"Christ is Mine and All for Me"
Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love, Sayings of Light and Love # 27
If you could ask for anything from God, what would it be? Did you know that you could ask him for it All? At least this is what John of the Cross teaches us in his famous “Prayer of a Soul taken with Love.” After the exclamation cited above, the Mystical Doctor asks the following question, accompanying it with an answer in the form of a loving demand: “What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul? Yours is all of this, and all is for you. Do not engage yourself in something less or pay heed to the crumbs that fall from your Father’s table. Go forth and exult in your Glory! Hide yourself in it and rejoice, and you will obtain the supplications of your heart." ["Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love," Sayings of Light and Love, #27]. If our hearts conform themselves to this strong counsel, we will find for ourselves the glory of divine love. This prayer promises a great deal.
We cannot possibly continue our meditations on the Sayings of Light and Love without spending some time commenting on this celebrated prayer. The prayer captures a moment of loving flight in God. John of the Cross, in these powerful "supplications of the heart," describes the exultation of a soul in God through love. They represent on some level the ultimate desire of anyone who is traveling on the path of prayer. Along the Way, we all hope for a taste of this kind of love. We pray to be taken with love.
Background
When reading the lives of the saints we become used to the fact that they often enjoyed special favors from God as they worked for the cause of his Church and the spread of the Gospel. For example, thinking of St. Teresa of Jesus (Avila) we immediately recall her ecstasies, revelations, locutions, and raptures of love given as gifts which would help her in the mission of founding monasteries of Carmelite nuns.
It is sometimes hard to relate to the saints in these moments of extraordinary spiritual favor, which are truly supernatural experiences of God and his gifts. However, we must not forget that the saints are no different from us. They too carried the weight of our frail and fallen human nature. This means that they would have experienced darkness, desolation, dryness and distraction in prayers - even moments of doubt and discouragement. Just read about how Teresa felt in the hours following her first foundation of St. Joseph's in Avila, or the spiritual poverty she mentions as she settles down to begin her spiritual masterpiece, the Interior Castle.
Closer to our current meditation is the life and example of St. John of the Cross. Here is a snippet from a letter, describing the period just following his captivity in the prison cell in the Carmine of Toledo (a monastery belonging to the Carmelite friars of the Ancient Observance).
"Jesus be in your soul, my daughter Catalina. Although I don’t know where you are, I want to write these lines trusting that our Madre will send them on to you if you are not with her. And if it is so—that you are not with her—be consoled with the thought that you are not as abandoned and alone as I am down here. For after that whale swallowed me up and vomited me out on this alien port, I have never merited to see her again or the saints up there. God has done well, for, after all, abandonment is a steel file and the endurance of darkness leads to great light. May it please God that we do not walk in darkness!"
[St. John of the Cross, Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Letter 1 (to Catalina de Jesus, discalced Carmelite Baeza, July 6, 1581), p. 736.]
John of the Cross writes these lines feeling both abandoned and alone. Here is the man who was strong enough to survive nine months in a cramped cell shrouded in spiritual darkness. He compares the room in which he was imprisoned to the belly of Jonah's whale. It swallowed him up and spit him out on foreign shores. Brave Fray John is bewildered in the strange port in which he has landed. He does not despair; rather, he explains the good of being abandoned. He says that the loneliness acts like a steel file. Enduring spiritual darkness leads to great light. And yet, he does not wish such experiences on anyone praying: "May it please God that we do not walk in darkness!"
St. John, as a man of prayer experienced periods of both light and darkness - periods of fullness and of emptiness. He is the master of what is called the Nada and the Todo… the Nothing and the All. He teaches us that God is to be found in both the All and the Nothing, because he is Everything to us! Each of us must learn to say: Christ is mine and All for me!
Times of abandonment, of dryness, darkness, along with trial prepare us for the fullness of God, for the All. God makes room for himself by emptying our hearts of all that is not of him. Spiritual darkness too, is a preparation for God's overwhelming light. The dark night it is exactly what we are now describing. God by drawing us through painful purifications and self-emptying is overwhelming the one traveling the path of prayer and union with divine light. Yet, in the passage towards the brightness of Divine Union with God through love, it seems only like darkness to us and not the fullness of love. Rather it feels like the opposite, that we are nothing and have been rejected. The experience raises some doubts and hesitations to be addressed. In addressing them we will see that God is our "All" in the experience of "the Nothing" (i.e., the perception of nothing in prayer, in life and in relationships, in ourselves, in our works and accomplishments). When everything fails us, it is then that God becomes our All.
Hesitations in making the Ascent of Love:
Sin, Labors, & Suffering
Before we are capable of saying the bold things which we find in the prayer of a soul taken with love, we must first address initial hesitations. Yes, there are things in our life-experience that hold us back from being taken up in love. What are these blocks to love? What prevents the ascent, our being taken by love to the summit of Mount Carmel (a symbol for Divine Union). The prayer itself suggests three hesitations: attachment to sin, the refusal of love's demands, and the fear of suffering.
The first answer that comes from the lips of St. John of the Cross as he makes this prayer with us is: sin. He asks, "Lord God, my Beloved, if you still remember my sins in such a way that you do not do what I beg of you, do your will concerning them, my God…" What is it that the soul desires in making such a request? The mystical doctor is placing a request in our own mouth, a petition for union with God through love. This is the greatest desire of every human heart. The soul taken with love is asking to be free from sin by the exercise of God's goodness. God, in the greatness of his love, will be known through our sinfulness by showing us his great mercy. John of the Cross is giving God the freedom to do whatever he needs to do in order to free us from our sins. The evil of sin binds us and prevents us from being taken captive by love. God frees us from the bondage of sin in order to bind us to himself in the union of love. All sin is a block to love. God removes this obstacle in his great mercy and we beg him to do so… to remember us in his steadfast faithfulness. To be honest with you: this is a poetic request for what God needs to do in the dark night. A terrifying request, but one we must beg the Lord to accomplish in our journey of prayer. (See Book One of the commentary on the Dark Night for a more complete discussion for the need of spiritual purification.)
Freed from sin, the soul asks for something else. What else? Well, works of love are also needed in the ascent of love. The soul in this prayer asks for such works: "…if you are waiting for my good works so as to hear my prayer through their means, grant them to me, and work them for me…" If we ask God, he will do that which we ourselves cannot do. What does this prayer reveal about our powerlessness? We are not able to love God as he deserves. God must give us his own love if we are to love him with the strength necessary for divine union. This is key. Let God love you and perform for you the works of love that are needed for arriving at the summits of the spiritual life.
The prayer shows us something else about being taken up in love. Namely, that there is no love without suffering and no suffering without love. Think for just a moment: was there any time in your life that you failed to show love because you were afraid of the suffering involved in loving? The suffering could have been something like the terror of being truly vulnerable before another. Whatever it was, love costs and it demands everything. Look at the Cross of Christ to see the truth of this statement. Love suffers for the other. Maybe that thing which is holding us back from being drawn up into love is the refusal to suffer for love. The soul must pass through suffering before it arrives at the delights of love. This probably gives us pause. Yet, in removing this hesitation the soul courageously asks: "…and the sufferings you desire to accept…let it be done." Love casts out all fear of suffering and of the Cross and is willing to work hard. St. Augustine remarks: love makes all labor light!
Our Mite and the Might of God's Love
Throughout the works of St. John of the Cross the recurring theme of love is apparent. It is the one thing necessary for union with God along with the gift of faith. These two theological virtues give the soul all that it needs to approach God as he is, and to be united to him. For our Carmelite Saint, we fail most often to reach the heights of Divine Union because our love for God has very little strength. We must be strong in love and generous of heart in responding to the invitation to Divine Intimacy. Question: what do we do in our poverty?
St. John gives an answer and shows us a way forward to loving union with God. Simply put, ask God to give you the love you need. As the soul looks at its own loving deeds or lack thereof, it makes this tremendous request:
"…if you are not waiting for my works, what is it that makes you wait, my most clement Lord? Why do you delay? For if, after all, I am to receive the grace and mercy that I entreat of you in your Son, take my mite, since you desire it, and grant me this blessing, since you also desire that. Who can free themselves from lowly manners and limitations if you do not lift them to yourself, my God, in purity of love? How will human beings begotten and nurtured in lowliness rise up to you, Lord, if you do not raise them with your hand that made them?"
[Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love, Sayings of Light and Love # 27]
God desires to exalt each of us in his love, even to love us as if we were the only person to love in this world which he created. Remember that if you were the only one in the world who needed redemption, God's Son would still have gone to the Cross just for love of you. This is the ultimate truth: God does take us to himself. That is why he sent his Son into the world to dwell among us - to lift us up to himself by Jesus' death on the Cross. From the Gospel of John we hear:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn 3:16)
Jesus promises:
"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (Jn 12:32)
God overcomes our poverty by becoming poor, pouring into our emptiness the wealth of his love. God in an outpouring of total love flows into our nothingness with his All, his Son Jesus Christ. If we acknowledge that we are bankrupt, God can do anything with our surrender in love. God can even take us up to himself in the union of love. Just when we thought that there was nothing for us, we discover that all things are in God who becomes our whole desire and love. Why? Because God will not take away from us what he has given: his Christ. If Jesus, is for us who can be against us? The soul now asks of itself: "With what procrastinations do you wait, since from this very moment you can love God in your heart?" How is such love possible? It is because Christ is mine and all for me! What else could we possibly want?!