One dark night, kindled in love with yearnings

I like to pray outside.  It’s been a challenge when the temperature has been in the twenties, and the ‘feels like’ is 14 degrees!  I’ve been starting a fire.  Since my feet were the only thing getting warm, it’s been my “dark night of the sole”. 

In all seriousness, “One dark night, kindled in love with yearnings” is the opening stanza of Saint John of the Cross’s masterpiece, Dark Night of the Soul. 

In it, the saint provides a beautiful metaphor for divine healing.  It’s like a fire that transforms a log of wood.  He says the transformation takes place in several stages.  First, the fire forces out the moisture.  “Then it begins to make [the wood] black, dark and unsightly, and even to give forth a bad odor.”  (p. 83) But little by little the fire drives away everything contrary to the nature of the fire.  When the process is complete, the wood becomes the fire.

Such is the way of divine healing.  I saw this metaphor come alive at a healing retreat for the New Year.

The retreat atmosphere first allowed the participants to push out the moisture.  The moisture for most was the stuff of life – the busyness and heaviness of the daily grind. In ordinary circumstances, this keeps the fire from igniting. 

Using various healing techniques such as imagination with scripture, role-playing, contemplative prayer, and personal testimonies, the participants gently examined their emotional, physical, and spiritual wounds, both the present and the past.  As they got a little closer to the fire, the guilt, shame, regrets, and pain became the “black, dark, and unsightly” wounds that began to surface and be transformed.

The retreat concluded with the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.  As I assisted Fr. Amaro Saumell, tears came to my eyes.  I knew the back story of many retreatants and could feel the fire of divine healing entering their hearts. 

I prayed that the participants received the healing they sought and became “wounded healers” for the world around them.  As Henri Nouwen says:

The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed,  but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.  (The Wounded Healer)

Infused with divine love, may you receive the healing you seek in 2025 – mind, body, spirit, and soul. And may you become a wounded healer yourself.