Introduction

Great speculative theologians and great mystics have written so many excellent books on the love of God that we have only to get at the truth which they contain, for we can desire nothing better than to understand them well. But the works of the great masters of theological speculation, like St. Thomas, and those of the mystics strictly so-called, like St. John of the Cross, present serious differences, both in form and in point of view. We may, then, profit by comparing I hem, not to establish a harmony between them which would destroy both their difference and their individuality, but to see if, by reason of this very difference, these works do not mutually clarify one another. Such is the purpose of the present investigation.

In a preceding work, Christian Perfection and Contemplation, we saw that Christian perfection consists especially in charity, or the love of God and of neighbor. And we noted that the perfection of this virtue falls under the precept of love, not as matter, or that which is to be immediately realized, but as the end toward which all men ought to tend, each according to his condition. We said further that the gifts of the Holy Ghost, particularly the gifts of understanding and of wisdom, the principles of infused contemplation, are connected with charity and develop with it, so that infused contemplation belongs to the normal growth of holiness. St. John of the Cross has, in fact, shown that contemplation, which is quite distinct from such extraordinary graces as visions, revelations, and interior words, begins to grow ordinarily at the outset of the illuminative way and comes to full flower in the unitive way. This first work was an exposition of the principles of ascetical and mystical theology; it might have been called "The Love of God and Contemplation."

In the present work, entitled The Love of God and the Cross of Christ, we are not taking up again the study of those problems already dealt with; we presuppose their solution as given in die light of the principles of St. Thomas and of St. John of the Cross. Here we shall confirm that solution by what the two great masters teach on the love of God and the mystery of the cross. Plainly, the subject touches what lies deepest in the interior life of our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently in the life of every Christian who would imitate Him. It is only by the royal road of the cross that the Christian soul truly enters into supernatural contemplation of the mysteries of faith and lives lovingly and deeply by them.

Division of the subject In the first part of this work we treat in a general way of God's love for us, the response He expects from us, and the mystery of the cross. It contains a study of the problem of love, which comes to this: Is pure or disinterested love of God possible, and, if it is, what is its relation to love of self? In other words, does the primordial inclination of our nature lead us to love ourselves above everything else, or to love God still more? We shall study this problem in the light of St. Thomas' principles, which contain virtually the metaphysics and theology of love; we shall also see the relation of these principles to the mystery of the cross in our Lord and in His mystical body. Then we shall discover what the progress of the love of God ought to be in a truly faithful Christian, a progress by means of mortification made necessary by the remains of original and personal sin, as well as by the infinite loftiness of our supernatural end.

We shall examine the laws of the progress of love or of the increase of charity, obtained by our meritorious acts and by Holy Communion. We shall see how, in principle, this progress ought, without haste, waste, or worry, to become ever more and more rapid.

Having done this, we shall be the better prepared to understand the crosses of the sensitive powers and of the spirit, the role of these purifying graces, and the way we should act during such trials. Finally we shall speak of the life of union, of its relation to the indwelling Blessed Trinity, together with the influence of the humanity of the Savior and of Mary our Mediatrix.

These pages are, then, a treatise on God's purifying graces, preceded by an introduction on His love for us and the return He expects from us. We have developed, especially under the title of "The Cross of the Senses" and "The Cross of the Spirit," the teaching of St. John of the Cross on the passive purifications of the senses and of the spirit, and of the states preceding and following them.

Although St. Thomas did not treat these purifications ex professo, he has given us, in the questions on grace, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost which accompany them, principles that make the description of the Doctor of Carmel more understandable by throwing light on them from above, so to speak. These descriptions reproduce and enrich those already given by St. Gregory in his reflections on the book of Job, and later those of Hugo of St. Victor and of

Tauler.

Instead of "passive purification" we have chosen to use the more general and profound term, "the cross," in the sense our Lord Himself gave it in the gospel, so frequently explained by the Fathers and so beautifully chanted in the liturgy, especially during Passiontide. St. Thomas, in treating of this divine Passion, has left us some profound considerations on the love of God and the mystery of the cross. These considerations, united to his doctrine on charity, on living faith, and on the purifying role of the gifts of knowledge and understanding, help us to get a better grasp of the meaning and implication of the words of St. John of the Cross. These two great masters throw light on each other, the abstract considerations of St. Thomas showing us the profound essence of those things the great mystic of Carmel describes so concretely and vividly. Through this association the doctrine of the Summa theologica gains in life, throwing open vast perspectives before us, and the doctrine of The Dark Night reveals itself as much more theological than at first sight it seems to be. St. Thomas has made it his special task to lay bare the essence or nature of the infused virtues and of the gifts, reasoning to their properties and mutual relationships; and St. John of the Cross has described their progress to perfect development.

It is to our advantage to note at the start what each possesses unshared and what both hold in common.

The theology of St. Thomas and the spirituality of St. John of the Cross Anyone frequently consulting the works of St. Thomas and meditating on those of St. John of the Cross can easily see that fundamentally they agree. Although mystics often have a disdain for scholastic theology, St. John of the Cross, who knew it well, had great respect for it, and especially for the Angelic Doctor, whom he follows with particular care on questions relative to habitual and actual grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Some writers find a perfect harmony between their doctrines difficult. They say that St. Thomas, following Aristotle, has as his characteristic the mean and defends the value of everything human without in the least failing to recognize the infinite greatness of God. St. John of the Cross, they maintain, is the representative of excess, continually reminding us that no measure can exist for a love that should be measureless, placing the value of divine union in such strong relief that he seems to put too little value on things human.

If we forget the difference between scholastic terminology and the language of mysticism, we may come to suppose a wide doctrinal divergence between them; and this will widen if we understand St. Thomas' "mean" as a designation for the mediocre or the halfway, lying at an equal distance from philosophical and theological minimism and its opposite extreme.

We often find the fundamental theses of Thomism presented in this very way. In philosophy men assign them a place midway between Empiricism and idealistic Platonism, between materialism and exaggerated spiritualism; in theology, between Pelagianism and predestinationism ; and in morals, between the laxist and rigorist, the liberal and authoritarian, points of view. A writer can easily slip into making such antitheses, frequently refuting the first of two extremes by the second and then the second by the first just to keep to a vague middle course that oscillates first this way and then that, depending on the moment's need. As a result agnostics say that the antinomies are insoluble, and any thinking man could rightly label such a middle course eclecticism and, in the practical order, opportunism.

If this were St. Thomas' doctrine, it certainly would differ from the thought of St. John of the Cross: insisting on this is pointless. But does this idea belong to Thomism, or to the eclectics treading their aloof and careful way between those who exaggerate and those who minimize? It is their darling. St Thomas' "mean" is a summit lifting its great shoulders high above the crooked course of error that splays out in everlengthening lines to far, fiat extremes.

A truth is not on the same horizontal plane, on the same level, as die two contrary errors it opposes. It rises far above diem like a great peak radiant with principles. Eclecticism has never reached it, for eclecticism seeks, in its oscillations, to remain at an equal distance from the apex of this height and those errors which are like the two extremities of its base. Progress towards truth should not be a fluctuation between extremes, but an ascent, deviating neither to the right nor to the left, like die path drawn by St. John of the Cross in the ascent of Mount Carmel.

If time permitted, we could easily show that this is die character of St. Thomas' progress toward the heights of truth and of the mean typical of his doctrine. The problems of becoming and of being, of knowledge, of the union of soul and body of the relationship between intellect and will, and many others, could all be examined with this m mind; but, obviously, we would then be wandering too far afield from the subject in hand, the spirituality of St. John of the Cross. This great mystic, Thomistically trained at Salamanca and consciously faithful to that training, has confined himself to treating of the soul's intimate relation with God, preparation for divine union in this life, and that union itself. To compare his doctrine with that of St. Thomas, we must, then, consider chiefly the terms of the divine union: God in His intimate life, the author of grace, and the human soul supernaturalized by grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts. Viewed in this light, the apparent distance separating these two conceptions contracts; more than that, St. John of the Cross brings out in a wonderful way the wealth of lofty truths expressed only virtually by St. Thomas and turns out before our eyes the hidden richness of his highest principles. The Angelic Doctor certainly does uphold the value of human things but always points to its infinite smallness when weighed against the infinite greatness of God. And St. John of the Cross, in all his works, never ceases praising God's infinite greatness by insisting on the purifications necessary to approach die inaccessible light of God and the conditions indispensable for divine union in this world. We do well, by the way, to remember that even here and now divine union belongs to the normal development of the life of grace — by right if not, because of human weakness, in fact.

When it is a question of God, the first cause, probably no one holds that St. Thomas' thought lies halfway between the unlikely attenuations of the minimists and the exaltation of the great mystics. None have excelled the Angelic Doctor in dealing with the subject of God's sovereign dominion over all creation. Nor has anyone set forth the universality of the divine causality and the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end better than he. According to him, divine causality, by reason of its intrinsic and transcendent efficacy, infallibly moves us not only to will the good in general but to choose a particular salutary good. And, far from injuring our liberty, it extends to the free mode of our determination.

The Thomistic doctrine of grace is not only at an equal distance from Pelagianism and predestinationism as revived by Calvin, but it also rises above all such mediocre conceptions as the different forms of congruism. In one way or other, these put limitations on the universal causality of the frirst A*ent and the sovereign efficacy of grace. They rob some or ah of their meaning from St. Paul's words: "For who distinguished! thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?" 2 "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, acording to His good win."'

On this fundamental point, St. John of the Cross like the Carmelites of Salamanca, is the faithful disciple of St. Thomas. Few souls have actually lived the doctrine as deep y as he did What the prince of theologians says speculatively about the intrinsic efficacy of grace, St. John of the Cross experienced, especially in the passive purification of the spurt wherein men undergo temptations against the theological virtues such as God alone could vanquish by His grace. This He gives not only to precede our choice but to infallibly produce it in and with us. "Lord," says the saint, "if to grant what I ask You await my works, give them to me, accomplish them in me, and join to them the sufferings You will to accept from

1 See Summa theol., la, q. 19. a-8, ad 2um; q.83, a. 1, ad 3 um ; la Hae, q. 10, a. 4, cetad3um.

2 I Cor. 4: 7. « Phil. 2: 13- me." 4 This thought recurs often in the Oracion de alma enamorada, preserved in an autographed manuscript at Andujar.

The author of The Dar\ Night and The Living Flame has grasped particularly well the consequences of the deep and often misunderstood distinction made by St. Augustine and St. Thomas between operating grace, by which the soul is moved without, properly speaking, moving itself, and cooperating grace, by which the soul both is moved and moves itself through its own proper activity. 5

Like all the best Thomists, 8 St. John of the Cross has recognized that through operating grace, through tiiat divine inspiration dominant in the passive state, man can act not only vitally but also freely and meritoriously without, properly speaking, acting deliberately, that is, as the result of discursive deliberation. Such is the act of the gift of piety inspired by the Holy Ghost. It is superior to the act of the virtue of religion under the guidance of Christian prudence. We can recite the Rosary but cannot have at will that filial lifting up of the heart that reaches to our Father in heaven. Of itself, by its own proper activity, the soul does not attain to acts of the gifts or purpose in advance to accomplish them. The Holy Ghost leads the soul to perform them without deliberation but with free consent to receive the divine inspiration. Like the most acute interpreters of St. Thomas, St. John of the Cross under-

• E. A. Peers, tr. The Complete Works of St. ]ohn of the Cross (London: Burns Oatcs & Washbourne, 1935), III, 243. See also pp. 244, 246. "The soul that is hard becomes harder through love of its own self. If in Thy love, O good Jesus, Thou softenest not the soul, it will persist for ever in its natural hardness. . . Thou, Lord, returncst gladly and lovingly to exalt him that offends Thee, and I return not to exalt and honour him that angers me."

8 Cf. Del Prado, OJ 5 ., De gratia et libero arbitrio, II, 220, 223. This subject has already been treated in Christian Perfection and Contemplation, tr. Doyle (St. Louis: Herder, 1939), pp. 80 ff.

I0 THE LOVE OF GOD stood this and made it the principle of his mystical doctrine. He clearly distinguishes between die acts that the soul effects by its own activity under common and cooperating actual grace and those higher acts lying beyond the reach of the soul's capacity and in the power of God alone. Infused contemplation and the love flowing out from it are, for example, vital, free, and meritorious acts not only during times of grievous purification but even in ecstasy and rapture.

Living this doctrine deeply, St. John of the Cross admits without difficulty St. Thomas' teaching on the gratuitousness of our predestination to glory. We ought to remark this attentively that we may not misunderstand his statement that the call of interior souls to contemplation is a part of the normal way of sanctity. Of eternal life, the normal fulfillment of the life of grace, the Gospel says: "For many are called, but few are chosen." 7 The same is true of divine union, its normal prelude in this life, as St. John of the Cross and St. Thomas perfectly agree. We read in The Spiritual Canticle: "In the ... day of eternity God predestined the soul to glory, and therein determined the glory which He would give her, and gave it to her freely, without beginning, before He created her. And this ... is proper to this soul, in such wise that no happening or accident, high or low, will suffice to take it from her for ever; but she will come to possess without end that to which God predestined her without beginning." 8 We find the same thought again in The Ascent of Mount Carmel: "For, although it is true that a soul, according to its greater or smaller capacity, may have attained to union, yet not all do so in the same degree, for this depends upon what the Lord

» The Spiritual Canticle, str. 38.

desires to grant to each one. It is in the same way that souls see God in heaven." 9

This accord of St. John of the Cross with St. Thomas on the doctrines of grace and of predestination, certainly neither accidental nor material, is essential and formal, truly fundamental, reaching to the very spirit and orientation of their doctrines. No less agreement exists between them on another subject that concerns God Himself: the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end. The sentimentalism of the Modernists, through conforming to the method and doctrine of immanence, shows an unmistakable tendency to confound the order of grace with the order of nature, our higher with our merely sensitive faculties. This confusion leads a man to deny the necessity of mortification and the cross. Following St. Thomas, St. John of the Cross, on the contrary, states in the strongest terms that the order of nature is infinitely below the order of grace and declares the latter absolutely inaccessible to the natural powers of man or angel, no matter how fully those powers are developed. Because he believes so firmly in the infinite transcendence of the supernatural order, he insists, more than anyone else has ever done, on the necessity of the passive purification of the spirit to free the acts of the theological virtues from every natural alloy. Because together with St. Thomas and contrary to nominalist empiricists he is fully convinced of the absolute superiority of our intellect enlightened by faith and of our will animated by charity over our imagination and sensitive appetite, he insists on the necessity of the passive purification of the senses. These three orders, infinitely distant from one another, are so constituted — not in virtue of a free decree of God, as Duns Scotus would have it,

' The Ascent of Ml. Carmel, Bk. II, chap. 4.

THE LOVE OF GOD but by their very nature, because of the very nature of God and of His intimate life, inaccessible to the natural powers of every created intellect, actual and possible alike

Like St. Thomas, St. John of the Cross keeps repeatmg that Pagination and emotion could be developed tc . infinity within their own order without ever attaining to the lowest Igree of intellectual or moral life, just as the intellect^ al and volitional powers natural to men and angels too, could contit growing steadily and constantly without becoming worth the leas? degree of that grace, infused to be found in a baptized infant. St. Thomas says The good of g race in one is greater than the good of nature in the whole unWerse" 10 These primordial truths so clearly stated by St omas have been misunderstood by the nominalist theologians and their successors and more recently by the Modern, S even when writing about "the dark night. No one, p ha , has had a deeper insight into the ; ""T Luces of these truths on the supernatural life than St. John of th Cross. The same cannot be said of Baruzi, whose recen work testifies to his bondage to the principles of idealistic

^"Tcanvinccd is the author of Tke Dar k Ni gh * of the Soul that these great truths cannot find > sufficient expression in our human language, that to make us understand them better he often has recourse to mystical hyperbole S s terminology thus differs from that of St Thomas and the Scholastics. Difference of expression is, however any thing but doctrinal divergence. Indeed St John of the Cross - tending to make us fully understand their value and to w n us from our habit of bringing all things, even the most spxrxt- i« la Hac, q."3. *-9. ^ 2um ' ual, down to the level of the material, accentuates precisely those things in theology which are the very soul of the doctrinal body.

Readers not familiar with his style believe that he, unlike the moderate St. Thomas, exaggerates the necessity of austerity and purification. They forget that St. Thomas himself recognized the legitimate use of mystical hyperbole as a means of expression and that, moreover, spiritual writers who use it have Holy Scripture as their model. 11 An expression like "the nothingness of creatures" helps us to realize how trifling is the most gifted creature in comparison to God. The style of the mystic is a telling style, an apt instrument wisely used for a definite purpose. Our Lord Himself said, "If thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out . . . thy hand, ... cut it off.

" 12 ■T'| ie spiritual or mystical style is not the scholastic style. It would be an error, for example, to maintain as scholastically true those propositions about the nothingness of creatures, true only in mystical language, where we expect and properly interpret the use of hyperbole. Were we to take "the nothingness of creatures" literally, we would be granting that, strictly speaking, creatures are absolutely nothing and God alone exists, a position that entails the denial either of the dogma of creation or a fusion and confusion of the being of creatures with the being of God, the error of pantheists and immanentists. Logically there follows the denial of created free will and consequently of sin. If some mystics have gone off in this direction, if Master Eckhart's thought approaches or approximates this dangerous position, nothing is more contrary to the doctrine of St. John of the Cross. He repeatedly

THE LOVE OF GOD Lists upon the infinite distance between the created and 1 Uncreated, the existence of sin, and the necessity of profound purificadon for the soul. St "distance by saying that God alone « -If-subs^ng B eng "I am who am." In Him alone are «sence and ex,^ stence identical ; in every creature they are really distinct In these enthely speculative domains, perfect harmony ex 1S ts between St John of the Cross and St. Thomas; tins is true m equal measure in the practical order, as we are about to see

A close study of the Angelic Doctor's answers to the two most important questions in the spiritual hfe reveals no doc- Lai disagreement between St. John of the Cross and himself These questions are: (1) Do the virtu* consist in an exact mean ? (2) How should the virtues grow ? Let us see if , in Z connection, the enthusiasm of St. John of the Cross , opposed to the perfect mean of St. Thomas Aquinas.

If St. Thomas says that the moral virtues, other acquired or infused, consist in an exact mean between too much and too little and generally between two contrary vices, this *s certainly not Ac golden mean of the Epicureans They avoid vice o escape its inconvenient consequences and not out of love for he true good transcending the useful and delectable alike The moral mean, as St. Thomas conceived it, is a summit as well the culminating point of the life of reason Itis above Te opposing forms of the irrational and the evil » The more vhtue grows, the higher this exact mean becomes wrthout de iating either to the right or to the left. Fortitude for examol remains at an equal distance from cowardice and Rashness, but at the same time it is ever reachmg new h , r ,, a.2, ad lum. Cf. also Dc potenua, q.3,

heights. Infused fortitude is a higher mean than acquired fortitude; the gift of fortitude is higher still. 15 Likewise St. Thomas admits, without any difficulty, that the different phases of the soul's ascent to God are marked by the progress of the Christian moral virtues, especially with the help of the gifts. This is what he tells us when speaking of the perfecting virtues and the virtues of the perfect soul, those clear likenesses of the divine virtues, the supreme exemplars of our own. What St. Thomas merely indicates on this subject in one article, 18 St. John of the Cross develops throughout The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dar\ Night in regard to the theological virtues and the gifts accompanying them. The harmony of these two doctrines is particularly apparent. St. Thomas teaches that, because these virtues immediately concern our last end, God Himself, they cannot consist essentially in an exact mean and that consequently they far surpass even the noblest moral virtues. God Himself in His infinite truth and goodness is the primary object and formal motive of faith, hope, and charity. Therefore we cannot believe too much in Him, hope too much in Him, or love Him too much. It is true that, as far as we are concerned and in an entirely accidental way, by relation to some material and secondary object, faith is to be found between unbelief and credulity. In the same way, hope has a middle position between despair and presumption. But deviations from the theological virtues do not originate in any limitation in their primary object or formal motive, as though development of

16 St. Thomas' doctrine about the mean of certain moral virtues, such as humility and magnanimity, religion and penance, is closely related to the teaching of the great mystics. Cf. Ha llae, q.8i, a.6, ad 3um; q.93, a.2; q. 129, a.3, ad lum and ad 4um; q.161, a.1, a.3; Ilia, q.85, a.2, a.3.

i6 THE LOVE OF GOD these virtues reached boundaries beyond which it cannot pass without falling into excess. Departures from the virtues ordinate in a bad application of their motive to some secondary mat ter that is unfitting; for example, we can hold as revealed what is not revealed or we can hope for the grace of a happy death and yet have no will to realize its necessary condition,

3 Sotoltnly is it true that we cannot believe in God too much, hope in Him too much, or love Him too much, but it is also true that we cannot believe in Him, or hope in Him or love Him enough." Hence we are not only counseled but required to grow in virtue until death. In this matter the exact mean no longer characterizes St. Thomas' doctrine; at these great heights he says with all the great mystics that the : measure of our love of God is to have no measure. Now the love of God and of our neighbor is not commanded according to a measure, so that what is in excess of the measure be a matter of counsel. This is evident from the very form of the commandment, pointing, as it does, to perfection for instance m the words, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart ' The reason of this is that the end of the commandment is charity ... and the end is not subject to a measure but only such things as are directed to the end as the Philosopher observes." 18 The perfection of charity falls under the first and greatest commandment not as matter, as that which is to be immediately realized, but as the end toward which all Christians should advance, each according to his condition. Here, as St. Thomas says, the objective measure of our acts is no longer created but uncreated and, therein /,<., q.64, a. 4. "Ua Ilae, q.184, a. 3.

fore, infinite and impassable. 10 In every one of his works, St. John of the Cross repeats the same thing.

The essentially supernatural and naturally inaccessible character of the uncreated formal motive of the three theological virtues should receive particular attention because of its importance. Once we have appreciated this, then the more we read The Dar\ Night of the Soul and The Living Flame and compare them with St. Thomas' treatises on the theological virtues and the gifts accompanying them, the more we see how these two dissimilar works mutually clarify each other. St. Thomas shows us the nature and properties of the infused virtues and of the gifts; St. John of the Cross holds up before us the wonder of their growth and strengthening — the loveliest thing in the world. This takes place in the midst of those passive purifications which bring into strong relief the wholly supernatural, formal motive of the theological virtues: God, the first revealing truth, God all-powerful, ever merciful and ready to help, God infinitely good in Himself. Nowhere is the full development of the theological virtues and of the gifts of wisdom and understanding better presented than in the works of this great saint. In his treatment of these lofty and difficult subjects lies his claim to that greatness the Church recognizes in conferring upon him the title of Doctor.

To appreciate fully the penetration of these two great masters, we must consider that for them — contrary to Scotus, the nominalist theologians, and their numerous followers — the infused Christian virtues and especially the theological virtues are supernatural not only quoad modum, by the mode of their production, like the resurrection of the dead, when

18 la Ilae, q.64, a. 4, ad 2um; "The theological virtues perfect (our intellect and will) in relation to an uncreated rule and measure."

THE LOVE OF GOD natural life is supernaturally restored to the body; but they ar LpematuraW«^ substanUam, by the, very essence *e sanctifying grace, the physical and formal the nature of God. These virtues have their source in sanctif y- £££ as its properties, and are specified by an essentiaUy supernatural formal object and motive, inaccessibly : to the natural competence of any human or angelic inte^c ^ however powerful. "In the object of faith, St. ^omas ^ "there is something formal, as it were, namely, the First Truth surpassing all the natural knowledge of a creature, and some- Zg material, namely, the thing to which we assent whi e adhering to the First Truth. With regard to the former, before oblling the happiness to come, faith is common to al (whether men or angels) who have knowledge o God, by adhering to the First Truth." - "A heretic does not hold he other articles of faith, about which he does no, err * . the same way as one of the faithful does, namely, by adhering simply to the Divine Truth, because, in order to do so, a man n"ds the help of the habit of faith." « This faith essentially supernatural by reason of die formal motive and the primary object specifying it, is altogether different from the acquired fatfi of the demons who, forced by the evidence of miracles, believe while trembling: "compelled by ^ evidence of sign. Whence 'believing' is used equivocally of the faith u nd of demons; in them faith is not due to any infused light of o-race as it is in the faithful." -

8 Wthout the infused light of faith, man, when face to face

458-5"5- with the gospel, is like a tone-deaf listener at a symphony; he hears it but cannot perceive its beauty. As St. Paul says: "But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him; and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined." 23 Faith is "the gift of God," 24 "the substance of things to be hoped for," 25 the seed of eternal life.

Very few souls have understood this statement of St. Paul as fully as the author of The Dar\ Night. For a real comprehension of his splendid commentary on it, let us recall that the historical and critical study of the gospel and the philosophical examination of the miracles confirming it can give us evidence of the credibility of the mysteries of faith. They can bring us to a rational certitude that God, the author of a naturally knowable miracle, is also the author of the gospel. This rational certitude, however, does not have the same formal motive as infused faith, for it rests on the first principles of natural reason and not on the revealed and revealing First Truth.

In itself, the First Truth is the cause of faith, being that which and that by which we believe, 28 making us adhere by the infused light of faith to the mysteries of faith revealed to us. By God I believe in God, my single "Credo" acknowledging Him who reveals and is revealed in one and the same essentially supernatural act. 27

This is a new domain, the kingdom of God, infinitely beyond the natural knowledge of every actual or even possible

23 I Cor. 2: 14. See St. Thomas' commentary on this text. "Eph. 2:8. 26 Hcb. 11: 1.

creature. In this realm, by an act of obscure but wholly supernatural faith, man infallibly clings to God. In a divine obscurity far above the reach of human reasoning, the created intellect finds refuge in the immutable.

When the act of faith, infinitely superior to the natural activity of both our reason and the angelic intellect, is illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom, we shall have infused contemplation of the revealed mysteries and the understanding and delight of a spirit of great faith. 28 Infused contemplation proceeds from faith and the enlightening gifts, as both the Carmelite Joseph of the Holy Ghost and Cajetan have brought out so well. 29

Certain theologians who forget this great teaching and follow the nominalists come to consider our act of faith as a kind of discursive and substantially natural act mvested with a supernatural modality. They think that it rests formally on the natural evidence of miracles and the other signs that confirm revelation and therefore diey regard it as substantially natural although invested with a supernatural modality and efficacious for salvation. The supernatural would not be according to this view, a new and essentially divine life, but a sort of finish, a pretty process of supernatural gold plating, as it were. If this is said of the act of faith, it must logically be asserted of the acts of hope and of charity as well. Then charity would no longer be the same on earth as it is in heaven, since in heaven alone would it be essentially supernatural. This sort of supernatural is but an imitation diamond. We seek the genuine.

"Srf. q i die Holy Ghost, Cursus thcol. scolast mysticac. 0, Sec also Father Gardens recent and excellent work, U structure dc lime et Vexperience mystique, II, 173

What nominalist theologians and their followers failed to see, St. John of the Cross, walking in the way of St. Thomas, has comprehended in a masterly way. The doctrine diat there are acts essentially supernatural because of their formal motive and inaccessible to both the human and the angelic intellects serves as the basis for all he has written on faith, hope, and charity. Few others have possessed the same insight into the meaning and implication of our Lord's words: "No man can come to Me except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him. . . . Amen, amen, I say unto you: He that believeth in Me hath everlasting life." 30 "My sheep hear My voice." 31 "The school in which God teaches and is heard," says St. Augustine, "is far from the realm of the senses. We see many men come to the Son of God, since we see many who believe in Christ; but when and how they have learned this truth of the Father we do not see; too intimate and too secret is this grace." 32 "He who has supernatural faith," says St. Thomas, "cleaves through the influence of an infused light, to the First Truth revealing." 33

St. John of the Cross always keeps before us the increasing intensity of this infused light. He says: "From what has been said it is to be inferred that, in order for the understanding to be prepared for this Divine union, it must be pure and void of all that pertains to sense, and detached and freed from all that can be clearly perceived by the understanding profoundly hushed and put to silence, and leaning upon faith, which alone is the proximate and proportionate means whereby the soul is united with God ; for such is the likeness between itself

82 De praedestinatione sanctorum, P.L., XLIV, 970; XLIII, 1019. 88 St. Thomas in Joann., c. IV, lect. V, 2.

and God that there is no difference, save that which exists between seeing God and believing in Him. . . . And thus, by this means alone, God manifests Himself to the soul in Dmne light, which surpasses all understanding. And therefore, the gLter is the faith of the soul, the more completely is i united with God . . . beneath this darkness [o faxth] the understanding is united with God, and beneath it God is

Thb evidently means that the primary object and the formal motive of infused faith infinitely surpass the natural powers of every created intellect. But in his immortal pages on the passive purifications of the spirit St. John of the Cross revealed to best advantage one of the highest consequences of this doctrine. St. Thomas had already given the prmaples and traced the course to be followed when he showed that the gift of understanding progressively purifies faith trom every human alloy by freeing our mind from speculative and practical errors and from attachment to sensib le im ages St John of the Cross showed us how, in die night of the spirit under the two contrary influences of God and Satan and through purifying, redeeming, and ahnost overwhelming suffering, the three formal motives of the theological virtues grow brighter and brighter in spite of the darkness. In all their uncreated and supernatural sublimity ^se are lik three great spiritual diamonds-God the revealing First Truth, God Ible and willing to help us, God infinitely good and eminently lovable. St. Thomas had declared that these three formal motives are inaccessible to the natural intellectual powers of any actual or possible creature. St. John of the Cross made known

3* The Ascent of Ml. Camel. Bk. II, chap. 8. asila Ilac, q-8, a. 7- to us how the Holy Ghost, by purging the theological virtues of every natural impurity through the light of His gifts, gives them the capacity to cleave with great purity to God and to His intimate life, unattainable by the natural knowledge of even the greatest angel.

Such is the immediate preparation for transforming union: wherein, in this life, die soul is divinized by being made to share in the very nature of God; wherein it enjoys, through the gift of wisdom, the quasi-experimental and almost continual realization of the indwelling Trinity; and wherein it loves with a pure and generous love the infinitely good God and, in Him, the souls of men. In this state God touches the soul deeply, substantially. The Holy Spirit breathes His most secret inspirations into its depths. This is the supreme, the normal, development of the life of grace, eternal life begun in time. "Amen, amen, I say unto you: he that believeth in Me hath everlasting life." 36

The doctrine of St. John of the Cross is, then, in full harmony with the principles formulated by Thomas Aquinas and unfolds all their rich virtuality in the order of the mystical life. It has the great merit of joining to the theology of the theological virtues and the gifts the mystical states that St. Teresa contented herself with describing. It gives a scientific knowledge of these states by designating their four causes — their immediate subject, their formal constituent, their principle, and their end. It has another merit no less great. It draws a clear-cut distinction between infused contemplation (which proceeds from faith united to charity and from the gifts of wisdom and understanding) and those extraordinary favors diat sometimes accompany it (visions, revelations, in- se John 6: 47. Cf. The Living Flame, str. 2, v. 5.

terior words). And it shows that the first alone belongs to the normal way of sanctity and is greatly to be desired. St. John of the Cross is one of the masters who do most to warn souls against the desire for extraordinary favors while at the same time, making them desire more and more the full perfection of charity, together with infused contemplation of die mysteries of faith, which usually accompanies it He even insists that the desire for revelations turns the sou from true contemplation, from the divine darkness of faith In this he again faithfully follows St. Thomas, who has taught us that the grace of the virtues and the gifts is far superior to the gratuitous graces {gratis datac) which are, in a sense, external, like die gift of miracles or of tongues, or the prophetic knowledge of future events. 38

St John of the Cross has merited the title of Doctor or the Church because of the absolute trustworthiness and the great sublimity of his doctrine. Many things in mystical doctrine and in the works of his great predecessors become clear to us when we read him. He floods new light upon every subject. With him speculative mystical theology becomes a definitive science; and, instead of separating itself from general theology, is incorporated within it, becoming its highest and most beautiful branch.

So, in perfect fidelity to tradition, the work of St. John of the Cross marks a great step forward in doctrinal mystical theology. He has, indeed, what is very unusual, the double authority of a sure theologian and a great mystic who has had deep and experimental knowledge of the divine things about which he speaks. For this reason he is far ahead of most

" The Ascent of Ml. Carmel, Bk. II, chap. 27s»Ia nae, q.m, a-5- authors who have written on the same subject. He speaks of these things as only the great masters can. In his writings we are aware of the continual influence of the gifts of wisdom and understanding. His words flow freely from their source, the Holy Ghost, "a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting." 39

When we have meditated on this doctrine and have observed at close range souls that, during the trials of the night of the spirit, live, and live deeply, by it, we return with new joy to St. Thomas' treatises on grace, the theological virtues, and the gifts. And we realize that the best commentators have not told us all they contain. We discover new treasures in them. We see that the principles which the Angel of the Schools formulated on faith, hope, and charity are fully verified only in the mystical life. And we are convinced that doctrinal mysticism is nothing else but the full flowering of speculative theology, just as experimental mysticism is the normal and full development of the grace of the virtues and of the gifts in a truly faithful, interior soul.

May these two great masters obtain for us light to understand them well and fidelity to follow them closely.