Chapter LXXXIX. The Transforming Union, Prelude of the Union of Heaven
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E shall now discuss the supreme development on earth of the life of grace in souls that have undergone the passive puri- fication of the spirit, described by St. John of the Cross in The Dark Night + and by St. Teresa in The Interior Castle.?
On emerging from these interior trials, the soul receives such knowledge of the divine majesty that it is at times absorbed in God, as Archimedes was by his discoveries, to such an extent that he did not hear speech addressed to him. At other times, the soul exults and cannot refrain from singing the praises of God. In this connection St. Teresa says: “So excessive is its jubilee that the soul will not enjoy it alone, but speaks of it to all around so that they may help it to praise God, which is its one desire.” * Thus St. Dominic spoke only to God or of God and spent his nights in prayer at the foot of the altar; St. Thomas Aquinas also prayed for hours at night before the Blessed Sacrament.
This holy joy of soul, the fruit of union with God, may be desired, says St. Teresa,* whereas it is in no way fitting to desire visions and revelations, for they are extraordinary favors entirely distinct from the full development of the life of grace in our souls. St. Teresa declares: “Know that for having received many favors of this kind, you will not merit more glory, but will be the more stringently obliged to serve, since you have received more. ... There are many saints who never knew what it was to receive one such favor,1 while others who have received them are not saints at all. . . . Indeed, for one that is granted, the soul bears many a cross.” °
Finally, at the end of its earthly ascent toward God, the soul 1s introduced into the transforming union, described especially by St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, who bring a precision of statement on this point to what the greatest spiritual writers who preceded them had said. Using their description, we shall see the graces which sometimes accompany the transforming union, next the essential nature of this union, its theological explanation, and its fruits.
Tue Graces Wuicu SOMETIMES ACCOMPANY THE "TRANSFORMING UNION
The spiritual marriage is at times celebrated with expressive symbolism: the favored person receives a ring set with precious stones, which from then on he sees from time to time; he hears celestial canticles. This sensible symbolism is also at times accompanied by an apparition of our Lord and by an intellectual vision of the Blessed Trinity. St. Teresa mentions these two graces which she personally received.® She also notes: “Those whom our Lord admits into the seventh mansion . . . are constantly in the company of Christ our Lord both in His humanity and His divinity.” 7
The intellectual vision of the Blessed Trinity which certain persons receive in this state shows them by an infused idea and an eminent light the real distinction between the three Persons and the unity of Their nature incomparably better than the best theologian could by developing the congruous arguments relative to this mystery. The soul thus favored has not yet the immediate vision of the divine essence; it does not possess the intrinsic evidence of the mystery; it does not yet see that if God were not triune, He would not be God. The soul still remains in the order of faith, but its faith becomes singularly penetrating, luminous, and sweet. It grasps far better than before that the Father is God, that the Son is God, that the Holy Ghost is God, and, nevertheless, that the Father is not the Son, and that neither the Father nor the Son is the
8 Ibid. ê Seventh mansion, chap. 2. T Sixth mansion, chap. 7.
Holy Ghost. It sees dimly, so to speak, that the Father in His infinite fecundity communicates the entire divine nature to the Son, and the Father and the Son communicate it to the Holy Ghost by the most perfect diffusion of the divine goodness and in the most intimate communion. The soul sees in the Blessed Trinity an eminent exemplar of Eucharistic Communion and of the closest union of the soul with its Creator and Father, according to the words of Jesus: “That they may be one as We also are one.”
This intellectual vision of the Blessed Trinity, which is inferior to the beatific vision, is of varying and intermittent clarity. It does not seem necessarily linked to the transforming union according to the description given of it by St. John of the Cross.® He does not say that this state requires essentially extraordinary graces, although it implies a very lofty contemplation of the divine perfections.
Tue ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE [TRANSFORMING UNION
St. Teresa notes that in this stage ecstasies cease as a rule: “The infirmity [of ecstasy ] formerly so troublesome to the mind and impossible to get over, disappears at once. Probably this is because our Lord has now strengthened, dilated, and developed the soul.” ® Thus union with God, which can now take place without troubling the exercise of the faculties, becomes almost continual. It seems indeed that the Blessed Virgin was always in this state, and it is also said that St. Hildegarde never knew the weakness of ecstasy.
According to St. John of the Cross,!° the essential basis of this wholly eminent state is in no way miraculous; it is, says the saint, “the perfect state of the spiritual life,” being here on earth the culminating point of the development of the life of grace and of the love of God, and the closest union with the Blessed Trinity, which dwells in every soul in the state of grace.
In the transforming union the higher faculties are drawn to the innermost center of the soul where the Blessed Trinity dwells." Under this grace the soul cannot doubt the presence in it of the divine Persons and is almost never deprived of Their company.
8 The Living Flame, st. 2; A Spiritual Canticle, Part III, st. 22 ff. ® Seventh mansion, chap. 3.
10 The Living Flame, st. 2; A Spiritual Canticle, Part III, st. 22 ff. 11 The Living Flame, loc. cit.
“The soul learns that it is God who gives it ‘life,’ by certain secret intuitions,” says St. Teresa.!?
St. John of the Cross, in The Living Flame of Love, explains this union by several images:
Thus fire or a stone tend by their natural fotce to the center of their sphere. . . . When a stone shall have reached the center of the earth, and is incapable of further motion of its own, we say of it that it is then in its inmost or deepest center.
The center of the soul is God. When the soul shall have reached Him, according to its essence, and according to the power of its operations, it will then have attained to its ultimate and deepest center in God. This will be when the soul shall love Him, comprehend Him, and enjoy Him with all its strength. When, however, the soul has not attained to this state, . . . it is not in the deepest center, because there is still room for it to advance. . . . Butif the soul shall have attained to the highest degree of love, the love of God will then wound it in its inmost depth or center, and the soul will be transformed and enlightened in the highest degree in its substance, faculties, and strength, until it shall become most like unto God. The soul in this state may be compared to crystal, lucid and pure; the greater the light thrown upon it, the more luminous it becomes by the concentration thereof, until at last it seems to be all light and indistinguishable from it; it being then so illumined, and to the utmost extent, that it seems to be one with the light itself.™*
A little farther on, St. John of the Cross uses another image: “It is the same fire that first disposes the wood for combustion and afterward consumes it.” 14 It is still wood, but incandescent wood, which has taken on the properties of fire. Thus from the purified heart a flame rises almost ceaselessly toward God.
St. Teresa uses still another figure for this spiritual state, comparing it to rain: “Thus rain which falls from heaven into a river is so mingled with it that it can no longer be distinguished from it.” The figure of two candles whose flames unite to form a single flame, has also been used to describe this union, which is like a fusion of the soul’s life and God’s. As a result, we understand why St. John of the Cross describes the transforming union as the state of spiritual perfection, the full development of the grace of the virtues and the
gifts: “The perfect spiritual life,” he says, “consists in the possession of God by the union of love.” 15
The transforming union is, therefore, most intimate; it brings with it great, inalterable peace, at least to the summit of the higher faculties. Yet the soul thus favored may still at times be “sorrowful unto death” if Jesus wishes to associate it with His life of reparation and lead it to Gethsemane for the salvation of sinners. In the Garden of Olives, He himself had more than the transforming union; with the hypostatic union, He had the beatific vision, and yet He willed to experience mortal sadness that His holocaust might be perfect.
THe THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF [uis STATE
In A Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross writes of the interior cellars thus: “These cellars are seven in number, and the soul has entered into them all when it has in perfection the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, so far as it is possible for it. . . . Many souls reach and enter the first cellar, each according to the perfection of its love, but the last and inmost cellar is entered by few in this world, because therein is wrought the perfect union with God, the union of the spiritual marriage.” 16
In other words, when the soul perfectly possesses the gift of wisdom, the highest of the seven gifts received in baptism with sanctifying grace, it has reached its inner sanctuary where the Blessed ‘Trinity dwells, and union with God is no longer only habitual, but actual and in some measure transforming. In spite of the infinite distance separating the creature’s being from that of the Creator, it is a union of quasi-experimental knowledge and very intimate love, in which the soul is deified by receiving perfect participation in the divine nature. In this sense, St. Paul could write: “He who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.” 17
In this case union is transforming because the soul, while keeping its created nature, receives a great increase of sanctifying grace
15 Ibid., st. 2, v. 6. Cf. Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen, C.D., “L’union transformante selon saint Jean de la Croix,” La Vie spirituelle, March, 1927, pp. 87 ff. G. L. Strena, “Les Sommets de la vie d’amour,” Angelicum, January, 1937, pp. 264-80.
and charity, and because it is the characteristic of ardent love to transform us morally into the person loved who is like another self, alter ego, for whom we wish, as we do for ourselves, all suitable goods. If this person is divine, holy souls wish Him to reign ever more profoundly in them, to be closer to them than they are to themselves, closer than the air they breathe 1s to their lungs, and the freshened blood to their hearts.18
St. John of the Cross himself, therefore, gives the theological explanation of this state, which he sums up in a principle enunciated in the Ascent of Mount Carmel: “The more pure and clean the soul in the perfection of a living faith, the greater is the infusion of charity, and the greater the charity, the greater the illumination and the more abundant the graces.” +°
St. Thomas says likewise that the seven gifts are connected with charity; consequently, just as the infused virtues, they grow with it, like the parts of one and the same organism, or “like the five fingers of the hand.” ?°
Evidently there are many degrees in the transforming union. St. John of the Cross points out this fact in A Spiritual Canticle,’ apropos of the spiritual betrothals, in which the soul enjoys perfect union in a transitory way, whereas in the spiritual marriage the soul possesses it in a quasi-continual manner.
According to St. Teresa,?? the fruitive union of the betrothal lasts scarcely more than half an hour, during which the soul has experimental knowledge of God really present in it and of His embrace.
In the spiritual marriage, which is ratified on earth and will be consummated in heaven, the actual union of love with God experimentally known in the center of the soul becomes more constant. According to several authors, this state is, as it were, the equivalent of a special revelation which gives the soul the certitude of being in the state of grace and, some writers add, a certitude of its pre-
18 St. Thomas, Ia Iae, q.28, a.1, 2: Union is the effect of love, which itself consists in the union of affection, and desires real union by vision which is like the possession of the object loved. Mutual inherence is also an effect of love; for the loved one is in the lover, in his affection, and this affection inclines the lover toward the beloved.
destination. This last point may be verified in many cases, but, as we shall see, it is not certain that it is verified as a rule.
St. John of the Cross says in A Spiritual Canticle: “We are not to suppose that all souls, thus far advanced, receive all that is here described, either in the same way or in the same degree of knowlédge and of consciousness. Some souls receive more, others less; some in one way, some in another; and yet all may be in the state of spiritual betrothal.” 23 Likewise, there are many degrees in the quasicontinual transforming union, under a more or less manifest form, up to the highest degree which the Blessed Virgin Mary enjoyed on earth. In these different degrees, it may be truthfully said that souls, according to their predestination, have attained here on earth their deepest center. This is the perfect realization of Christ’s prayer: “That they may be one, as We also are one: I in them, and Thou in Me; ... that the world may know that Thou... hast loved them, as Thou hast also loved Me.” 24
THE EFFECTS OF THE TRANSFORMING UNION
The effects of this state of perfection are those of the theological virtues and of the gifts which have attained their full development. One of the fruits of this union is that which was granted to the apostles on Pentecost, confirmation in grace. St. John of the Cross says: “I believe that no soul ever attains to this state without being confirmed in grace.” 78
The Carmelites of Salamanca explain this confirmation in grace as a certain participation in the impeccability of the blessed through a great increase in charity whose progress turns us more and more away from sin. This notable increase of divine love is completed by a special protection of God, who removes the occasions of sin and strengthens the soul when necessary, so that it is henceforth always preserved from mortal sin and even almost always from deliberate venial sin.?6
Is the soul that has reached this state certain of no longer offending God and of obtaining the grace of final perseverance? St. Teresa simply says that it is almost freed from the disturbance of the pas-
25 4 Spiritual Canticle, st. 22. 26 Cf. Salmanticences, De gratia, q.110, disp. III, dub. XI, no. 259.
sions, that as long as it is under the actual grace of the transforming union it does not sin venially with full deliberation. She writes: “The accustomed movements of the faculties and imagination do not appear to take place in any way that can injure the soul or disturb its peace. Do I seem to imply that after God has brought the soul thus far it is certain to be saved and cannot fall into sin again? I do not mean this; whenever I say that the soul seems in security, I must be understood to imply for as long as His Majesty thus holds it in His care and it does not offend Him.” 27
This text shows that St. Teresa is less categorical than St. John of the Cross, who goes so far as to say in A Spiritual Canticle: “The soul has left on one side and forgotten all temptationis, trials, sorrows, anxieties, and cares.” 28
St. Teresa’s manner of speaking seems more conformable to that of theology, which teaches that the grace of final perseverance cannot be merited, and that to be assured of salvation one would have to have a special revelation about one’s own predestination. This last point was even defined by the Council of ‘Trent.*® Now we cannot affirm as certain that the transforming union implies in all its degrees and in every case the equivalent of such a revelation. Moreover, after receiving a revelation, one may, under certain temptations, doubt its divine origin.
We should not forget the unusually significant example of the great St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists, who passed through the purifying night of the spirit about the age of twentysix, and received the grace of the transforming union at twenty-nine. Destined to reach the age of eighty-one and to found an order vowed to reparation, he lived from the time he was thirty-one until he was seventy-five in an almost continual reparatory night of the spirit, during which several times he questioned whether he would be saved.°®°
Perhaps with the reservation “under the actual grace of union,” the following statement of St. John of the Cross should be understood: “Finally, all the motions and acts of the soul, proceeding from
21 The Interior Castle, seventh mansion, chap. 2.
to Cf. Father Cajetan of the Holy Name of Mary, Oraison et ascension mystique de saint Paul de la Croix (Louvain, 1930), pp. 115-177. Cf. infra, the appendix to chap. 49.
the principle of its natural and imperfect life, are now changed in this union with God into divine motions. For the soul, as the true child of God, is moved by the Spirit of God, as it is written: “Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ (Rom. 8:14).” 3}
We are not ignorant of the fact that in speaking of the transforming union Philip of the Blessed ‘Trinity *? and Scaramelli ** consider that so sublime a state requires that God reveal to the soul the indissoluble friendship that exists between them. According to these authors, if the person thus favored does not receive a special revelation of his predestination, there is, as it were, an equivalent of this special revelation.
We believe that it suffices to affirm that the Holy Ghost then greatly confirms the certitude of hope. This certitude is, as St. Thomas says,** a certitude of tending toward salvation without being as yet the certitude of salvation itself. Now the Holy Ghost confirms this security of hope by the increasingly filial and strong affection which He excites in us. Then is fully verified St. Paul’s statement: “The Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.” 35
In this state there are at times divine touches so profound that they are, the mystics say, “impressed on the substance of the soul.” What is the meaning of this expression in the light of the principles of theology as St. Thomas understood them?
The divine touch is a most profound supernatural motion which acts on the very depth of the will and the intellect where these faculties take root in the substance of the soul, from which they emanate. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, inasmuch as He immediately preserves the substance of our soul by a divine act which 1s the continuation of the creative act. Likewise He preserves sanctifying grace in the very essence of the soul, and at certain moments, by a special inspiration, He moves the very depths of our will and intellect from within in order to incline them toward Himself. Therein is a contact, not quantitative and spatial but supraspatial, spiritual, and absolutely immediate, of the divine essence with
82 Theol. myst. Proaemium, a.8.
the substance of our soul, and from this contact proceed in the depths of our higher faculties direct acts to which God alone can move us and which we would never produce without this special inspiration. The soul can act only through its faculties, that is, it can know only by its intellect, love and will only by its will; but in this case, under the divine touch, it acts by the most intimate depth of its faculties, there where they take root in the essence of the soul.
In it there is a spiritual embrace of God, which at certain moments is extremely strong. There is also at times in the depths of the higher faculties a wound of love, a delicious spiritual wound, which is occasionally accompanied, as in the stigmatics, by a painful wound of the body, in particular in the region of the heart.*° It is God who wounds the soul while drawing it strongly to Himself and giving it a very ardent desire to see Him immediately and never again to be separated from Him. This burning desire of the beatific vision is the normal disposition to receive it without delay. A similar desire also exists in its way in the souls in purgatory when they are approaching the end of their purification.
In the epilogue to The Interior Castle, St. Teresa invites her sisters humbly to desire this intimate union with God, but not to wish to force their entrance into this mansion: “Therefore I advise you to use no violence if you meet with any obstacle, for that would displease Him so much that He would never give you admission to them. He dearly loves humility: if you think yourselves unworthy to enter the third mansion, He will grant you all the sooner the favor of entering the fifth. Then, if you serve Him well there and often repair to it, He will draw you into the mansion where He dwells Himself.” 87
The saint’s words make clear that the state of spiritual perfection of which we are speaking is on earth the summit of the normal development of the life of grace, considered not precisely in a given
86 Cf. The Living Flame (st. 2, v. 2): “God confers no favors on the body which He does not confer in the first place chiefly on the soul. In that case, the greater the joy and violence of the love which is the cause of the interior wound, the greater will be the pain of the visible wound, and as the former grows so does the latter. The reason is this: such souls as these, being already purified and strong in God, their spirit, strong and sound, delights in the strong and sweet Spirit of God, who, however, causes pain and suffering in their weak and corruptible flesh.” Cf. infra, chap. 56, “Stigmatization.”
87 The Interior Castle, Epilogue.
person, but in itself. This summit should, in fact, imply this aspiration, that is, this very ardent desire for the beatific vision, which up to this stage did not exist in this degree. It 1s inconceivable that God should reveal Himself to souls not yet keenly desirous of possessing Him forever, of seeing Him immediately and forever. He prepares them for the immediate vision by a divine touch which has a savor of eternal life. St. John of the Cross speaks admirably of this favor, saying that divine touches are attained only by the practice of complete detachment from everything created,** and that by one of these touches of love the soul is rewarded for all its labors.3®
About the wound of love, St. John of the Cross writes in A Spiritual Canticle, which he explains in The Living Flame:
O Living Flame of Love,
That woundest tenderly
My soul in its inmost depth!
As thou art no longer grievous, Perfect thy work, if it be thy will,
Break the web of this sweet encounter.*°®
In other words, complete the work of our union; break the thread of my earthly existence, which 1s the final obstacle to my meeting with the Well-Beloved. This veil allows me to see God imperfectly, but it is still an obstacle to immediate and definitive union.
The living flame is the Holy Ghost who excites in the soul acts of love which are more meritorious than all it has elicited before it reached this state, says the saint in the explanation of this first stanza. He adds: “O how wonderful the fire of God! though so vehement and so consuming, though it can destroy a thousand worlds with more ease than material fire can destroy a single straw, it consumes not the spirit wherein it burns. . . . Thus on the day of Pentecost the fire descended with great vehemence upon the Apostles, who
. sweetly burned interiorly.” 41
In his explanation of verse five of the second stanza of The Living
Flame, St. John of the Cross wrote this significant passage: “Why is
it that so few ever attain to this state [of perfection and of union with God]? The reason is that in this marvelous work which God Himself begins, so many are weak, shrinking from trouble, and unwilling to endure the least discomfort or mortification, or to labor with constant patience. Hence it is that God, not finding them diligent in cultivating the graces He has given them when He began to try them, proceeds no further with their purification, neither does He lift them up out of the dust of the earth, because it required greater courage and resolution for this than they possessed. . . . They are few in number who deserve to be made perfect through sufferings so as to attain to so high a state as this.” 42 The soul must pass through many tribulations to reach “the perfect spiritual life, which consists in the possession of God by the union of love.” 4% Truly spiritual delights come from the cross, from the spirit of sacrifice which puts to death all that is inordinate in us in order to assure the first place to the love of God and of souls in God. When the heart thus burns with love for its God, the soul contemplates lamps of fire which illumine all things from above. These lamps are the divine perfections: wisdom, goodness, mercy, justice, providence, eternity, omnipotence. They are, so to speak, the colors of the divine rainbow, which are identical without destroying each other in the intimate life of God, in the Deity, as the seven colors of the earthly rainbow fuse in the white light from which they proceed. “God, therefore,” says St. John of the Cross, “‘according to this knowledge of Him in unity, is to the soul as many lamps, because it has the knowledge of each of them [these attributes], and because they minister to it the warmth of love, each in its own way, and yet all of one subject, all one lamp.” *4 These souls are characterized by great forgetfulness of self, a great desire to suffer in imitation of the example of our Lord. The soul participates in the very strength of Christ, in His immense love for men; it succeeds in practicing simultaneously virtues that apparently are most contradictory: justice and mercy, fortitude and meekness, the simplicity of the dove and the prudence of the serpent. It unites the most sublime contemplation to the most circumspect common sense in matters of which it must judge. Thus these souls are definitively marked with the image of Christ. The apostolic life 42 Ibid., st. 2, V. 5.
(manifest or hidden) or the life of reparation overflows from the plenitude of their contemplation and union with God.*
Such is manifestly the perfect disposition of the truly purified soul to pass immediately at the moment of death from earth to heaven without having to go through purgatory. The perfect order is to be purified before death with merit, in order not to have to be purified after death without merit. Only in the close union we have described does the soul have an ardent desire to see God. It is inconceivable that God should show Himself immediately and forever to a soul not ardently desirous of seeing Him.
This doctrine would be too lofty for us if in baptism we had not received the life of grace, which should develop in us also into eternal life, nor often received Holy Communion, which has as its principal purpose to increase the love of God in us. Let us remember that each of our Communions should be substantially more fervent and fruitful than the preceding one. We shall then see that, as St. John of the Cross says, interior souls would reach the close union which we have just discussed if they did not flee from the trials which God sends them for their purification.*?
In the transforming union we see the full development of grace, which is eternal life begun, quaedam inchoatio vitae aeternae.*"
A NOTE on THE HicHest DEGREE oF THE MYSTICAL LIFE
THE NAMELESS DEPTH OF THE SOUL AND THE DEITY
Tauler describes as follows the highest degree of the mystical life in the servants of God:
The peace of the highest degree is the essential peace of which it is written: “Seek after peace and pursue it.” + They seek peace, and it follows them. This peace, “which surpasseth all understanding,” ? follows upon the essential conversion. When what is unnamable and unnamed in the soul turns fully toward God, everything in man that has a name follows this unnamed depth of the soul and is likewise converted. To this
45 Cf. St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue (transl. E. Cartier, Paris, 1855), II, chap. 145.
tt What St. John of the Cross says of the transforming union in The Living Flame should be compared with what Tauler wrote about it. Cf. Sermons de Tauler: Second sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday (transl. Hugueny, II, 222-26).
conversion always answers that which is nameless, that which is unnamed in God and also that which in God has a name; all this answers to conversion. In such a man, God proclaims His true peace, and man can then say: “I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me; for He will speak peace unto His people . . . and unto them that are converted unto the heart.” * Dionysius says that these men are formed in God. St. Paul must have been thinking of these men when he said: “That being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth . . . of God.” *
Do not imagine that I claim to have arrived at this degree. No master should, in truth, teach that which he himself has not experienced. Strictly speaking, it suffices that he love that of which he speaks, that he pursue it, and place no hindrance to it... .
Nature, which is too weak to bear such a life, must necessarily be broken, with the result that this man no longer has a single day of good health. . . . As St. Paul says: “Power is made perfect in infirmity.” ° However, this weakness does not come from exterior observances, but from the superabundant outpouring of the divinity, which inundates this man to such a point that his poor body of clay cannot bear it. For God has so drawn this man into Himself that man thus becomes “deicolored,” to such an extent that God Himself performs the works of this man... . It isin such souls that God finds His glory... .
When they plunge into this bottomless sea, no longer do they have definite words or thoughts... . At this time man buries himself so deeply in his unfathomable nothingness that he retains absolutely nothing for himself . . . and gives back all that he has received from God, the Author of every good. . . . There the spirit [of man] is lost in the spirit of God. . . . And yet this man becomes so profoundly human a man ... so good to all that no defect can be found in him. .. . It is not to be believed that such souls may ever be separated from God. May this be the portion of all of us! May God help us to attain it! Amen.’
THE HOLY GHOST LIFTS UP THE SOUL AND PRAYS IN IT
In the Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent," Tauler also speaks of the pursuit of God:
6 Second Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity (transl. Hugueny, Il, 222 ff.).2
It provokes an appealing cry of immense power. . . . It is a sigh coming from an endless depth and far exceeding nature. The Holy Ghost Himself must utter this sigh in us, as St. Paul says: “The Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings.” * . . . When the poor man thus pursued experiences this immense anxiety and cries to God with inexpressible sighs and with such a desire that his appeal penetrates even the loftiest heavens, if God then acts as if He heard absolutely nothing or wished to know nothing, how greatly at this moment in the depths of the soul man’s desire should reach out and become more urgent! . Then the soul, while abasing and humbling itself, should pray with confidence like the woman of Canaan: “Yea, Lord; for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters.” ® . . . These roads, and these alone, lead in truth, and without an intermediary station, even to God.?°
In a manuscript dealing with this subject, we read:
In this immensely powerful cry of appeal there is an act of love of God which pierces the clouds, an act of love not obtained by impetuous outbursts. It is Jesus who passes by and gives rise in the soul to a movement which is extremely calm, tranquil like the peace of God, but which issues from the most profound depths of the heart, where love dwells, and goes forth and touches Jesus in the unfathomable depths of eternity. This act of love is absolutely distinct from the most fervent acts that we ourselves make. When Jesus forms it in the soul, the soul perceives it because a little of its life ascends toward God. It is not so much the Lord who, by a divine touch, reaches the depths of the soul, but rather it is the soul which, lifted up by Him, rushes rapidly toward Him, as by a flight of incomparable gentleness, by an act of love which God alone can produce in it.
These acts of love are always promptly followed by crosses, by great crosses. But everything goes well in this way.
This is progressive configuration to our Lord.
DETACHMENT FROM SELF AND ATTACHMENT TO GOD
A soul that seems to be approaching this state wrote the following lines which are reminiscent of the pages we have just quoted from Tauler:
11 This is clearly an eminent operating grace, sharply distinct from cooperating grace, as St. Thomas points out (Ia Iae, q.111, a.2). Thus is heard
In prayer I sometimes feel this tearing of myself away from myself which carries all my being into “An Other,” a tearing away which is brought about without any violence, but with power and gentleness, and with the sweet and complete consent of my will; this is my part. But what is the Lord’s part? . . . At the term of this movement (if I may thus express myself, for in this prayer this movement is continuous), I have felt as if two great arms entwined me; it was the Abyss which closed over and swallowed me up in its infinite depths. When a ship sinks, the waters of the sea open up to receive it, then silently close over it. This is something similar. . . .
My whole being would break its bonds and cast itself into the Other. Although often I do nothing in prayer, there is always, more or less, this secret and imperceptible movement which would draw me whither I cannot go... . All graces, all supernatural impulsions emanate from this innermost depth wherein God acts, and literally bear me away into this infinite abyss. It is God within me who bears me away in Himself out of myself. Sometimes I feel that the grace is not completed, that it stops at the threshold of a grace of full union. . . . Were the grace to attain its normal term each time, the result would be the embrace of two spirits in a silence like that of eternity; but I remain on the threshold.
When a grace of this kind is given to me, my active intellect and will are warned by the substance of my very soul, as, for example, when it is extremely cold, I feel the cold before thinking that the weather is cold. This physical experience precedes the judgment of the mind; similarly, the experience felt in the substance of the soul (evidently, it is from the experimental and mystical point of view and not from the philosophical point of view that I speak of the substance of the soul) precedes the idea of the gift received. Inversely, if I deliberately propose to touch an object that I know is very cold, the thought of the cold precedes the physical experience of the cold that I am about to feel. Likewise, my will and intellect can in an instant awaken the inert experience in the depths of my soul which awaits but a stimulus to be revived. When my soul is powerless and empty, I do indeed deliberately intensify my oblation, and this act provokes at long intervals as it were an awakening.
DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF THE TITLE “SPOUSE”
In view of certain observations that have been made to us, we believe it advisable in a discussion of the transforming union to signalize the following points.
Some very loving, greatly tried, and extremely generous souls and granted the prayer: “Take me from myself, Lord, and give me completely to Thyself.”
live closely united to God in the world, and their director may early believe that they have entered the transforming union. This judgment may, however, be precipitate, for, before attaining to the spiritual marriage, the chosen soul must first become a spouse, as a simple religious is who has made profession after the trials and generous acts of the novitiate.
There may be a notable error of interpretation in this decision if the director or the directed soul attributes to the title of spouse, received occasionally in an interior locution, the same meaning as that of the far superior title of spouse in the transforming union. There is a great difference between the term spouse, used to denote a religious who has made profession, and the title spouse, as applied to St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa. Moreover, even in the second sense, the perfect soul, though confirmed in grace, may not believe that it has attained the goal, for until its last sigh it will remain on the royal road, seeing this goal in a very consoling light, while recalling the words of St. Paul: “Not as though I had already attained or were already perfect; but I follow after.” 1
Again, a soul much loved by God is drawn to Him, and gives itself. It is very generous, wholly loving, pure, and its crosses become heavy. After an interior locution, the Lord seems to choose it as a spouse. May this soul believe that it is in the transforming union? Is this not simply the normal state of a good religious after profession? For this chosen soul still has numerous defects and imperfections, which seem incompatible with the spiritual marriage. But the director may believe that this soul will attain to this state when its charity is wholly true and its life completely impregnated with God.
The life of St. Gemma Galgani, for example, shows clearly what the Lord required of her before permitting her to call herself His spouse. This valiant saint, who never refused anything to grace, complained at times of these demands.
Another case is that of a married woman, who is partly emancipated from what has become for her humiliating servitude and who is generous in her sacrifices. Our Lord holds her soul captive and urges her to belong to Him alone. As a result she is somewhat inclined to believe that she is in the transforming union. In our opinion she is accepted as a spouse in the sense that a religious is after final profession, and we believe that if the mystical marriage is granted to this person, it will be only later on, for this beautiful soul is still too much encumbered with herself. All worldly nets are not odious to her. Her charity does not at all measure up to that of a soul united to God by the spiritual marriage. More profound trials will perhaps not delay in making this evident.
The transforming union is, undoubtedly, given in different degrees, but the least degree requires perfect charity toward God and one’s neighbor. Who can tell it without having attained to that state where there is no longer any insufficiency, where an unknown food is served to the well-beloved who, filled but still famished, utter ineffable groans?
THE DESIRE OF THE TRANSFORMING UNION
May a generous person, who truly seems to have passed through at least a part of the night of the spirit, desire and ask for the grace of the transforming union?
Certainly. This grace is here on earth the term of the more or less conscious aspirations of such a soul. If an explicit desire is in question, however, it is advisable to give it a more objective expression, that is, desiring the ever more profound reign of God in our souls and their more perfect configuration to our Lord. Besides, it is also advisable to keep in mind what St. ‘Teresa points out in the epilogue to The Interior Castle: “It is true you cannot enter all the mansions by your own power, however great it may appear to you, unless the Lord of the castle Himself admits you. Therefore I advise you to use no violence if you meet with any obstacle, for that would displease Him so much that He would never give you admission to them. He dearly loves humility: if you think yourselves unworthy to enter the third mansion, He will grant you all the sooner the favor of entering the fifth. Then, if you serve Him well there and often repair to it, He will draw you into the mansion where He dwells Himself. . . . When once you have learned how to enjoy this castle, you will always find rest, however painful your trials may be, in the hope of returning to your Lord, which no one can prevent.”
Let us also remember what St. John of the Cross says in The Living Flame: “O souls that seek your own ease and comfort, if you knew how necessary for this high state is suffering, and how profitable suffering and mortification are for attaining to these great bless- ings.” 13 He likewise writes in A Spiritual Canticle: “O that men would understand how impossible it is to enter the thicket, the manifold riches of the wisdom of God, without entering into the thicket of manifold suffering making it the desire and consolation of the soul; and how that the soul which really longs for the divine wisdom, longs first of all for the sufferings of the cross, that it may enter in. . . . They who desire to enter in that way are few, while those who desire the joys that come by it are many.” *
In the following stanza, St. John of the Cross says: “One of the reasons which most influence the soul to enter into the ‘thicket’ of the wisdom of God, and to have a more intimate knowledge of the beauty of the divine wisdom, 1s, as I have said, that it may unite the understanding with God in the knowledge of the mysteries of the Incarnation, as of all His works the highest and most full of sweetness, and the most delicious knowledge. . . . But the soul cannot reach these hidden treasures unless it first passes through the thicket of interior and exterior suffering.” 1°
Certainly this end, the prelude of heaven, is highly desirable; but the soul must be willing to take the royal road which leads to it.+°
15 St. 37, v. 1 f. This passage and the preceding one are almost the same in the two editions of A Spiritual Canticle, although the numbering of the stanzas is not identical. The stanza, numbered thirty-five in one is number thirty-six in the other. We are inclined to believe, as Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen does (Angelicum, 1937, fasc. 1-2, p. 264), that these two editions of A Spiritual Canticle are the work of St. John of the Cross. In the second, the saint denies nothing of what he said in the first, but his thought is more precise; it shows more clearly that the plenitude attained by the transforming union on earth is still only relative, and he compares it more with that of the union of heaven.
On the desire of the transforming union in the soul undergoing the night of the spirit, see A Spiritual Canticle (2nd ed.; st. 37, v. 3, par. 5): “The soul longs to enter in earnest into these caverns of Christ, that it may be absorbed, transformed, and inebriated in the love and knowledge of His mysteries, hiding itself in the bosom of the Beioved. It is into these caverns that, in the Canticle of Canticles (2:13 f.), He invites the bride to enter, saying: ‘Arise, My love, My beautiful one, and come; My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall.’ These clefts of the rock are the caverns of which we arc here speaking, and to which the bride refers, saying: ‘And there we shall enter in.’ . . . To say ‘we shall enter,’ is as much as to say, ‘there shall we transform ourselves,’ that is, ‘I shall be transformed in Thee through the love of Thy divine and sweet judgments.’ ”
16 Cf. the text from A Spiritual Canticle quoted at the end of this appendix.
THE INTIMACY OF THE TRANSFORMING UNION
The intimacy of the transforming union, it should be noted, is due to an absolutely eminent operating grace. Of operating grace in general, in contradistinction to cooperating grace, St. Thomas says: “The operation of an affect is not attributed to the thing moved but to the mover. Hence in that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of operating grace.” 17 The will, however, freely consents to be moved.
The human will indubitably continues to exist, since it will subsist even in beatific love; it is not physically absorbed in God, as the pantheists would say in this case. We must hold what St. John of the Cross so well expresses in A Spiritual Canticle: “Though in heaven the will of the soul is not destroyed, it is so intimately united with the power of the will of God, who loves it, that it loves Him as strongly and as perfectly as it is loved by Him. . . . Thus the soul loves God with the will and strength of God Himself, being made one with that very strength of love wherewith itself is loved by God. This strength is of the Holy Ghost, in whom the soul is there transformed. He is given to the soul to strengthen its love; ministering to it, and supplying in it, because of its transformation in glory, that which is defective in it.” 18
THE EQUALITY OF LOVE
Consequently, as Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen +° well explains, one can understand that the soul reaches a certain equality of love with God. St. John says in The Living Flame:
Thus, then, the soul, by reason of its transformation, being a shadow of God, effects through God in God what He effects within it Himself by Himself, because the will of both is one. And as God is giving Himself with a free and gracious will, so the soul also with a will, the more free and the more generous the more it is united with God in God, is, as it were, giving back to God—ain that loving complacency with which it regards the divine essence and perfections—God Himself. . . . The soul gives to the Beloved, who is God Himself, what He had given to it.
17 Summa, Ia Ilae, q. 111, a.2. 18 Second edition (1909), st. 38, par. 3 f. 19 Art. cit., Angelicum, 1937, p. 275.
Herein it pays the whole debt, for the soul gives as much voluntarily with inestimable joy and delight, giving the Holy Spirit as its own of its own free will, so that God may be loved as He deserves to be. Herein consists the inestimable joy of the soul, for it sees that it offers to God what becomes Him in His infinite Being.?°
This is truly the prelude of the life of heaven.
CONCLUSION
Whence A Spiritual Canticle concludes: “O souls created for this [such grandeurs] and called thereto, what are you doing? What are your occupations? Your aim is meanness, and your enjoyments misery. Oh, wretched blindness of the children of Adam, blind to so great a light and deaf to so clear a voice!” 21
As Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen says: “This call, addressed by the saint to souls in general, shows us that he cannot regard as ‘extraordinary’ the sublime things he has just described for us... . That state, the flowering of the seed of supernatural life, which is sanctifying grace in the soul, should be within the reach of all those who are endowed with this grace.” 22
APPENDIX
Tue PERFECTION oF Love AND THE MysticaL UNION OR Tue Mysticism oF A Spiritual Canticle py St. Jonn OF THE Cross !
We reproduce here an article which appeared in La Vie spirituelle (January, 1936). We thank its author for permitting us to use it and also for having so well expressed what in our opinion is the true teaching of St. John of the Cross on several points of great importance.
I. THE PERFECTION OF LOVE AND INFUSED CONTEMPLATION
It has recently been affirmed that according to the spiritual teaching of Carmel, and of St. Teresa in particular, the perfection of
love is found in the ascetical way and that infused contemplation is not at all necessary to sanctity.?
God willingly grants these mystical graces to generous souls, they say. Consequently the soul does well to desire them, to prepare itself for them, and to tend to them, even to direct its whole life toward the contemplative ideal; nevertheless, they add, the fact remains that sanctity can be attained without them.
Moreover, they distinguish two kinds of contemplation: acquired contemplation and infused contemplation. The first may also be called mixed or active-passive contemplation; it is a latent mystical contemplation. They concede that this contemplation is in the normal way of sanctity. The second, mystical contemplation properly so called, experimentally passive or infused, especially in its higher degrees (the betrothal and the spiritual marriage), is not, they maintain, in the normal way.’
This opinion, it seems to us, is not in harmony with the teaching of St. John of the Cross.*
To affirm on the one hand that mystical contemplation is not necessary to perfection, and to maintain on the other that it is good to tend to it seems to us difficult to reconcile with the teaching of the Mystical Doctor. We know with what insistence he requires that the soul absolutely divest itself of all that is accidental, acces- s Cf. Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen, “La Mística Teresiana,” Vita Cristiana, Florence, 1934. Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen, however, comes far nearer to our way of looking at the matter in a more recent book: S. Giovanni della Croce, Dottore dell’ Amore divino, Florence, 1936. See also the note at the end of this appendix.
- We believe that there is no essential divergence on this point between the teaching of St. Teresa and that of St. John of the Cross. The opinion stated in the text does not seem to us conformable either to the teaching of the great Teresa. The thesis that the doctrine of St. Teresa on the normal character of the mystical life does not differ essentially from that of St. John of the Cross is upheld and solidly proved by Arintero, Garate, Garrigou-Lagrange, Lamballe, Saudreau, and others. Cf. the works of these authors.3
sory, extraordinary, and not essential or necessary to perfection.” For St. John of the Cross the unique goal in this life is perfect union with God through the theological virtues; everything that is not necessary to this union—even graces in other regards precious— is, as soon as one dwells excessively on it, an obstacle. These things must be renounced, rejected, as far as possible; the soul must go beyond them and thus rest in emptiness, in the most absolute nudity of spirit. This is the very essence of the teaching of St. John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and in The Dark Night.® How, therefore, can we harmonize this doctrine of the void, excluding all that is accidental, with the seeking after a mystical contemplation that would be precisely something accidental?
This mortification of every desire, with the exception of that of divine union, this divesting oneself of all that is not God, constitutes for the soul the dark night, which is at the center of the saint’s doctrine. If he leads the soul by this night to mystical, obscure, and general contemplation,” is it not that, in his opinion, this contemplation is part of the perfect union to which the denudation of the purifications tends, and that there is a necessary connection between perfect love, the fruit of denudation and of the purifications, and the mystical contemplation to which the soul has access through the dark night?
This is especially clear in A Spiritual Canticle, and we should like to show it. Our fundamental reason is summed up in the following argument.
The transforming union described in A Spiritual Canticle is certainly a very lofty mystical state; no one can deny it. Now this state is in the normal way of sanctity, since St. John calls it the union of love, the state of perfection, full union with God, full and perfect love.’ ‘Therefore even the most elevated mystical state, at least in its essential character, is in the normal way of sanctity.
Besides it would be difficult to comprehend how the perfection of love described by the saint in A Spiritual Canticle, could be attained without the help of mystical graces and of infused contemplation. We shall see this by an analysis of A Spiritual Canticle.
To the above we add a further consideration. If the connection between the state of perfect love and the mystical state of the betrothal or of the spiritual marriage were only accidental, St. John of the Cross would at each step have caused an unbelievable confusion by continually uniting them, without ever warning us that one can exist without the other. He affirms explicitly, on the contrary, that consummate perfection is obtained only in the state of the espousals and of spiritual marriage and that before this state is reached love is always imperfect. This is what we shall try to establish by evidence.®
We shall show, first of all, that the union described in A Spiritual Canticle is the highest mystical state. By analysis of the text we shall then establish that this union is in the normal line of the development of perfect charity, the necessary term of sanctity.
II. THE UNION DESCRIBED IN A Spiritual Canticle 1s MYSTICAL
First of all, we can easily establish that the union described in A Spiritual Canticle is the highest mystical union.
St. John calls this union the spiritual espousals, in its lower degree,’° and, in its higher degree, the spiritual marriage.1! Now, these expressions are commonly attributed to the mystical union; marriage denotes the most sublime union; the espousals refer to the union which immediately precedes the spiritual marriage. The union to which St. John of the Cross leads the soul is, therefore, the highest mystical union.
St. John of the Cross calls this union the transforming union, the transformation of the soul in God," and these expressions, like that of the spiritual marriage, fittingly designate the highest mystical union.
The Mystical Doctor attributes to the espousals the entrance into the “sweet science” that God teaches to the soul in this union;
® Our demonstration, as is evident, is completely independent of the lively debated question regarding the frontier between asceticism and mysticism. Our proof prescinds from this controversy. As our point of departure we take the states of the espousals and of the spiritual marriage, they are not states of transition, they are incontestably at the summit of mysticism.
and “this science is mystical theology, which is the secret science of God, and which spiritual men call contemplation.” ** Evidently mystical contemplation is meant. It is God who “bestows on the soul this science and knowledge in the love by which He communicates Himself to the soul.” 14 In this luminous union God transforms the soul, “makes it completely His own and empties it of all that is alien to Himself,” 25 which cannot be done without the mystical graces.
In the higher degree of union we find infused contemplation more clearly described: “When the soul has been raised to the high state of spiritual marriage, the Bridegroom reveals to it, as His faithful consort, His own marvelous secrets most readily and most frequently, for he who truly and sincerely loves hides nothing from the object of his affections. The chief matter of His communications are the sweet mysteries of His Incarnation, the ways and means of the redemption, which is one of the highest works of God, and so is to the soul one of the sweetest.” 1° The Bridegroom does all this in this stanza which emphasizes with what tender love He discloses such mysteries interiorly to the soul.
The state which St. John of the Cross describes here is a state of love linked to a state of infused contemplation. The connection is owing to a necessity of love: “True and full love cannot hide anything.” This connection is not accidental, since this need is connatural to perfect charity. The observation is important.
The Mystical Doctor repeatedly affirms that it is God alone who acts and operates immediately in the soul in this state, that therein the soul passively receives contemplation.*? But passivity characterizes precisely mystical contemplation.
Lastly, St. John of the Cross speaks of divine touches, of the contact of the divinity as characteristic of this union, as ordinarily produced in this state.48 These are, certainly, very lofty mystical graces.
There is not, it seems, any doubt that the union described in A
Spiritual Canticle is the most distinctly characterized and the loftiest mystical union.'®
This union is in the normal way. St. John of the Cross again and again describes the state to which the soul should tend: the spiritual marriage as full union with God, as consummated union, as the state of perfect love. He affirms that the full perfection of love is obtained only in the spiritual marriage.?°
But full union with God, consummated perfection, perfect love are certainly in the normal way: this is the whole end of our life.?? It will suffice, therefore, to establish solidly that, in the opinion of the Mystical Doctor, the spiritual espousals, the spiritual marriage are simply the state of perfect love in order to conclude that he places them in the normal way of sanctity. The texts will furnish us abundant proof of this.
III. THE PERFECTION OF LOVE IN THE SPIRITUAL ESPOUSALS
St. 14. The Flight of Mystical Contemplation and the State of Union
In the thirteenth stanza St. John of the Cross describes the flight of the soul in this state of ardent love and great desires, which he set forth in the first stanzas.
In the fourteenth stanza he continues: “This spiritual flight signifies a certain high estate and union of love, whereunto, after many spiritual exercises, God is wont to elevate the soul: it 1s called the spiritual betrothal of the Word, the Son of God.” 2?
Here we have two very important afhrmations: (1) the state of the spiritual espousals is nothing other than the state of union of love; (2) God is wont to elevate the soul to this state when it has greatly exercised itself in the spiritual life; which is equivalent to saying that this state is normal.
19 Jn describing, with St. John of the Cross, the espousals and the spiritual marriage as forms of perfect charity, we shall again have occasion to point out the mystical character of these states.
20 What we say of the spiritual marriage corresponds also, due proportion being kept, to the spiritual espousals which precede it.
St. 24. The State of the Spiritual Espousals, the State of Perfect Love
St. John describes the state of the spiritual espousals as the state of perfect love and of perfect and heroic virtues. The soul says clearly that it is now united to the Beloved, since it has the solid virtues together with perfect charity. Therefore it calls this union of love a bed of flowers.” Moreover, the soul says that the bed is of flowers because in this state the virtues in the soul are perfect and heroic, a condition impossible before there was a bed of flowers, the fruit of perfect union with God.
Perfect and heroic virtues cannot, therefore, exist before the union of the spiritual espousals; such virtues are the fruit of this union. Similarly, each of the virtues (the soul now possesses them in perfection) becomes like a den of lions. “The soul’s bed is encompassed by these dens of the virtues, because in this state its virtues are so perfectly ordered, and so joined together and bound up with one another in the consummate perfection of the soul, each supporting the other, that no part of it is weak or exposed. Not only is Satan unable to penetrate within it, but even worldly things, whether great or little, fail to disturb or annoy it, or even move it; for being now free from all molestation of natural affections, and a stranger to the worry of temporal anxieties, it enjoys in security and peace the participation of God.” *4
It is clear that for St. John the state of the spiritual espousals is the initial stage of the state of consummate perfection.
St. 26. The Inner Cellar and the Union of Most Intimate Love
St. John of the Cross describes here the state of the espousals and of the spiritual marriage as full union with God and as the supreme degree of love to which the soul can attain in this life. The soul sets forth in this stanza the very great grace that God gave it by making it enter the secret depths of His love which is the union or transformation of love in God. The cellar of which the soul speaks is the supreme degree of the most intimate love to which the soul can attain in this life; consequently the soul calls it the inner cellar,
that is, the most secret. It uses this term because there are others less interior: such are the degrees of love through which the soul ascends to the highest. We may say that there are seven of these cellars. The soul will enter them all when it has in perfection the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. In the inmost cellar is wrought the perfect union with God, the union of the spiritual marriage, of which the soul is now speaking.?®
Thus for St. John of the Cross the spiritual marriage is identified with full union with God. The effects of this union are then described: “Until the soul reaches the state of perfection, however spiritual it may be, there always remains a troop of desires, likings, and other imperfections, sometimes natural, sometimes spiritual, after which it runs, and which it tries to feed while following and satisfying them. . . . As to this flock, some men are more influenced by it than others; they run after and follow it, until they enter the inner cellar, where they lose it altogether, being then transformed in love. In this cellar the flock of imperfections is easily destroyed, as rust and mould on metal in the fire.” 28
It is evident that in the opinion of St. John of the Cross the highest degree of love and perfection is attained only in the state of the espousals and the spiritual marriage, in the “inner cellar.” Hence no one can say that the highest degree of love is outside the normal way of the saints.
St. 27. The State of the Spiritual Espousals and the Complete Impulsion of the Soul toward God
In this stanza St. John describes the state of the spiritual espousals as the state of perfect love, in which even the first movements of the will and the sensible appetites are directed toward God. It would be futile to wish to obtain such perfection actively by one’s own efforts in the purely ascetical life. And besides, St. John teaches explicitly that it is God Himself who causes this perfection in the
25 4 Spiritual Canticle, st. 26, par. 2, 3. It is love that opens the way into each cellar, and the soul advances therein according to its degree of love. St. John of the Cross says: “Many souls reach and enter the first cellar, each according to the perfection of its love, but the last and inmost cellar is entered by few in this world.” The reason for this is that few souls attain on earth the final perfection of love possible in this world. It is not, however, that we are not all called to it, since the perfection of charity is the very goal of our whole life.
soul by means of “mystical theology,” that is, by infused contemplation. St. John states that the “science full of sweetness” which God has taught the soul is mystical theology, “which is the secret science of God, and which spiritual men call contemplation. .. . God is the Author of this union, and of the purity and perfection requisite for it; and as the transformation of the soul in Himself makes it His, He empties it of all that is alien to Himself. Thus it comes to pass that, not in will only, but in act as well, the whole soul is entirely given to God without any reserve whatever, as God has given Himself freely unto it. . . . The soul is, as it were, absorbed in God, and even its first movements have nothing in them—so far as it can comprehend them—which is at variance with the will of God. . . . The first movements (in the understanding, the memory, the will, and the desires) of the soul which has attained to the spiritual state of which I am speaking are ordinarily directed to God, because of the great help and courage it derives from Him, and its perfect conversion to goodness.”
Evidently this degree of perfection is superior to human efforts; it can be attained only in the mystical way. On the other hand, it is the effect of a “union by exchange” which is in the normal development of charity.
St. 28. The Spiritual Espousals and the Activity of Love
St. John here describes the state of the spiritual espousals as the state of perfect love, in which all the higher and lower powers “are consecrated no longer to its own interests, but to those pertaining to the service of the Bridegroom.” The saint says: “Even its communion with God Himself is nothing else but acts of love.” The soul declares: “My soul is occupied, and all my substance in His service.” In these words it reveals the gift it has made of itself to the Beloved in this union of love in which the soul is, with all its powers (intellect, will, and memory), dedicated and engaged in His service, devoting its intellect to the understanding of what is of most consequence to His cause that it may put it into practice; its will to the preference of all that gives pleasure to God, to the direction of its affections in everything to God; its memory to the seeking of what may serve Him and give Him the greatest pleasure.
The soul continues: “And all my substance in His service.” By all its substance, the soul means here all that relates to its sensible part. The soul says here that it has consecrated its sensible as well as its rational and spiritual part to His service.
All this, it says, is consecrated to His cause: the soul orders the body according to God “in all its interior and exterior senses, all the acts of which are directed to God. The four passions of the soul are also under control in Him; for the soul’s joy, hope, fear, and grief are conversant with God only; all its appetites and all its anxieties also are directed unto Him only.”
“The whole substance of the soul is now so occupied with God, so intent upon Him, that its very first movements, even inadvertently, have God for their object and their end. The understanding, memory, and will tend directly to God.”
“Now I guard no flock.” By these words the soul means: “T do not now go after my likings and desires; for having them fixed upon God, I no longer feed or guard them. The soul not only does not guard them now, but has no other occupation than to wait upon God. ‘Nor have I any other employment.’ Before the soul succeeded in effecting this gift and surrender of itself, and of all that belongs to it, to the Beloved, it was entangled in many unprofitable occupations. . . . It may be said that its occupations of this kind were as many as its habits of imperfection.”
The soul still has a blemish, which it never rids itself of as long as it does not once and for all consecrate all its substance to the service of God so that, as we have said, all its words, thoughts, and works are directed to God.
“ “My sole occupation is love.’ The soul means: ‘All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love? ...
“When the soul has arrived at this state all the acts of its spiritual and sensual nature, whether active or passive, and of whatever kind they may be, always occasion an increase of love and delight in God; even the act of prayer and communion with God, which was formerly carried on by reflections and divers other methods, is now wholly an act of love. . . . The soul, in the state of spiritual be- trothal, is for the most part living in the union of love—that is, the will is habitually waiting lovingly on God.”
It is impossible to conceive of such perfection of love, of such a gift of self extending even to the first movements of all the powers, in the purely ascetical way. According to St. John of the Cross, this perfection, obtained only in the spiritual espousals, is the effect of the mystical graces bestowed in this state.?7
Thus once more the state of perfect love is identified in the teaching of St. John of the Cross with the state of the spiritual espousals.
St. 29. The Soul Lost to the World for Its Beloved
This stanza also refers to the state of the spiritual espousals: “Having attained to a living love of God [that is, practicing the virtues solely for love of God], it makes little account of all this; and that is not all. It boasts that . . . it is lost to the world and to itself for the Beloved. . . . Such is he that loves God; he seeks neither gain nor reward but only to lose all, even himself, according to God’s will; this is what such a one counts gain.”
This is still another description of perfect love; it is the way of pure faith and pure love, as the following words show: “When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks Him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways, or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with Him by faith and love, then it may be said to have found God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.”
IV. THE PERFECTION OF LOVE IN THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE
St. 12. The Spiritual Marriage and the
Transforming Union
In this stanza St. John himself declares that he is discussing the spiritual marriage. First of all, he tells us that the perfection of this state is not obtained by our own efforts, but by the breathing of the Holy Ghost: that is, it belongs, not to the ascetical, but to the mystical way. The soul has again implored and obtained the breathing of
UCL St. 8S) 1.75 185-293: 34- the Holy Ghost which remains the indispensable means and instrument of the perfection of this state.
St. John then describes the spiritual marriage as the state of perfect love. It is a complete transformation into the Beloved: God and the soul give each other total possession of each other by the union of love consummated in the measure possible on earth. The soul as a result becomes divine and God by participation, as much as this life permits. By the consummation of the spiritual marriage between God and the soul, two natures are in one single spirit and love of God. The spouse is introduced, that is, she has got rid of all that is temporal, all that is natural, of all attachments, ways, and spiritual manners . . . in the transformation of this sublime embrace... . The soul is transformed in its God. The transformation is complete. What St. Paul says to the Galatians may be applied to it: “I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” 28
Thus the spiritual marriage is for St. John of the Cross the union of perfect love. But perfect love is in the normal way; all are called to perfect love, the final end of life on earth: “Now the end of the commandment is charity.” ?°
Besides, St. John of the Cross affirms it: “In all the works of the soul, God and the soul have only one ambition, one end: the consummation and plenitude of this state.” If, therefore, the state of spiritual marriage is the end of all the actions of the soul, as well as of the divine operation, it is necessarily identified with perfect love and cannot be in purely accidental relation to it. Consequently we conclude that it incontestably brings the spiritual marriage, an eminently mystical state, into the normal way of sanctity. The analysis of the following stanzas will but strengthen this conclusion.
St. 20-21. The Spiritual Marriage and the Total Death of the Passions
In this stanza St. John describes the spiritual marriage as the state of perfect love in which God “commands all vain distractions of the fancy and imagination from henceforth to cease, and controls the irascible and concupiscible faculties which were hitherto
29 Cf. I Tim. 1:5. See also St. Thomas, Ila Iae, q.184, a.1, 3. Pius XI, Encyclical Rerum omnium perturbationem, January 26, 1923, and Encyclical Studiorum ducem, June 29, 1923.
the sources of so much affliction. He brings, so far as it is possible in this life, the three powers of memory, understanding, and will to the perfection of their objects. . . . He adjures also all these actions which depart from the true mean, and bids them cease before the soft lyres and the siren strains, which so effectually charm the powers of the soul as to occupy them completely in their true and proper functions, so that they avoid not only all extremes, but also the slightest tendency to them.”
This is a new degree of love which manifestly surpasses our own efforts and the purely ascetical life. Moreover, St. John of the Cross says so explicitly: “The Beloved adjures the affections of these four passions, compels them to cease and to be at rest.”
St. 18. The Perfect Calm of the Powers and Senses
The spiritual marriage is represented here as the state of perfection which excludes even the imperfection of the inordinate first movements of the powers and senses. “And touch not our thresholds, that is to say: Let not even your first movements touch the higher part, for the first movements of the soul are the entrance and thresholds of it. When the first movements have passed into the reason, they have crossed the threshold; but when they remain as first movements only, they are then said merely to touch the threshold, or to cry at the gate, which is the case when reason and sense contend over an unreasonable act.”
Thus, in this state, this sensible part with all its powers, its energies, and its weaknesses has yielded to the spirit. This constitutes even now a blessed life, similar to that of the state of innocence, when all the resources and capacities of the sensible part of man enabled him to know and to love God.
St. 35. The Solitude of the Soul with the Bridegroom
In this stanza St. John shows clearly that the spiritual marriage is a mystical state and that perfect love is not obtained in the ascetical way, but that it is God who produces it in the soul in the mystical way. In this stanza the Bridegroom declares not only that He guides the soul, “but that He is its only guide, without any intermediate help.”
feat hath the Beloved guided her.’ That is, the Beloved not only guides the soul in its solitude, but it is He alone who works in it directly and immediately. It is of the nature of the soul’s union with God in the spiritual marriage that God works directly, and communicates Himself immediately, not by the ministry of angels or by the help of natural capacities. For the exterior and interior senses, all created things, and even the soul itself, contribute very little toward the reception of those great supernatural favors which God bestows in this state; yea, rather, inasmuch as they do not fall within the cognizance of natural efforts, ability, and application, God effects them alone.
“The reason is that He finds the soul alone in its solitude, and therefore will not give it another companion, nor will He entrust His work to any other than Himself. There is a certain fitness in this; for the soul having abandoned all things, and passed through all the ordinary means, rising above them unto God, God Himself becomes the guide and the way to Himself. The soul in solitude, detached from all things, having now ascended above all things, nothing now can profit or help it to ascend higher except the Bridegroom Word Himself.”
In this stanza St. John admirably distinguishes betwen the ascetical and the mystical ways. To the ascetical way belongs the preparation of the soul for the divine operation by denuding it of all that is created; to the mystical, consummate perfection, which God produces in the soul.
St. 37-38. Perfect Purity and Equality of Love
St. John of the Cross shows first in this stanza that the soul desires mystical contemplation, designated here by “the caverns of the rock,” because mystical contemplation is the means to obtain perfect love and perfect purity. In the following stanza he describes perfection and the purity of the state of the spiritual marriage. “The reason why the soul longed to enter the caverns was that it might attain to the consummation of the love of God, the object of its continual desires; that is, that it might love God with the pureness and perfection wherewith He has loved it, so that it might thereby requite His love.”
If the connection between perfect love and the mystical contemplation designated by the “caverns of the rock” were purely accidental, if perfect love and perfect purity could be obtained without mystical contemplation, this desire of the soul would be imperfect, according to the principles of St. John of the Cross.
He continues: “In the present stanza the bride says to the Bridegroom that He will there show her what she had always aimed at in all her actions, namely, that He would show her how to love Him perfectly, as He has loved her. And, secondly, that He will give her that essential glory for which He has predestined her from the day of His eternity.
‘There Thou wilt show me
That which my soul desired.’
“That which the soul aims at is equality in love with God, the object of its natural and supernatural desire. He who loves cannot be satisfied if he does not feel that he loves as much as he is loved.”
The desire for equality of love is, therefore, essential to love; it is in the nature and the grace of love. The saint continues: “When the soul sees that in the transformation in God, such as is possible in this life, notwithstanding the immensity of its love, it cannot equal the perfection of that love wherewith God loves it, it desires the clear transformation of glory wherein it shall equal the perfection of love wherewith it is itself beloved of God; it desires . . . the clear transformation of glory wherein it shall equal His love. . . .
“The will of the soul will then be the will of God. . . . Though in heaven the will of the soul is not destroyed, it is so intimately united with the power of the will of God, who loves it, that it loves Him as strongly and as perfectly as it is loved of Him; both wills being united in one sole will and one sole love of God. Thus the soul loves God with the will and strength of God Himself, being made one with that very strength of love wherewith itself is loved of God. This strength is of the Holy Ghost, in whom the soul is there transformed. He is given to the soul to strengthen its love; ministering to it, and supplying in it, because of its transformation in glory, that which is defective in it. In the perfect transformation also of the state of spiritual marriage, such as 1s possible on earth, in which the soul is all clothed in grace, the soul loves in a certain way in the Holy Ghost, who is given to it in that transformation.”
Again St. John identifies the state of the spiritual marriage with the state of perfect love, of perfect conformity to the will of God; it is the normal end of all life on earth. He then explains the purity of this state, saying that it presupposes evidently that God has given to the soul in this state of transformation a great purity, like to that of original justice or that of baptismal innocence.*° The soul here adds, therefore, that this purity is going to be granted to it by the Spouse as the fruit of this transformation of love. It says also:
“And there Thou wilt give me at once, O Thou, my life, That which Thou gavest me the other day.”
“By ‘other day’ is meant the day of the eternity of God, which is other than the day of time. In that day of eternity God predestined the soul unto glory, and determined the degree of glory which He would give it and freely gave from the beginning before He created it.”
The soul declares in these verses that it will find this gift again in this union of love. That is indeed what it meant in the last verse by the words “that which Thou gavest me the other day,” since, as we have said, the soul, in its state of perfection, attains to the same purity and the same cleanness.
St. John therefore affirms here that in the spiritual marriage the soul reaches a purity similar to that of original justice or of baptismal innocence. [his is an important statement. From this affirmation we may draw two conclusions which interest us: (1) the spiritual marriage 1s normal; (2) it is mystical.
It is normal, for the purity of original justice or of baptismal innocence, which the soul receives in the spiritual marriage, excludes every moral imperfection; and this exclusion is the normal end to which all souls can and must tend. This state is mystical, for in the present order a permanent state, similar to that of original or baptismal innocence, without moral imperfection, in the full activity of the spiritual faculties, cannot be attained in the purely ascetical way by our own efforts, but only in the mystical way by the special operation of the Holy Ghost. It requires the grace of infused contemplation and the activity of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, as is evident from all the texts from the works of St. John of the Cross. In this state the soul “experiences interiorly a sort of fruition, a sweetness which makes it overflow with praise.” The s C Stogi purity to which it has attained is “bestowed on it by the Bridegroom as the fruit of this transformation of love.” The touches of the passive graces are evident in this state. Is not this also a normal growth of perfect love?
St. 39. The Flame of Sweet Transformation
The spiritual marriage is described in this stanza as the state of the most sublime perfection and transformation in God. St. John bases his teaching on the words of St. Paul: “And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba (Father)”;%! on the words of our Lord: “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me”; 82 and on the words of St. Peter: “He hath given us most great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature.” 33 All these quotations admirably confirm our thesis that in the opinion of St. John of the Cross the spiritual marriage is the full and normal development, the flowering of the life of grace, the normal end of supernatural life on earth.
St. John of the Cross also teaches in this stanza that perfect love is obtained in the mystical way by the “breathing of the air,” that is, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and that it is accompanied by mystical contemplation, which is not only the means,** but also the effect of perfect love.*5
The spouse, we said, wishes two things in the preceding stanza: first, what her soul had as an end; then, what the Bridegroom had given her the other day. The soul sets forth in the present stanza the parts of its end: that is, not only perfect love, but also all that comes to the soul through it.
Therefore the soul enumerates five things which detail all that it admits having in view here: first the breathing of the air; then the love of which we have spoken, the principal object that it has in view; . . . fourthly, the pure and clear contemplation of the divine essence.
“The breathing of the air.” This is a property of the Holy Ghost
which the soul asks for here in order to love God perfectly. It calls it the “breathing of the air” because it is a touch or a very delicate feeling of love, ordinarily produced in the soul in this state by the presence of the Holy Ghost.
Thus, according to St. John of the Cross, to love God perfectly the “breathing of the air,” or the touch of the Holy Ghost, is necessary; this is certainly a mystical grace ordinarily produced in the spiritual marriage.*®
The fourth request is “ ‘In the serene night.’ That is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold the grove. It is called night because contemplation is dim; and that is the reason why it is also called mystical theology, that is, the secret or hidden wisdom of God, where, without the sound of words, or the intervention of any bodily or spiritual sense, as it were in silence and in repose, in the darkness of sense and nature, God teaches the soul—and the soul knows not how—in a most secret and hidden way... .
“Some spiritual writers call this “understanding without understanding,’ because it does not take place in what philosophers call the active understanding, which is conversant with the forms, fancies, and apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the understanding as it is possible and passive, which without receiving such forms, receives passively only the substantial knowledge of them free from all imagery. This occurs without effort or exertion on its part, and for this reason contemplation is called night.
“Still, however clear may be its knowledge, it is dark night in comparison with that of the blessed, for which the soul prays. Hence, while it prays for clear contemplation, that is, the fruition of the grove, and its beauty with the other objects here enumerated, it says, let it be in the night now serene; that is, in the clear beatific contemplation.”
This magnificent description of mystical contemplation proves conclusively to us that the spiritual marriage is a mystical state. But this mystical contemplation, according to the terms of St. John of the Cross, is “that which comes to the soul through perfect love.” It is, therefore, not purely accidental, but is the essential effect, the distinctive characteristic, of perfect love, as it was also, we have seen, the means, the disposition to obtain this love.” But if mystical
contemplation is the characteristic of perfect love and its necessary disposition, it is surely in the normal way, as perfect love itself 1S.
St. 40. The Final Preparations of the Soul
In the last stanza, St. John of the Cross describes the perfection of the virtues in the spiritual marriage and the perfect harmony in this state between the lower and the higher parts of man.
In this stanza the soul wishes to make it known that it is ready to receive the favors to be enjoyed in this state, gifts which it has asked of the Bridegroom and which, if the soul is not ready, it can neither receive nor preserve. Therefore the soul puts before the Beloved four dispositions or preparations which made possible what precedes, in order to urge Him still more to grant it the favors mentioned: “The first is that the soul is detached from all things and a stranger to them. The second is that the devil is overcome and put to flight. The third is that the passions are subdued and the natural desires mortified. The fourth . . . that the sensual and lower nature of the soul is changed and purified, and so conformed to the spiritual, as not only not to hinder spiritual blessings, but is, on the contrary, prepared for them... .”
“ ‘None saw it.’ That is, my soul is so detached, so denuded, so lonely, so estranged from all created things, in heaven and earth; it has become so recollected in Thee, that nothing whatever can come within sight of that most intimate joy which I have in Thee. That is, there is nothing whatever that can cause me pleasure with its sweetness, or disgust with its vileness; for my soul is so far removed from all such things, . . . that nothing can behold me.
“This is not all, for: “Neither did Aminadab appear.’ Aminadab, in the Holy Writings, signified the devil; that is, the enemy of the soul, in a spiritual sense, who is ever fighting against it, and disturbing it with his innumerable artillery, that it may not enter into the fortress and secret place of interior recollection with the Bridegroom. [here the soul is so protected, so strong, so triumphant in virtue which it then practices, so defended by God’s right hand, that the devil not only dares not approach it, but runs away from it in great fear, and does not venture to appear. The practice of virtue, and the state of perfection to which the soul has come, is a victory over Satan, and causes him such terror that he cannot present himself before it. Thus Aminadab appeared not with any right to keep the soul away from the object of its desire.
“ ‘The siege was intermitted.’ By the siege is meant the passions and desires, which, when not overcome and mortified, surround the soul and fight it on all sides. Hence the term ‘siege’ is applied to them. This siege is ‘intermitted,’ that is, the passions are subject to reason, and the desires are mortified. . .. Under these circumstances the soul entreats the Beloved to communicate to it those graces for which it has prayed, for now the siege is no hindrance. Until the four passions of the soul are ordered in reason according to God, and until the desires are mortified and purified, the soul is incapable of seeing God.”
The soul says that in this state the cavalry dismount at the sight of the spiritual waters, because the sensible part of the soul is now so well purified, and in a certain way spiritualized. “So the soul with its powers of sense and natural forces becomes so recollected as to participate and rejoice to some degree in the spiritual grandeurs which God communicates to it in the spirit within.”
Here again St. John of the Cross shows us that the spiritual marriage is the state of consummate perfection, the normal end of the present life, which can, however, be attained only in the mystical way, “in the fortress or the hiding place of interior recollection in the company of the Beloved.”
Rich in suggestion is the conclusion by which St. John ends his work: “Whereunto [the spiritual marriage] may He bring of His mercy all those who call upon the most sweet name of Jesus, the Bridegroom of faithful souls, to whom be all honor and glory, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” In these words the Mystical Doctor wishes for the grace to be introduced into the interior recollection which he has just described, that is, into the state of the spiritual marriage; and he wishes it for all those “who call upon the most sweet name of Jesus,” that is, for all the faithful. Now, one does not wish for all the faithful an extraordinary grace, outside the normal way, especially if the one who wishes it is St. John of the Cross.
We shall append two texts from The Ascent of Mount Carmel, in which the holy doctor explicitly teaches that obscure contemplation (which is without any doubt mystical contemplation) 1s part of perfect union with God, and consequently is in the normal way, and that absolute renunciation in regard to all other types of knowledge does not apply to this contemplation, since it belongs to the union of love, the normal end of our life on earth.
St. John makes the following statement: “The second kind [of knowledge], which is obscure and general, has but one form, that of contemplation, which is the work of faith. The soul is to be led into this by directing it thereto through all the rest, beginning with the first and detaching it from them.” 38
Farther on he says: “This divine knowledge concerning God never relates to particular things, because it is conversant with the highest, and therefore cannot be explained unless when it is extended to some truth less than God, which is capable of being described; but this general knowledge is ineffable. It is only a soul in union with God that is capable of this profound loving knowledge, for it is itself that union. This knowledge consists in a certain contact of the soul with the Divinity, and it is God Himself who is then felt and tasted.” 3° Nothing could be more clear and explicit.
From a study of all the texts that we have quoted (and they could be multiplied), it seems we may conclude that, in the opinion of St. John of the Cross, the state of the espousals and of the spiritual marriage is identified with the state of perfect love. It is, therefore, in the normal way; it is the normal end of our life on earth.*°
To conclude and to clarify everything, we must, it seems, avoid two confusions:
- What is essential to mystical contemplation must not be confused with what is accidental and accessory in it. The essence of mystical contemplation is the infused, obscure, general contemplation which St. John of the Cross speaks of in The Ascent of Mount Carmel ** and in A Spiritual Canticle.*? This contemplation is produced by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by the gifts of wisdom and understanding. The other types of supernatural knowledge, particular and distinct like visions, revelations, locutions, and so on,
4° This teaching of St. John of the Cross on the normal character of the mystical life seems to be also that of St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, St. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
as well as ecstasies and other exterior phenomena, are only something accidental in comparison with mystical contemplation, properly so called; they are, more properly speaking, gratiae gratis datae *° which the soul ought not at all to desire.
- Sanctity should not be confused with the salvation of the soul. We do not affirm that mystical contemplation in this life is necessary for the salvation of the soul, but the question is whether it is not necessary for sanctity. By sanctity we mean a very great perfection of the love of God and of neighbor, a perfection which, nevertheless, always remains in the normal way, for the precept of love has no limits.44
To state the matter with greater precision, the sanctity in question here is the normal immediate prelude of the life of heaven, a prelude which 1s realized either on earth or in purgatory, and which presupposes that the soul is fully purified, capable of receiving the beatific vision immediately. Finally, when we say that, according to St. John of the Cross, infused contemplation is necessary for sanctity, we mean a moral necessity, in other words, that in the majority of cases sanctity will not be attained without it. And we even add that without it the soul will not actually have the full perfection of the Christian life, which implies the eminent exercise of the theological virtues and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost which accompany them.
To this very remarkable article which Father Alexander Rozwadowski, S.J., wrote in 1936, we shall add a simple remark: Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen, C.D., has since that date drawn much nearer to this point of view. In fact, in an article in the Angelicum,’ after describing the transforming union and quoting the moving call of St. John of the Cross to negligent souls, created, nevertheless, for such grandeurs,? he wrote: “This call, addressed by the saint to souls in general, shows us that he cannot consider ‘extraordinary’ the sublime things that he has just described for us. Not everyone is invited to graces which are privileges. The object of
1“Les Sommets de la vie damour,” Angelicum, January, 1937, pp. 278-80. 2 A Spiritual Canticle, st. 39, par. 8.
the sacerdotal prayer of Christ, made for ‘all those who should believe in Him,’ cannot, in its turn, be a ‘reserved’ good; and that which constitutes the flowering of the seed of supernatural life in our souls, which sanctifying grace is, must be prepared for all those who are endowed with grace.” Likewise in regard to the desire for equality of love, he writes: “There is, therefore, in our charity for God an aspiration connatural to mystical love; such love is in no way ‘extraordinary’ for a soul endowed with the virtue of charity, but brings this virtue to its ultimate and integral perfection.”
Lastly, infused contemplation, without which mystical love does not exist, is not extraordinary either, as Father Gabriel recognizes: “For St. John of the Cross, the ‘illumination’ of faith is the work of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. He has, moreover, strongly affirmed ‘that faith leads the soul to union.’ è He could not uphold such a thesis if it were necessary to add other ‘extraordinary’ principles to faith.” . . . We may therefore conclude, Father Gabriel says at the end of his article, that neither does the light necessary for the transformation of love belong to the order of reserved privileges. It is a “connatural” light: the light of faith accompanied by that of the gifts. Faith and the gifts are elements of our supernatural “organism.” . . . Unfortunately the soul often recoils before the indispensable suffering which should prepare union. Let us not forget that “the door by which we enter into the riches of the knowledge of God is the cross.” 4
Father Arintero, O.P., taught this same doctrine from 1908 on in Evolución mistica and we have not ceased to teach it since the first edition (1923) of Christian Perfection and Contemplation, in which we declared: “What constitutes the foundation of this eminent state, called the transforming union, is in no way miraculous.” ® And again: “All just souls are called, at least in a general and remote manner, to this transforming union, which is the normal prelude to the life of heaven. If they are faithful to this call, and
8 The Ascent, Bk. II, passim.
*A Spiritual Canticle, st. 36, par. 14. We are happy to see that Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen perfectly agrees with us in refusing to admit that there are, as Father Chrysogonous claimed, “two specifically distinct modes” for the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the one ordinary, the other extraordinary. Cf. “Le double mode des dons du Saint-Esprit,” Etudes carmélitaines, October, 1934, pp. 215-32; and supra, Vol. I, pp. 78-88.
6 Salamanca, pp. 460-86. 8 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, p. 257.
at the same time humble and generous, they will hear a more proximate and urgent invitation.” St. Teresa repeats this in the Epilogue to The Interior Castle.” 8
The same conclusion is more or less explicitly reached by several authors who have treated of very close union with Mary in the unitive way, according to the principles set forth by St. Grignion de Montfort.® Father E. Neubert, S.M., has assembled some very significant data on this point.!° On this subject must also be mentioned L’Union mystique à Marie, written by Mary of St. Teresa (1623-77), a Flemish recluse who experienced it personally.’
TOWARD A CLOSE UNION, ALMOST ALWAYS AN ACTUALITY THE VALUE OF THE HIDDEN LIFE
The life of union seems to us expressed with simplicity and depth in the following letter from a contemplative religious who is still young and who has, we believe, truly found his vocation, in spite of the powerlessness of which he speaks:
Peace increases with joy, although everything sensible disappears more and more, and my poor soul is as if lost at times in the darkness, possessing nothing and unable to acquire anything by its own powers. Life becomes so simple. A single desire governs everything: to arrive at Love, to thank Him for His incomprehensible love, and to save souls. My desire for the infinity of God grows continually, and the clear view of my own nothingness is ever before my eyes. Though it humiliates me greatly, it does not discourage me. I try to live simply as at Nazareth, making each act, even the most banal, an act of perfect love. For ts it not with our will that we love? What matter then if a man is truly a wretched nothing? Is not the sole, strong, and constant determination to give pleas-
™Cf. The Way of Perfection, chaps. 18-21.
8 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, p. 259.
? True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, chap. 5, art. 5, An easy, short, perfect, safe way; chap. 6, art. 1, How Mary forms the predestinate; art. 2, pars. 3-5, She conducts them, defends them, intercedes for them; chap. 7, art. 3, The grace of pure love; art. 5, Communication of the soul and of the spirit of Mary; art. 6, Transformation of souls in Mary in the image of Jesus Christ.
10 Cf. “L’Union mystique a la Sainte Vierge,” La Vie spirituelle, January, 1937, pp- 15-29. .
11 Les Cahiers de la Vierge (May, 1936), published, under the title L'Union mystique à Marie by Mary of St. Teresa, the text translated from the Flemish by L. Van den Bossche. (Introduction to Marian life. Marian life. The end of Marian life.) Cf. p. 55: “In this life the soul is transformed in Mary through fusion of love”; also, pp. 62—68 ff.
ure to Jesus and to my heavenly Mother by each act, love which grows more perfect with the intensity of the will? Every morning and repeatedly during my work or in the recitation of the Divine Office, I say to Jesus: Beloved Jesus, I wish each thought, each word, each little action to be an act of perfect love, and to each one of them I unite the infinite merits of Calvary, the immense merits of my Mother and of all the angels and the saints. This intention becomes more and more actual and is continually on my lips.
All (my powerlessness to understand His limitless love, my actual desire of love, my prayer for my friends, for souls), all is more and more summed up in this single word: Jesus. I think always of Him, but I do not possess Him sufficiently.
If I am mistaken in what I have just said, Father, correct me.
Oh, I see indeed that I am very wretched. All the sins and all the selfishness of my past life are ever before my eyes. I know that I have been very ungrateful. But precisely for that reason, I do not wish to lose a minute that is not an act of love. I should like my love to be as pure as possible in order that my poor life may be useful to the Church, to souls. In your letter you told me that I am not losing my life. What joy!
On the other hand, I see that I am so terribly poor. The world can offer me nothing; everything in it is vanity. This I see. The supernatural, the divine, which alone I seek, which alone can help me toward union with Jesus, I do not possess; at least I do not feel that I possess it.
My faculties no longer seem to belong to me; my thoughts do not come at will. The thought of Jesus, yes; but no others. I am convinced that I shall never be able to advance unless help comes to me from on high. Will it come? When? I wish to be patient, tranquil. May His holy will be done, and may I oppose no obstacle to it!
You know that in recent years, I have had to admit to my superiors and to everybody, that I was good for nothing, that I could no longer preach or teach. My memory retains nothing.” ‘Thanks be to God, I am no longer concerned about men’s opinion. I work for Jesus. Since my arrival here, I take my turn with the others for the sermons. Moreover, there are no great preachers here, and the people are simple. I also sometimes preach to our Carmelite sisters. Everybody claims to be satisfied, but these sermons are, more properly speaking, little talks in which everything is very simple and the language not elegant. I have nothing by heart; but I bring several great thoughts on a scrap of paper and try
12 Tt seems to retain nothing, but it assimilates and transforms the food with which it is nourished in order continually to recall the things of eternity. The writer of this letter has the impression that his memory forgets everything;
in reality, it retains what is most important of all, the relation to eternity. It is no longer immersed in time; it dominates it.
to talk about them. I know that grace alone can change hearts, and that is why I wish to be increasingly united to my divine Friend. A final reason why I wish that my poor life should be as holy as possible is the good of the Province. .. .
The conviction that there is only one thing to do, to render myself increasingly like the great friends of Jesus, in order to do good to the Church and to save souls, grows continually. Besides, my holy Order exacts perfection from me; it is not sufficient to be “a good religious”; one should be closely united to God. But that is precisely what constitutes my constant torment. The thought of the unbounded love of Jesus for us is always present to my thought. What can I do in return to please Him and to save souls? It is my first thought in the morning, it returns repeatedly in the course of the day, and it is my last thought at night.
Footnotes
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Bk. II. 3 Sixth mansion, chap. 1. s Ibid., chap. 6. t Ibid., chap. 9. §27 ↩
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Ibid., I, 241 ff. ↩
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We take the word “ascetical” in its ordinary meaning, to characterize acts that can be produced by our personal activity aided by common grace. In these acts the soul is active rather than passive. On the other hand, we use the term “mystical” to characterize acts that cannot be produced by our personal activity aided by common grace, but that require a special 1 inspiration and illumination of the Holy Ghost. In these acts the soul is passive rather than active: patiens divina, as St. Thomas says, using the expression of Dionysius. Such are the acts of P contemplation. This terminology is conformable to the usage common and proper to classical authors. ↩
Chapter 92 of 99