"In Company with the Strong"

Sayings of Light and Love, #4

In the experience of suffering, the assumption is usually that God has abandoned us. Suffering is a privation of one kind or another. Because of some affliction in body, mind, or soul, we feel that we are being deprived of the happiness that we desire and for which each of us was made. Furthermore, in our suffering, it is easy to give in to the impression that we are all alone - that no one understands or could relate to what it is that we are going through at this difficult moment. This may be true, simply because there is something very intimate about suffering which cannot be communicated to another. If the pain is extreme it may also seem that everyone and everything is failing us. The privation caused by suffering is an evil, but it does not go completely unredeemed. The word from John of the Cross today bears within it some very good news. There is some benefit to suffering, trial, and temptation. Our present question is: "what good can come out of suffering?"

John of the Cross is here to answer this question about suffering. One of the reasons, this Carmelite mystic appealed to me immediately in my first reading of him over 16 years ago, was his ability to speak to the issue of suffering so universal to us all, providing some meaning in the experience. I came to learn, reflecting on his sage advice and the example of his own life, that human suffering is not just a negative. In fact, there are many positives in our trials, discomforts, and desolations. St. John of the Cross helps us to understand the meaning behind this mystery of human existence. He knows what suffering is all about.

Let's start with the example of his life. There are many instances of privation and suffering in John's life from the poverty of his childhood to his final illness in Ubeda. We will focus on the most important one: his time in the prison cell of Toledo. One night in December, St. John was returning from the nun's monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, where he was serving as chaplain, to his residence on the same property. Suddenly, he was abducted, blind-folded and brought secretly to the Carmelite Monastery of calced friars in Toledo.

He was imprisoned under the pretext of living as a recalcitrant religious, a friar "rebellious and contumacious." John of the Cross was placed in a cell where there was barely enough room to stand. The cell was no more than six feet wide and ten feet long. There was one window (no more than two inches wide) towards the ceiling of the room from which some light and a little air would come. The cell was freezing cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer. It was a place of darkness and utter squalor. He was placed on a diet of bread and water. On Fridays and other days, he was brought to the refectory where he was beaten with a discipline, each of the 85 friars of the community taking turns while reciting the Miserere (Psalm 51). John of the Cross would bear the scars on his back from these episodes for the rest of his life. These calced friars tried everything, from bribery to feeding him false information about the failure of the reform, in order to get him to renounce his life as a discalced Carmelite - a way of life which he had begun with St. Teresa of Jesus. He would remain faithful and persevere through it all, escaping nine months later during the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

John's experience of suffering would span the spectrum of the physical and the psychological and move even into the depths of the spiritual. During that period of physical and emotional privation and darkness, he would experience a dark night of the spirit. God's presence vanished and he felt alone and abandoned. He did not even have the support of prayer and was refused the ability to celebrate Mass. He prayed his Divine Office by what little light came from the tiny window of his cell. In short, his suffering was total. Like Christ on the Cross, John was suspended between heaven and earth without any tangible support from above or below. The experience of suffering in prison gave St. John of the Cross light and understanding about the nature of the spiritual night through which the soul must pass in order to arrive at union with God. In his commentary on the Dark Night he writes:

"They resemble one who is imprisoned in a dark dungeon, bound hands and feet, and able neither to move nor see nor feel any favor from heaven or earth. They remain in this condition until their spirit is humbled, softened, and purified, until it becomes so delicate, simple, and refined that it can be one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love that God, in his mercy, desires to grant. In conformity with this degree, the purgation is of greater or lesser force and endures for a longer or shorter time." (Dark Night II, 7, 3).

This is about as close as we will get to an autobiographical account of John's own suffering in Toledo. It says everything, however, demonstrating that his experience was not just a privation, a negative event without meaning or value. A positive good was born out of this event in the Carmelite mystic's life - union with God. Great darkness in the life of John gave way to great light.

We might pause now and ask ourselves once more, "what could possibly be the point of all that suffering?" St. Teresa will be the first to reply when she exclaims that no one had suffered more for the discalced reform than her little Seneca, St. John of the Cross. Teresa may have described him as "half a friar" (due to his diminutive stature) but Fray John never did anything by half measures! He gave his whole heart and soul to Carmelite religious life and the Teresian reform, dedicating himself to the exercises of the interior life and contemplation. He suffered for his dedication, and yet, it proved him true. All the suffering united him more completely to Jesus his Beloved and the Cross. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, John of the Cross explains that Christ accomplished his greatest work on the Cross. In the complete annihilation of Christ on the wood of the Cross, in both body and spirit, Jesus worked the reconciliation of humankind to God. John would live out the paschal mystery in his own life and arrive at the most sublime state of interior grace by his suffering; union with God in the darkness. His poem Dark Night, written while in his prison cell, describes the significance of this period of trial: "O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover." This is just a sketch to give an impression of the value of suffering in the life of the Christian - it leads to union with Christ! Trial and transformation are one in the person of St. John of the Cross. Trial, temptation, and suffering all leads to the transformation of the human person in God. It changes us… for the better!

The saying with which we started this reflection serves as a word of direction for times of trial and difficulty. The first lesson: we are weakness itself. It should amaze us, then, that we try so hard to rely on our own strength. Self-reliance is an illusion. The burden of suffering makes us rely on the only One who is strong, the Almighty. In suffering, the soul learns to live in God's company and to lean on him. The burden of suffering tells us that God is close. When we are free of the burden, it just might mean that we have thrown off the yoke and run from the company of God. Jesus says: "…my yoke is easy, and my burden light." (Mt 11, 30). The yoke of the Cross is light and easy because Jesus bears the greater part of the suffering. God abides with the afflicted. Jesus knows what is in your heart and what it is that you suffer. He suffers in us and with us. You are not alone in your suffering! Do not be tempted to throw off the Cross. In patience remain in the trial and trust with silent love; for "virtue and strength of soul grow and are confirmed in the trials of patience." Suffering is not a privation. It is the boon of great goods - the greatest gifts of God, a sign of his love for us and union with him.