“When we listen to John of St. Samson in the school of Carmel and discover the spirit of the second reformation, we are filled with pleasure. Then we venture to cross the abyss which seems to widen and does widen, according to some, between the two observances. Then we hear that on either side of the chasm the wood has its charms, that birds sing on both sides and their songs speak to us of God. We see trees bend towards each other across the chasm and their branches intermingle. From above there is no abyss, only a terrestrial pedestrian halts a moment before the division. The higher he mounts, the narrower the chasm appears to his sight. And when his wings are grown, then he springs from branch to branch till he is across the chasm and for him it is one and the same lovely wood, in which the birds sing one and the same hymn in honor of God.
With a teacher like John of St. Samson in a reformation of which he was the soul, and still is, we are not branches that have lost the true nature of the old stem, but in us the old stem can put forth new bloom, as it did in him.
The blind singer of Rennes, John of St. Samson, sings as the illuminated singer, St. John of the Cross, sang in the darkness of Toledo.”
St. Titus Brandsma
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