Red, and etc.

As the perfect finishing touch of the disguise, the soul puts on the precious red cloak of charity. The third virtue lends elegance to the other two and lifts the soul near to God. The red cloak of charity makes the bride so alluring to her Beloved that she dares to say: “Although I am black, O daughters of Jerusalem, I am beautiful and so the king has loved me and brought me to his chamber.”

The cloak of charity is a mantle of love. It heightens love for the Beloved. It protects and conceals the soul from her third adversary: the animal nature. Where there is true love of God, the urge for self-gratification and the attachment to one’s own things cannot enter. Charity strengthens and revitalizes the other virtues. It renders them more genuine. It graces them with loveliness and deeply pleases God. The Song of Songs calls charity the seat draped in purple on which God rests.

The three-colored virtues prepare the three faculties of mind, memory, and will for union with God. Faith darkens and empties the mind of all natural understanding and so prepares it for union with divine wisdom. Hope pulls the memory away from all creature attachments. St. Paul says that hope is for that which one does not have. And so it withdraws the memory from the ordinary things that can be possessed and focuses it on the glory the soul hopes for. Charity annihilates the appetites of the will, ruining the soul’s taste for anything that is not God. Charity centers the desires on God alone. Charity cultivates the will and merges it with God through love.

The virtues separate the soul from all that is less than God; their purpose is to join her with God. Unless the soul walks sincerely in these three virtues, it is impossible for her to reach perfect union with God through love. It is vital for the soul to wear this disguise if she is to reach her goal, which is sweet and loving union with the Beloved. It was a blessed chance the soul took when she put on this disguise and stayed with it until the end of her journey. That is why she cries out in the next verse, “O exquisite risk!”

Green

Over the white robe of faith, the soul spread a green shawl of hope. Draped in hope, she is liberated from her second adversary: the world. This is the green of living hope in God; it fills her heart with courage. Hope lifts the soul to the sphere of eternal life. In comparison with these divine aspirations, all earthly things seem withered and worthless. The soul cannot take back her worldly wardrobe. She can no longer focus her desire on anything that was, is, or will be in the world. She lives wrapped in hope for nothing less than the infinite. Her heart is so transported that she cannot touch earthly things. She can’t even see them.

St. Paul calls this green disguise the “helmet of salvation.” A helmet protects the whole head. It covers it entirely, except for a visor to peek out of. Hope shrouds the mind’s senses so that they will not become absorbed in worldly things. Shielded by hope, no arrow from the world can wound the soul. Hope opens a visor in the soul through which she can look only toward the divine. David says: “Just as the eyes of the handmaid are fixed on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes fixed on our God until he has mercy on us who hope in him.”

Wearing the luminous green shawl, gazing perpetually upon God and nothing else, content only with him, the soul brings delight to her Beloved, and he gives her all that she hopes for. Without this green shawl of hope in God alone, the soul might as well not even start out on her journey of love. It is unrelenting hope that moves and overcomes all obstacles.

White

The inner robe of faith is pure white: radiant, blinding to the eye of the discursive mind. It is the foundation of all the other virtues. Clothed in faith, the soul is protected from the Fallen One. Dressed in white, the soul captures the heart of her Beloved and attains union with him. Without faith, says, the Apostle, it is impossible to please God; with faith, he says, it is impossible not to. It is as if God were saying to the soul: If you desire union with me, come clad in faith beneath everything.

The soul was wearing the white robe of faith when she went out into the dark night and traveled the dangerous depths of inner emptiness. There was no comfort for her senses, no light for her intellect. No relief from above: God’s house seemed to be locked and the Master hidden away. No relief from below: her spiritual guides had nothing left to offer. And yet the soul suffered with humility and perseverance. She passed through these troubles without growing discouraged and blaming the Beloved. The Beloved proves his lover’s faith. “Because of the words of your lips, I have kept hard ways,” says David.

The End of the Dark Night

As I'm sure anyone who reads this blog will be gratified to know, I have finished Mirabai Starr's wonderful translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul and will at last move on to something else. I just wanted to post Chapter 21 of the book, which is titled: “An explanation of why the soul says that she is in disguise, and a description of the colors of the disguise the soul wears in the night.” "Disguise" refers to verses in St. John's original poem, "Songs of the Soul."* John analogizes by way of wardrobe - the soul's garments, of three colors, representing three virtues - something I find charming and beautiful. I'll reprint here the whole chapter, separating posts by color, because....well....because it's so Krzysztof Kieslowski:

We disguise ourselves by hiding under a garment that makes us look different from who we really are. We use our disguise to please and charm our Beloved or to elude our enemy and accomplish our mission undetected. We choose the clothing that most clearly reflects our heart’s desire and also most carefully conceals us from discovery by those who would do us harm.

The soul, filled with love of God and longing for his friendship, leaves her house dressed in the vivid hues of her affection. She goes out covered in love and she is safe, invisible to her three adversaries: the world, the animal nature, and the Spirit of Evil. She wears garments of three different colors: white, green, and red, which symbolize the three virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

Don't forget to read these in reverse-blog order!

I have to add that I adore St. John of the Cross. What sweetness, and what lovely gentleness in this man! He wrote the poem first, and added Dark Night of the Soul as an explication; some think the poem far surpasses the explanatory prose, but I love much of what he has to say in the book. When he speaks in the poem of "my house," he is referring to physical human existence, which encompasses all of our sensual and spiritual passions: "The exquisite risk begins once the soul finds all the members of her household asleep. It is God who has put all the passions and appetites - both sensual and spiritual - to bed." Perhaps I would have understood this eventually, but I was glad for lengthy discussions of sleeping household members, the climbing of secret ladders, and the wearing of various colorful robes, shawls, and cloaks. Incarnation, indeed!


* "Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still."

"Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night."

From John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul (Mirabai Starr's translation), Book 2, "The Night of the Spirit," Chapter 6: "Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night":

In dark contemplation, the soul suffers the suspension of all her natural supports and perceptions, which is terribly painful, like hanging in midair unable to breathe. God is purging the soul, devouring all the imperfect habits and inclinations she has contracted throughout her entire life, as fire consumes the tarnish of metal. Besides this natural and spiritual poverty, she is likely to suffer interior torment from the radical undoing of all the remaining imperfections rooted firmly in the substance of the soul. "I shall gather up the bones and light them on fire. The flesh shall be consumed and the whole composition burned, and the bones shall be destroyed," says Ezechiel. "Place it also empty upon the embers that its metals may heat up and melt, its uncleanness taken away from it, its rust consumed."

Purified in this forge like gold in a crucible, as the Wise Man says, the soul feels as if she herself were coming to an end. David calls out to God: "Save me Lord, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. I am trapped in the mire of the deep. I have nowhere to stand. I have come unto the depth of the sea and the tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in my cry, my throat has become raw and my eyes have failed while I hope in my God."

God greatly humbles the soul now so that he might greatly exalt her later. And he makes it so that when these feelings are quickened in the soul they are soon stilled; otherwise she would die within a few days. The soul is only aware of their vibrancy at intervals. These souls descend into the underworld alive.

I will say more about this later.

Right now, I have two thoughts. First, that this sort of thing, the reading of Scripture as a description of the mystical journey of the soul as it moves towards (and away from) God - something that John of the Cross does quite often - is the beginning of a new theology. It is a way to make the Bible intelligible in the modern world; a way to connect with people outside the tradition.

This kind of reading diametrically opposes "fundamentalism" - and it is a historical method as well. "Fundamentalism" is essentially, and ironically, a very modern way of looking at the Bible. It is a scientific reading of literature that was often meant to be read and understood in a completely different way. This, I think, is the means to the end we seek: a "new Pentecost," as I read elsewhere (someplace!). A new language for a new era, and a way for the Holy Spirit to reach the modern ear.

Second: Well, maybe I'll wait on that as well; so much to say about it. But here's the topic: what our connections through this medium mean for religion going forward. I get a lot out of talking things over with people online, and together we already make up an informal "community" of sorts - people who identify with, and feel related to, one another in matters of the heart and of the spirit. Some of us are self-described solitaries (in the religious sense, I mean) already, but we have found a way of talking to one another in way in which most of us can't, with people in our actual lives. I find this to be similar to what happens in the monastic communities, actually. I'm very interested in how the phenomenon might play out; I wonder if there will be formal "virtual communities" of this sort in the future, made up of people who have otherwise normal lives but internet-based spiritual lives. Can we pray the Daily Office together, apart? Can we follow one of the various "Rules of Life" this way, or create new ones? Can we work out new theology in these kinds of discussions? (The web is changing the world in every other area of life, through the lightening-fast spread of ideas; why wouldn't this also happen in the spiritual life?)

IOW, can we have ordinary, but religious, lives, together in this way in the modern world?

But this is a big topic, so maybe for later.