Dark Night of the Soul - Softcover

St. John Of The Cross

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935785990 ISBN 13: 9781935785996

Publisher: Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

With His gentle hand He wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended. // Part poetic masterpiece, part mystic treatise, The Dark Night of the Soul by 16th century Carmelite monk, St. John of the Cross, addresses the feeling of being forgotten by the Presence of the Almighty that every Christian desirous of walking more closely with God must pass through in order to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. // Spiritual persons suffer great trials...by reason of the fear which they have of being lost on the road, thinking that all spiritual blessing is over for them and that God has abandoned them since they find no help or pleasure in good things. Then they grow weary, and endeavor to concentrate their faculties with some degree of pleasure upon some object of meditation, thinking that, when they are not doing this and yet are conscious of making an effort, they are doing nothing. // Perhaps one of the most widely recognized of the mystical writings, St. John’s classic Dark Night of the Soul is not only practical theology but a beautiful balm of healing to anyone whose heart has ever echoed the words of Christ, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

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Review:

Almost every believer feels forgotten by God sometimes. Even Christ cried out on the cross, "Oh God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Dark Night of the Soul, a 16th-century mystical text written by the Carmelite monk St. John of the Cross, ranks among Christianity’s most helpful answers to this enduring question. In St. John’s vision of spiritual life, the pain of separation from God is to be embraced, not avoided. "The dark night is about being fully present in the tender, wounded emptiness of our own souls," explains translator Mirabai Starr--although she grants that modern culture makes such acceptance hard to attain. "We tend to see difficult feelings as a form of illness, which we hope to conquer, cure, and expel. [St. John of the Cross] has a far greater imagination of human life: his goal is not health but union with the divine." Several fine English translations of Dark Night already exist; Starr’s, however, is distinguished by its ecumenism. Minimizing the explicit scriptural references of the original text, she makes the treasures of Dark Night more accessible to readers of all religious traditions. --Michael Joseph Gross

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About this edition

• Publisher: Bottom of the Hill Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1935785990
• ISBN 13: 9781935785996
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144