Journey into yourself

In order to have an encounter with the Lord, we must journey inwardly, because only the inner person can enter into communication with the Lord. Those who permanently live on the periphery of their souls will find it difficult to possess the living mystery of God.

What is the periphery of the soul? St. John of the Cross describes it to us as being like noisy, boisterous neighborhoods, packed of children playing and shouting; or like a marketplace full of all kinds of people, who pass through, conversing, buying and selling. They are the exterior senses, fantasies, and imagination that perturb the perception of the inner realities.

If we go even deeper, John of the Cross distinguishes and envisions the soul by giving us a fantastic description. The soul, he says, “is a profoundly deep, wide solitude... an immense, limitless desert.”

Therefore, the soul is the frontier region between God and man, and at the same time, it is the setting where the encounter with the Lord takes place.

From the book Journey Towards God by Father Ignacio Larrañaga