Saint John of the Cross would agree with me about how much suffering and persecution we’re obligated to undergo in order to follow Christ to the utmost, as he did. Few saints, in fact, could be worse described with the word “ecstasy.”
You should read The Living Flame of Love:
O living flame of love
whose tender burning fire
wounds sore my soul within its deepest center!
No more depriving of
completing your desire,
now burst the veil, perfect this sweet encounter!
O cautery’s mellow glow!
O healing wound’s delight!
O gentle hand! Oh delicate touch, you taste
of heavenly life, and lo!
each debt is set aright!
You killed, yet with new life my death you graced.
O lamps of fiery light,
within whose radiant splendor
the very deepest caverns of my sense,
once dark, bereft of sight,
now with rare beauty render
to Lover light and ardor full intense!
How soft your love’s sensations,
that waken in my heart,
where only you alone in secret live;
and your sweet inspirations
all good and glory impart,
as tenderly the grace of love you give!
St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language.
His theological works often consist of commentaries on these poems:
These, together with his Dichos de Luz y Amor (or “Sayings of Light and Love”) and St. Teresa’s writings, are the most important mystical works in Spanish, and have deeply influenced later spiritual writers all around the world. Among these are T. S. Eliot, Thérèse de Lisieux, Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) and Thomas Merton. John has also influenced philosophers (Jacques Maritain), theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar), pacifists (Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan and Philip Berrigan) and artists (Salvador Dalí).
Pope John Paul II wrote his theological dissertation on the mystical theology of Saint John of the Cross.
Poetry and philosophy are not mutually exclusive…No, certainly not. Many of the saints have been deeply introverted. Look at the early monastic orders, who went out into the desert, struggling to survive in poverty and pain, just so that they could be away from the corruption and bustle of many within church and government, and focus on personal holiness. They too formed a communion, but it was a communion of people who all wanted (at first,) to be away from the world and become holy.
All the Communions of Saints implies, by itself, is that there is a Heaven, some people have gone there, that they are united in some sense, and present to us when we worship.
True, he does say that, but while Dawkins can be fun to quote from in irony, he’s no expert in matters of theology.
Anyway, you made the claim that Christian charity is well understood, and as I pointed out, in the modern world at least, it clearly is not; having been confused with the English word “love,” which I feel should have been dropped by the Church like a hot potato the moment it began to be associated with niceness and/or sexual intercourse.
See, that first statement there is false, because if beauty were truth, then any statement about one would also be true of the other, but this is not the case. For example, when a detective in searching for a murderer, he wants to find out the full truth, but he doesn’t care about finding out “the full beauty.”
While the truth is unquestionably beautiful, when presented fully, and with no lies added to the mix, it would be a mistake to call them one and the same.
Finally, I’m not going to say that poetry has -no- place. Songwriting, after all, is a type of poetry, and sacred music is the highest of all forms of art.
However, this is not the same thing as forming conclusions with respect to the evidence and logic. I would even say the two should never be combined, unless the poem is written to express a philosophical and/or theological position that could stand on its own, even without the rhyme and verse.
