In this episode, we unpack a profound quote from St. John of the Cross: "When something distasteful or unpleasant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be silent." We explore how the natural human reaction is to defend ourselves against perceived injustices, but the spiritual path calls us to a radical silence. By viewing our adversaries not as enemies but as God's chosen craftsmen, we can embrace the purifying chisel of suffering. Like Christ annihilated on the cross without consolation, we are called to trust God as our sole vindicator and allow our trials to sculpt us into saints.
You have the concepts, but you need the tool. When the audio ends and the silence returns, don't go back to "trying harder." Use the "5-Minute Prayer Reset" to stabilize your interior life and prepare for the Divine Physician.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello there, and welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite.
This week I wanted to push forward on what we were talking about last week, and there's a quote I found from St. John of the Cross where he says: "When something distasteful or unpleasant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be silent."
I want to unpack this a little bit and go through what I think this means based on what John is saying and how we think about it. Naturally, let's say you're at work or at home and someone yells at you, someone says bad things about you (true or false), someone threatens you, or any sort of bad thing. The natural logic says that you must speak up. From John's teaching, what I could find is that he would say you speak up to the proper authorities. That being said, our most powerful spiritual response is actually to say nothing. That's the best thing. Now, why is that?
John goes on to say that when Christ was on the cross, He was annihilated in His soul without any consolation or relief. In other words, to carry your cross daily is to be on the cross with Christ, and to annihilate yourself to the point that you will not receive any consolation or relief, and to be like Him, to experience that suffering not for suffering's sake, but to show the depths of love like He did.
We'll get to that love in a second. How is this? Why does God say that we need to suffer like this and have no consolation and relief? John gives us the answer. He says those things I was speaking about earlier are not enemies, because remember, God didn't consider us an enemy when He came down to die for us. They are craftsmen. They were placed there by God to mortify you by working and chiseling at you.
In his background, John actually did manual labor as a child. He's using this analogy where he's saying, look, think of yourself like a big piece of stone or a piece of wood. It has no form. At first, you have something to start with. You either have a messed up piece of stone or marble, or you have the piece of stone or marble that you're going to chisel from. The artisan, the craftsman, will chisel away over time at the stone, taking pieces off, and then from what was a block will be this beautiful sculpture, it will have this beautiful form.
That's how we should think about our holiness, and how these unpleasant or distasteful things that come our way, that's God using the bad to chisel us to form us into saints. He's making us into saints. Again, back to the beginning of this podcast, the natural reaction is to metaphorically speaking, to stand, to respond. It is to say, "Hey, back down," or whatever. The problem is that when you really dig into what John is saying, that's not the way to do it. That's actually the wrong way. The way is to remember Christ crucified and be silent.
What does he mean here by remembering Christ crucified and being silent? Back to my original point, being silent means that you let God and trust in Him as your sole vindicator. That's going to knock you down a bit on the pride department, because most people are naturally fighting for self-preservation. The goal here, and what John is pointing at, is that most of the time we use false justifications to defend ourselves because of our pride and our anger and all these other things. That is not the path to holiness. It's not the path to holiness.
So, whenever something unpleasant or distasteful comes your way this week or any subsequent week after, remember Christ crucified. Remember that He had no consolation or relief, even from His Father. "Father, why have you abandoned me?" Remember that these unpleasant things are there to chisel you, to form you, and to purify you, to make you a saint. So that God can take those bad things, which are bad (no one is denying that), and bring the greatest good out of it, which is making you a saint so you can spend eternity with God.
Anyway, that's all for now, and I'll see you next time.
