I often find myself smiling when I hear spiritual bromides floated, like "seeing God in all things," or "grace is everywhere." I wonder: do these people realize that the first is derived from the Fourth Week of Ignatius' Exercises (after passing through the purification of the first three weeks); and the second comes from the very end of Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, not the beginning?On this feast of John of the Cross, the great spiritual master of suspicion, who shatters all manner of religious pretense, one must indeed yearn for the destiny of a transfigured creation, but recognize that the only way is the Crucified Christ.Rowan Williams' remarkable youthful study, The Wound of Knowledge, ends appropriately with John of the Cross. Williams writes:

"Christ the Way" is the norm for our "inner life," and Christ is most totally active for the world's salvation, most completely doing God's work, on the cross, in the depths of his forsakenness, utterly without consolation. It is the climax of the poverty and defenselessness of his whole life: he is brought to nothing, ad nihilum redactus...It is Christ whose example exposes the dishonesty and selfishness of the "comforts of religion."