An icon of St Minas and Christ, which depicts Christ as friend.
Since childhood, retired Anglican priest Ron Browning OAM has lived with hidden doubts about an afterlife. But two years ago these doubts were brought into sharp focus when he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. His journey into the Dark Night of the Soul has been a journey of naked trust which has brought pain and loss, but also profound insight into how Christ’s mystical love can be a bridge into the next life.
Although I have ministered as a priest for many years, doubt has quietly accompanied me in relation to the Christian understanding of death as the gateway to eternal life.
Over those years I managed to lead funerals fittingly (according to those around me), seeking to serve. In a sense my doubt had little to do with the pastoral and liturgical presentation of life eternal which it was my role to ensure. So my doubt hid in the corner, as it were.
In this way I moved into my 70s when the prospect of death loomed through the news of an aggressive form of cancer. I was faced squarely with the need to enter into the contemplative space to find a solution.
A year before receiving this news, I had started looking into the work of the 16th century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross and his teaching on the Dark Night of the Soul. I did so with a yearning to resolve a long-term childhood wound that years of psychotherapy had helped only to some extent.
These two themes of living with doubt and looking into the Dark Night became intertwined in my inner journey with the onset of cancer. Between operations and bouts of radiotherapy I managed to surface and ponder what was at hand spiritually. My inner work on the dark night had to be continued.
I have now been living with cancer for two years. My delving into St John of the Cross had been mediated through the amazing work of psychiatrist Gerald May, in his book The Dark Night of the Soul, which explores St John of the Cross’ writings. May affirmed for me that I had already entered the Dark Night, which is an experience that is obscure, finding that there is nowhere to go emotionally and spiritually. People can also find themselves going down this path without being faced with an acute issue.
In the Dark Night, the breaking up of customary inner structures, such as the controlling ego and wilfulness, begins. Familiar images of God, and usual habits of prayer, are withdrawn. These are aspects of what St John of the Cross calls The Dark Night of the Senses and The Dark Night of the Spirit.
After some time, little is left to hold onto of the past, and the cry Nada – “nothingness” – arises. Here paradoxically lies a deeper pathway, in which St John of the Cross draws on the erotic love imagery of the Song of Songs, in describing a relationship between ourselves as bride and Christ as bridegroom. In this relationship, whether we are aware or it or not, with weakness or wound keenly present, we hold onto the Cross as the centre piece, with its profound love and sustenance. “God is active beneath our awareness - the unconscious dimension which is dark,” May writes.
This is a journey of naked trust in which, in time, through contemplative living, the transformation of desire into freedom is discovered bit by bit and the soul will begin to glimpse participation in the unity of love’s fulfilment, the dawn.
The dynamic that is going on in the soul throughout is one of letting go of habitual ways of attachment. It is both gift and discipline - letting go of that which we have clung onto for so long in order to survive in a limited existence. While this process has its accompanying pain and loss, and perseverance is called for, there are surprises of grace along the way.
Over the two years of living with cancer I have felt that I am slowly progressing. Gerald May is like a spiritual director, accompanying me as I delve into the mysteries of St John of the Cross’ teachings. I have also turned occasionally to my issue of doubt.
Since childhood I have wondered how God could manage to have enormous numbers of people redeemed by the divine mercy in an afterlife. What could it be like? This is easily answered, some may say, by Jesus’ teaching about the many rooms in his Father’s house. But I have never found this a satisfactory explanation.
Although no one seemed to address this particular aspect of belief, I have been encouraged by the life and witness of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Early in his career, Bonhoeffer preached a simple acceptance of the good news about death due to Christ’s Resurrection. Later, doubts lingered in his mind. Then by the time of his imprisonment by the Nazis, and his approaching death ordered by Hitler, he was deeply convinced of the Christian truth again, saying just before he was hanged: “This is the end - for me, the beginning of life.”
Providentially, during my period of treatment, an agnostic cousin who is a doctor, came to visit me. I shared my doubt with him and he responded by saying, surely God is big enough to manage that issue and has room enough for all.
Pondering his comment precipitated an “aha” moment, leading me to focus on the grandeur of God’s creation of the universe and planet Earth with its awesome plenitude of creatures and plants. There was also an important parallel for me in the utter magnificence of God’s creation and the utter magnificence of the divine redemption and re-creation.
At the same time I knew l had more interior work to do on my doubt - to look at the scriptures, to sit long and still, and reflect on the passages of the New Testament relating to death and eternal life.
After some months, a major turning point in my pondering came when turning to Jesus’ sharing with the disciples in the Upper Room the night before he died (John 12-17). Here I found in a fresh way the remarkable emphasis – simply yet deeply – on love: abiding in love, his love, such that this is qualitatively not something to do with this life alone, but is infinitely greater than it.
Christ’s love mystically forms a bridge from this life to the next. “May they see the glory you have given me because you loved me” (John 17:22). Whilst I had been struggling with doubts, love came to the rescue to provide acceptance, trust and gratitude.
I returned to St John of the Cross and Gerald May, learning that love is deeply and intimately present to the soul’s struggling journey in ways that may seem slow to come to awareness, but is there: “He comes again, the bridegroom peeping through the lattice.” (Song of Songs, 2:9)
In the Upper Room scene in John’s Gospel, we can see the long, loving attention of Jesus looking into the hearts of the disciples during that dim-lit evening; they wet-eyed with wonderment and joy at the intimate companionship of his presence, his abiding with the Father and with them. And this is ours too, with the assurance that this love will endure and fulfil our destiny.
Recently I was told by my oncologist that the cancer in my lung had disappeared. This was largely due to the amazing modern drugs of immunotherapy which I have been receiving regularly for two years. Over those years of treatment, with its great demands, I have become immensely thankful for family and close friends.
Life and eternity become inter-connected as contemplation deepens. I must now live day by day with the realities thereof, and by the grace of God, not be afraid to go ever more deeply into the Dark Night, with its on-going awakenings in the transformation of desire. “Oh you guiding night, oh night more kindly than the dawn,” St John of the Cross writes.
And I pray that I may grow continually into seeing that death itself is a healing, and that, as the Song of Songs proclaims: “love is stronger than death.”
Fr Ron, who is a Benedictine Oblate, lives in Melbourne, Australia. Over the past 20 years he has also worked with the Karen people, both in their refugee communities on the Thai-Myanmar border and resettled communities in Australia.