerate anything within itself unless it is of God or leads to God; approaching confession from the abyss of her misery, she casts off everything, desiring to preserve in herself only the image of God according to which she was created, to look only at him and to rejoice only in him. In her love-filled tears she receives a shower of graces that descend from the wounds of her Savior. The misery of sin makes way for grace, the thorns become roses, and even the very poison of sin changes into an antidote for the soul. Here are the fruits of a good confession: it purifies, heals, fortifies, and beautifies the soul.

All that we have treated so far leads us back to what we discussed at the beginning: imitating our Holy Father by using the means the Savior left us to purify our soul, to preserve the heart ever pure in order to be able to transform it into an altar of the living God, and to become enamored of him in suffering and being despised: Altare Dei, cor nostrum! Humilis corde, cor Christi est [The altar of God is our heart; the humble heart is like the heart of Christ].

In the sketch of the Ascent of Mount Carmel drawn by Our Holy Father John of the Cross, we read: “Here there is no longer any way because for the just . . . there is no law.” This means that if all the prescriptions of the law have as their object the love of God, when this is fully attained, the prescriptions cease of themselves. True repentance, in crushing the heart of man, crushes everything opposed to the love of God and destroys all that does not lead to him… And all this through Mary (Excerpts from On a Good Confession, 24 November 1902).

Prayer

O St. John of the Cross
You were endowed by our Lord with the spirit of self-denial
and a love of the cross.
Obtain for us the grace to follow your example
that we may come to the eternal vision of the glory of God.

O Saint of Christ’s redeeming cross
the road of life is dark and long.
Teach us always to be resigned to God’s holy will
in all the circumstances of our lives
and grant us the special favor
which we now ask of you.

Mention your request

Above all, obtain for us the grace of final perseverance,
a holy and happy death and everlasting life with you
and all the saints in heaven.
Amen.

Let’s continue in prayer

Day 1 — Self-trust
Day 2 — Self-giving
Day 3 — Cleansing
Day 4 — Walking in love
Day 5 — Trust
Day 6 — Prayer
Day 7 — Humility
Day 8 — Eternal Silence
Day 9 — Silent love

The novena prayer was composed from approved sources by Professor Michael Ogunu, a member of the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order in Nigeria.

Praskiewicz, S 2016, Saint Raphael Kalinowski: An Introduction to his Life and Spirituality, Coonan, T, Griffin, M & Sullivan, L (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

All scripture references in this novena are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America as accessed from the Bible Gateway website.

Don’t become discouraged and give up prayer, says St. John of the Cross. We offer varying novenas to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, as well as novenas to St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, and St. Joseph.

Let us unite in prayer

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