Embracing The Cross

A friend recently gave me the book ‘100 Days in the Secret Place’ compiled by Gene Edwards. It is selected writings of Michael Molinos, Madame Guyon and Francois Fenelon. I am familiar with Madame Guyon and only some of Fenelon’s writings, but I really hadn’t read much of Molinos prior to this book.

God’s timing is always perfect and therefore, a blessing. As was the timing of this book for me.

It has three sections: Way of the Cross, Drawing Inward and Stepping Into His Presence.

Once past the few pages of short bios for Molinos, Guyon and Fenelon, the book is into the writings of The Way of the Cross. I’m not one for a lot of forward and preamble before getting to the meat. That’s what I loved about this. A few pages in and it’s already meat for me to chew on and prayerfully consider.

My posts concerning the Dark Night of the Soul have had the most interest to people passing by this blog and this holy darkness is an experience in the Way of the Cross because it includes the death process the soul must pass through.

So I thought I would share a brief excerpt from the book concerning the Way of the Cross, written by Francois Fenelon called Embracing the Cross. (This is, in fact the very first writing in the book!)

EMBRACING THE CROSS

You need to learn to separate yourself from unnecessary and restless thoughts which grow out of self-love. When your own thoughts are set aside you will be completely in the middle of the straight and narrow path. You will experience the freedom and peace that is meant for you as a child of God.

I try to follow the same advice that I give others. I know that I must seek peace in the same way. Often, when you suffer, it is the life of your self-nature that causes you pain. When you are dead you do not suffer. If you were completely dead to your old nature you would no longer feel many of the pains that now bother you.

Endure the aches and pains of your body with patience. Do the same thing with your spiritual afflictions (that is, trouble sent to you that you cannot control). Do not add to the cross in your life by becoming so busy that you have no time to sit quietly before God. Do not resist what God brings into your life. Be willing to suffer if that is what is needed. Over activity and stubbornness will only increase your anguish.

God prepares a cross for you that you must embrace without thought of self-preservation. The cross is painful. Accept the cross and you will find peace even in the middle of turmoil. Let me warn you that if you push the cross away, your circumstances will become twice as hard to bear. In the long run, the pain of resisting the cross is harder to live with than the cross itself.

See God’s hand in the circumstances of your life. Do you want to experience true happiness? Submit yourself peacefully and simply to the will of God, and bear your sufferings without struggle. Nothing so shortens and soothes your pain as the spirit of non-resistance to your Lord.

As wonderful as this sounds, it still may not stop you from bargaining with God. The hardest thing about suffering is not knowing how great it will be or how long it will last. You will be tempted to want to impose some limits to your suffering. No doubt you will want to control the intensity of your pain.

Do you see the stubborn and hidden hold you have over your life? This control makes the cross necessary in the first place. Do not reject the full work that the power of the cross could accomplish in you. Unfortunately, you will be forced to go over the same ground again and again. Worse yet, you will suffer much, but your suffering will be for no purpose.

May the Lord deliver you from falling into an inner state in which the cross is not at work in you! God loves a cheerful giver. (See Second Corinthians 9:7.) Imagine how much He must love those who abandon themselves to His will cheerfully and completely-even if it results in their crucifixion!

Francois Fenelon

Did this speak to you in some way? Have you read any of the writings from these authors before, Fenelon, Molinos and Guyon?

My posts related to the Dark and Holy Night are;

Faith or Fairy Tales

Holy Darkness

Dark Night of the Soul

See in The Dark

Don’t Be Discouraged

6 Signs You Are in a Dark Night

 

The Dark Night Qualified

I was going to end the ‘series’ on the dark night with the last post, but now think I should qualify something about the dark night experience.

It is not a usual hard, tough, difficult experience in our life. This is more than just a bad day, week, month or year. It isn’t just feeling like you’re having a hard time with things in your life. It is much more like a free fall. You have no bearings, no footing and in the fall that doesn’t end, you begin to question everything you were standing on until then, because in this new experience it just doesn’t apply, or seem to ‘work’ or fit or make sense. It isn’t a matter of ruling things out and choosing an alternative. There are no alternatives. There are no more choices. There is nothing but CHRIST, and yet it would seem even He ISN’T THERE. One’s faith can be seriously tested here.

My point is that the expression “The Dark Night of the Soul” is much overused within Christian vernacular. It is not a common experience.

One more thing. There are varying degrees of the dark night experience as well. Entirely at our Father’s discretion, it is a passage at a time of His choosing and for His purposes. One may pass through such an experience many times in their life. Or not. It is entirely out of our hands. He alone is the finisher of our faith and said that He would complete the work He has begun in us. He does not consult us concerning this and therefore we aren’t entirely sure it is Him causing this at first.

St. John of the Cross was a Carmelite monk who wrote a book called The Dark Night of the Soul. It is believed he was the one to first coin the phrase. St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun wrote of the same soul’s journey and called it ‘The Ascent of the Soul’ towards spiritual perfection. I have read Madame Guyon’s autobiography and a few of her other books as well. She tended to refer to a person’s journey of spiritual growth as a ‘Torrent’ of water seeking to rush back to it’s source (God) and she used the water and ocean metaphor quite often. Another book, written by Jesse Penn-Lewis, is called “Life Out of Death”, and here she distilled what Madame Guyon had written into this small and quick read little book.

My posts related to the Dark and Holy Night are;

Faith or Fairy Tales

Holy Darkness

Dark Night of the Soul

See in The Dark

Don’t Be Discouraged

6 Signs You Are in a Dark Night