It is natural to flee from the place where that hunger throbs. Still, John encourages us to go there. It is what beckons the divine. It is the threshold at which Christ stands. We hunger for him because he has touched us; we want him because he wants us. The wound is the print of the pledge upon us, the pledge of the Spirit who holds us from the abyss. John comments on his poem: we "have our feeling of longing, the sense of God's absence" precisely there, "within our heart, where we have the pledge."

--from "St. John of the Cross and Seasons of Prayer" by Iain Mathews

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