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Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim
1.
Bridle your tongue and your thoughts very much, direct your affection habitually toward God, and your spirit will be divinely enkindled.
What does it mean to bridle your tongue?
Speak when necessary, or better, speak only when the situation requires that one speak.
Some examples would be:
1. Speak when failure to speak can be interpreted as “giving the cold shoulder.” Better, speak when failure to do so would represent a failure to be charitable.
2. Speak when the interests of truth and justice must be
vindicated (Jesus is Truth) (Justice is truth applied to a particular situation.)
How can I decide whether 1 or 2 above apply?
We simply have to ask for an increase of LOVE daily, because with LOVE come the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Prudence, etc. If we have a goodly degree of LOVE, we need only to follow our spiritual instincts in good faith and trusting in the help of the Holy Spirit, and remain at peace.
When one does have to speak, especially when the interests of truth and justice require it:
2. Be concise and brief. Do not pursue irrelevant subjects or ideas raised about what you have just said (ideas spawn further ideas).
3. Keep every hint of sarcasm, displeasure, anger, insult or contempt out of one’s tone of voice.
No doubt you can think of other ways of bridling the tongue.
What does it mean to bridle one’s thoughts?
Since we cannot help thinking (having a stream of consciousness) monitor the ideas:
What is none of our business reject.
What amounts of analyzing or judging the conduct of others, reject.
What tends to re-open wounds – recalling hurts and disappointments, reject.
What causes temptations, reject.
Keep re-focusing on God’s business at hand.
Practice custody of the eyes and the senses (which stimulate thoughts)
What does very much mean?
It means more than just “slowing them down.” It must mean trying to bring them to a halt – although apparently it is not possible to cause them to come to a complete halt.
What does “direct your affection habitually toward God” mean?
First – what is our affection?
Well, we have “hearts” and they are always seeking un-created Good to love and rest in (or adhere to).
The suggestion here is that the thoughts we are trying to bridle tend to direct our hearts toward some created good to love and rest in. (good of sense? - good of ego? - pride?
In the instances when we try to keep ourselves from thinking and speaking in the ways spoken of above, it is usually to “vindicate ourselves in some way, so we tend to be overly concerned about self and we habitually direct our affection toward those things which make us feel better about ourselves and confirm our self-worth. If we are proud people, our affection is for those things, and maybe persons, who make us feel we are better than most people. Rather, we must seek those things and thoughts, which help us, remain humbly prostrate before God.
Second – What is meant by “habitually”?
It probably means what we know of as the “practice of the Presence of God”.
But at the same time, habits are kinds of conduct that require no thought or effort on our part. They are semi-automatic responses to stimuli. Example: Biting our nails when we are nervous or worried. Another example: Typing. We do not have to consciously activate our fingers; the thought alone of the letters and words causes us to hit the proper keys.
Perhaps we can think of habitually in terms of a motor that is “idling”. When a car is not moving, its motor is running at a speed sufficient to keep it from stalling. When the driver needs power, he engages the motor – transfers its power to the wheels – and causes the motor to accelerate.
We can compare this to “being at home.” When we do not have to be out doing something, we return home. Home is where we “habitually” reside and can be found. So if our “affections are directed toward the “good” represented by our duties, i.e. the “good” of doing God’s will for us, temporarily they are directed towards the things or persons or situations that are connected with doing our duties or other necessary good works. Then when we are finished, we can “return home”. Then we can occupy ourselves with God directly, in the sense of being aware of Him and of our basic relationship with Him. So if we have become “successful” in practicing the presence of God, we habitually direct our affection toward Him.
What does your spirit will be divinely enkindled mean?
Spirit here is probably different from the “soul” and different from the “heart”. The heart is enkindled when “desires” grow fervent. The soul is enkindled when the faculties of the soul – powers – are working at maximum capacity and intensity. This one is living a full and intense life when the soul is enkindled. Spirit probably can be compared to one’s overall state of physical health. It may be compared to: team spirit, or community spirit, also. Spirit, then, would be a spiritual attribute or quality. So, spirit is enkindled, when one’s enthusiasm is high, and when one’s optimism is also of a high degree. A spirit enkindled, therefore, would rid a person of sluggishness and half-heartedness, or weariness and fatigue of any kind.
But, probably, one’s spirit can be identified with the combination of faculties and powers functioning at high capacity and intensity and the heart being inflamed with desire.
What does “divinely” mean?
I believe it means the alternative to being “humanly” enkindled. The material and spiritual good we perceive in a human, natural way would enkindle our desires and the operation of the faculties of our soul by means of our human mode of perceiving and of responding to perceptions. That being the case, they are divinely enkindled (either directly or indirectly) when God Himself is the cause of the inflaming of the desires and of the full engagement of the faculties of the soul.
He does so indirectly when we apply our attention to His Word in Scripture or to the evidence of His great love for us that is found in Scripture or of examples of the great things He has accomplished in the great souls, all of which we realize He would do in our own lives if we only allowed Him. He does so directly when the Holy Spirit is the agent who inflames our desires to love Him (God, the Persons of the Trinity) more and more and to cause the powers of our soul to be fully and intensely occupied by Him alone.
The first would be divinely – natural, the second divine in the fullest sense because, being a Pure Spirit, God can be apprehended by neither the sense nor the intellect in His essential Being.
Maxim
2.
Feed not your spirit on anything but God. Cast off concern about things and bear peace and recollection in your heart.
[This maxim and one that follows seem to be related to the one we have just talked about, namely, related to “bridling the thoughts” and directing the “affection.” Perhaps what we say about them will show the relationship.]
What does it mean: To feed the spirit?
We can find the answer by considering what we said about the meaning of “spirit” in Maxim 1. If spirit means an overall condition or attribute of a spiritual nature (intangible nature) characterized by enthusiasm and optimism, then feeding the spirit means directing our thoughts to the truths that engender enthusiasm and optimism. Of course enthusiasm and optimism are also engendered by a firm hope! So whatever feeds our Hope, will also feed our spirits. And it turns out that these are the same things that inflame the desires of our Heart, and which fully, and to our great satisfaction, engage the faculties of our soul: Intellect, Memory and Imagination. They would be, not only the remembrance of the evidence of God’s love for us and the intellectual assent of the doctrines concerning God’s compassion and mercy, but also the remembrance of His promises in Scripture, beginning with the Proto-evangel in Genesis and all through the entire Bible to the last line of the Book of Revelation. Again, remembrance of how He has already fulfilled these promises in the great Saints also helps feed the “spirit”, regardless of how we think of the meaning of that word.
Already by anticipation, we have spoken about what it means to feed on God. God is love, and so only the love that is God can engender enthusiasm and optimism. But, of course, we focus not only on God’s love, but also His Wisdom and His Omnipotence. (By the way, all the attributes of God are God. It is our finite minds that cause us to think of them as qualities inhering in Him and somehow distinct. That is because we do this when talking about finite creatures, and so only by analogy can we apply these to God.)
Because God loves us with an Infinite Love, He desires to give Himself in His totality to us. In other words, He wants the absolute best for all of us individually and collectively. Because He is Infinitely Wise, He knows what it is that will implement and realize His desire to do the absolute best for us, if only we will let Him!
Finally, no matter how difficult it may seem to us – or to Himself – to put that plan or way into effect (difficult because of our fallen, human nature and especially, because of our free wills e.g. He cannot violate our free will because that is evil.) God can realize that plan in virtue of His Infinite Power, His Omnipotence. So since all of these are God we do feed our spirits on God (Infinite Love, Wisdom, Infinite Power).
The admonition “cast off concern about things” also corroborates what we have said about “spirit” being made up of the qualities of enthusiasm and optimism, i.e. the quality of “morale”. Concern, worry, or anxiety are the things that erode enthusiasm and optimism and which tempt us to fall into discouragement and pessimism. They cause us to lose our morale and our Hope – they cause us to be dis-spirited. They rob us of our “joie de vivre” or our “elan.”
Interestingly Jesus said: “Fear is useless, what is needed is Trust.” Since trust is what we need to “cast off concern”, it follows that worry and anxiety is caused by fear of being over-taken by an imminent evil.
Thus we have a way of knowing if we really are feeding our spirits on God alone. With the remembrance that God is infinite Love and has Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power at His disposal, how can we be afraid? Absolutely nothing can do us harm if we rely on God. Thus we would have no reason to fear! Fear, of course, always has to do with what is imminent, so the trust that casts out fear has to be applied to what God permits to happen to us here and now. We have every reason to remind ourselves that no matter what we or our loved ones are experiencing, it is for our greater good, our best good, because God’s love, Wisdom and Power never change, they are eternal and are operative at every moment in everyone’s life.
What does it mean to bear peace and recollection in your
heart?
It seems to me that these do not require any effort on our part or rather to bear peace does not. It seems to me that peace is automatically produced when we cast off concern by means of Trust. Perhaps it would be necessary to make an effort to “bear recollection” in the heart. Recollection requires us to “focus” the powers of our soul, and the word is a technical one in spiritual theology, it means to focus on God. If we are not recollected in God when the temptation to be worried or anxious assails us, it means we are looking for something or someone other than God to dispel what generated the “feeling” of fear.
Peace, then, is not always the opposite of disorder and violence. Peace is also opposed to anxiety and concern. So, in-so-far as we can focus on the goodness, wisdom and power of God and so bear “recollection” in our hearts, to that same extent we can “bear peace” in our hearts in the sense that we actively cast out worry and concern, and all fear.
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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.