Lectio
“God will give illumination by bestowing on the soul not only knowledge of its own misery and lowliness but also knowledge of his grandeur and majesty.”
— St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night
Meditatio
God often reveals Himself to us through contrast. First, He reveals our sin, by allowing us to feel the fullness of the despair and desolation we have chosen by choosing that which is not Him. He reveals to us the darkness and suffering of eternity without love — without Christ — allowing us to weep, gnash our teeth, as the fire strips away everything we mistook for love, and the worm of longing — insatiable, undying — is all that remains. And by this, He reveals to us ourselves, to the misery and lowliness that all of our life’s choices, all of our best ideas and efforts, have led us to.
He does not do this against us, however. He does this for us. He does this out of His love for us, and so that we may, in a graced moment of clarity, see what our life has become by choosing other than love. It is as if our vision has been distorted by a veil of our own making and, in His infinite mercy, He lifts that veil from before our eyes to give us a choice. And while in this moment of pure seeing, we may feel entirely alone, forsaken by God and man, and as if there is no hope, God does not lift the veil without also providing a new way of seeing, and a new path forward, which is to say, without revealing to us Himself.
At first, we may not see Him for the darkness, but as grace allows us to walk in a new way, we slowly begin to realize that the dark abyss we have entered is in fact the vast presence of God, Himself, enveloping us from all sides in arms of love — surrounding us with a light so bright that our eyes need time to adjust. His grandeur and majesty, we come to discover, are not some far off thing, but the very grace that reveals both our suffering and the gentle promise to heal us of it. And by our graced consent to His healing, by faithfully, even if timidly, leaning into His promise, His light enters us through our wounds, our souls are enlightened with the very radiance of Christ from which we once ran.
Oratio
With Your Light
enlighten my soul
with love
good Lord
fill me with Your light
my ways
have brought me nought
but despair and desolation
I have become but a shadow
absent of all goodness
a malignant abyss
of consumption
and resentment
a bitter taste
an abscess
an infection
heal me with Your love
good Lord
fill me with Your light
make whole what is broken
enlighten the darkness
make my soul anew
Contemplatio
Related Scripture
For Further Reading
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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