DESCRIPTION: TNS 18, 1 (Tuesday, 20 January 2026) - the Author (s) of the Song of Songs (late 4th to early 2nd centuries BCE) - Love as Eros (Erotic)

I am aware of no biblical book that has received the attention of so many of the greatest minds and mystics, Jewish and Christian, in history than this biblical book. “If all the [biblical] writings are holy,” Rabbi Akiva proclaimed in a discussion of the Song’s canonicity, “the Song of Songs is holy of holies.” And the magnificent Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) is clearly a nod to this great biblical text. Robert Alter (born 1935), a Professor of Hebrew at the University of California at Berkeley and a renowned translator of the whole Old Testament puts it this way:

"But even against that background, the Song of Songs stands out in its striking distinctiveness—a distinctiveness that deserves to be called wondrous. The delicate yet frank sensuality of this celebration of young love, without reference to God or covenant or Torah, has lost nothing of its immediate freshness over the centuries: these are among the most beautiful love poems that have come down to us from the whole ancient world."

Welcome to The Night School.

The third of our “Johns” of Series 17 is only the second native-born Englishman since the 8th century to be raised by the Church to the status of Doctor of the Church. 

It is because of this remarkable man, and what was done by Pope Leo XIV on 1 November 2025 in Rome, that I designed Series 17 to include these three Johns: John the Evangelist, John Chrysostom, and John Henry Newman. 

It is one thing to be a profound thinker, even a holy thinker of the great Mysteries of God and God’s way with human beings. John Henry Newman was that. But it is quite another capacity for that same person to be able to stay in close to the way human beings actually are - Pope Francis spoke of pastors being “close enough to the sheep to take on their smell” - rather than as they ought to be. John Henry Newman was this also. There is a beautiful, articulate humanity that comes through in John’s writings.

In order to get a sense of this about John, I have chosen to concentrate attention on his justly revered Parochial and Plain Sermons (eight volumes of them), paying close attention to perhaps four of those sermons. 

Welcome to the conclusion of Series 17 of The Night School.

Our second John of Series 17 has been better known, and profoundly revered, in the eastern half of Christianity than in its western (Roman) half, though both halves esteem his life of holiness and brilliance as a pastor and speaker and writer, designating him a Doctor of the Church. He was so designated in the year 1568 with three other giants of holiness and intellect: St. Basil the Great (239-379 CE) St. Gregory of Nazianzus (330-390 CE) St. Thomas Aquinas, OP (1225-1274)

About St. John Chrysostom we find remarks such as: “But at the center of his being is a dynamic and courageous faith that deserves to be praised. And feared. The fact is, John’s life and preaching not only inspire, they also convict. There was a fire in John’s gut; he loved Jesus Christ and had little patience with Christians who did not lay every ounce of body, mind, and soul at Jesus’ feet. As much as I’m drawn by his spiritual fire, I have to admit, I’m hesitant to get too close lest I get singed.” (Mark Galli in 1994) And in the learned Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 4th edition: “He is, furthermore, among the fathers of the church, the one who has best understood the difficulties, the trials of an authentically lived Christian life, whether in the monastery or in the world. His apostolic activity took place in the middle of a society which was not at all in harmony with the demands of Christianity. Despite everything, his message, with its charge of love for God and of love for people, has reached even us today in light of its gospel message.”(Malingrey & Zincone in 2014)

We will get to know John through a series of seven sermons (388-389CE) that he preached on the biting parable of Jesus recorded in Luke16:19-31 - about a rich man and about a grindingly poor man who cowers at his front door, Lazarus by name. Welcome to the Night School.

The Night School, Series 17 (September through November 2025) - Three Johns - Wise Ones from East of Us

The Night School has always been about the “Guests” whom we invite to be with us, people often from the deep past whom we meet in the texts that they left behind when they went to be among our Ancestors.

Why have we invited “three Johns”; that is, the Evangelist, Chrysostom, and Newman? We chose them upon learning that for the first time in this 21st century, the Catholic Church will elect someone as a Doctor of the Church. Pope Leo XIV had indicated in July 2025, that he would place St. John Henry Newman among these greatest and wisest of Christian teachers. So in celebration of this, we have placed him, in Series 17, with two other Doctors of the Church.

What is a “Doctor of the Church”?“ A title regularly given since the Middle Ages to certain Christian theologians of outstanding merit and acknowledged saintliness. Originally the Western theologians Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome were held to be the ‘four doctors’ par excellence; but in later times the list has been gradually increased to nearly 40. There are four female doctors, with Teresa of Ávila named first, in 1970.” [Matthew J. Mills, “Doctors of the Church,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. Andrew Louth (Oxford, United Kingdom; New York: Oxford University Press, 2022) 565–566.]

The Night School, Series 16 (February through May 2025) - Light from Light

In the famous Creation account in Genesis 1, it was only on the fourth day of Creation that God created the sun and the moon - the light by which we see the physical world in the day and at night. 

But it was on the first day of Creation that God placed into the inmost fabric of our created world the inner light, giving humans the means to recognize God and the difference between what is good and what is bad (Genesis 1:3-4). In other words, long before the Light of the World was born of Mary, there was the inner light - the mark in all things of the Triune God who created and sustains all things - the light that guides “all who seek God with a sincere heart.”

What this means is that long before Christ and then Christianity, great-souled human beings in all cultures and ages responded to and served the inner light. They were light from (the divine) Light, and the whole world reveres what they gave to humanity in their exceptionally accomplished lives.

The four Parts of The Night School, Series 16, will search for the fruitfulness of the inner light in four great souls: Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Cicero (106-43 BCE), Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE), and, the sole Christian of this group, who knew the Light of the World, the Christ, John Cassian (360-430 CE).

Welcome to Series 16.

The Night School, Series 16 (February through May 2025) - Light from Light

In the famous Creation account in Genesis 1, it was only on the fourth day of Creation that God created the sun and the moon - the light by which we see the physical world in the day and at night. 

But it was on the first day of Creation that God placed into the inmost fabric of our created world the inner light, giving humans the means to recognize God and the difference between what is good and what is bad (Genesis 1:3-4). In other words, long before the Light of the World was born of Mary, there was the inner light - the mark in all things of the Triune God who created and sustains all things - the light that guides “all who seek God with a sincere heart.”

What this means is that long before Christ and then Christianity, great-souled human beings in all cultures and ages responded to and served the inner light. They were light from (the divine) Light, and the whole world reveres what they gave to humanity in their exceptionally accomplished lives.

The four Parts of The Night School, Series 16, will search for the fruitfulness of the inner light in four great souls: Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Cicero (106-43 BCE), Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE), and, the sole Christian of this group, who knew the Light of the World, the Christ, John Cassian (360-430 CE).

Welcome to Series 16.

The Night School, Series 16 (February through May 2025) - Light from Light

In the famous Creation account in Genesis 1, it was only on the fourth day of Creation that God created the sun and the moon - the light by which we see the physical world in the day and at night. 

But it was on the first day of Creation that God placed into the inmost fabric of our created world the inner light, giving humans the means to recognize God and the difference between what is good and what is bad (Genesis 1:3-4). In other words, long before the Light of the World was born of Mary, there was the inner light - the mark in all things of the Triune God who created and sustains all things - the light that guides “all who seek God with a sincere heart.”

What this means is that long before Christ and then Christianity, great-souled human beings in all cultures and ages responded to and served the inner light. They were light from (the divine) Light, and the whole world reveres what they gave to humanity in their exceptionally accomplished lives.

The four Parts of The Night School, Series 16, will search for the fruitfulness of the inner light in four great souls: Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Cicero (106-43 BCE), Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE), and, the sole Christian of this group, who knew the Light of the World, the Christ, John Cassian (360-430 CE).

Welcome to Series 16.

The Fireside Gathering is an annual event in which we invite guests to come experience the works of the Institute. Funds raised through this event support the ongoing work of the Faber Institute - the work of souls - activated through classes, retreat, spiritual direction, writing and speaking. We invite you to support the Faber Institute by making a donation online: https://faberinstitute.com/donate/

In Series 15, we have picked our Guest based on the date when his or her feast day is celebrated (annually) according to the Catholic liturgical calendar. Mechthild’s feast day is November 19th. She began a poem in this way: 

Ah blessed absence of God,

How lovingly I am bound to you!

You strengthen my will in its pain

And make dear to me

The long hard wait in my poor body.

She, and in a way similar to Julian of Norwich (who was a Guest at The Night School in the Fall of 2018), Mechthild received a series of “revelations”, a series of intense experiences of God that profoundly deepened and recentered her life. Her effort to express what she saw and understood became a work that took her fourteen years to write, which she called The Flowing Light of the Godhead. About this one of the greatest living scholars of her thought has the following to say.

Margot Schmidt writes - “Rather, it [this book] is the expression of a basic human drive that comes to the surface, sometimes more, sometimes less. To these basic human drives we can reckon hunger, love, sex, and a yearning for God. This last-mentioned drive appears to have been so smothered by the others that today we scarcely still perceive it as a basic drive. And yet, the testimony of the mystics teaches us that the human person in its capacity for God (capax Dei) soars above all other recognized drives and surpasses them in a marvelous and terrifying way, once we have been awakened by the spark of God’s spirit or God’s love. In the face of this bursting forth of a passion for God, everything else suddenly retreats. An important characteristic of this passion for God is that it irrevocably prevents us from falling back into an all too vapid and tame existence. In essence Mechthild of Magdeburg’s book, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, is nothing other than the moving story of God’s heart and the human heart, and of Lucifer’s cunning attempts to interfere with the ties that join them.” [Margot Schmidt, “Preface,” in Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of the Godhead, ed. Bernard McGinn, trans. Frank Tobin, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998), xxv-xxvi.

The second Guest of our Series 15 of The Night School has her annual feast day on October 15th, which is one reason that we have chosen her to be our Guest on this night. She wrote in a letter in 1574: “It is necessary that we bear our weakness and not try to constrain our nature. Everything amounts to seeking God, since it is for Him that we search out every kind of means, and the soul must be led gently.”

Britannica offers this short summary: "St. Teresa's beliefs centered on prayerful meditation and poverty for her sisters. St. Teresa of Avila (born March 28, 1515, Ávila, Spain—died October 4, 1582, Alba de Tormes; canonized 1622; feast day October 15) was a Spanish nun, one of the great mystics and religious women of the Roman Catholic Church, and an author of spiritual classics. She was the originator of the Carmelite Reform, which restored and emphasized the austerity and contemplative character of Carmelite life. St. Teresa was elevated to Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, the first woman to be so honored.”

St. Teresa was our Guest at The Night School in the Spring of 2019, who was introduced to us by Joel Kibler. Teresa’s inexhaustible depth and almost unparalleled grasp of the ways of God with human beings could cause us to choose to have her visit each year, and we still would only have experienced and understood a small part of her enduring gift to the world.