Letter 10. To A Spiritual Son in Religion

Teaching Him How to Employ His Whole Will in God, Withdrawing It From Pleasure and Joy in Created Things

THE peace of JESUS CHRIST, my son, be ever in your soul.

I have received the letter of your reverence, wherein you tell me of the great desire you have, given you by our Lord, to occupy your will with Him alone, loving Him above all things, and wherein you also ask me for some directions how to obtain your end. I rejoice that God has given you such holy desires, and I shall rejoice the more at their fulfilment. Remember, then, that all pleasure, joy, and affections come into the soul through the will and the desire of those things which seem good, befitting, and pleasurable, because they seem to be pleasing and precious,; now the affections of the will are drawn to them, and the will hopes for them, de lights in them when it possesses them, and dreads the loss of them. The soul, therefore, by reason of these affections and joys, is disturbed and disquieted.

In order then to annihilate and mortify the desire oi sensible pleasure in things that are not God, your reverence will observe, that everything in which the will can have a distinct joy is sweet and delectable, because pleasant in its eyes ; but there is no delectable thing in which it can have joy and delight in God, for God is not cognisable by the apprehensions of the other faculties, and therefore not by the pleasure and desires of the will. In this life, as the soul cannot taste of God essentially, so all the sweetness and delight of which it is capable, and, however great they may be, cannot be God, for whatever the will takes pleasure in and desires as a distinct thing, it desires so far as it knows it to be that which it longs for. For as the will has never tasted of God, nor ever known Him under any apprehension of the desire, and therefore comprehends Him not, so by its taste it can never know Him ; its very being, desire, and taste can never desire God, because He is above and beyond all its powers.

It is, therefore, plain that no distinct object whatever that pleases the will can be God ; and for that reason, if it is to be united with Him, it must empty itself, cast away every disorderly affection of the desire, every satisfaction it may distinctly have, high and low, temporal and spiritual, so that, purified and cleansed from all unruly satisfactions, joys, and desires, it may be wholly occupied, with all its affections, in loving God. For if the will can in any way comprehend God and be united with Him, it cannot be through any capacity of ii

1 62 LETTERS the desire, but only by love ; and as all delight, sweetness, and joy, of which the will is sensible, is not love, it follows that none of these pleasing impressions can be the adequate means of uniting the will to God ; the means are an act of the will. And because an act of the will is quite distinct from feeling ; it is by an act that the will is united with God, and rests in Him ; that act is love. This union is never wrought by feeling, or exertions of the desire, for these remain in the soul as aims and ends. It is only as motives of love that feelings can be of service, if the will is bent on going onwards, and for nothing else.

These sweet impressions of themselves do not lead the soul to God, but rather cause it to rest upon them : by an act of the will, that is, by loving God, the soul puts its whole affection, joy, delight, contentment, and love in Him only, casting everything else aside, and loving Him above all things.

For this reason, then, if any one is moved to love God by that sweetness he feels, he casts that sweetness away from him, and fixes his love upon God, Whom he does not feel ; but if he allowed himself to rest in that sweetness and delight which he feels, dwelling upon them wit! satisfaction, that would be to love the creature, and thai which is of it, and to make the motive an end, and th< act of the will would be vitiated ; for as God is incomprehensible and unapproachable, the will, in order to direct its act of love unto God, must not direct it to that which is tangible and capable of being reached by the desire, but must direct it to that which it cannot comprehend nor reach thereby. In this way the will loves that which is certain and true, according to the spirit of the faith, in emptiness and darkness as to its own feelings, above all that it can understand by the operations of the under standing ; its faith and love transcend all that it can comprehend.

He, then, is very unwise, who, when sweetness and spiritual delight fail him, thinks for that reason that God has abandoned him, and when he finds them again, rejoices and is glad, thinking that he has in that way come to possess God.

More unwise still is he who goes about seeking for sweetness in God, rejoices in it, and dwells upon it ; for in so doing, he is not seeking after God with the will grounded in the emptiness of faith and charity, but only in spiritual sweetness and delight, which is a created thing, following herein his own will and fond pleasure. Such an one does not love God purely above all things, which is to direct the whole strength of the will to Him — for by clinging to and resting on the creature by desire, the will does not ascend upwards beyond it to God Who is unapproachable. It is impossible for the will to attain to the sweetness and delight of the divine union, to feel the sweet and loving embraces of God, otherwise than in detachment, in refusing to the desire every pleasure in the things of heaven and earth, for that is the meaning of David, when he said : ' Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.' * Now, in this place ' the mouth ' of the will is the desire : the mouth opens, when not filled or hindered with the morsels of its own satisfactions : for when the desire is bent upon anything, it is then re strained, because out of God everything is a restraint.

The soul, then, that is to advance straightway unto God, and to be united with Him, must keep the mouth of the will open, but only for God Himself, in detachment from every morsel of desire, in order that God may fill it with His own love and sweetness : it must hunger and thirst after God alone, seeking its satisfaction in nothing else, seeing that in this life it cannot taste Him as He is. That which may be tasted here, if there be a desire for it, hinders the taste of God.

This is what the prophet Isaias teaches when he says : ' All you that thirst come to the waters.' f He bids all who thirst for God only to come to the fulness of the divine waters of union with Him : namely, those who have not the money of desire. It is most expedient then, for your reverence, if you wish to have great peace in your soul and to reach perfection, to give up your whole will to God, that it may be united to Him, and utterly detached from the mean and vile occupations of earth. May His Majesty make you as spiritual and as holy as I desire.

FR. JOHN OF THE CROSS.

SEGOVIA, April 14, 1589.