A great Saint teaches us how to be in union with God. Find out what you need.
Newsroom (31/07/2022 2:45 PM, Gaudium Press) St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest mystics in history, proposes a path to encounter God.
Awareness of God’s love
The first point is to know that God loves us, to have this certainty within you, because Christianity is not a set of rules, but is instead an encounter with the love of God Who loves us without conditions.
“When the soul understands what it must do […]; knowing the great debt it owes to God for having created it for Himself alone (for which it owes Him the service of its entire life)[…]” (Spiritual Song 1, 1).
Awareness of God’s love will accompany us throughout the Christian life.
Purifying the soul
Once the soul has perceived God’s love, the second step is to purify the soul, removing from it all that separates it from God.
Purification consists in loving God with the same love with which one is loved.
The state of perfection, according to John of the Cross, consists in the union of the soul with God.
“Do not flee from suffering, for it is for your good”.
The union that transforms
You can only abandon attachments and vices if you find something much more beautiful: the love of God.
In “Living Flame of Love”, St. John of the Cross describes in detail the process of the transforming union in God.
In fact, the Holy Spirit purifies the soul of the Christian, illuminates it, warms it like a flame.
On the other hand, in “The Dark Night”, St. John of the Cross describes the “passive” aspect of the progressive transformation and purification of the person.
Man with his human effort is incapable of freeing himself from inclinations and vices, he can control them, but not eradicate them.
Even in spiritual marriage, the Bridegroom makes the bride (soul) understand His secrets, especially the mysteries of His Incarnation and the ways and paths of human redemption.
“In the twilight of life we will be judged according to love; learn to love as God wants to be loved:
To come to savour everything,
Desire a taste for nothing.
In order to possess everything,
Wish to possess nothing.
To become all things
Wish to be nothing.
To know everything
Desire to know nothing.
If you want to have something in everything
Your treasure will not be purely in God. (St. John of the Cross)
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
