| <<<Home | Maxims Directory |
Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross (Continued)
Maxim 49.
The soul that desires God to surrender Himself
to it entirely must surrender itself entirely to Him without keeping anything for itself.
This
Maxim recalls the teaching of St. Teresa of Jesus that is almost the equivalent
of this Maxim. She also says that God
surrenders Himself to those souls who surrender themselves to Him. I do believe that only St. John of the Cross
uses the word "entirely".
Perhaps St. Teresa says "completely" instead of "entirely". Actually, neither are necessary. They add nothing to the Maxim. God's Self (Selves) are all of God; myself
is all of me. Nevertheless, the use of
the word entirely is of value because it requires us to reflect
upon the fact that there are aspects of God and aspects of
ourselves that may be withheld, while other aspects may be
surrendered. This commentary will
endeavor to reflect upon what the various aspects might be.
At
first sight, we might think that there is no need for us to surrender entirely
to God in order for Him to surrender Himself entirely to us, because Jesus has
already done that in giving Himself completely to us in the Most Blessed
Sacrament. He is entirely there, Body
and Blood, Soul and Divinity. But
Divinity is God, it is the Divine nature.
So if we have God entirely in Jesus in the Eucharist, why need we to
surrender to Him to have Him to surrender to us?
Well,
I guess the answer to that is found by making a distinction in the meaning of
surrender. We tend to think in terms of
physical surrender, as when one army surrenders to another, or a suspect in a
crime surrenders to the Police. But
that is really an incomplete surrender.
In those instances, one party gains physical custody of the other
party. That kind of surrender into
physical custody makes one a prisoner.
Jesus Himself has said as much to saintly mystics about the
Eucharist. His love has made Him a
willing prisoner in our tabernacles. We
do have physical custody of Him and of God, Divinity, in the Eucharist. But of course, He wants to surrender to us
more than His physical presence. He
wants to surrender every aspect of His Being, all His knowledge, all His
attributes, all His love. But He cannot
do all that unless we first surrender entirely to Him, keeping nothing for
ourselves.
Looking
at the Maxim again, we get the impression that not every soul wants God to
surrender Himself entirely to it. But since St. John is speaking to Carmelites,
we can surmise further that every Carmelite wants God to surrender Himself
entirely to him/her. So it seems that St. John knows that, but since God has
not yet surrendered entirely to those that desire He do so, he wrote this Maxim
to explain the reason why. On the other hand, perhaps God does not surrender
Himself entirely to souls that want Him to, because He knows that if He did,
they would not be able to bear it. Thus we can try to figure out what would be
in store for souls to whom God surrendered completely, and that would help us
know why some would not be able to bear it.
When we think about it, we have to admit that
there is a difference between desiring salvation and desiring God to surrender
Himself entirely. To desire salvation
does mean the same as desiring to be at peace with God, that is, to remain a
friend of God. But to be saved, we do
not have to surrender everything to God.
We do have to surrender our intellects to some extent because unless we,
who are baptized, believe the truth of certain mysteries, we cannot be
saved. We do not have to surrender our
entire intellects because we are free to pursue knowledge in fields other than
that concerning God and our relationship to God and to one another under
God. We do have to surrender our wills
to God, again to a certain extent, because, as baptized Christians, we have to
observe the Ten Commandments as a basic minimum in order to be saved, that is,
to maintain our state of friendship with God.
But we do not have to surrender our entire wills to God in order to be
saved because we are free to choose good, better or best from the many options
available to us in regard to how we can conduct ourselves within our
vocation. We even remain free to choose
any one of several authentic vocations within the Church in service to God and
to the Church, each of which is lawful and pleasing to God.
With
regard to the other faculties of our human nature, we can say that these are
given to God in the same measure that our intellects and our free wills are
given to God, because it is in and through these other faculties of our
humanity that the intellect and will direct all those other faculties of our
humanity to comply with the commandments, in the course of which we act upon
others, and others act upon us. Others
here includes people, free agents, as well as un-free agents, such as natural
forces and non-intelligent, living beings.
So,
before we talk about what it means to give oneself entirely to God, I think we
should consider what it means for God to give Himself entirely to the human
person. As we said above, someone who
knows what that entails might not want God to surrender Himself entirely to
him/her, in order to obtain His surrender in return..
I
said above that besides the aspect of the physical presence of Himself, which,
in addition to the Blessed Sacrament, we have in a non-tangible way in virtue
of the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity, there are the other aspects of God,
namely, His knowledge, attributes and especially His Love. Among others would be His experience of
Blessedness, and His experience of Joy, if indeed, the latter two can be
separate and distinct.
Well
we do already share some of God's knowledge through the gift of Faith. Faith enables us to know what God
knows: about Himself, about all the
beings He created, and about the relationships of all beings to God and among
themselves. That knowledge is
surrendered to us for at least two reasons.
One is because God had to reveal these truths, otherwise we would never
know them with certainty. Without His
revealing these truths mankind would only be able to speculate and guess about
Divinity, as it has done, and would not be able to keep from falling into
error, as we know from the history of peoples.
The
other reason why God's revealed knowledge is surrendered to us is because
we are free to use this knowledge as we please.
That is, provided we keep it intact and unadulterated. And we remain free not to use it at all. There are other aspects of God's knowledge
that He allows us to seek out on our own.
He allows us to seek out knowledge of the laws by which He governs
nature. He allows us to seek out the
laws by which our bodies and psyches function properly and in healthy fashion.
Somehow it is to our advantage
that He allows us to do this without interfering in any way to correct errors
or to affirm what is correct.
Likewise,
God has surrendered certain of His attributes to us, but not all. He has indeed surrendered to us His
attribute of existing forever. This is
the same as creating our souls to be spirits.
Angels are pure spirits, we are embodied spirits. But our having been brought into being (when
God created our souls and infused our souls into us as embryos at the moment of
our conception), guarantees that we will always be, in one state or
another. Also, in creating us. God
surrendered to us His attributes of intelligence and freedom. In creating us free, God also conferred on
us His attribute of being able to love.
All of the above were surrendered by God to us; they are created
participations in the infinite, subsistent, eternal and perfect Being which God
is. All of that God surrendered without
our having had to desire it, nor to do anything to earn it.
As to
the other aspects of God Himself in His entirety, we know from Genesis that He
chose not to confer certain aspects of His knowledge to the human
race. He specifically did not want Adam
and Eve to know, have knowledge of, good and evil. Of course, we cannot be sure what God's knowledge of evil is, but
I do suspect that it means the experience of being hurt and offended.
God,
because He is a perfect spirit, eternal and unchangeable, cannot be
diminished in His possession of perfect Goodness and perfect Being. However, He can be offended, He can be hurt
in His sentiments. Because He created
us free, He is susceptible to sorrow and anguish at seeing us frustrate His
loving plans to share His Life and Happiness with us. That sorrow and anguish could be exactly what He wanted to spare
the human race, namely, the experience of being hurt, or the experience of
being frustrated in our desires to do good and to seek true goodness as our
happiness. What would have preserved
Adam and Eve from experiencing, and thus knowing, that kind of evil, was
obedience to God in all things.
Actually, He asked little of them in the way of obedience. He asked only that they refrain from eating
the fruit of one tree in the garden.
Of course, as an aside, we know that it still happens that obedience
once again can preserve us from harm, but only from harm to our souls. Obedience now, after the sin of Adam and
Eve, does not always preserve us from experiencing physical and emotional
evil. But we know now that the
obedience that exposes us to physical and emotional evil, or suffering, has
redemptive value not only for ourselves, but for others as well. Jesus is the incontrovertible proof of
that. And so it turns out that any kind
of suffering that is not caused by disobedience is good, good for
our souls. And knowledge of that
kind of good suffering, which is still, technically, an evil, God wants
for everyone.
As to
God's knowledge of past, present and future, of all that happens everywhere, of
the states of being of all material creatures, and of all souls and all
spirits, that is something He reserves for us in Heaven. And even then, He offers all, but we can
absorb only as much of that as the degree of sanctity we have attained will
allow. But not to worry, St. Thomas
Aquinas tells we that those in Heaven who peer deeper into the mystery of God,
then teach what they have learned to those angels and saints less holy than
they are. We know of course, that here on earth the same thing happens. There are always, in every age of the
Church, certain souls who have loved God (and Jesus) so much that their
surrender to God, Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit is so complete that the Divine
Persons reveal to these souls intimate knowledge concerning Themselves, and
particularly knowledge of Jesus' life and the sentiments, sufferings and joys
Jesus experienced while He was on earth.
Not always, but often, Jesus then allows such extremely holy souls to
teach us about those things which God in His providence did not reveal in
Scripture, because, obviously, they were not necessary for us to know in order
to be saved.
My,
how far I have drifted from what I proposed to reflect upon, namely, if we knew
beforehand what it means to have God surrender completely to a human soul,
there would be many souls who would not be able to desire it because of the
fear of what it entails. We only have
to look to Jesus to see what that surrender brings with it.
Jesus,
being a Divine Person, clearly had a humanity that was totally surrendered to
His Divinity (God the Father), and to Whom (that is, His Humanity) the Father,
in turn, had totally surrendered Himself.
Thus the humanity of Jesus, or better, Jesus, in and through His Human
life on earth, reveals in a general way what any other person's life is like to
whom God has surrendered Himself completely.
To help
us get a handle on that, let us remember that when a person gives his whole
heart to another person, in effect he has given Himself completely. Thus we are able to say this Maxim can be
paraphrased to read: The soul that
desires God to surrender His Heart to it entirely must surrender its heart
entirely to Him. And because Jesus said: The Father and I are One, it
stands to reason that we can re-interpret the maxim to read: The soul
that desires Jesus to surrender His Heart to it, must surrender its heart
entirely to Jesus. It is not necessary
to add "without keeping anything for itself", because as we said
above, who gives his heart, gives everything.
This
is what helps us see that not everyone would want or desire to have Jesus
surrender His Heart completely to him/her.
To have the Heart of Jesus means to be so totally devoted to loving the
Father that one is totally devoted to doing the Will of the Father through
utter and perfect obedience. In
particular, such a soul would be totally devoted to assisting Jesus in the
Salvation of souls, which is what He and God the Father want more than anything
else. Such a person would then look
forward eagerly to terrible suffering and would embrace lovingly every cross
that the Father would send or put in his/her path because the suffering of an
innocent person has powerful redemptive and salvific value. Like Jesus, he/she would say: I have a baptism with which I must be
baptized, and how straitened (meaning how anxious) I am for it to be
accomplished. Jesus’ baptism, as you
know, was His passion, crucifixion and death.
Now
in reflecting upon the heart of Jesus, we have to admit there was, and still
is, in it more than the total devotion to the Father's will which yearned
for the suffering that brought redemption to the human race. There are also the sentiments caused by the
response made to the Heart of Jesus by souls, many of whom are vividly aware
of His infinite love for them, as manifested by the extent, severity and profundity
of the physical and emotional sufferings He endured to win their salvation.
That
means that a person to whom God has surrendered Himself in His entirety, or as
we paraphrased it, to whom Jesus has surrendered His Heart, and who therefore
loves others with Jesus’ own love, a love He has shared with him/her, is
obliged to endure from those same beloved people all the things that Jesus
complained about in His revelations to St. Margaret Mary, to Saint Faustina,
and to other holy victim souls in the course of the Church's history. That means a response to their love
consisting not only of coldness, neglect, want of gratitude, but even rejection
and contempt. The heart of Jesus
suffers terribly, also, in seeing souls He loves look to other things or other
people rather than to Him for comfort, consolations, strength, happiness, peace
and joy. (Not only does anything or
anyone other than Jesus fail to give all those things in adequate and lasting
measure, but, compared to Jesus, they are of no account and vile). Because of the
immense, on-going sufferings of the Heart of Jesus, it seems obvious to me that,
if people knew beforehand what it means to have God surrender entirely to them,
many wouldn't be able to bear it, and so would not desire it.
But
perhaps I have not explored well enough other aspects of God's surrender of
Himself to the soul surrendered completely to Him. Surely this includes His putting his Infinite Wisdom and Power
and all His other attributes:
compassion, Mercy, Forgiveness, Patience, Long-suffering, power over the
forces of nature, the power to work miracles, and so forth, at the disposal of
the one who has surrendered completely to Him.
In our daily lives these would be so helpful. What tremendous good we would be able to do with all these powers
and virtues and attributes!!! But even
as I say that, it dawns on me why it is necessary to first surrender oneself
entirely to God, keeping nothing for oneself.
The most important thing that we have to surrender is our human way of
thinking and acting. Each of us can
think of a whole bunch of events that have taken place in our lives that we did
not want to happen. Each of us must
admit honestly that if we did have God's power at our disposal, that is, if we
did have His power over the forces of nature and the power of miracles, we
would have used all that to make things turn out differently. We also have to admit that, if God did not
intervene to let things turn out the way we wanted (in answer to our prayers),
then it had to be His Wisdom, placed at the service of His infinite Love
(read Mercy, Compassion, Goodness) that permitted events to turn out as they
did. So it seems to me, that, as we gradually
surrender to God more and more of our human ways of thinking and acting, He
begins gradually to surrender more and more to us a knowledge and understanding
of His Ways of thinking and acting.
When we have taken on His Mind, then indeed, God can trust us with His
tremendous power and influence over men and nature. Of course, in addition to His Mind, we also have to have His
LOVE, that is, His Very Own Benevolence for all His human creatures.
Perhaps
we can get an inkling of how to go about surrendering our human ways of thinking
and acting or better, how to know when and how to surrender it, by recalling
what St. John of the Cross has taught about beginners being introduced into
the Dark Night of the Soul. We find
that teaching in Book 1, chapter 1, of the Dark Night, to which I refer
you. It is the experience of the Dark
Night, which begins to divest the soul entirely of its human ways because
it purifies the soul of the spiritual vices of vainglory, avarice,
lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. And this same experience of this Dark Night can also support what
I said earlier about not everyone wanting to know, i.e. to experience, what
it is for God to surrender Himself, notably His Divine Ways of thinking and
acting. I was unable to find the place
where St. John of the Cross says this, but He did say that God does not place
every beginner into the Dark Night of passive purification because most of
them are unwilling to undergo the sufferings involved [similar to the sufferings
experienced by the heart of Jesus] that do rid them of human ways and begin
to give them Divine Ways of seeing, judging and acting. Thus, rather than risk their defection, God in His Mercy leaves
them in a state of beginners, where they are serving Him and will be saved.
But they will never get to know the inestimable joy of possessing God and
sharing His Life in as complete a way as is possible on earth for a human
creature. As we must have said in a previous conference,
the joy of sharing God's life, Jesus' life, lies in knowing one has loved
to the upper limit of possibility and has left nothing undone, nothing un-suffered,
to manifest the full measure of one's love.
| <<<Home | Maxims Directory |
MISSION STATEMENT: This web site was
created for the purpose of completing the work of Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, O.C.D
These conferences may be reproduced for private use only. Publication of this
material is forbidden without permission of the Father Provincial for the
Discalced Carmelites, Holy Hill, 1525 Carmel Rd., Hubertus, WI 53033-9770.
Texts for the Maxims on Love were taken from The Collected Works of St. John
of the Cross, by Fr. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Fr. Otilo Rodriguez, O.C.D.
1979 Edition. Copies of the book are available at ICS Publications, 2131 Lincoln
Rd., N.E., Washington, D.C. 2002-1199, Phone: 1-800-832-8489.