St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionist Order.
I mentioned St. Paul of the Cross in reference to the dark night of the soul we recently learned Bl. Mother Teresa endured for so many years. I recall one journalist stating that this night of faith seems to be the hallmark of the saints of the 20th century. I don’t know where she got that idea. I’m quite sure the experience has been around much longer than when it first became a focus of study in the writings of St. John of the Cross. It is an aspect of the mystical life, albeit extraordinary, reserved for the few.
Garrigou-Lagrange devotes six pages to the life of St. Paul of the Cross in the second volume of his work, “The Three Ages of the Interior Life.” He concentrates upon the mystical life of St. Paul and the reparatory night of the spirit, which he endured for forty-five years.
The mystical life of the saint.
Since his youth St. Paul was accustomed to a life of self-denial, and at a very early age was favored with the affective prayer of simple gaze. Around the age of nineteen he underwent the passive purification of the senses. After this he was given the grace of infused contemplation, accompanied by visions and ecstasies. At. twenty-six he underwent the passive purification of the spirit, preparing him for the grace of transforming union by the age of thirty-one.
Garrigou-Lagrange writes: “After receiving the grace of transforming union, he had, according to the testimony of his confessor, to pass through forty-five years of interior desolations, most painful abandonment, during which, ‘from time to time only, the Lord granted him a short respite.’” This was a period when it seemed to him that he had been totally abandoned by God, that God was displeased with him, and he endured great temptations to despair and sadness. Yet the chief characteristic others noted about him was his patience and extreme kindness to all who approached him.
The life of reparation.
Aside from the purificatory aspect of the night of the spirit which enables “the soul thus purified to pass beyond the formulas of mysteries and ‘enter into the deep things of God’, as St. Paul says,” this trial can be chiefly reparatory as well. Such is the case with St. Paul of the Cross, and more recently, Therese of Lisieux, and as we read now, Teresa of Calcutta.
Garrigou-Lagrange writes that when the trial is chiefly reparatory the principal end is to have the purified soul work for the salvation of its neighbor, in conformity with the intimate sufferings of Jesus and Mary. It is interesting to note that Father writes that these souls struggle for years in this night in order to “Snatch souls from eternal death; and, in a way, these reparative souls must resist the (same) temptations of the souls they seek to save that they may come efficaciously to their assistance.” - Three Ages, Vol. II
Oh what a night!
