How to Enter into the Thicket of God's Wisdom

Anyone who has ever suffered greatly can recoginze himself or herself in these wise words, and take comfort therein.

From Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), Carmelite, Doctor of the Church The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 36, 10.13

"(The) thicket of God’s wisdom and knowledge is so deep and immense that no matter how much the soul knows, she can always enter it further; it is vast and its riches incomprehensible, as St. Paul exclaims: O height of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how incomprehensible are His judgments and unsearchable His ways. (Rom 11:33)

Yet the soul wants to enter this thicket and incomprehensibility of judgments and ways because she is dying with the desire to penetrate them deeply. Knowledge of them is an inestimable delight surpassing all understanding…

Oh! If we could but now fully understand how a soul cannot reach the thicket and wisdom of the riches of God … without entering the thicket of many kinds of suffering, finding in this her delight and consolation; and how a soul with an authentic desire for divine wisdom, wants suffering first in order to enter this wisdom by the thicket of the cross!… The gate entering into these riches of His wisdom is the cross, which is narrow, and few desire to enter by it, but many desire the delights obtained from entering there."

In My Father's Eyes

Many of us have seen Salvador Dali's painting of the Crucifixion but until yesterday I had never known that the offical title of the painting is "The Christ of St John of the Cross."

The perspective from which Dali painted the scene is taken from St John of the Cross. Apparently, St John had a vision during which he saw the crucified Christ from above and behind, i.e. from the viewpoint of the Father in heaven. He made a simple sketch of the scene which lay in a monstrance unremarked upon for years until Dali and another artist saw it in the 1940's.

The monastery in 1968 removed the sketch and restored it, placing it in a new reliquary in the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila.

How great is the love of the Father who looked down from heaven upon His dying Son and wept the tears of merciful love which fell upon us all.