| <<<Home | Maxims Directory |
Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim - 29.
All the goodness we possess
is lent to us, and God considers it His own work.
The first thing to reflect upon
in this Maxim is the meaning of the word possess, or rather, the exact
meaning of the word possess. It
obviously has more than one meaning because ordinarily we think of
possession as meaning ownership. We do this when we speak of a person’s
possessions. We come across
this meaning in Scripture, in the Gospel episode of Jesus and the rich young
man. We read there that the young
man went away sad after learning that in order to be perfect, he had to sell all
he possessed and give it to the poor, and then follow Jesus. The text comments: “for he had many
possessions.” (Matt. 19:22).
Possession has to mean ownership here, because a person cannot sell what
he does not own.
So therefore, what is the other
(or another) meaning of possess that applies here? We learn what that is by the presence of
the verb to lend in the Maxim.
Whatever is lent to us we do not own. Although we physically exercise control
over it, what is lent to us we are obliged to give back to the true owner sooner
or later. Thus this Maxim is
concerned with what God has lent to us, over which He has not renounced His
rights of ownership. But now, right
away, we find ourselves in difficulties.
St. John of the Cross is not talking about things, that is,
substantive entities that God has lent to us, but about a quality,
or an attribute. As our human
language makes it clear to us, qualities or attributes do not have a separate,
substantive existence the way things, or substantive entities, do. As you know, further, words representing
substantive entities are called nouns, and words denoting attributes or
qualities are called adjectives.
So, what God lends to us is the quality of
Goodness. Thus, there
may be entities that God lends to us and which we must eventually give
back to Him, and there might be entities that He gives us outright. These latter we would not have to give
back to Him.
Perhaps the only things
that we have that really belong to us would be our souls and the faculties of
intellect, memory and will, Perhaps this is the same as saying the only thing we
have is our existence as persons. Once God brings us into being, He does
not ever return us to the nothingness out of which we were created. And here again we have another
difficulty. Are not our souls
good? Are not intellect, memory and
will good faculties? It
seems we have to answer yes to that. “God looked at all the things He
created and found them very good.” (Gen. 1:31) As a matter of fact, because of that
last statement, even the mere existence or substantive being and
faculties of Satan, considered in the abstract, have to be considered good,
because God created them.
This notion is helpful in
understanding this Maxim 29 (saying 108) because we realize that the
goodness that St. John of the Cross has in mind is the quality
which rational creatures freely choose to introduce into
whatever it is they produce by the use of the basically good faculties that God
has created in them. Perhaps
better: The goodness would be that which is an attribute of the
operation of the faculties themselves, even in those instances when a
separate, tangible entity is produced.
That is to say, the goodness would be in the working or the
activity of the human faculties, e.g. telling the truth is a
good act. Making a
rash judgment is a bad act.
Satan, using basically good faculties, freely chose to rebel, and thus to
reject goodness, and he made himself totally evil.
Having all that in mind, we
would have to say that it is the operative goodness that comes from God
and we have to admit, further, that we have been aware of this because way back
to the time of St. Augustine, we have known that God is the chief author of all
the good deeds that we do. We alone
are the authors (unique authors) of all the evil that we
do.
But now we have to go back and
continue with that other meaning of possess. This meaning is best understood in terms
of real estate terminology. Someone
is in possession of a parcel of real estate when that person has control
of the parcel at the same time that he or she is occupying, or abiding on that
parcel. How does this help us to
understand what St. John + means when he says God has only lent us the
goodness our works and activities have acquired through our cooperation
with Him?
Ordinarily, owners of parcels that are occupied (possessed) by
other people require nothing more from the ones in possession than (1) to expect
periodic payments of rent, and that (2) no damage be done to the
property. To say the latter
positively, the ones in possession are to maintain the parcel in the same
condition it was when they were allowed to take possession or occupy it. So, if St. John of the Cross does have
this meaning in mind, then at least God expects a kind of rent to be paid
to Him for letting us possess the goodness He has lent us. That would be the only thing He
would expect of the possessor, unless we can think of something analogous
to “maintaining” what has been lent in good condition.
What would be the nature of the
rent God is expecting of us?
One of the very first things we
do when someone does us an unexpected favor, or gives us an unexpected gift is
to say “thanks” in some way. The
favor and the gifts are unexpected since we know we have done nothing to merit
them or earn them. In other words,
we know we are in no way “entitled” to the gift or favor. Thus I would say that gratitude, which
of itself is a disposition of soul, is required as rent by God, first and
foremost. Being a disposition of
soul, this gratitude should be permanent in us. Associated with the disposition, though,
is the necessity to express thanks from time to time. And even though that is true only among
humans, who cannot see the dispositions of souls directly, yet we still must
express thanks to God by word or deed, even though He sees in our hearts that we
do so for our own sake, for the integrity of our humanity, and so that we
ourselves do not kid ourselves into thinking we have a permanent grateful
attitude toward God.
Another type of rent that God
would require for having lent to us the goodness we possess would be that
we love Him. Again this has
to do with the integrity of our humanity.
As soon as we are aware, through experience, that someone is good
to us, and therefore has a high esteem for us and cherishes us, the
normal, authentic response is that we love that person. Namely, that we desire always the
welfare and happiness of the person who loves us, and that we follow up that
desire (benevolence - wanting what is good for the other) by expressing it in
word or deed. Here again, there
should be a permanent, constant disposition of benevolence, and its outward
expression from time to time in word or deed.
Are there other kinds of rent
that God might expect of us? It
seems that gratitude and the love we call benevolence suffice. In my opinion, we can say yes and
no in answer to that question.
No because gratitude and benevolence are wide enough to
include all the specific words or deeds that are expressions of both, and
yes because to be grateful requires giving something of self freely as
evidence of gratitude. And to love
with benevolence requires that we cherish and actively promote the interests of
the one we love. Of course, the
interests of God most dear to His Heart are those of His human creatures. The spiritual (1st) and temporal (2nd)
welfare of souls is what interests Him most. Thus, the rent would be to have the same
benevolence for our fellow human beings that He has, the same desire that all
souls be saved. We already know
that we really do not love God (in spite of what we say) unless we love our
neighbor. (St. John the
Evangelist). As Jesus expresses it:
that we “love one another as He has loved us.” These also pertain to the
integrity of our humanity. I
said above that expressing gratitude involves a kind of self-giving, a giving of
what we have that is ours and is of value to us. This, of course, is another way of
saying that true gratitude, rather, a true expression of gratitude
involves sacrifice. Therefore,
sacrificing for the good of any of God’s human children is a way of saying
thanks to Him. So, loving our
neighbor, making sacrifices for his/her greater good are the other rents
that God expects for lending us the goodness we possess.
Before leaving this Maxim, let
us consider another interpretation of the meaning of goodness. I said above that goodness is a
quality and therefore not a substantive entity. As we saw, the words denoting qualities
(or attributes) are called adjectives, which modify nouns. Nouns denote a substantive
entity.
Perhaps St. John of the Cross
wants us to understand by “goodness” not the quality alone, but all the things
God has placed in us that possess the attribute of “goodness”. Above we spoke of acts or
operations of our faculties that have that quality. We can also say that these apply to such
things as habits, which are a kind of substantive entity in that they are
quasi-automatic tendencies or inclinations that constitute the overall
physiognomy (or structure) of the human soul. Habits can be good or bad. Good habits are called Virtues, bad ones
are called Vices.
What then would be the
rent God expects of us for having given us the virtues, the good habits
we possess? The answer seems clear
and easy: That we use them.
Namely, that we act virtuously. But what do the virtues help us to
do? They help us to relate to God
and our fellow human beings in accord with and fully consistent with the truth
concerning God and our neighbor.
Which is our total dependence upon Him, and the true inter-dependence we
have with one another as social beings, whether as individuals or as members of
the various societies we are part of: family, nation, parish, religious
community, church. Interestingly,
this also has to do with our integrity as human beings. The reason why God gives us the virtues
is to perfect us as human beings, considered both as members of the human
society and as members of Jesus’ Mystical Body, the
Church.
To sum it all up, then, all the
aspects of goodness we have spoken of, or rather the rent God expects of
us for lending goodness to us can be included in the concept of “holiness”. And it is this concept which explains,
or indicates, what St. John of the Cross had in mind in the last two parts of
the Maxim, namely: God considers it (goodness or holiness) His own work and
God and His Work is God.
Finally, as we saw in a
previous conference, Everything in God is God. God’s Life is God. God’s wisdom is God. God’s omnipotence is God. Each of God’s attributes is God. Therefore His work in us is
Himself. But I am getting ahead of
myself. When God gives us a created
participation in His very life, which is LOVE, He also gives us a created share
in all His Divine, supernatural attributes. Thus we share in His attributes of
wisdom, mercy, compassion, justice, truthfulness: tenderness, integrity,
strength, power, patience, long-suffering and any other good quality we
can think of. That these remain in
us is due to the fact that God the Holy Spirit maintains them in existence in
us. We can say this because we
learned as children that unless God kept all of creation in being as a result of
a continuous act of His Will, all created things would return to the nothingness
out of which they were created. The
same applies even to the created share of His supernatural Divinity that we
possess and enjoy. Of course, we
must freely choose to let Him communicate Himself and His attributes to us. But even here, His work is necessary,
because it is only in virtue of Actual graces that we are able to persevere in
our determination to live by His Life.
Indeed all of these things, being the works of God, are evidence that God
Himself truly abides in us in a very real, substantial
way.
Now since I do not want to
begin commenting on the next Maxim with so little time left, let me speculate on
a couple of other questions related to what we have said about St. John’s
statement that God has lent us all the goodness we possess. Clearly, St. John + is talking in this
Maxim about our earthly life. Are
we able to say the same thing about the goodness we possess in heaven, in
eternity?
It seems to me we have to
answer NO to that question.
This is why I think so. Here
on earth, where we have been lent something, or when we have borrowed something,
the owner is free to ask it back, but more importantly, the borrower is always
free to give it back. Thus here on
earth, we are always free to reject God and His gifts, by which He shares with
us His life and good qualities in a very limited way. That is because we do not see God
directly on earth, we only perceive Him indirectly, as through a kind of frosted
window pane. We do perceive Him in
creatures, or rather in the beauty and goodness and loveable-ness we perceive in
certain creatures. Or we perceive
Him in a dark way in the truths of our Faith, the Truth and Goodness and
Loveable-ness about Himself He has revealed through Holy Scripture. In no other way could He have left us
free to choose Him over the very creatures in whom
and in which He has placed traces of His adorable, loveable
attributes.
In Heaven, that is not the
case. Once a soul in the state of
grace has left its union with the body and, when utterly purified, sees God face
to face and perceives Him in the light of Glory, His Goodness and Lovable-ness
and Beauty, being infinitely great, take away from the soul the freedom either
to choose Him and possess Him or to reject Him. The soul realizes that compared to
Him, all else is as nothing, and as worse than nothing, as vile. However, other souls united to Him in
love in Heaven remain good and loveable in our eye, and we can love them without
relinquishing our total possession of God in blessedness. Besides, God Himself takes the place of
any ideas of Him in our intellect, by means of which we know, or see with
our mind’s eye. Once that happens,
it becomes impossible for us to forget Him or lose sight of Him, so that He and
His Goodness are really ours forever. He thus does not merely lend us
the attribute of His Goodness, He actually makes a complete and total
gift to us of Himself in all His Infinite Perfection. Thus He is ours forever,
in a sense, we own Him for eternity.
Again, as an afterthought. We have to keep in mind two meanings of
a person’s work. We use
the word “work” to refer to the actual expenditure of energy that introduces
changes in things or circumstances, and we use the word “work” to refer
to the finished product of the result achieved by the expenditure of
energy. Only in the first sense
can we say that God’s work is God.
His divine operations are Himself.
We cannot say that the finished product, all the creatures He created
out of nothing, are God though manifestly all of us creatures, visible and
invisible are His work. And if
we wonder why the result of God’s creative activity is not also God,
that is infinitely good, it is because of the limitations inherent in the
nothingness to which he communicated a share of His being and attributes as
he created them and us.
| <<<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.