The dark night of the soul, and other quick takes. 7QT I, seriatim.

o I see this Sev­en Quick Takes fad every­where I go in the Catholic blo­gos­phere, and I think to myself, I hate fads. How can I get in on this one? I decid­ed, sen­si­bly enough, that the best way to get in was to, well, get in. So here I am.  Sev­en Quick Takes is still, as always, host­ed by the grace­ful Jen­nifer Ful­wiler at the peer­less Con­ver­sion Diary. I would be hence­forth unmen­tion­able by civ­i­lized man if I did­n’t point out that Ms. Ful­wiler’s writ­ing fac­tored great­ly in my con­ver­sion, for she has an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to make the Church come across as what it, in fact, is: joy­ful. I will nev­er be able to do what she does, or as well.

II.

I awoke Mon­day morn­ing to the jaw-drop­ping sur­prise that one of my posts, overnight, had become the most-read on the blog, and by lots. A sec­ond joined it, and has since sur­passed it in page views. Over the course of the week, the total num­ber of vis­i­tors to the blog is now triple what it had been dur­ing the first ten months. Wow. I hard­ly expect­ed that kind of explosion—viral by any yard­stick I pos­sess. Pos­si­bly it will die down, I don’t know, but if you have been here and you have come back, then I want to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to say thank you and wel­come to the blog. I hope you will stick around.

III.

Here in Cincin­nati, the days have dis­cov­ered the autumn. We’ve had a beau­ti­ful cou­ple of days, and I love this time of year. I par­tic­u­lar love it that Pump­kin Spice cof­fee is back. If you’ve not tried it you are miss­ing out on the best argu­ment I know for the exis­tence of God. Well, okay, maybe the sec­ond best. But don’t get your Pump­kin Spice from McDon­ald’s (vile) or, still worse, Star­bucks (unmen­tion­able). Get your Pump­kin Spice from the Carmelite monks of Wyoming. It is an excel­lent way to help a won­der­ful and faith­ful com­mu­ni­ty of reli­gious (and this blog), while enjoy­ing the reward on your tongue and rest­ing in the knowl­edge that God is in his Heav­en and all is well with the world.

IV.

In your char­i­ty, I asks that you pray for the recov­ery of Thomas Peters, who blogs at Amer­i­can Papist. The Nove­na to St. Joseph is a very pow­er­ful prayer. Mr. Peters, who is 27, injured his fifth cer­vi­cal ver­te­bra in a swim­ming acci­dent in July. The fifth cer­vi­cal ver­te­bra is in the neck. He con­tin­ues to have a dif­fi­cult recov­ery, and has now learned he has a life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion com­mon to patients who have injured the spinal cord. The con­di­tion is called Auto­nom­ic Dys­re­flex­ia. You can read more here.

V.

As a read­ing and blog­ging project for 2014, I am going to work my way through the entire text of St. Augustine’s City of God. The text of my Pen­guin edi­tion is 1087 pages, so at three a day or there­abouts I should com­plete Augus­tine in a year. If you fol­low this blog, you can join me as I read and write my way through Augus­tine, in what I hope will be a kind of the­o­log­i­cal read­er’s jour­nal by some­one encoun­ter­ing the text for the first time.  I’m not entire­ly unfa­mil­iar with Augustine’s writ­ing; I’ve read both the Con­fes­sions and On Chris­t­ian Doc­trine. City of God seems the log­i­cal next step, and pos­si­bly a good foun­da­tion for con­tin­u­ing where I real­ly want to go, which is the Sum­ma.  But Aquinas will be for anoth­er year.

VI.

I some­times won­der whether it has ever struck any­one else that Job is so well-placed in the Old Tes­ta­ment. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been placed any­where, but in the prov­i­dence of God it was placed imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms. In the Psalms, to be sure, there are laments and cries to a God who seems absent or slow. But ulti­mate­ly they are songs of praise and thanks­giv­ing. So imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms we read the ulti­mate nar­ra­tive of spir­i­tu­al dark­ness in Job. Job is the night; the Psalms are the day. Job is lament; the Psalms are praise. The books com­ple­ment each oth­er.

My con­vic­tion, from all that I have read, is that the Dark Night of the Soul is an incal­cu­la­ble gift. But we need to learn how to work through spir­i­tu­al dark­ness with­out let­ting go of God; we need to learn how to seek His ways and not our own; we need to learn how to trust in His care more than in our own efforts and our own suc­cess. Job teach­es us all these things. Read it; read it; read it. In the very near future, I shall start blog­ging my way through Job too—the first in what I hope will be a con­tin­ued exer­cise of blog­ging my way through Sacred Scrip­ture.

In this effort, I have a def­i­nite rea­son for begin­ning with Job. But you’ll have to read the posts to find out.

VII.

And last, a prayer. On the sev­enth day God rest­ed from all His work. Thus the sev­enth in this my first set of quick takes is about rest, and about rest in the Lord. Psalm 3:5 is one of the most com­fort­ing of all vers­es: I lie down and sleep. I wake again, for the Lord sus­tains me. Thus may there nev­er be fear of the night. God is the cre­ator and the sus­tain­er of all things. In your wak­ing and in your sleep­ing, dear read­er, may you be blessed and sus­tained.