"We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see ahead,
but looking back the very light that blinded us
shows us the way we came,
along which blessings now appear,
risen as if from sightlessness to sight,
and we by blessing brightly lit,
keep going toward that blessed light
that yet to us is dark."
Wendell Berry
When I try to articulate something of the experience I have had through the past year and a half (and more) culminating in the post I put up at the end of March, (The Paradox of Prayer and Ever-Deepening Hunger) I am aware that it is a difficult paradox. After all, how can an experience of yearning be the presence of the source and ground of the thing hoped for? Similarly, how can an experience of abject loneliness and darkness be an experience of the Light that God is? During the past month, I have spent time "unpacking" this experience with my director, and it is this quote from Wendell Berry that comes back again and again to help explain things.
I am pretty sure that John of the Cross would have recognized the way the Divine Light blinds and leaves us in darkness; at the same time, it allows us to look back at where we have been to see everything with a new kind of clarity and meaningfulness, a new wholeness and holiness. I am also reminded that John of the Cross admired the hermit vocation as an outward sign of an interior state, namely, the union with God to which every person is called. We hermits journey toward that union, "toward that blessed light/ that yet to us is dark." The joy of this darkness, despite the pain and struggle we also continue to experience, is awesome. That is the sense with which I enter Holy Week this year.
Almost twenty years ago, then-Bishop Vigneron asked me who my favorite saint was. It was a way of breaking the ice at our first full conversation on my petition to be admitted to perpetual profession as a c 603 hermit. I answered "St Paul," and then burbled on about how much I loved his theology of the Cross, declaring, "If I could spend the rest of my life coming to truly understand that theology, I would be a happy camper." (Yes, those were my exact words!) Well, be careful what you ask for!! I have continued to learn Paul's theology of the cross, not just academically, but existentially. It is another way of describing the journey I have been making, and the very heart of this eremitical vocation. That way or via crucis, is precisely the path, [[along which blessings now appear/ risen as if from sightlessness to sight,/ and we by blessing brightly lit,/ keep going toward that blessed light/that yet to us is dark.]]
.jfif)
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