Although It is an Advent Night

We live at a time of great fear and insecurity. So many difficult and painful evils are revealing themselves in the most discouraging ways at precisely the moment when courage is most needed. It is long past time that we take our bearings and find our footing. We are all in a cultural night where the most basic human truths are being rejected even by those we most trust and hold most dear. Even in the Church, a spiritual night has come in the form of loneliness and confusion among not only the faithful, but her ministers, and these at the highest levels. Whatever kind of night it is for you, surrounded by so much the unknown solicits fear and confusion. Unfaced, these movements of heart rob it of the courage it needs to stand firm. But faith teaches a different response.

Whether what is unknown is in our culture, in the Church or even in our hearts, it is long past time that we take our bearings and find our footing. Indeed, Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He is coming, flowing forth from the Father as a boundless River that overflows its banks. Hope is the music of a soul that welcomes this surging flood from the Father. This is what Advent is all about. Christ is producing this hope deep within every heart that welcomes Him in his ever new and unfamiliar comings. This hope has the form of interior, spiritual music - a canticle of praise ringing out in the night that one can only discover in silent prayer.

St. John of the Cross has a poem about this music in a soul that believes. His poem invites us into a beautiful meditation during this Advent Season and challenges us to the silent prayer that allows this music to unfold. His whole doctrine of "night" helps us see even the physical darkness of the season as a metaphor for interior vision. Indeed, faith comes by hearing not by sight. Whatever is going on culturally, ecclesially, or personally, faith invites us to open the eyes of the heart - the only eyes that see rightly. When we open the eyes of faith, we realize with St. John that what most fills the nights of this life is not fear of the unknown but this powerful music, a canticle of praise whose strands resound all the more beautifully the darker it is.

This is a wonderful corrective for those who reduce the life of faith to obscurantism. True music is never obscure, but instead the most accurate unveiling of who we are in this swiftly passing life. Our souls are musical because music in the only adequate response to the truly beautiful. Faith looks on a beauty so exquisite that it can rescue us even from death. It is the Beautiful One Himself who reveals Himself solicits this interior canticle. Like a Bridegroom, He runs his course. Or, as in the poem of St. John of the Cross, like He is a brimming river flooding forth to inundate whereever it flows with unfathomable depth. Is this not what happens when the Eucharistic Christ unveils his presence to the Church?

When we believe in the saving mysteries that we cannot see, an interior, spiritual music rises up in us. This soundless symphony carries us through the darkness, that is through those painful moments of life that seem impossible, but with Him are not so. Never reducible to what the unaided light of human reason sees, this flood of divine presence "who does not spurn the Virgin's womb" ignites the light of faith. Indeed, the darkness cannot hold back the Light but the light of faith overcomes every obstacle against which natural cognition is powerless. In other words, faith sees God's presence in every situation no matter how hellish, and as long as we practice renewing our faith in this divine presence, we will always hold fast our hope.

All of this is a long introduction to what St. John of the Cross describes in his poem Cantar de la Alma que se huelga de conoscer a Dios por fee. This is a meditation about the hidden music in the soul. The rhythm of the refrain "in the dark of night" unfolds from the inaccessible depths of the Holy Trinity to the gift of the Bread of Life. Each repetition is another step through heaven, earth and even hell. and every step of the poem culminates in the mystical contemplation that lives in Eucharistic worship.

Indeed, St. John of the Cross seems to have sung the mysteries of this poem in his own soul while in solitary confinement in Toledo. His cell was a dark drafty closet under a stairwell with nothing but a slit to the outside that barely let in the smallest amount of fresh air. To all appearances, his devotion to the Lord, rather than edifying his community, had sewn division and rancor. His dedicated ministry could only seem to have ended in total disaster. His friends, he was told, had all forsaken the reform that they began together. He was the last one left. Was his devotion steadfast love or was it the very obstinance that he was accused of? Months of oppressive isolation must of stirred deep doubts about where he was spiritually. However, rather than cave into despair, he found a way to maintain his faith. This was by cultivating the music of his soul. Though imprisoned in darkness, through the lightless slit of his cell, he heard the roar of the River Tagus below the convent and became aware of where he was. So, also, the spiritual isolation he felt was relieved as he pondered his own interior canticle responding to Christ's new coming in his life, an advent not despite but because of his present circumstance.

His poem was born of real suffering and has something to say to all those who feel alone in the dark. Just as is the case in our bodily life, so too spiritually, knowing where we are is critical if we are to hold firm our hope. This Advent, with all the gatherings and joyful reunions it occassions, is a time of darkness where we become more acutely aware of familial strife and divisions. The stress of loved ones who have alienated themselves from the family hurts all the more this time of year. The worry for those who lost their way is even more painful in the shared smiles of a Christmas party. For others, the haunting loneliness of life circumstances can even become unbearable. This means, it is a time of faith.

Our faith is born from hearing, so we must learn to listen. To listen, we must turn off the technology and make time for silence and for solitude. We enter this silence not only out of devotion for the Lord, but also out of concern for those who most need his presence in their lives. In this silence, we take them to Him with a simple act of love even as we attend with the ears of our hearts to the Word of the Father. It is true. Nothing seems to be happening. Nothing noticeable at least. Yet by faith we know a certain descent of the Holy Spirit. What is the darkness really except the overshadowing of God the Father? And the mystery conceived in the Virgin's womb is conceived in our hearts - unseen, hidden in the frailty of our own humanity, but nonetheless present in power.

This Word made flesh stirs with delicate force in the depths of our own spiritual powers, and when He stirs, He transforms our whole being until through the faithful soul. He makes all things new, even in the darkness. This new creation, this saving wonder of love, this is what evokes such melodies in us as we were meant to sing from before the foundation of the world. Mental prayer, time spent in silence before the Lord, helps us hear the music that God is causing to break forth in us even when nothing else makes sense.

This translation is inspired by by John Federick Nims in the 3rd Edition of Poems of Saint John of the Cross as published by the University of Chicage, 1979, pp. 42-45 . I love the rhyme. However I changed the last line of each stanza "in the dark of night" to "although in the night" because the Spanish says "aunque es de noche." This change emphasizes that the mysteries that the stanza describes are not seen but believed. Notice the deviation of this line in the penultimate stanza where again I changed the translation to "because it is night." Again, this attempts to reflect a deviation in the Spanish text itself where it says, "porque es de noche." Perhaps those of you who know Spanish better than I can come up with even better translations.

The spring that brims and ripples

oh I know

although it is night.

Waters that flow forever and a day

through a lost country-oh I know the way

although in the night.

Its origin no knowing, for there's none.

But weIl I know, from here all sources run

although in the night.

No other thing has such delight to give.

Here earth and the wide heavens drink to live

although in the night

Though some would wade, the wave's unforded still.

Nowhere a bottom, measure as you will

although in the night

A stream so clear, and never clouded? Never.

The wellspring of all splendor whatsoever

although in the night

Bounty of waters flooding from this well

invigorates all earth, high heaven, and hell

although in the night.

A current the first fountain gave birth to

is also great and what it would, can do

although in the night.

Two merging currents of the living·spring---:

from these a third, no less astonishing

although in the night.

O fountain surging to submerge again deep

in the living bread that's life to men

although in the night.

Song of the waters calling: come and drink.

Come, all you creatures, to the shadowy brink

because it is night.

This spring of living water I desire,

here in the bread of life I see entire

in dark of night.