Coming Soon: Turning to St. John of the Cross

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2021

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Season 3 of Turning to the Mystics will continue with our next mystic, St. John of the Cross. We will begin our journey together on March 8th, 2021. Many have emailed and asked which book we will be working out of. You can purchase it here, although it is not necessary. We will continue to include the passages in the transcripts. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about Jim, visit jamesfinley.org  Connect with us: We also produce other podcasts you might enjoy. To learn more about them and our other offerings, visit cac.org This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at cac.org/podcastsupport Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.3	To learn more, visit caac.org.
0:07.0	Coming soon, on turning to the mystics, I think Thomas Merton was the first Christian mystic
0:17.4	that I read in high school, in sign of a journalist, which led me to go to the monastery.
0:24.4	Be with him as my teacher, which is real grace for me.
0:28.5	Within with Thomas Merton's guidance, I began to read the classical texts of these mystics
0:34.5	that were going through in this series.
0:37.1	And John of the Cross was the first mystic that I read under his guidance.
0:42.3	And I can remember having never read John of the Cross before any of these classical texts.
0:47.9	I remember the very first time I took with me my copy of John of the Cross and walked
0:52.9	out into the woods and sat on the ground, the base of a tree.
0:59.0	And I read this opening sentence, this is the prologue of how he begins his first work,
1:05.2	John of the Cross, as a deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary
1:13.0	to explain the dark night through which his soul journeys toward that divine light,
1:18.7	a perfect union with God, which is achieved in so far as possible in this life through love.
1:26.1	The darkness and trial, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily encounter
1:32.1	on their way to the high-stated perfection are so numerous and profound
1:37.4	that human science cannot understand them adequately.
1:40.8	Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them.
1:45.6	He who suffers them will know what this experience is like, but he will be unable to describe it.
1:52.3	I can remember sitting there as 18 years old, and that's the first sentence of the book.
2:00.6	And I can remember just singing, like most of this is going right over my head,
	...

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