Visiting with St John of the Cross (Psalm 139 and Psalm 42)

On Tuesday we set out for Segovia, to the Monastery of St John of the Cross, where his body rests and which is one of the few houses remaining where he lived. It also quite beautifully contains a hermitage he built in the garden of the monastery. As we set out for the top of the garden someone stopped Fr Matt saying we couldn't simply scamper about on our own because something could happen (falling off a ledge I think was the fear) and so he appointed Fr Matt as a personal supervisor!

We didn't find out until later about his new 'position' as a wise father he had watched us wandered off into the garden in small groups finding our way to the hermitage without saying a word. The views from the garden are quite beautiful looking out onto the valley and the hill on which the city centre of Segovia was built. A certain peaceful silence reigns over it all, you would never think there is a road at the bottom of this hill. We then had mass at the tomb of John of the Cross inside the monastery church.

While there we encountered two Psalms in the Monastery, Psalm 139 and Psalm 42. In his hermitage, John of the Cross had a fresco with the first two lines from Ps. 42: " As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, o God." 

This became linked to Psalm 139, which we heard shortly afterwards: "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. 

You discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways." There is something about God's knowing us intimately and the way in which our soul seeks Him out. It is almost as if His knowing us prompted a response in us that can only come about through His knowing us. One way of understanding it is can be found in what Edith Stein once said: that he who seeks out the Truth seeks God even if they do not know it. Our being created in His image leaves an imprint in our souls that not only reflects God but calls us back to Him. Yet this calling back is gentle and natural in the way spoken of in Ps. 42: our hearts long for Him but not violently in a human understanding but rather in a way that is natural to us, there where we are at that moment and in the condition in which God created us because He knows us as intimately as Ps. 139 tells us He does.