Jacques Lacan
So what does this have to do with Catholicism? Well, read Saint John of the Cross and you will find that his description of spiritual purgation is, in its practical effects, quite a bit like Lacan’s philosophy.
The difference between the two, of course, is Christ. Christ begins where Lacan ends. Lacan leaves us with the stark, bare psychological truth of our broken lives. Christ—and only Christ—can heal the brokenness. And in that gap between Lacan and Christ is precisely where I locate the relation between psychology and religion.
Juan de la Cruz
Psychology cannot heal us, but it can help us recognize just how broken we really are, and it can help us overcome our resistance to total surrender to Christ. Once we make that surrender, our healing begins. And that is precisely what Saint John of the Cross told us.Stopping Self-fulfilling Prophecies
1. Begin by accepting the fact that, when you were a child, others inflicted their own internal unconscious conflicts on you and that you were not to blame for their hostility.
2. Then you can stop believing that you “deserved it.”
3. Then you can stop hating. You can stop hating others for being so mean to you; you can do this by having compassion for their suffering in their own unhealed emotional pain, and you can forgive them for their blindness and failures. And you can stop hating yourself for being unable to fix things.
4. Then you can stop letting your own emotional resentments unconsciously contribute to the emotional chaos of the world around you. You can say, “From now on, I will do everything I can to seek to understand others, to seek their good, and to help them heal from their emotional pain.”
5. Then you can stop unconsciously wishing to punish yourself.
2 comments:
Saint John spoke of the Dark Night as an experience of spiritual purgation in which all physical and psychological satisfactions are stripped away to leave the soul in the presence of nothing but the physically invisible (and therefore, to human experience, dark) and silent workings of divine grace.
As unnerving as it is, it still is a profound experience of spiritual healing, not a questioning of—or loss of—faith.
GOSPEL:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
‘Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.’
“If you forgive others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” (Matthew 6:7-15)
Post a Comment