I’ve been looking at Salvador Dali’s ‘Christ of St. John of the Cross’ a lot today

Today is the first day of Lent. John of the Cross has always fascinated me, a man who knew as intimately as any man the darkness that the soul can find itself in throughout this life, and yet it was a darkness that he peered into, from his own humble vantage point, with tireless faith and hope. And here I mean hope in that deeply biblical and theological sense, a fundamental abiding certainty in the midst of what tremendous doubt may occupy the mind from moment to moment. There’s always something contradictory yet utterly sound about the way Truth is spoken of in Christian language (a line from the Avett Brother’s wonderful song ‘Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise’ comes to mind here: “There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light…and I’m frightened by those who don’t see it.”). The relationship between, and necessity of, Faith, Reason, and Doubt can be a baffling one; until, that is, you seek understanding. And then you realize that it can, and should, be no other way for we dependent creatures.

That certainty in faith, in the midst of darkness, is at the heart of John of the Cross’s reflections on the dark night of the soul (some find the subject too melancholy, too wan, because they fail to realize that it is exactly the LIGHT that all of this meditation is about!), and it’s the same intuition that led Kevin Hart to write these lines, in ‘The Last Day’:

When the last day comes
A ploughman in Europe will look over his shoulder
And see the hard furrows of earth
Finally behind him, he will watch his shadow
Run back into his spine.

It will be morning
For the first time, and the long night
Will be seen for what it is,
A black flag trembling in the sunlight.

But back to Dali’s painting. John of the Cross’s poetry especially is rich with water imagery, which Brother Salvador captures beautifully here, and this is appropriate for Lent. Lent is a time to reflect on many things, some of them difficult: death, mortality, finitude, human fragility, human dependency, suffering, loss; our own sin, our own wretchedness, our own guilt. But this is all preparation, all a movement. Like every season of the Church calendar, there is nothing static about these reflections. It is always a movement from darkness to light. From death to Resurrection. At the heart of the dark night, as at the heart of Lent, there is the water of the nourishing, eternal fountain, the purifying light of God’s love and promise of Redemption that we will soon celebrate. The movement of Lent is the movement through Reflection, Repentance, and Renewal. Christ peering down over Saint John of the Cross’s renewing waters, flowing from the spring and source of all goodness, all life, in Dali’s painting, seems as beautiful an image as any to enter this season with.

Lest we forget: Lent is an old word for Spring.