Ascent of Mount Carmel/Dark Night of the Soul – St. John of the Cross (1943)

S$62.00

Ascent of Mount Carmel/Dark Night of the Soul – St. John of the Cross (1943)

S$62.00

Title: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul (Vol. 1 of The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross)

Author: Saint John of the Cross, P. Silverio De Santa Tereas (trans.), E. Allison Peers (ed.)

Publisher: Burns Oates, London, 1943. 2nd printing.

Condition: Hardcover, cloth. Fair. Front hinge cracked, some tanning to pages and rubbing to spine. 486pp.

 

SKU: st-john Categories: ,

Vol 1 of The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, comprising General Introduction, Ascent of Mount Carmel, and Dark Night of the Soul

About Ascent of Mount Carmel (from Wikipedia):

Ascent of Mount Carmel is a 16th-century spiritual treatise by Spanish Catholic mystic and poet Saint John of the Cross. The book is a systematic treatment of the ascetical life in pursuit of mystical union with Christ, giving advice and reporting on his own experience. Alongside another connected work by John, entitled The Dark Night, it details the so-called Dark Night of the Soul, when the individual Soul undergoes earthly and spiritual privations in search of union with God. These two works, together with John’s The Living Flame of Love and the Spiritual Canticle, are regarded as some of the greatest works both in Christian mysticism and in the Spanish language.

Written between 1578 and 1579 in Granada, Spain, after his escape from prison, the Ascent is illustrated by a diagram of the process outlined in the text of the Soul’s progress to the summit of the metaphorical Mount Carmel where God is encountered. The work is divided into three sections and is set out as a commentary on four poetic stanzas by John on the subject of the Dark Night. John shows how the Soul sets out to leave all worldly ties and appetites behind to achieve “nothing less than transformation in God”.

About Dark Night of the Soul (from Wikipedia):

Dark Night of the Soul is a poem written by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. The author himself did not give any title to his poem, on which he wrote two book-length commentaries: Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night.

The “dark night of the soul” does not refer to the difficulties of life in general, although the phrase has understandably been taken to refer to such trials. The nights which the soul experiences are the two necessary purgations on the path to Divine union: the first purgation is of the sensory or sensitive part of the soul, the second of the spiritual part (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Ch. 1, 2). Such purgations comprise the first of the three stages of the mystical journey, followed by those of illumination and then union.

There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas of the poem. The thesis of the poem is the joyful experience of being guided to God. The only light in this dark night is that which burns in the soul. And that is a guide more certain than the mid-day sun: Aquésta me guiaba, más cierto que la luz del mediodía. This light leads the soul engaged in the mystical journey to Divine union.