Friday, August 5 : Saint John of the Cross

“I lost myself and was found” The one who walks in the love of God seeks neither gain nor reward, but seeks only to lose with the will all things and self for God: and this loss the lover judges to be a gain. Thus it is, as St. Paul asserts: “For me death is gain” [Phil 1:21], that is, my death for Christ is my gain, spiritually, of all things and of myself. Consequently the soul declares: I was found. The soul that does not know how to lose herself does not find herself but rather loses herself, as Our Lord teaches in the Gospel: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25). Should we desire to interpret this verse more spiritually and in accord with what we are discussing here, it ought to be known that when a soul treading the spiritual road has reached such a point that she has lost all roads and natural methods in her communion with God, and no longer seeks him by reflections or forms or feelings or by any other way of creatures and the senses, but has advanced beyond them all and beyond all modes and manners, and enjoys communion with God in faith and love, then it is said that God is her gain, because she has certainly lost all that is not God and has truly lost herself.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team