{"id":18791,"date":"2020-04-23T09:31:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18791"},"modified":"2020-04-23T09:31:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:31:04","slug":"made-for-infinite-love%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18791","title":{"rendered":"Made for Infinite Love\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Teresa of \u00c1vila and<br>\nJohn of the Cross<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Made\nfor Infinite Love<\/strong><br>\nThursday, \u202fApril 23, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qDdTt7AB0gI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Jim Finley, my friend and fellow\nteacher at the CAC, began studying the mystics at the Abbey of Gethsemani at\nage eighteen, with Thomas Merton as his novice master. He remembers when he\nfirst read this excerpt from the Prologue to the<\/em>&nbsp;Ascent of Mount\nCarmel <em>by St. John of the\nCross:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A deeper\nenlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark\nnight through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union\nwith God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The\ndarknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily\nundergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and\nprofound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does\nexperience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will\nknow what this experience is like, but they won\u2019t be able to describe it. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Jim describes the effect John\u2019s writing had on him:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I could tell in the first paragraph, I was in deep\nwater, and I could also tell as I kept reading that just a lot of it was going\nright over my head. But in John\u2019s poetry, and from the very first paragraph of\nhis prose, I sensed that his words were coming from some very deep place inside\nof him, or really coming from some deep place and [going] through him, and then\nintimately accessing that deep place in me. There was a certain resonance in\nrealizing he was talking about something that I didn\u2019t understand; but I knew\nmattered very, very much. And, as I kept reading on in that way, it got clearer\nand clearer to me. I am now over 76 years old, and I am still reading John of\nthe Cross. He is one of my teachers. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John\u2019s core intuition is that the Infinite Love that is\nthe architect of our hearts has made our hearts in such a way that nothing less\nthan an infinite union with Infinite Love will do. It&#8217;s the setup in the\nbeginning. For Infinite Love to create us in the image of itself is for\nInfinite Love to create us as a capacity to receive the forms of Infinite Love\nas our destiny. That love is our origin, love is our ground.&nbsp;That Infinite\nLove creates us as a capacity for love, for love&#8217;s sake alone. Love is the\nfabric of the true nature of everything that&#8217;s happening. This is the love\nnature of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Richard again: Throughout these\nweeks, I have been praying, trying to understand how, as Jim puts it, \u201clove is\nthe fabric of the true nature of everything that\u2019s happening.\u201d How can it be\nthat God\u2019s love is at work and present in the tragedies around the globe right\nnow? But knowing what harrowing circumstances John of the Cross was in when he\ncame to experience the infinite love of God gives me hope and perseverance.]<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teresa of \u00c1vila and John of the Cross Made for Infinite Love Thursday, \u202fApril 23, 2020 Jim Finley, my friend and fellow teacher at the CAC, began studying the mystics at the Abbey of Gethsemani at age eighteen, with Thomas Merton as his novice master. He remembers when he first read this excerpt from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18792,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791\/revisions\/18792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}