CREEDE HINSHAW: The more the resolutions, the grander the fall

One of the joys of retirement is the freedom to meditate on spiritual classics that I never got around to reading. I am reading “The Dark Night of the Soul,” a universally recognized treasure of Christian mysticism. First published around 1619 in Barcelona, it is the work of Spanish mystic Juan de Yepes Y Alvarez, a Carmelite monk later canonized, named a Doctor of the Church and eventually known as St. John of the Cross.

Before his canonization John, who was severely persecuted (by the church!) for his faith, wrote a poem while in a church prison and later wrote “Dark Night” as a commentary on his poem. John meditates about how God often brings believers to the deepest faith by allowing them to experience seasons so dark that the very presence of God seems to have disappeared. His own prison experience must have informed his writing.

In the opening section of the book, John describes the process by which new Christian disciples find faith and how that faith is often immature. John is convinced that the believer’s first efforts and experiences of faith must fall away so that faith can deepen. These passages are particularly pertinent at the onset of a new year:

SPIRITUAL SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS OR SPIRITUAL MEEKNESS: “There are other of these spiritual persons … who fall into another kind of spiritual wrath: this happens when they become irritated at the sins of others, and keep watch on those others with a sort of uneasy zeal. At times the impulse comes to them to reprove them angrily, and occasionally they go so far as to indulge it and set themselves up as masters of virtue. All this is contrary to spiritual meekness.” (page 53)

MAKING GRAND RESOLUTIONS AND HOPING TO ATTAIN INSTANT SAINTLINESS: “There are others who are vexed with themselves when they observe their own imperfectness, and display an impatience that is not humility; so impatient are they about this that they would fain be saints in a day. Many of these persons purpose to accomplish a great deal and make grand resolutions; yet, as they are not humble and have no misgivings about themselves, the more resolutions they make, the greater is their fall and the greater their annoyance, since they have not the patience to wait for that which God will give them when it pleases Him; this likewise is contrary to the spiritual meekness aforementioned, which cannot be wholly remedied save by the purgation of the dark night. Some souls, on the other hand, are so patient as regards the progress which they desire that God would gladly see them less so.” (page 53)

Are you too impatient when it comes to spiritual progress or are you so self-satisfied that God desires you’d be a little more stirred up over your lack of headway? It’s a question worth pondering. I’ll probably revisit John of the Cross later this year.

(The volume I am reading is translated and edited with an introduction by Allison Peers, Doubleday Books, published 1990.)

Contact columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].