My brothers and sisters, there is no greater time to be Catholic than now. We have a tremendous opportunity at this moment to enter the prayer closet and worship Him with abandon. Fellow humans are dying from what the government calls an “unseen enemy,” referring to the Covid-19 virus that has infected more than a million (as of this writing), with hundreds of thousands dying around the world.
We are self-quarantining everywhere. When we meet friends, we keep a minimum of six-feet away. When we shop for food, we cover our faces. We see our streets empty. Those we see rarely smile. When we arrive home, we wash our hands over and over again. We hear heartbreaking stories of loved ones dying alone, separated from family. Yet we know that the love of God that surpasses all understanding upholds those who call upon Him. Grace prevails in times of hardship.
In the Sacramental Wilderness
Most sadly, on a personal note, our churches are as good as closed. There is no liturgy, nothing external to bolster sagging shoulders and lift lowered heads. Worst of all, there is no Eucharist. Our priests celebrate Mass alone, not permitted to concelebrate with others. They consume the Sacred Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord and Savior, without the faithful being permitted even to stand in the back, behind the pews, to listen and watch. A time of penance for sure. A time to turn closer to God.
There was a time in our Church when “seeing” the Eucharist was as good as receiving Him on one’s tongue. At the elevation, persons standing in the back would yell out, “Higher! Higher!” when they could not see the Sacred Host because of the people in front of them. Viewing the Eucharist was enough for many people. Is seeing it on TV the same as seeing it held high at the altar of grace?
However, dear sisters and brothers of the faith. Like Christ driven into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights without human interaction, we have the opportunity to fast from the Precious Body of Christ, our ultimate Sacrifice. We have the opportunity to fast from participating in the sacred liturgy. An undeniable loss. We are forced now to turn our eyes to Him who first loved us. We have time to break open the Word of God and find solace. It is the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through His Word.
John of the Cross’s Own Wilderness Experience
Holy Scripture tells us that “Faith come through hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ” (Romans 10:17). In Hebrews we read that “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). St. John of the Cross tells us that “Faith… brings us to believe divinely revealed truths which transcend every natural light and infinitely exceed all human understanding…. The light of faith in its abundance suppresses and overwhelms that of the intellect. For the intellect, by its own power, comprehends only natural knowledge, though it has the potency to be raised to a supernatural act whenever our Lord wishes” (Kavanaugh, Collected Works, 110). Saint John says in another place in the book, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, that faith is the “legitimate and proximate means of union with God….” And, he claims that faith “is a dark night for man, but in this very way it gives him light. The more darkness it brings upon him, the more light it sheds” (Ascent, Book II, 4).
The saint was writing from his own experience, his own battle with self and the world around him that assisted him in denying himself and living in faith.
The Proper Response: Reform
In the fall of the year 1567, twenty-five-year-old Carmelite priest, Father John de Santo Matia met with a fifty-two-year-old Reformed Carmelite Nun, Madre Teresa de Jesús, in the town of Medina del Campo. Medina was Father John’s hometown. He just finished singing his first Mass, months after his ordination.
The nun was in town making final arrangements for a second foundation for nuns professing the Carmelite life in the reform movement she called the Discalced. It was a more rigid movement, a return to the Primitive Rule that required much in the form of sacrifice and selflessness. She was considering extending the strict reform to the Carmelite friars. A student from the University of Salamanca suggested she speak with Father John as a possible candidate to help her bring the reform to the friars.
Father John shared with the nun in private that his heart was pointing him toward a transfer to the Carthusian Order. Founded by Saint Bruno, the Carthusians were austere hermits who lived in community. Father John’s goal was to embrace a deeper, contemplative life of solitude and prayer.
Mother Teresa explained to the young priest that the Reformed Movement would provide just such a life, as they restored the Primitive Rule for the friars of the Mitigated Rule. Father John was interested in the vision shared by the Nun and embraced the reform.
A year later, after assuming the responsibilities of both confessor and chaplain to the new Reformed Nuns, Father John, under the direction of Mother Teresa, formed a small group of friars in a farmhouse in Duruelo. On the first Sunday of Advent, November 28, 1568, the Father Provincial celebrated Holy Mass, then received the renunciation of the Mitigated Rule from the several men in attendance and their profession of the Primitive Rule. Father John de Santo Matia changed his name to John of the Cross.
The Challenges of Reform
As the Reformed Movement grew, there was much contention between the friars and nuns of the reform (Discalced Carmelites) and those called Calced. On December 2, 1577, John of the Cross and a companion were kidnapped by a group of Calced Fathers and taken to Toledo. The two were forced to renounce the reform. John refused. He was declared a rebel and imprisoned.
The “jail cell” occupied by the future Saint was originally intended as a closet. It was six feet wide and ten feet long. There were no windows in the cell, only an opening with a slit high in the wall. The cell was very cold in winter and suffocating in summer. John was deprived of his hood and scapular, (a large pieces of cloth front and back joined over the shoulders with strips of cloth, originally used as a type of work apron), the symbol of his piety and commitment. He was given little food and beaten, leaving him with wounds that never healed properly.
On August 16, 1578, John escaped and found his way to the Discalced nuns in Toledo. The nuns hid him from the search party. He eventually escaped to El Calvario in the south of Spain where he was afforded the opportunity to restore his health.
Saint John of the Cross lived his life in communion with God. His tremendous insight in the mystical life, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, and his other works, assisted in raising him to the position of Doctor of the Church.
On December 13, 1591, Saint John of the Cross died. “… without agony, without struggle, at the age of forty-nine, repeating the words of the Psalmist: ‘Into your hands O Lord, I commend my spirit.’ The favors he had asked for in his declining years he had now received: Not to die as a superior; to die in a place where he was unknown; and to die after having suffered much” (Ibid., 26).
Much to Learn from the Saints
These great saints, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, knew deprivation, suffering, and persecution. Most of us, myself included, could hardly walk a day in their shoes. Perhaps in this week we call Holy, we can find it in our hearts to thank the Lord who first walked that narrow way before us. Then perhaps we can offer up any inconveniences, sufferings, and deprivations of this recent shut down period for the grace to find ourselves on that same pathway to holiness.
