Chapter I. The Passive Purification of the Senses
When speaking of mortification or active purification we have already said that we must impose it upon ourselves chiefly for the following reasons: 1 to correct whatever inordinate tendencies resulting from original sin remain after baptism; (2) to destroy die results of our personal sins and to make reparation for offending God; (3) to prevent an overdevelopment of our natural activity and consequent injury to the life of grace, together with an increasing blindness to the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end; (4) to imitate Christ crucified and to work with Him for the salvation of souls.
Our Lord Himself pointed out this fourth reason to us when He said : "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."(1) In quoting these words, St. Luke remarks diat Christ said diem "to all." To mortify ourselves still falls short, in fact, of what is necessary; we must bear patiently as well the crosses God sends us to purify us, to make us like to our Savior, and, in a sense, to so continue the mystery of redemption with Him, by Him, and in Him until the end of time.
What Christian terminology calls "the Cross" by analogy with the sufferings and death of our Lord, is made up of the daily physical and moral trials arising from our relations with the world of things and of men but especially of those sufferings sent more directly by God to make us more like Christ Jesus, who became "obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross"2 for the ransom of mankind. As the Father hath given Me commandment, so do I." 3 All Chrisdans, each in the measure of his capacity, must go even to these lengths to follow our divine Master.
The necessity of the cross is laid on us principally for two reasons. The first is that the roots of evil we bear within us go much deeper than we may think, and we hardly know I where these germs of death are to be found. Even when we have mortified ourselves and tried hard to be regular and fervent, we still have many unconscious faults: egoism m various forms, even in our prayers and devotions, in study and the apostolate. Natural eagerness, spiritual sensuality, intellectual pride, self-judgment and self-will, al these prevent God's kingdom from becoming deeply established in us and keep us from closer union with Him. A vast difference exists between regularity, even when accompanied with a certain fervor, and true sanctity. The cross patiently borne for love bridges the distance between these two. Our Lord knows better than we do where the evil in us lies; He sends messengers to tell us, not always too charitably, the truth about ourselves and to put a finger on our touchiest points. He comes Himself, when necessary, with metal and fire to cut and cauterize our wounds, the principles of corruption which prevent us from becoming the living image of His bon. The second reason why the cross is imposed on us has to do with our two great models, Jesus and Mary. They had no need for purification; they suffered for our redemption. We must imitate them in this. Our association with our Lord in His redemptive work keeps pace with the growth of our union with Him, and He Himself used the cross as the principal means for redeeming the world, the supreme manifestation of His love for the Fadier and for us.
Consequendy, as the lives of all the saints prove, the necessity of the cross is proportionate to the purification souls need and to the degree of their union with Christ, as well as of the apostolic and reparative life God efficaciously wills for them. Some souls, still in their baptismal innocence, have less need for purification; others, though already quite pure, live in almost continual suffering because our Lord calls them to an incomparably higher perfection than that which contents so many easily satisfied Christians. The more God loves us, the heavier crosses He sends us, and the more they resemble the cross carried by Christ and shared by His Blessed Mother.
To bear the cross patiently, we must understand it, see where it leads, and carry it in the light of love. It is therefore good for us to know the different ways in which God usually tries souls. Some crosses are intended to purify the senses and subject them to the spirit; these occur frequently and are common to many persons, especially to beginners. Other crosses are of the spirit. These have for their purpose the progressive supernaturalization of the soul and its growing subjection to God. Trials of this kind are the lot of a small number of advanced souls.
Spiritual writers properly speak, then, of two kinds of trials, calling one passive purification of the senses and the other passive purification of the soul, designations that help us to determine what is essential to each and what trials commonly accompany them. And thus we can come to understand why souls must undergo a twofold passive purification to arrive at the full perfection of Christian life.
For the sake of order, the following questions will be taken up in this chapter in regard to the passive purification of the senses: first, the necessity for purification; secondly, its psychological description; and thirdly, its theological and causal explanation. In subsequent chapters the rules for direction appropriate for this state, together with its purifying effects and accompanying trials, will be discussed. Lasdy we shall see just when the passive purification of the senses normally takes place, whether at the beginning of the illuminative way or considerably later.
The spiritual imperfections of beginners (possible paths to pride, sensuality, and sloth of a spiritual kind) make purification necessary, as St. John of the Cross shows. 4 These imperfections are, as it were, so many modulations of the seven capital sins appearing as different deviations in the spiritual life but all leading back to the principal ones just spoken of above. St. John of the Cross confines himself exclusively to the consideration of the trouble these cause in our relations with God, but they work no less harm to our relations with our neighbor and to the apostolate entrusted to us.
A man may become immoderately attached to sensible consolations and seek them for themselves, forgetting that they
PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 7 are not an end but a means; thus he may come to prefer the flavor of spiritual things to their essence. Spiritual greediness of this kind, when unsatisfied, begets impatience and, as soon as "the narrow patii" has to be taken, spiritual sloth and a distaste for the work of sanctification so frequently referred to by early writers under the name of acedia. 5
If, instead, everything goes as we would have it, we take pride in our perfection and judge others severely, posing as masters when we are nothing but poor disciples. Spiritual pride, St. John of the Cross says, 0 leads beginners to avoid masters who disapprove of their spirit and even sometimes to harbor ill will toward them. They look for guides to suit their tastes, desire to be intimate with them, and confess their sins to them in such a way as "to excuse themselves rather than to accuse themselves. . . . And sometimes they seek another confessor to tell the wrongs they have done, so that their own confessor shall think they have done nothing wrong at all." 7
This hypocrisy pointed out by St. John of the Cross in beginners, who need to undergo the passive purification of the senses, shows clearly that, for him, they are beginners in the sense in which that term is generally understood and that we should take literally and in the ordinary sense of the words what is said in The Dar\ Night: "the night of sense is common and comes to many; these are the beginners." 8 It cannot, therefore, be admitted, as some hold, that the beginners referred to here are already living in the unitive way after passing through active purification and that they merit the
name of beginners only from a very special point of view, so far as they are making a beginning, not in the interior life, but in the passive ways, considered as more or less extraordinary and beyond the normal way. 3
The faults St. John of the Cross speaks of certainly show that he is talking about real beginners, not in a special sense, but in the traditional sense of the word, taken in its full and unwatered meaning with particular reference to those having either a contemplative vocation or a call to the apostolate, the overflowing of contemplation.
Many other faults companion those remarked by St. John of the Cross, but he scarcely comments on diem since he concerns himself, as has been said, only with our relations with God and not, as it were, witii the repercussions these faults have on study and the apostolate. However, to round out his thought on this point presents little difficulty.
Beginners— and the retarded, too, of whom there are but too many— devote themselves to study more out of curiosity than from love of truth and, as they fail to appreciate the value of truth, they take insufficient precautions against error. They are likely to overevaluate themselves, to become irritated when others seem not to recognize their worth. Jealousy and envy lead them to disparage fellow workers more talented and more disinterested than themselves and so to block the good influence these might have exerted on others, who may fail, therefore, to advance or even to persevere because of this lack. People who do things like this may work
0 It is to be regretted that Tanquercy in his treatise on The Spiritual Life, a. Branderis, 2nd cd. (Tournai: Desctee, 1930), pp. 601 ff., favors this point of view, placing the night of the senses in Bk. Ill where he considers the uniuvc way. In doing so he departs not only from the terminology of St. John of the Cross but both from his teaching and from traditional doctrine as well.
great harm to the general good without being conscious of it. Even in scholarly religious circles a thousand petty passions and intrigues may influence minds and result in books and reviews becoming tainted with untruth, even when, and perhaps especially when, all concerned profess to be quite objective. Irritating controversies arise only too often because those concerned have but relative good faith.
Those who give themselves to the apostolate bring much natural eagerness and self-seeking to it and they unconsciously make themselves the center of their activity and attract souls either to themselves or to the groups to which they belong instead of to our Lord Jesus Christ. And when trials come they complain and allow themselves to sink into discouragement. Anyone who sets out to indicate all the nuances of the seven capital sins on this level of human activity, either in beginners or in the great number of retarded souls, would never be done.
All this shows us the necessity for profound purification. Exterior, and especially interior, mortification can doubtless correct many of these faults, but what we impose on ourselves cannot suffice to tear up the roots that reach down into the depths of our faculties. The remains of sin impregnate, as it were, our temperament and character. We are unconscious of this, but our neighbor is not and sometimes, without saying anything, suffers much because of it. St. John of the Cross says:
But neither from these imperfections nor from those others can the soul be perfectly purified until God brings it into the passive purgation of that dark night whereof we shall speak presently. It befits the soul, however, in so far as it can, to contrive to labour, on its own account, to purge and perfect itself, so that it may merit xo THE LOVE OF GOD being taken by God into that Divine care wherein it becomes healed of all things that it was unable of itself to cure. Because, however greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire, in the way and manner that we have to describe. 10
Further, to remedy the faults of the proficient, there must later be another much more grievous and proportionately more fruitful purification of the spirit. 11
PSYCHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE PASSIVE PtJRIFICATON OF THE SENSES
In describing this state, many authors place particular emphasis on its negative aspect: the loss of all sensible devotion and the great difficulty experienced in discursive meditation. They give us the impression that it is a time of relapse rather than of progress, not bringing out what is positive and principal in the night of the senses: a strong desire for God, a sign of the beginning of infused contemplation, the entrance into a new way.
It is commonly and truly said that, in the passive purification of the senses, the soul experiences complete sensible aridity in prayer and pious exercises; nothing offered to it in meditation or in the books it used to love attracts it any more; it no longer has any taste for these things and everywhere finds dryness and sterility. It has the impression of being left in darkness and penetrating cold, as though the sun which
gave light and warmth to the spirit had ceased. Sometimes this painful aridity engenders a disgust for spiritual things and even a sort of desolation, especially in souls temperamentally inclined to sadness, souls that formerly received sensible consolations. In the words of the Book of Job, they become a burden to themselves, "foetus sum mihimetipsi gravis." 12 They have no spirit for prayer or for work, and yet they realize how necessary prayer is. They ask themselves whether their aridity is lukewarmness, whedier it comes from some partly unconscious fault of their own, for example, from presumption which they have taken for zeal. If they consult others, many wish to persuade them that their trouble is due to melancholy and that they ought to take the appropriate remedies for it: exercise, diversion, and exterior works.
Authors usually add that sensible aridity is a privation of merely accidental, but not of substantial, devotion. The will to give oneself generously to the service of God is not lost, 13 but the senses and imagination are left in a kind of emptiness and the sensuous appetency finds no savor in anything. The disgust experienced with everything is really involuntary and fails to affect the will, which is as far above the sensuous appetency as the intellect is above the senses and imagination.
All this is true; but we must consider aridity or dryness of the sensuous appetency more closely so as to distinguish it from spiritual sloth or acedia, the privation of substantial devotion itself, a disgust for spiritual things both culpable and voluntary, if not in itself at least in the negligence which gives it birth. 11 To confuse the night of the senses with
"Ila Ilac, q.82, a. 1. «/«</., q. 35- xa THE LOVE OF GOD spiritual sloth would be a grave speculative and practical error leading straight to quietism.
To draw a clear distinction between them, we shall have to return to the description of the passive night of the senses left us by St. John of the Cross, who plumbed the depths of St. Gregory the Great's doctrine on diis point. 15 In the Middle Ages Hugh of St. Victor 16 and later Tauler 17 developed this teaching. Together with these masters, we must insist on stressing the positive aspect of the state of purification, that is, a strong desire for God and for perfection, rather dian the negative characteristics of aridity and difficulty in meditating. Indeed the soul makes great progress during this period because of the profound working of God within it, and this divine activity and the passive state resulting from it are plainly the chief elements of the state, although the negative notes of dryness and quasi-impossibility to meditate serve as the chief means of evidencing it, especially at first.
The description given by St. John of the Cross 18 brings out what is most fundamental, positive, and divine in dfis state and will serve to help us get beyond its negative aspects to the supernatural reality produced by God. According to St. John of the Cross three principal signs, already noted by Tauler, manifest this state. He expresses it thus in The Dar\ Wight: 19
16 Moral., XXIV, chap. 6, no. n; X, chap. 10, no. 17. In Ezech., Bk. II, horn. 2, nos. 2, 3, 13.
10 In Eccl.. horn. 1. Here Hugh of St. Victor compares the passive purification of the soul by divine grace to the transformation of green wood into fire.
17 Institutions, chap. 35. From their master's sermons Tauler's disciples gathered together the essentials of this doctrine into the Institutions.
PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 13 The first (sign) is whether, when a soul finds no pleasure or consolation in the things of God, 20 it also fails to find it in anything created; for, as God sets the soul in this dark night to the end that He may quench and purge its sensual desire, He allows it not to find attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever. 21 Hence it may be laid down as very probable that this aridity and insipidity proceed not from recently committed sins or imperfections. For, if this were so, the soul would feel in its nature some inclination or desire to taste other things than those of God. . . . Since, however, this lack of enjoyment in things above or below might proceed from some indisposition or melancholy humour, which oftentimes makes it impossible for the soul to take pleasure in anything, it becomes necessary to apply the second sign and condition.
The second sign whereby a man may believe himself to be experiencing the said purgadon is that ordinarily the memory is centred upon God, with painful care and solicitude, thinking that it is not serving God, but is backsliding, because it finds itself without sweetness in the things of God. And in such a case it is evident that this lack of sweetness and this aridity come not from weakness and lukewarmness; for it is the nature of lukewarmness not to care greatly or to have any inward solicitude for the things of God ... for lukewarmness consists in great weakness and remissness in the will and in the spirit, without solicitude as to serving God; whereas purgative aridity is ordinarily accompanied by solicitude, with care and grief, as I say, because the soul is not serving God. And although this may sometimes be increased by melancholy or some other humour (as it frequently is) it fails not for this reason to produce a purgative effect upon the desire, since
20 What is meant is that the soul no longer finds consolation in things divine proposed to it in a sensible way, for example, by way of the imagination in discursive meditation. i a
21 Later it will be made evident that this is an effect of the gift of knowledge, which shows us the vanity o£ all created things and their inability to reveal to us God's intimate life.
j 4 THE LOVE OF GOD the desire is deprived of all pleasure, and has its care centred upon God alone. . . . When the cause is aridity, it is true that the sensual part of the soul has fallen low, and is weak and feeble in its actions, by reason of the little pleasure which it finds in them; but the spirit, on the other hand, is ready and strong. 22
St. John of the Cross insists on die positive character of the second sign :
For the cause of this aridity is that God transfers to the spirit the good things and the strength of the senses, which, since the soul's natural strength and senses are incapable of using them, remain barren, dry and empty. For the sensual part of a man has no capacity for that which is pure spirit, and thus, when it is the spirit that receives the pleasure, the flesh is left without savour and is too weak to perform any action. But the spirit, which all the time is being fed, goes forward in strength, and with more alertness and solicitude than before, in its anxiety not to fail God; and if it is not immediately conscious of spiritual sweetness and delight, but only of aridity and lack of sweetness, the reason for this is the strangeness of the exchange; for its palate has become accustomed to those other sensual pleasures upon which its eyes are still fixed, and, since the spiritual palate is not made ready or purged for such subtle pleasure, until it finds itself becoming prepared for it by means of this arid and dark night, it cannot experience spiritual pleasure and good. . . .
These souls whom God is beginning to lead through these solitary places of the wilderness are like to the children of Israel; to whom in the wilderness God began to give food from Heaven, containing within itself all sweetness, and, as is there said, it turned
- Just as in the first sign wc see the effects of the gift of knowledge, in the second we find manifest the gifts of fortitude and fear of the Lord. These, too, will be given furdier consideration later.
to the savour which each one of them desired. But withal the children of Israel felt the lack of the pleasures and delights of the flesh and the onions which they had eaten aforetime in Egypt.
This state has also been compared to the teething period of infants; when they begin to cut their teeth, they have continual pain, but after their teeth have come through they are ready for stronger food and will receive it. At first it has no appeal for them, but soon they grow to need and desire it. Because the same is true of the spiritual fife, St. John of the Cross adds :
The which food is the beginning of contemplation that is dark and arid to the senses; which contemplation is secret and hidden from the very person that experiences it; and ordinarily, together with the aridity and emptiness which it causes in the senses, it gives the soul an inclination and desire to be alone and in quietness, without being able to think of any particular thing or having the desire to do so. If those souls to whom this comes to pass knew how to be quiet at this time . . . then they would delicately experience this inward refreshment in that ease and freedom from care. So delicate is this refreshment that ordinarily, if a man have desire or care to experience it, he experiences it not; for, as I say, it does its work when the soul is most at ease and freest from care; it is like the air which, if one would close one's hand upon it, escapes. . . .
For in such a way does God bring the soul into this state, and by so different a path does He lead it that, if it desires to work with its faculties, it hinders the work which God is doing in it rather than aids it. . . . For anything that the soul can do of its own accord at this time serves only, as we have said, to hinder inward peace and the work which God is accomplishing in the spirit by means of that aridity of sense. . . .
l6 THE LOVE OF GOD
The third sign whereby this purgation of the senses may be recognized is that the soul can no longer meditate or reflect in its sense of the imagination, as it was wont, however much it may endeavor to do so. For God now begins to commun.cate Himselt to it, no longer through sense, as He did aforetime, by means of reflections which joined and sundered its knowledge but by pure spirit, into which consecutive reflections enter not; for He^communicates Himself to it by an act of simple contemplation.
On the subject of this third sign, St. John of the Cross remarks that "the embarrassment and dissatisfaction of the faculties proceed not from indisposition, for, when this is the case, and the indisposition, which is never permanent, comes to an end, then the soul is able once more, by taking some care about the matter, to do what it did before, and the faculties find their needed support. But in the purgation of the desire this is not so: when once the soul begins to enter therein, its inability to reflect with the faculties grows ever greater . . . although, at first, and with some persons, it is not as continuous."
In the Ascent of Mount Carmel" too, St. John of the Cross, while not following absolutely the same order, mentions these three signs when indicating at what time it is well to pass from discursive meditation to contemplation. This passage refers to infused contemplation. St. John of the Cross 20 says that contemplation works not actively but passively, being received from God operating in us and having
28 When the gift of understanding is united to the gift of piety they make q.8, a. i, 2, 4. 7-
such subtlety and delicacy that the soul may hardly notice its presence. In this state "God communicates Himself to it passively, even as to one who has his eyes open, so that light is communicated to him passively without his doing more than keep them open. And this reception of light which is infused supernaturally is passive understanding." 26 The state here referred to is the same as that described in The Dar\ Night. 27
Therefore, although this state is made manifest by two negative characteristics, — aridity or the deprivation of all sensible consolation and difficulty or quasi-powerlessness to meditate — it has another more important and positive element : the beginning of infused contemplation and the ardent desire for God which is born of it. Further, aridity of the sensuous appetency and difficulty in meditating spring precisely from this, that grace is starting to take on a new and purely spiritual form, superior to the senses and to discursive reasoning. At first sight we might be led to believe that God purifies us chiefly by depriving us of something, sensible grace; in reality He gives us much more than we had before because, far from taking grace away from us, He gives it to us more abundantly but in a higher form, far above the reach of any sense enjoyment. The state into which God thus leads the soul will be better understood when we have tried to discover its causes.
27 The quotations just given, as well as many other texts, show that these chapters of the Ascent of Mount Carmcl and The Dark, Night (Bk. I, chap. 9) describe not two different states, one preceding the other in time, but the same state, the Ascent of Ml. Carmel dealing with its active aspect, The Dar\ Night with its passive. The earliest commentators took this view (cf. Diet, de thiol, cath., art. on St. John of the Cross); and more and more are coming to recognize it at the present time.
l8 THE LOVE OF GOD
Some authors 28 find the explanation for the state of purification chiefly in the deprivation of sensible grace. Since the beginner might, through spiritual greediness, become too attached to it, he is deprived of it for his own sake, as the author of The Dark Night remarks. 29 Although the deprivation of grace truly belongs to this state, it is not die principal thing at issue. The fundamental characteristic for us to note is the beginning of infused contemplation due to the habitual intervention of the Holy Ghost. The texts already quoted from St. John of the Cross treating of the three signs make this clear to us.
The first sign is, as has already been said, that the soul can no longer find consolation either in things created or in die things of God presented in a sensible manner. The gift of knowledge effects this, making us understand as if experimentally the emptiness of created things and their radical inability to tell us anything of God's inner life. Knowledge differs from wisdom inasmuch as it knows dungs not through their Supreme Cause but through their proximate and lower causes. Now die only thing in the world and in us that does not spring from the Supreme Cause is sin, the imperfection of our acts, our indigence, our weakness. All diese arise solely from defectible and deficient created causes. Because St Augustine and St. Thomas appreciated this truth, they have related the holy sadness spoken of by Christ in the fifth
28 For example, Anthony of the Holy Spirit, Dircctorium mysUcum, tr. II, d.IV, sect. 2, no. 221. 2" Bk. I, chap. 8.
beatitude to the gift of knowledge; for knowledge of the gravity of sin and of the nothingness of creatures brings us to tears of contrition. St. Augustine says that those who mourn are those who know what defeats they have suffered by seeking evils as good. 30
St. Thomas, too, tells us that the gift of knowledge makes us judge as we should of human things, showing us how foolish a man is to seek the sovereign good in them even when they often prove an occasion for turning us from God. 31 In the Old Testament the Book of Ecclesiastes is never done telling us of the vanity and poverty of all human things: riches acquired with great effort, worldly pleasures, human wisdom. "Vanity of vanities," said Ecclesiastes, "and all things are vanity," except to love and serve God. "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction come . . . before ... the dust return into its earth, from whence it was, and the spirit return to God, who gave it. . . . Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is all man. And all things that are done, God will bring into judgment from every error, whether it be good or evil." 32
This deep sense of the vanity of things created when not ordered to God, when not directed to knowing, loving, and serving Him, penetrates every page of The Imitation. We are told, for example, "Without Me, friendship can neither profit nor endure"; "Never read anything in order that thou mayst appear more learned or more wise." 88
Ruysbroeck gives us the same message: divine knowledge will teach us to be without presumption and not to place our
30 IJbr. I dc scrmone Domini in monle, c.4.
2o THE LOVE OF GOD joy cither in perishable things or in our works but to be dissatisfied with ourselves as unprofitable servants and creatures weak in every way. Blessed are they who suffer this dissadsfaction for they shall be comforted in the eternal kingdom of God. 34 Ruysbroeck also notes the relationship between the gifts of the Holy Ghost and the passive purification of the senses, writing that Christ first comes to exercise His influence and action on a man's lower powers to purify, uplift, and inflame them, and orient them toward his inner life. Working within the soul, God holds out His gifts to us or takes them away, enriches us or makes us poor, gives us joy or makes us desolate, quickens us or abandons us, sets our hearts on fire or binds them about with ice. No language whatever, Ruysbroeck tells us, can express these contrary gifts. 38 They are graces evidently connected with the passive purification of the senses. 30 By them we begin truly to know by experience die emptiness of created things and really to see that God alone can be our ultimate end. The gift of knowledge is having a profound influence on the soul. 37
The gifts of fear of the Lord and of fortitude are deeply at work too, as shown by the second sign referred to above when, in the words of St. John of the Cross, the soul knows "painful care and solicitude, thinking that it is not serving God, but is backsliding; ... the sensual part of the soul has fallen low . . . but the spirit, on the other hand, is ready and strong." 38
34 Le royaume del amants de Dieu, chap. 18.
*» L'Ornement des noccs spirituelUs, Bk. II, chap. 5.
37 Cf. Litre de la Bienheureuse Angile de Fotigno, cd. Paul Doncceur (Pans: Lib. de 1'art Cath., 26). The nindi step of the way of the cross as outlined here seems to correspond to the night of the senses; the nineteenth, to the night of the soul.
The care and solicitude experienced by the soul are certainly effected by the gift of fear of the Lord, the filial fear of sinning which grows with die progress of charity, while servile fear, the fear of being punished, diminishes. 38 Under the influence of this gift the soul resists the temptations against chastity and padence which often accompany passive purification of the senses. It repeats the words of the Psalmist, "Pierce Thou my flesh widi Thy fear: for I am afraid of Thy judgments." *° According to St. Augustine, the gift of fear of the Lord corresponds to the beatitude of the poor in spirit, for he who fears God does not become puffed up, seeks neither honors nor riches, but is especially inspired to love poverty and the hidden life because they make him more like his Savior. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And even in this world their poverty will give them a share in the only true wealth.' 11
The influence of the gift of fortitude makes itself felt at this time in an ardent desire to serve God in spite of dryness, temptations, and every other possible difficulty. According to St. Augustine and St. Thomas, this gift corresponds to the fourth beadtude, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill." The relationship is evident. St. Thomas says: "Now it is very difficult, not merely to do virtuous deeds, which receive the common designation of works of justice, but furthermore to do them with an insatiable desire, which may be signified by hunger and thirst for justice." * 2 The gift of fortitude must come to the aid of the virtues of patience and longsuff ering ; otherwise, amid the difficulties, misfortunes, and contradictions
3B IIa Hae, q.19, a. 9, 12. , 40 Ps. 118: 120. «IIa Hae, q.19, a.12. ** Ibid., q.139. 3.2.
that have to be met, we would lose our ardent desire for perfection.
Enthusiasm based on sense feelings burns out like a fire of dried grass; we need ardor of another and wholly spiritual order, something God alone can give us. The Imitation says: "If thou carry the cross willingly, it will carry thee, and bring thee to thy desired end. . . . And the more die flesh is brought down by affliction, the more is the spirit strengthened by interior grace. . . . This is not man's power, but the grace of Christ; which doth and can effect such great things in frail flesh that what it naturally abhors and flies, even diis, through fervor of spirit, it now embraces and loves." 43
Ruysbroeck says that die gift of fortitude allows us to rise above joys and sorrows, gains and losses, hope and care for earthly things, and every kind of intermediary and multiplicity. It delivers us and makes us free of all creatures. The man who has it will not let himself become dissipated by sensible affection or in covetousness for sweetness and consolation or for any divine gift. Even the rest and peace of his own heart will not lure him from going beyond all gifts and consolations to find the only one whom he desires and loves. 44
Lasdy, the third sign, that is, great difficulty in discursive meditation, certainly reveals to us the gift of understanding making itself evident as the principle of newly infused contemplation. In explaining the third sign, St. John of the Cross says: "God now begins to communicate Himself to it, no longer through sense, as He did aforetime, by means of reflections which joined and sundered its knowledge, but
** UOrnemcnt dcs noces spiriluelUs, Bk. II, chap. 64.
by pure spirit, into which consecutive reflections enter not; but He communicates Himself to it by an act of simple contemplation, to which neither die exterior nor the interior senses of the lower part of the soul can attain." 45 Here we have "the beginning of a contemplation that is dark and arid to the senses, . . . secret and hidden to the very person that experiences it. . . . So delicate is this refreshment diat ordinarily, if a man have desire or care to experience it, he experiences it not; for, as I say, it does its work when the soul is most at ease and freest from care." 46
The gift of understanding and that of piety show their influence in producing this effect. Ruysbroeck says that the first result of the gift of understanding shines forth in the spirit of simplicity. A remarkable clarity floods simplicity, for the grace of God is the basis of all the gifts and dwells essendally in our passive intellect as a simple light, fixing and enlightening the mind in a simple manner so that it acquires a resemblance to God. And it is a property of the unity of God's divine essence to attract whatever resembles it. Nevertheless a just man may somedmes diink that he fails really to love God and rest in Him. But this very fear itself springs from love, for his desire to love God more than he can leads a man to believe that he loves God less than he is able. 47
Before the subject had been dealt with by these great mystics, St. Thomas took it up when treating of the effects of the gift of understanding, pointing out the purifying action of the gift, saying that it cleanses the mind by purging it of
41 L'Orncment des noces spirituclles, Bk. II, chap. 66.
2 4 THE LOVE OF GOD
"phantasms and errors, so as to receive the truths which are proposed to it about God, no longer by way of corporeal phantasms, nor infected with heretical misrepresentations." 48 It makes us penetrate simply but deeply into the mysteries of faith, taking us beyond images to the divine reality they represent and through the letter to the life-giving spirit. 49 During the dark night of the soul, the purifying influence of this gift penetrates much more deeply into the soul although it is already plainly operative in the night of the senses.
Furthermore, St. Thomas, following Dionysius, says that for the soul to reach the uniformity of contemplation, symbolized by circular motion without beginning or end, it must rid itself of a twofold lack of uniformity arising first from the variety of external things with which the mind is occupied and secondly from reasoning or discursive thought. The soul heals itself of its deformity by the simple contemplation of intelligible truth. 50
St. Augustine often says the same thing. We find a clear expression of it, for example, in the first book of the De quantitate animae 51 when he describes the seven degrees of life: (1) vegetative life; (2) sentient life; (3) the knowledge of human things and of the different sciences; (4) the life of true virtue; (5) the tranquillity of soul springing from control of the passions by solid virtue; (6) entrance into the higher spiritual light; (7) contemplation and union with God. As early as in the fourdi degree he gives a description
"Ila Hae, q.8, a. 7. «Cf. ibid., a. 1. *°Ibid., q.180, a. 6. 61 Bk. I, chap. 33.
of the purification necessary for the soul to acquire true virtue and to understand practically how much more it is worth dian the body and the whole material universe. He says that in the difficult work of purification the soul must place its whole confidence in God in order to resist all the temptations then arising and to persevere in virtue. The more the soul advances, the more it sees how far it still is from true purity of heart; but finally, God helping it, it lets itself be more and more animated by Him. 52
The doctrine taught by St. John of the Cross and by Ruysbroeck shows, in regard to this subject and many others, a wonderful harmony with the teaching of St. Augustine and St. Thomas. What has been presented here is what seems to be the psychological description and theological explanation of the state of purification according to the great masters. Although the soul appears at first to lose rather than gain by having sensible graces taken away from it, it is in reality entering upon infused contemplation and standing on the threshold of die mystical life.
Still to be considered are rules of guidance suitable for those in this state, the effects of passive purification, the trials usually accompanying it, and lastly the stage of spiritual progress at which it normally appears. Because of the importance of the question, we should do all we can to know the mind of the great masters concerning it. In regard to the first stage of development at which passive purification occurs, whether during the course of the unitive way, as some seem to think, or at the beginning of the illuminative, the great masters evidently regard the illuminative way as a period in which
62 Ibid. Cf. quartus gradus animae.
the soul frees itself more and more from the senses and from reasoning so that it may go on under the special illumination of the Holy Ghost to the contemplation of divine things, to find, as all of us should, the soul of the interior life and of the apostolate in contemplation and charity.
Footnotes
Chapter 18 of 37