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Showing posts from August, 2010

Comments on the Dark Night

I have been reading in recent days regarding certain aspects in the lives of well-known Catholic saints that have long fascinated me. For example I came across an account of St. Paul of the Cross (who founded the Passionists) and who apparently from documentary evidence spent most of his latter years (45 in all) enduring a continual dark night experience. Perhaps, largely due to his close namesake St. John of the Cross, an unduly limited view of the dark night is sometimes taken. So the dark night process (especially with respect to the passive nights of sense and spirit) is often viewed as an intermediate stage for advanced contemplatives on the way to transforming union. However this can mistakenly imply that somehow the process has no longer any strict relevance during the ensuing unitive life (in what I refer to as the radial stages of development). However this would be very mistaken. One of the great limitations that I have frequently pointed to is the possible restricted v