TRANSCRIPT
(NOTE: This transcription has been automatically generated through an AI program. Consequently, this transcript may not match everything you hear in the podcast episode, and it may contain errors such as spelling, grammar, word choice, etc., due to the limitations of current (AI technology.)
Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of Midnight Carmelite. So, I want to do a podcast on, we’ve been doing podcasts on the Dark Night and I wanted to do one on the Dark Night in relation to the human person. And what I mean by that here is that, you know, it’s not we often when we often talk about things will say in The Dark Night, you say you see the active night of the sense. You’re talking about these ways and where these, like, targeted parts of the person that this is what’s happening in those in this way, right?
But it’s really the whole person who goes to the Dark Night at all times. You’re never separated. And I think there’s a tendency sometimes for us to to divorce that, which should not be divorced, right? So, I wanted to meditate a little bit on Scripture to kind of, what I think brings out what I’m trying to say here, and it’s, if you’re interested, it’s the, at the end of Mark chapter two, and this is the point where kind of giving context for those who don’t have in front of them is Jesus disciples are passing through a field on the Sabbath and they’re picking grain, and the Pharisees basically say, you know, you, are you aware that it’s not lawful to do this on the Sabbath?
And Jesus tells them he’s like, you know, what about when David entered, you know, the House of God, during the days of a bit far the high priest and the loaves of the presentation, which wasn’t awful, and then, you know, if he’s not a priest and then he also gave it to those being with him, and and then Jesus continues, and he says, the sabbath was made or came to pass because of our on the account of man, not man, on account of the sabbath or because of the sabbath or through the sabbath.
So, basically it’s saying that here is that the sabbath day of rest, right? That was made for man, in the sense of it was made through man as man, meaning God understands that we sometimes need rest, that you can’t go forever. There’s a famous passage in St. Thomas and his Summa Theologiae, where he relates the story of John the Apostle and John the Apostle is playing some kind of game, I think it’s a ball or something and he’s playing ball and there’s a person standing on the sidelines and the person is, you know, kind of upset and you know, kind of mumbling, you know, we should be out preaching, we shouldn’t be playing ball, like this is a waste of our time, And john’s playing and playing and eventually john must have taken a break or something because he encounters this person on the sidelines and the person says, you know, you know, you shouldn’t be wasting your time playing ball or doing all these other things, You should be preaching the word of God, it’s it’s right now, it’s imminent.
Get out there and preach the word of God, John turned to this person, he said, So if you have a bow and you fire arrow arrow from it, it increases the tension of the strings. The person said yes, and he goes, and if you fire errors repeatedly, one after another, with very little time between, you know, the tension will increase quite a bit because you’re not giving good bow string much time. Yes, and he was eventually, if you do it over and over and over and eventually the bow string will snap.
Yes, and he says, people are like that, he goes, we can’t always fire our arrows. We need to sometimes let the bow string rest. So the tension gets out of the bow. And I think that’s a very interesting story. So if you look at the bow string, you see that were like the bow string, we can’t have this constant work without rest. So but then Jesus goes further and he says, so the son of man is Lord even of the sabbath.
And so there’s like an identification with him and us there as the son of man, he’s saying because the sabbath was made for men not man, on account of the sabbath and I’m the son of man. So I’m the head then I’m lord of the sabbath because it’s made an economy man. I’m the head of man and it therefore serves me. And if you look in the next chapter in Mark three, they were the Pharisees were still looking for him, doing things on the sabbath to go after him this time.
They went after him because of his disciples. Now they’re obviously probably looking for him to do something so they can go after him. He defended them. And and again, it brings back to this whole idea of a denial in the Dark Night, which is okay if you know, if I’m supposed to work on my spiritual life and I’m supposed to do all these things, deny finite things. And like I’ve been saying in the past couple podcasts, turned the lights off and lock myself included, which you’re not supposed to do, What, what does that mean for?
How do I actually do it basically? How do I actually, you know, live this spiritual life? And, and I think it requires not only being conscious of what your hierarchy is, but it’s also being conscious of where are you resting? You know, if if you’re going to make a, for example, an exercise, if you if you say okay, I’m gonna, you know, I want to build up my biceps and you start doing reps of curls and you don’t rest, you’ll tear your muscle and you could seriously injure yourself.
In fact, especially at the beginning, you know, when when maybe you’ve been exercising for a while, you could really hurt yourself. And I think that applies here in the spiritual life too. It’s you got to start with the baby step, you’ve got to start small. Like when you’re looking at yourself as a human person, just know where you are and start where you are because that’s where God starts because God will always start where you are. So there’s no shame in saying, well, you know, I could see this other person and they’re probably ahead of me.
You don’t know that john is very clear. You have no absolutely no idea where people are. Some people may seem wholly, but you have no idea what’s going on. Only God can see that. So I would dismiss that the second thing is with this rest. I would I would integrate rest. And I mean obviously on Sunday, right, that’s what we’re called to do. But if you know, do it whenever you can because if you don’t, what’s going to happen is the bow string will snap because nobody can go forever.
It just doesn’t work. And and if you’re going to be making this long journey at Mount Carmel, well maybe take a maybe take a break, maybe, you know, um go outside, take a walk, maybe, you know, relax for a certain period time now, you know, and I think, and I think actually having a day of relaxation is ideal now, it’s not possible for most people today, I’m a lot of the times, that’s me, right? So I’m not preaching from a soapbox here, I don’t do it as much as I probably should, or could, I don’t know, anyway, but the point is is that by trying to do that and put at least slipping it in where you can, because you’re integrating your personhood better, it’ll make you stronger for when you have to work on this reordering, working on loving God, you’ll have more energy, you’ll be rested, right?
Just like, again, if you’re to take the sports analogy, you know? That’s funny with the sports analogy, I was just reading origin and he uses athletes and contests to talk about being Christians so that the analogy is apt here is that if you’re going to make the journey in this case, he’s talking about martyrdom, that’s really in a way, what’s happening here with the dark mate is you’re you’re bearing witness to God by conforming your will to God’s will. So this idea of an athlete, this idea of this contest, this has been in Christendom since the beginning, basically.
So give yourself some rest, try to find something that’s relaxing and and and to ease the tension on the bow string, right? And then that way, when you start working on reordering things and going through the Dark Night, then that way, you remember one, you’ll probably see clearer what you need to reorder and two, you’ll be able to focus and walk, you know, like john says, the souls going through the dark night, you’ll be able to go through the Dark Night in a way that’s better. So anyways, thanks for listening everybody.
So. Get some rest, relax, take a break and we’ll see you next week.
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