Lenten Meditation - March 5, 2006

Those beginners who make progress do not rely on visible instruments. They do not burden themselves with them, nor do they seek to know more than is necessary for acting rightly. Their eyes are fixed on God, and their desire is to please him.

With great generosity they give up all they possess, spiritual and material, for their joy is to be poor out of love for God and their neighbor. They set their sights only upon true interior perfection, which is to please God in everything, and themselves in nothing.

It is right that the soul, as far as it is able, should work to purify itself, that it may merit that God take it into his Divine care and heal it of those imperfections before which it is helpless.

For, after all the efforts of the soul, it cannot by its unaided labors make itself fitted for union with God in love. God must take it himself into his own hands and purify it in the dark fire.

- St. John of the Cross, Collected Works: Dark Night of the Soul, Book I:3