Quote of the day, 13 December: Blessed Marie-Eugène
Intervention of Mary in the dark night of the spirit
This simple exposition suffices to show us how Mary must be solicited through her heart and her mission to help souls who are undergoing the purification of the dark night of the spirit. These souls are in suffering, the most painful that one can conceive. Her maternal heart cannot be insensible to them, inasmuch as such souls already have a great love for God. The remembrance of her anxious seeking for Jesus on the way home from Jerusalem must oblige her to bend over those who now are bearing the heavy trial of anxious love, in the weariness and depression of all their faculties.
These souls are in the darkness of the night, and the light of the Virgin never shines more sweetly than in darkness. Her providential mission requires her to be the star enlightening the night of the spirit. Mary fulfills her role and efficaciously intervenes in these periods of the spiritual life. She visits John of the Cross in his prison at Toledo, on the vigil of the Assumption, promising that his deliverance is near.
But these exterior and visible interventions do not tell us the usual manner of Mary’s interventions during this period. It would be useful to speak of this.
Mary excels in intervening without disturbing the realization of God’s design, without diminishing the salutary power of His light, nor the efficacy of His action. She does however intervene; but her manifestations are of a delicacy so subtle, so tender! There may be an apparently chance coincidence, a sudden calm, a light, a meeting, a nothing insignificant in appearance, but in which the soul recognizes with certitude the action, the smile, the perfume, and so the presence of its Mother.
A silent shadow in the night, Mary spreads sweetness without suppressing suffering, creates a soft shadow without dissipating the darkness. The sweetness and the shadow are produced by the certitude the soul has of her action and by the obscure awareness of her presence. To know that its Mother is there, watching over it in the night, makes the heart of the child glad, renews its strength, fortifies its hope, gives it light and peace; yet the violence of the crucifying ardors within does not grow less.
A real intimacy is thus established between Mary and the soul…
Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus
Help and Models in the Dark Night (V.B.2.b.1)
Marie-Eugène de l’Enfant-Jésus & Doran V 1997, I Am a Daughter of the Church: A Practical Synthesis of Carmelite Spirituality Vol. 2, Christian Classics, Allen, Texas.
Featured image: Dubai photographer Walid Ahmad captures this stunning photo of massive sand dunes in the desert at night. Image credit: Walid Ahmad / pexels.com (Stock photo)
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