“It is the nature of abandonment always to lead
a mysterious life, and to receive great and miraculous gifts from God by means of the most ordinary things, things that may be natural, accidental, or that seem to happen by chance, and in which there seems no other agency than the ordinary course of the ways of the world, or of the elements.” - Jean-Pierre de Caussade [18th C.], Abandonment to Divine Providence
(Faith is attuned to this wondrous dimension of ordinary life. Open the eyes of your soul this day.)
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1 COR 8:1B-7, 11-13; PS 139:1B-3, 13-14AB, 23-24 LK 6:27-38 Jesus said to his disciples:
“To you who hear I say, love your
enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you.
To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
offer the other one as well,
and from the person who takes your cloak,
do not withhold even your
tunic.
Give to everyone who asks of you,
and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
For if you love those who love you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love
them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.
If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners,
and get back the same amount.
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them,
and lend expecting nothing back;
then your reward will be great
and you will be children of the Most High,
for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful. “Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to
you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”
Reflection on the Scriptures
Psychic Energy and Contemplation by James
Arraj From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part III, Chapter 9. Inner Growth Books, 1986. A Psychological Dark Night Melancholy could not only counterfeit the dark night, but when it was a question of the unruly movements of sense during the time of prayer, it could magnify these
difficulties: "These impure thoughts so effect people who are afflicted with melancholia that one should have great pity for them; indeed, they suffer a sad life. In some who are troubled with this bad humor the trial reaches such a point that the devil, they think, definitely has access to them without their having the freedom to prevent it; yet some of these melancholics are able through intense effort and
struggle to forestall this power of the devil. If these impure thoughts and feelings arise from melancholia, a person is not ordinarily freed from them until he is cured of that humor, unless the dark night flows in upon the soul and deprives it successively of all things." (27) Thus, both
melancholy and the true contemplative night of sense could be operative in the same person, and this same point is made again later in the Dark Night: "There is thus a great difference between aridity and lukewarmness, for lukewarmness consists in great weakness and remissness in the will and in the spirit, without solicitude as to serving God; whereas purgative aridity is ordinarily accompanied by
solicitude, with care and grief as I say, because the soul is not serving God. And, although this may sometimes be increased by melancholy or some other humour (as it frequently is), it fails not for that reason to produce a purgative effect upon the desire, since the desire is deprived of all pleasure, and has its care centered upon God alone. For, when mere humour is the cause, it spends itself in displeasure and ruin of the physical nature, and there are none of those desires to serve God
which belong to purgative aridity."(28)
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