The Shadow of Our Own Greatness (S11EP16)

The rejection of God's illuminating grace is rarely a passive error; it is an active, willful orientation of the lower faculties toward the trivial. When the soul prioritizes its own spiritual achievements over divine teleology, it cultivates an ontological resistance to the light. This spiritual pride obscures the intellect, causing the individual to excuse their faults rather than confront them. To rectify this disordered attachment to creatures and spiritual gratification, the soul must undergo the rigorous purification of the Dark Night, stripping the ego of itself to restore a state of genuine, childlike receptivity.

• Why the willful preference for darkness constitutes an active rejection of divine charity rather than a passive misunderstanding of grace.
• The ontological distinction between the exposing light of God and the self-serving darkness of creaturely attachment.
• How spiritual pride manifests in the faculties as a vain desire to instruct others and a refusal to accuse oneself in the confessional.
• The theological necessity of spiritual dryness as a mechanism to detach the soul from the comfortable darkness of the ego.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. So this week I want to meditate on some scripture. And I want to start with John 3:16. You know, you see this all the time on billboards: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that everyone who believed in him may have eternal life. But what got me thinking is, if the gift of God's Son is so free and so great, then why isn't everyone saved? In other words, why does hell exist? And this isn't a full answer to that, but it's just some quick thoughts. And thinking about that, I went to the verses in the same chapter of John 3:18-21 that kind of give the key here. And it says, this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil. So the verb there is agapa, which should sound like agape, which means charity. So these people aren't just stumbling into darkness, they're giving themselves to it. So the rejection of God isn't a passive misunderstanding, it's an active, willful preference to hide. And that hiding obviously is calling back to Genesis, where they hid from God when he called them in the garden. But then you wonder, why do people hide? And verse 20 gives us the answer to that. It says, for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed. So, you know, when you walk into a room and it's dark, you can't see anything, you don't really know what's going on, you turn the light on. All of a sudden you see distinctions, right? You can see, for example, if you're getting up in the middle of the night to get a drink in the kitchen. You walk into the kitchen, maybe it's dark, you kind of see a little bit maybe with moonlight or a night light or whatever, and you see something, but then when you really turn on the light, like your main light, all the distinctions are there and it reveals things as they exactly are. And the Greek here for wicked things is fowl. But what's interesting about that word is it also can mean trivial. These wicked things are not simply evil things like, let's say, murder or these terrible crimes. It's trivial or worthless things. And so once you see that, then you say, well, wait a minute, what does that mean for the spiritual life? Well, Saint John of the Cross talks about this. He says darkness, which is an attachment to creatures, and light, which is God, are opposed to one another. So what happens here is that there's a certain kind of pride here, right? There's a rejection of God. In other words, by hiding, you think you know better than what God's light will expose about who you really are. And it made me think of Matthew 18:1. It starts out where the disciples came to Jesus, and instead of asking Jesus how can we be more charitable or how can we be more loving, they ask, who consequently is greater in the kingdom of heaven? So in other words, they're trying to parse out some spiritual hierarchy and want Jesus to validate their resumes. And this is totally spiritual pride. It's all right there. And so if you take John 3:18-21, you take Matthew 18:1, and you take what John of the Cross is saying about spiritual pride, spiritual pride is a way of hiding in the dark. And John of the Cross points out that individuals trapped in this darkness develop a vain desire to instruct others. And we'll be clear about that: a vain desire to instruct others, meaning it's not coming from a gift that you have developed through hard, grueling work to then be able to give something. You just think by virtue of whatever you've arbitrarily decided, you should be instructing others, not from something you actually have worked for and possessed that's for the benefit of others. The people of spiritual pride try to become the favorite of their confessors. And I would argue this includes things like spiritual direction. It would be applicable today for both confessors and spiritual directors. And then John says that people with spiritual pride approach the confessional to excuse themselves rather than accuse themselves. So now here we are again. The darkness. You don't want to expose what you're doing. You hide, you say, I'm actually fine, I'm good, God loves me, I'm fine. But you're not going to confession to say, actually, I'm not fine. Here are my problems. Here's what I need to be better on. Here's where I'm failing. In other words, you're putting yourself in the light of God, like you turn the light on in the kitchen to see all the sin in your life. So this spiritual pride is a way of hiding in the dark, like I said. And so if you compare Matthew 18 and John 3, being the greatest is, by your own effort, a way of avoiding this pure grace of John 3:16, God so loved the world. And this is what I'll call the comfortable darkness of your ego. So you build up these achievements, you create a false darkness where your ego thrives and God isn't. And you look for satisfaction in your works, not God's works through you. You want to be seen by others and not hide your works. These are all symptoms St. John of the Cross talks about. Ultimately, according to St. John of the Cross, these people don't want the piercing light of God to expose the fact that their motives are selfish. They are seeking themselves in God instead of serving him. Okay, so this is a lot. So what's the antidote? How do we fix this? Let's think about this. I'll tell you the antidote. Matthew 18 has it. Jesus puts a child in the midst of these people who had just asked, who consequently is greater in the kingdom of heaven? Saint John of the Cross mirrors this and gives us the antidote saying, only those who set aside their own knowledge and walk in God's service like unlearned children receive wisdom from God. So as long as we cling tightly to what we'll call spiritual resumes, you're gonna have to go through this dark night, you're gonna have to detach from your own ego, from your satisfaction in your own works. God's trying to give himself to you, John 3:16. But right now you're in the darkness, which means you're gonna have to go through the pain to remove these attachments. And this dryness and interior darkness, all the things of the dark night is God weaning you, to use a metaphor here, weaning you from these gratifications and delights, these childish ways, as John of the Cross says. And he wants you ultimately to let go of your ego and serve him. So just keep this in mind, and I'll see you next time.