Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
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Maxim 12
Be hostile to admitting into your soul things that of
themselves have no spiritual substance, lest they make you lose your
liking for devotion and recollection.
We
all know the meaning of hostile or as the Spanish text says,
inimical, because it is so much a part of human nature. It is an aspect (hostility) of one of
the two most basic human passions: hatred. The other most basic human passion
is love. Both of these occur on the
level of sense perception and are not under the control of the will. This love and hatred are called “first
movements” and arise spontaneously.
But once they are there, then the intellect and the will deal with them,
or are supposed to, in a fully human manner, that is, with deliberation and
freedom.
To
explain more fully, God created us in such a way, that as soon as our lower
nature, which is so closely associated with our external senses, perceives
something as good, it automatically loves* that something with
that most basic passion*. On the
other hand, as soon as our lower nature perceives (through the external senses)
something as evil, or harmful, the natural passion of hatred** arises
spontaneously. When the passion of
love arises, the lower nature tries to convince the free will to pursue and
embrace the thing perceived as good, and the passion of hatred tries to induce
the free will to run away from and to avoid the thing perceived as evil or
harmful.
In
practice, the lower nature tends to control the free will whenever the intellect
does not intervene to give its input based on reason and the perceptions of our
higher, spiritual nature, which we identify with the natural ego. The ideal situation occurs when the free
will responds neither to the urgings of lower or higher nature (the natural ego)
and allows itself to be determined by Faith exclusively.
* This
love = a wanting to enjoy that perceived good
**
This hatred = a wanting to avoid completely, even
destroy
Therefore, when St. John says that we are to be
hostile to something, he is implying that the lower nature does not
naturally experience hostility to that something, but rather, experiences love
for it. So he is telling us that we
have to use reason informed by Faith to overcome the natural passion of love,
and to replace it with hatred or aversion, and Then command the will to avoid
that something.
Also, I am sure, you all know what is meant by
“admitting into your soul”. Again
we have to distinguish between what we have no control over and where we do have
a measure of control. We know we
cannot stop our external senses from perceiving. The eye is always sensitive to light,
the ear is always sensitive to sound, and the same goes for the senses of taste,
touch and smell. All five
senses serve to let things into our soul in the sense that we become
aware of them. That
awareness is something we cannot stop either. But we can act to either rid
ourselves of that awareness, or to avoid letting our attention dwell on it or
focus on it.
Sometimes it is not the senses that make us aware
of something, but rather the memory and the imagination. We may have some measure of control over
memory and imagination, but whatever the
In
order to help us know what we must not allow our minds (and hearts) to dwell
on, St. John speaks of things that have or have not a “spiritual
substance” What does he mean
by that?
It
seems to me that we find the answer in the difference between what is a spirit,
and what is material. We know that
spirits, once they come into being, can never go out of existence. Angels, angelic beings are pure spirits
and will continue in being forever.
The same can be said of our souls, the spiritual component of our
humanity. Once created, our souls,
(and we [as persons] in them) remain forever. Having said that, it occurs to me that,
when speaking of our souls, we have to distinguish between our souls remaining
forever, and our souls being alive, or living. We do know that our souls (and also
angelic spirits) can be dead. Human
souls and angels are alive when united to God, who is our soul’s life and dead
when separated from God. So, I
believe we have to say that only those things have spiritual substance,
which tend to keep our souls alive by keeping them in union with
God.
Perhaps it is here that we can get a proper
understanding of why St. John of the Cross is called the Doctor (Teacher) of the
nada (Spanish for “nothing”).
Of themselves, no material creature, no sense experience, no idea,
no feeling or emotion, is capable of giving life to our
souls.
These are things that come and go, these are passing in
nature. None of these is God. So if we interpret this maxim to say:
“admit nothing that is not God into your soul”, then that is the equivalent of
saying let nothing perceptible - i.e. perishable into your soul, and this is the
essence of the teaching that the straight, short, secure path to the summit of
Mt. Carmel, union with God is “Nada, Nada, Nada, and on the mountain Nada”.
Grim as that sounds, we can suppose that this maxim does
leave room for admitting into the soul things that can take on a
spiritual substance by considering and dwelling on them not as they are of
themselves, but as in some way given to us by God, which we transform by Faith,
Hope and Charity, so as to make them capable of placing our souls in union with
God. That is, capable of
feeding our souls on the Truth, the beauty and the Goodness that is
God.
I
do believe that here St. John does not have in mind deeds or actions that we
perform. These are things that
go out from our souls and bodies.
But even, these, of themselves, are not capable of keeping our souls
alive. They, too, must be according
to God’s Will; they too must be enlivened by Faith, Hope and
Charity.
To
know how to identify those things that can take on a spiritual substance, we
need only to look at the final part of the maxim. They are the things that “nourish
devotion and recollection.” They
are the things that increase our liking for devotion and
recollection. So, all those things:
readings, memories, images, ideas, experiences that convince us and remind us of
how much God loves us and how much He deserves to be loved in return. These are the things we should be
very friendly to, and eagerly let them enter our souls to occupy our minds and
hearts.
Maxim 13.
Let Christ crucified be enough for you, and with Him suffer and take
your rest,
What does St. John mean by “enough for you”? I ask that because we use the word
“enough” whenever there is a need that has been fulfilled, or a
want that has been supplied.
Also, for some reason, I sense that St. John is thinking in terms of a
recompense or a reward of sorts.
Thus, in view of all I have just said, I think that by the word “enough”
St. John means enough to supply needs and enough to replenish
energy and motivation.
Apparently we all need a sense of personal worth, we
need to know we have standing in community and are of value as contributing to
the good of the society.
Also, as we work at fulfilling God’s will for us in our
daily duties according to our vocation and state in life, we develop stress and
fatigue and loss of enthusiasm, and all that has to be replenished: all
that = energy, morale, fervor, enthusiasm.
Very likely, it is in regard to these things that St.
John says: Let Jesus crucified be enough for you: enough to supply your sense of
personal worth, enough to give you assurance of your value to society, enough to
overcome the stress and fatigue of doing God’s will and loving others as Jesus
has loved us, enough to restore enthusiasm and motivation and
morale.
Perhaps St. John says to let Jesus Crucified be enough
because we might think that in addition to Him, we might need mere human
measures - friendships, recreation, monetary compensation, natural ego rewards,
etc. to give us all the things we just mentioned that constitute basic
needs. This does not mean that St.
John forbids making use of any of the mere human ways of getting enough of what
we mentioned above, since we find friendship and compensations do come our way,
even without seeking them. He does
not want us to think Jesus is not enough, nor does he want us deliberately to
seek out those natural means, nor even to desire them by wishful
thinking.
Because he explicitly mentions Jesus Crucified, perhaps
some of you are thinking: Does not St. John want us to seek what we need in the
Baby Jesus, in the Jesus of Teaching and working miracles? In Jesus in the Garden? In the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the
Blessed Sacrament?
I
think we can all agree that St. John would not want to forbid us to think of all
of those aspects of His life, since after all, in all of them we can find ample
evidence of His infinite love for us.
And again all of His mysteries either point to, or are somehow related
to, His redemptive death for us on the Cross, so that we would implicitly be
“letting Him crucified” be enough for us when we allow the thought of those
mysteries to renew us.
How, now, do we “with Him suffer and take our
rest”? (The second phrase in
the Maxim)?
That should be easy to do while we are suffering, that
is, experiencing any kind of pain in mind, soul, body or heart. In fact, it is usually our sense of
union with Jesus Crucified that enables us to endure difficult crosses that Our
Lord permits us to experience.
How, though, do we rest, or, take our rest with Jesus
Crucified? Would it not be difficult
to be at ease and comfortable with the thought of Jesus Crucified occupying
our minds? Well, perhaps St.
John wants us to take our rest with the understanding that by means
of sleep we are engaged in restoring physical and psychic energy and of regaining
enthusiasm and motivation for the specific purpose of being
able to persevere in carrying our crosses with him cheerfully each next day.
Finally, St. John might even include by that exhortation
the practice of hugging a crucifix to one’s heart while one is in bed sleeping
each night. Probably some of you
already do that.
The
last phrase of the maxim is: “and hence annihilate yourself in all inward and
outward things”.
Because St. John says “and hence”, it is clear that
letting Jesus Crucified be enough for us, and with Him suffering and taking our
rest is precisely what brings about the inward annihilation of
oneself.
Annihilation here seems to be another way of saying
self-abnegation, referring, of course, to the selfish
self.
If
we have understood St. John of the Cross properly, then whenever the lower
nature urges us, and the natural ego as well, to seek refreshment, reward,
compensation, rest and renewal of physical and psychic energy in what gratifies
the sense and the ego, we are to respond by not giving in, but rather
letting Christ Crucified be enough for us; then, we are truly
denying the self inwardly and outwardly in all things.
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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.