Chapter III. Effects of the Passive Purification of the Senses

Following die lead of St. Gregory die Great 1 and Hugo of St. Victor, 2 Tauler has touched on this subject many times in his Sermons? and St. John of the Cross has given it a searching treatment in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth chapters of the first book of The Dar{ Night. To acquire an exact knowledge of his doctrine on the matter, a useful procedure is to give special consideration to the results effected as he indicates them: purification of the sensuous appetency, knowledge of self, knowledge of God, humility, a great increase of divine charity, and the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost.

Purification of the sensuous appetency

The soul is freed from the necessity of seeking God by the weak, limited, and defective operations proper to the senses, which serve as means of transposing the disorder of the seven capital sins into the order of spiritual things. 4 At the beginning of the interior life, the soul desires sensible consolations somewhat as if diey were not simply a minor means

' Moral., XXTV, chap. 6, no. n; X, chap. 10, no. 17. In Ezcch., Bk. II, horn. 2, nos. 2, 3, 13.

2 Horn. I in Eccl.

• Taulcr's teaching on this point has been collected from different sermons and arranged in the Institutions, chaps. 8 and 35, by his disciples. « The Dark. Night, Bk. I, chap. it.

of the spiritual life, but its end ; for the soul is still in the infancy of its spiritual life, and infants are greedy for milk. Sometimes consolations have even had a disturbing, although involuntary, echo in the lower senses. The soul, with something like avarice, desires to hold on to everything conducive to sensible devotion and, if deprived of it, falls into spiritual sloth, impatience, and anger or it may even come to envy its neighbor's graces. Sensible consolations often lead to pride because the soul that has them is likely to think itself well on the way to perfection and to judge others with severity and a somewhat bitter zeal.

The night of the senses quenches sensible inclinations and, because of its darkness, puts an end to the habit of using reason, together with the imagination, in interior prayer. The purification of die senses, at first sight seemingly such a loss, is in reality the best thing that could happen to any soul. Deprived of the milk of infants, it can then begin to live on the bread of the strong. When the capacity to take pleasure in sensible things has dried up in the soul, God begins to communicate Himself to it by infused contemplation, His primary and principal benefit to it and the source from which all others are derived. 5

The senses are subdued, reformed, silenced; they can no longer enjoy any taste or relish of a sensible kind, whether high or low. The force of inordinate passion has spent itself in emptiness and darkness and a blessed spiritual sobriety comes to take its place and marks the beginning of peace. Times of aridity dull the natural sensitive appetite. The interior faculties leave off reasoned meditation and, together with the senses, are ruled by a higher harmony and lead be-

yond sensible delights and the letter of God's word to its spirit, which lies outside and above die reaches of all human poetry, however marked by genius. 6

This is the first and principal benefit caused by this aridity and dark night of contemplation: the knowledge of oneself and of one's misery . . . these aridities and this emptiness of the faculties compared with the abundance which the soul experienced aforetime and the difficulty which it finds in good works, make it recognize its own lowliness and misery, which in the time of its prosperity it was unable to see. . . . Wherefore the soul knows the truth that it knew not at first, concerning its own misery; for, at the time when it was clad as for a festival and found in God much pleasure, consolation and help, it was somewhat more satisfied and contented, since it thought itself to some extent to be serving God. . . . But, now that the soul has put on its other and working attire— that of aridity and abandonment— and now that its first lights have turned into darkness, it possesses these lights more truly in this virtue of self-knowledge, which is so excellent and necessary. 1.

Notice that this self-knowledge, so remarkably deeper than any that results from mere examination of conscience, is, according to St. John of the Cross, an effect of awakening infused contemplation. He certainly believes that infused contemplation, as also die self-knowledge accompanying it, belongs to the normal way of sanctity. At this period of development die soul begins to know in a quasi-experimental fashion what both St. Augustine and St. Thomas have taught us, that our own efforts cannot make God's grace efficacious, but God's grace itself both arouses and sustains our efforts.

The soul comes to realize that it does nothing and can do nothing of itself; that it is nothing; and so it takes no satisfaction in itself and this, "together with the soul's affliction at not serving God, is considered and esteemed by God as greater than all the consolations which the soul formerly experienced and the works which it wrought, however great they were, inasmuch as they were the occasion of many imperfections and ignorances." 8 St. John of the Cross tells us that the other benefits following on aridity have their source in self-knowledge.

The gift of knowledge evidently effects all this, for it judges things, not like wisdom, by their highest cause, but by their secondary, proximate causes. Its special function is to show us especially that the disordination of sin cannot come from God, but must come from deficient causes, from ourselves, our defecdbility, self-love, and radical egoism. Tears of true contrition flow from this supernatural knowledge given by the Holy Ghost. 9 In its light, St. Benedict Joseph Labre used to begin his confessions by saying, "Have pity on me, I beg you, Father. I am a great sinner."

Those who have received much, who have been filled to overflowing, see revealed the relative gravity of faults that would be slight in others less illumined. The more we see of God's greatness, the more we realize the absolute and infinite gravity of mortal sin, die attempt to snatch from God His dignity as last end by turning away from Him; die more, too, we perceive the relative gravity of certain dangerous faults which, although venial in themselves, may proximately dispose us for a mortal fall. In the light of the gift of knowledge

, . THE LOVE OF GOD our eyes are opened to our own misery, and we understand in what a singularly fragile vessel we bear the infinitely precious treasure of grace and of die indwelling Trinity.

A higher knowledge of God always accompanies a deeper knowledge of self. They are, St. Catherine of Siena says, the highest and lowest points of an ever-growing circle; if we see one of these clearly we see the other by contrast, for these two kinds of knowledge grow together. As St. Augustine expresses it, "Not/erim te, noverim me."

He who knows how powerless he is to do good and to persevere until death, knows by contrast and as if experimentally, how good and almighty is God, and how wonderful His grace, which owes its efficacy not to our consent but to itself "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will," St. Paul says. 10 Elsewhere, after he had heard our Savior's words, "My grace is sufficient for diee; for power is made perfect in infirmity," he goes on to say, "For when I am weak, then am I powerful." 11 When the soul experiences its own weakness and cries out to God, it becomes strong in His help and, "though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen . . . (the) eternal." 12

Growth in knowledge of our own weakness reveals to us the contrasting and infinite greatness of almighty God. And, io Phil. 2: 13. " II Cor. 12: 10. "II Cor. 4: 17- as St. John of the Cross expresses it, the soul learns to commune with God with more respect and courtesy than it showed to Him in times of pleasure and consolation.

For that pleasant favour which it experienced made its desire towards God somewhat bolder than was fitting, and discourteous and ill-considered. Even so did it happen to Moses, when he felt that God was speaking to him ... he was making bold to go to Him, if God had not commanded him to stay and put off his shoes. When Moses had obeyed ... he became so discreet and so attentive that the Scripture says that not only did he not make bold to draw near to God, but that he dared not even look at Him. . . . Even so likewise the preparation which God granted to Job in order that he might speak with Him consisted not in those delights and glories which Job himself reports that he was wont to have in his God, but in leaving him naked upon a dunghill. . . . And then the Most High God, He that lifts up the poor man from the dunghill, was pleased to come down and speak with him face to face ... in a way that He had never done in the time of his prosperity. 13 Then in the time of his testing, the saint answered his Lord : I know that thou canst do all things, and no thought is hid from thee. . . . Therefore I have spoken unwisely, and things that above measure exceeded my knowledge. . . . Therefore I reprehend myself, and do penance in dust and ashes. 14

The Scripture says, "Then shall thy light rise up in darkness." 15 In the darkness of the night of the senses a light dawns that shows the soul its misery and God's infinite greatness, a light that tests and frees and purifies the soul, for by it the soul comes to know God, and then God teaches it His wisdom, as He did not do in the days of its first delights and

satisfactions. 16 "The soul habitually has remembrance of God, with fear and dread of backsliding upon the spiritual road . . . the soul is purified and cleansed of the imperfections that were clinging to it because of the desires and affections, which of their own accord debilitate and darken the soul." 17

A knowledge of God, springing from living faith and enlightened by the gifts, strengthens the virtues very much, especially humility, hope, and charity, as St. John of the Cross makes clear to us:

Likewise the soul draws from the aridities and voids of this night of the desire, spiritual humility, which is the contrary virtue to the first capital sin, which, as we said, is spiritual pride. Through this humility, which is acquired by the said knowledge of self, the soul is purged from all those imperfections whereinto it fell with respect to that sin of pride, in the time of its prosperity. For it sees itself so dry and miserable, that the idea never even occurs to it that it is making better progress than others, or outstripping them, as it believed itself to be doing before. On the contrary, it recognizes that others are making better progress than itself. . . . It is aware only of its own wretchedness, which it keeps before its eyes to such an extent that it never forgets it, nor takes occasion to set its eyes on anyone else. This was described wonderfully by David, when he was in this night, in these words : "If I was dumb and was humbled . . ." This he says because it seemed to him that the good that was in his soul had so completely departed. . . .

In this condition, again, souls become submissive and obedient upon the spiritual road, for, when they see their own misery, not only do they hear what is taught them, but they even desire that anyone soever may set them on the way and tell them what they

ought to do. The affective presumption which they sometimes had in their prosperity is taken from them. 18

We begin to get a deep understanding of the beatitude, Beati pauperes spiritu. Spiritual humility, the fruit of nascent infused contemplation, far surpasses the humility produced in us by examination of conscience and meditation on the chief duties of our state of life. St. Teresa so informs us in her Life, where she remarks the fact that, when souls begin to advance in virtue and then read in spiritual books an account of all they must do to be perfect, they lose heart. She says: "For instance, they read that we must not be troubled when men speak ill of us, that we are to be then more pleased than when they speak well of us; that we must despise our own good name, be detached from our kindred . . . with many other things of die same kind. The disposition to practice this must be, in my opinion, the gift of God; for it seems to me a supernatural good, contrary to our natural inclinations." 19 At another time she observes that we can spend years of prayer and retain certain bad habits, such as standing on our dignity and possessions, whereas perfect prayer rids us of diem. 20

All interior souls, not merely those in the purely contemplative life like the Carmelites, but those in the mixed or apostolic life and even those in the active life, should make such progress that they are at last free of such faults. For all of them, infused contemplation, which alone can produce such fruits, belongs to the normal way of sanctity, although it may be accorded earlier to some, later to others, in an evident way

20 The Way of Perfection, chap. 13.

to one and in a less manifest form to another, according to the vocation of each and God's own good pleasure.

Spiritual humility being united to confidence in prayer, the petitions of die psalms are no longer words used more or less mechanically but become truly the soul's spirit and life: "I cried to the Lord with my voice. ... In the day of my trouble I sought God with my hands lifted up to Him in the night, and I was not deceived. Thy way, O God, is in the holy place: who is die great God like our God? Thou art the God that dost wonders." 21 Humble and trusdng prayer obtains patience and long-suffering, virtues needful in dryness and emptiness, when we must learn to persevere in spiritual exercises without either consolation or attraction. 22 At the same time the soul grows in charity because it no longer acts for any satisfaction of its own but simply and solely for God's sake and "often, in the midst of aridity and hardship, God communicates to the soul, when it is least expecting it, the purest spiritual sweetness and love, together with a spiritual knowledge which is sometimes very delicate, each manifestation of which is of greater benefit and worth than those which the soul enjoyed aforetime; although in its beginnings the soul thinks that tliis is not so, for the spiritual influence now granted to it is very delicate and cannot be perceived by sense." 23

This period marks the evident passage of the soul from affective charity, content with saying "Lord! Lord!" to effective charity, the orientation of the whole of life toward God. The soul enters into His kingdom, has true conformity

to the divine will in suffering as well as in joy, and loves with a will nourished by the hard bread of tribulation as well as by the milk of consolation.

Love for God, growing together with love of neighbor, gradually takes first place in the soul, thanks to die spirit of sacrifice, which destroys whatever is inordinate within us and makes us love the destruction which God Himself works there. The spirit of sacrifice brings us peace, the tranquillity of the order of charity, wherein we truly love God more than ourselves and above all things. And the Lord begins to rule completely all our affections, purifying, ennobling, and supernaturalizing them, and making us love everything lovable in Him. "Finally, inasmuch as the soul is now purged from the affections and desire of sense, it obtains liberty of spirit, whereby in ever greater degree it gains the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit." 24 To enumerate them is to reveal to ourselves what God's kingdom within us should be like; it should reign in "charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity." 25

Gradually the soul triumphs over its three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the Psalmist it can say of die grievous state through which it has come: "I am brought to nothing, and I knew not. I am become as a beast before Thee: and I am always with Thee. Thou hast held me by my right hand: and by Thy will Thou hast conducted me, and with Thy glory Thou has received me. For what have I in heaven? and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth? . . . But it is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my

"ibid.

hope in the Lord God: that I may declare all Thy praises." 28 These are the chief effects of die passive purification of the senses, the purpose of which is to spiritualize in some way the life of the senses, subordinating them to the spirit. The passive purification of the soul aims to bring about the entire supernaturalization and complete submission of the soul to God, making it, so to say, deiform and preparing it for divine union in this life, a union which is the normal prelude, for those who become perfect, of the eternal union of life everlasting. 27

« St. Catherine of Siena teaches the same doctrine in the third chapter of her Dialogue.¹

Footnotes

1. o THE LOVE OF GOD ↩