The Way of Sorrow
The writings of St. John of the Cross are filled with Joy. It is our desire and our destination—pure, transforming, fiery Joy. The greatest exuberant happiness offered by the things of this world is barely the near edge of the first step toward the mere threshold of that Joy. We are made for it, and it will be ours, God willing. But that is at the end of the story. We’re not there yet. We must first travel the way of sorrow.
St. John of the Cross was ordained a priest in 1567, in the Carmelite order. The Carmelite friars at that time generally were good and faithful men, but St. John sensed that something was lacking: a life of deep prayer. His heart already was turned completely toward God, and he already was abandoned to pursuit of his Beloved, like the bride in the Song of Songs. So he was planning to transfer to the Carthusian order. Its silence and devotion to prayer attracted him like haunting music. Then he met St. Teresa of Avila, the architect of a reform of the Carmelite order, still in its early stages, but destined to set the Church on fire.
St. Teresa was, by then, a force in the world. Imbued with confidence in God, and possessed of natural gifts of eloquence and command, she opened up a new path for St. John: stay with the Carmelites, and spread the reform to the male half of the order. He agreed.
In the years that followed, he endured sorrows that would have broken most people. Opposition to the reform intensified to the point that St. John was arrested, kidnapped by his own fellow Carmelites, and imprisoned in a miserable cell for nine months. Toward the end of his life, he was persecuted and belittled, even by his own comrades in the reformed order. Sorrow and suffering followed him.
Who has known rejection and betrayal from loved ones? We must seek healing, in the sense that we cannot let our wounds define us or hold too great an influence over us. But healing in a deep and lasting sense is not always possible in this life. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that healing might not mean undoing the wrong that was done. The sorrow remains. When you have loved, with a love that came from places in your heart that you did not know existed, until you loved that person—when you have loved with a love that didn’t even come from you but came from somewhere outside you, and flowed through you, and carried you—when your heart has taught you impossible things about what love can do—and then you lost that beloved one—what do you do with that sorrow?
How do you endure
O life, not living where you live?
And being brought near death
By the arrows you receive
From that which you conceive of your Beloved.
Why, since you wounded
This heart, don't you heal it?
And why, since you stole it from me,
Do you leave it so,
And fail to carry off what you have stolen?
The post-modern therapeutic pseudo-religion offers the promise of canceling sorrow. You must simply elevate the almighty self, be the hero of your own story. In other words, make the satisfaction of your own desires more important than any external reality, whether person, place, or thing. If anyone or anything stands between you and that consummation, brush it aside. And if you can’t manage that, then medicate.
We must learn that, in this life, joy does not cancel sorrow. But it is also important to know that sorrow is not a failure to accept joy. Some sorrows just are. We should not run from them. We should lay them down alongside joy. Here, Lord, is my sorrow, which comes to me from life in this fallen world. Please weave it into my joy, which comes from You. It will still be there while this life lasts, a companion and a burden that I do not seek to escape—just as You did not seek to escape the burden You carried for me.
St. John of the Cross teaches us that the way of sorrow and the way of joy run side by side. For now. Be at peace.