St. John of the Cross: Session 6

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the sixth session that focuses on the mystic, St. John of the Cross. With this episode, Jim turns back to Thomas Merton's book, The Inner Experience, to summarize his own understanding of The Dark Night and begins to move us towards St. John of the Cross's work on The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. Through these works, he will introduce us to the mystical awakening that emerges out of the dark night, and the oneness or union that comes with infused contemplation. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about Jim, visit jamesfinley.org  The transcript of this podcast can be found here. The book being used for this season can be found here. (Currently, there are issues with hyperlinks on Apple Podcasts since their recent update. If links aren't working, please visit our website at cac.org for the transcript. Thanks!) 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 to learn more
0:05.0	visit caac.org.
0:08.0	Greetings. I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:23.0	Greetings, everyone. And welcome to our time here together.
0:28.0	Turning for guidance to the teachings of the Christian Mystics and John of the Cross.
0:35.0	In this session, I'm going to go back to the beginning and summarize in my own words,
0:43.0	my own understanding of the dark night.
0:50.0	And from there, also in my own words, to move on into the spiritual canticle in the living flame of love,
0:58.0	to introduce this understanding of the mystical awakening that emerges out of this dark night.
1:06.0	As we go through this transformative journey that we've been following,
1:10.0	and it comes to a point where flowers or blossoms into this mystical communion with God,
1:17.0	this God's infinite oneness with us in love, and realize in this loving knowledge of God.
1:27.0	And then for the lexio part of Turning to a text, I also then want to turn and sit at the John of the Cross directly to Thomas Merton,
1:36.0	where he summarizes the same John of the Cross himself.
1:40.0	There's a few very succinct statements and his ability to make this more accessible to us.
1:46.0	On what this mystical union is, this union of infused contemplation.
1:53.0	So, hopefully, this will help make these teachings more accessible.
1:57.0	I know they're challenging, but they're also deeply rewarding.
2:01.0	But the more we can get into the wavelength, like it tuned in,
2:07.0	to kind of an intuitive resonance with what's being spoken of here,
2:11.0	and the light of my shit on our own experience and our ongoing search for God in prayer and in daily life.
2:18.0	I think that that's our goal here.
	...

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