Wednesday, August 24, 2005
BXVI and Dark Night of the Soul
If you have time you should also read the earlier articles posted. They're quite good.
Tim mentioned that the popular refrain he has heard is that many just say they loved JP the Great but just do not know B16 very well yet. This brought me to thinking about a possible analogy here to the interior life. I am thinking in particular about St. John of the Cross’s Dark night of the senses and Dark Night of the Soul. To keep from running down rabbit trails myself and also from getting any stalwarts lost who are still reading this blog, let me layout where I am going. I first will briefly describe the salient aspects of the Dark night and relate them to JP the Great’s anthropology. Then I will get to the main point, that is showing how it appears to me that one can find an analogy between an aspect of the WYD experience (and all of our experiences of this new Holy Father for that matter) and this Dark Night.
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So what does this have to do with WYD and B16? Well perhaps part of the reason for God’s choice of B16—a holy, wise and loving soul but one who does not have the charisma of JP the Great—because it is time for us to mature. We need to learn to love the Holy Father because he is Christ on earth for us. JP the Great was easy to love because he made us feel so good. He could exude the love he had for his flock, to millions at once. B16 does not have these same gifts. We do not receive the same affects from him (in general anyway—some I am sure do). We are perhaps being called to maturity. If the youth continue to flock to the Holy Father, who loves them every bit as much as JP the Great did, without the affective reinforcement then what JP the Great started I believe will bear much fruit. If most of the youths’ response to the Church and Her leader was a shallow, personality based response then we will see WYD (as many of the disaffected critics claim) fall off. I put my money on the former. Only time will tell.
Tim mentioned that the popular refrain he has heard is that many just say they loved JP the Great but just do not know B16 very well yet. This brought me to thinking about a possible analogy here to the interior life. I am thinking in particular about St. John of the Cross’s Dark night of the senses and Dark Night of the Soul. To keep from running down rabbit trails myself and also from getting any stalwarts lost who are still reading this blog, let me layout where I am going. I first will briefly describe the salient aspects of the Dark night and relate them to JP the Great’s anthropology. Then I will get to the main point, that is showing how it appears to me that one can find an analogy between an aspect of the WYD experience (and all of our experiences of this new Holy Father for that matter) and this Dark Night.
...
So what does this have to do with WYD and B16? Well perhaps part of the reason for God’s choice of B16—a holy, wise and loving soul but one who does not have the charisma of JP the Great—because it is time for us to mature. We need to learn to love the Holy Father because he is Christ on earth for us. JP the Great was easy to love because he made us feel so good. He could exude the love he had for his flock, to millions at once. B16 does not have these same gifts. We do not receive the same affects from him (in general anyway—some I am sure do). We are perhaps being called to maturity. If the youth continue to flock to the Holy Father, who loves them every bit as much as JP the Great did, without the affective reinforcement then what JP the Great started I believe will bear much fruit. If most of the youths’ response to the Church and Her leader was a shallow, personality based response then we will see WYD (as many of the disaffected critics claim) fall off. I put my money on the former. Only time will tell.
