Continuation of Commentaries

on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross

by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd

Maxim 16

 

Bear Fortitude in your heart against all things that move you to that which is not God, and be a friend to the passion of Christ.

 

When St. John+ speaks of  fortitude here, he seems to be thinking more in terms of ordinary strength, rather than the Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude.  The Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude is the good habit of enduring and putting up with, the suffering that often is part and parcel of persevering in the union of our will with God's will.  The suffering that is often concomitant with doing God's will is not always a physical suffering or bodily pain.  It also includes emotional and psychological suffering, which may or may not involve physical pain or inconvenience.  The best example of emotional, psychological suffering is grief or sorrow.  Actually grief, or sorrow, is caused by many different experiences.  The best example is the loss of a loved one.  But, it also arises out of other kinds of losses:  loss of precious objects, disappointments, loss of friendship, the experience of being despised and rejected, the experience of failure, the experience of hatred and persecution.  Because remaining faithful to God's will for us can be the occasion of the disappointments, loss of friendships, hatred, persecution, being despised and rejected, and the pain of body and mind that accompany them, we do need the Virtue, the Good Habit, of enduring them:  Fortitude.  It is in this way that Fortitude helps to perfect us as human being. Fortitude enables us to keep the senses and the sense appetites subordinate to our spiritual "senses," that is, to reason, and, finally, keeps reason subordinate to Faith, or in other words, subordinate to God.

 

The fortitude St. John+ speaks of, that is, the strength to remain unmoved from the posture of union of our wills with God's, is certainly required in all I have mentioned, but it extends to other things that tend to move us.  We can experience force as something pushing us, as the sufferings mentioned above would push us out of our state of fidelity to God's Will.  We can also experience force as an attraction, as drawing us out of our state of fidelity to God's Will.  It seems to me that this also is what St. John+ wants us strongly to resist, since he tells us to bear it (fortitude) in our hearts.  It is our hearts that are drawn to what is good and lovable, that is, which yield delight and pleasure when obtained and embraced.  In fact, it is chiefly this fortitude to withstand the attractiveness of sensible good that St. John+ is talking about because he implies that it is only the Good God who should move us - draw us - into closer union with Himself.  By this maxim, St. John+ is reminding us that there are created good things, created experiences, or rather the experience of created good things, which are so pleasurable that they do succeed in drawing human beings to seek their beatitude in the possession and enjoyment of those created good things, rather than in God.

 

Therefore, the fortitude that is spoken of here is really the strength provided by the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance.  That is the virtue which enables us to stand firm against the powerful attraction of things, the experience of which cause intense pleasure and delight of the senses, sought for their own sake, apart from whether or not it is God's will that we may enjoy them.  the reason I say "apart from whether its God's Will" is that god has attached delight in the use of certain good things that are necessary for the well being of the individual or of the human race.  For example, we need to eat and to drink to remain healthy which is God's will for us individually, so God has attached delight of taste to the foods and liquids that we eat and drink.  The human race cannot continue without new life being born into the human race, and so God has attached delight of sense to the act of generating children.  As we all know, it is so easy to approach and enjoy those kinds of delight of taste and feeling for the sole reason of the enjoyment, ignoring the purpose for which God gave them.  Because of our fallen human nature, our hearts do tend to incline toward those things which bring pleasure to the senses more strongly than to the good things presented by reason and Faith.  Therefore, it takes the strength, given by grace, given by love of God, charity, that enables us to resist enjoying certain goods of creation altogether, or if we are free enjoy them, only to the extent and measure willed by God.

 

And if we wonder how we can be moved by things to God, then the answer to that is found in the statement:  by enjoying created goods only to the extent and measure permitted or willed by God.

 

Because God is a pure spirit, He cannot be perceived by the senses, and He cannot be apprehended by the mind, the intellect.  That is why we cannot experience an attraction to Him that comes through our natural powers of perception.  Fortunately, God has given us, Christ has merited for us, a supernatural power of perception of God by means of which we are attracted to Him and moved toward Him to embrace Him and enjoy Him.  That, or those, supernatural powers are found in the Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.  By means of Faith we know that God is Love.  We know that God is Supreme Good and Supreme Truth and Supreme Beauty.  We know that these attributes of His are without measure, they are Infinite.  Once we know that in Faith, our Heart is attracted to Him and wants to be united to Him. 

 

Our Faith also tells us when we are united to Him in Love through Union of our will with His, and that gives rise to a real, though spiritual enjoyment, which surpasses sensible enjoyment.  Also, this spiritual enjoyment which comes from charity exists and can continue to exist, regardless of what the sense and the natural understanding are experiencing.  Our senses may be in pain, our understanding may be telling us we are failures, we are being persecuted, we are being treated unjustly, we are being despised, that people we have been good to are ungrateful or even contemptuous toward us.  In a word, we may be suffering great grief. 

 

Through it all, if we remain Faithful to God's Will, there remains a true spiritual joy in the depths of our souls.  Our joy, our pleasure is complete when, as happens most often, and God generally wants this for all of us, we are enjoying creatures according to God's will, and when we experience the sincere love and affection - also in accord with God's will - of others.  that is when, while remaining Faithful to God's Will, people are good to us, show us esteem and respect, tell us they are grateful for what little favors we do for them, and generally try to make life pleasant for us.  I believe that this is what all of us here experience most of the time.  This is what gives rise to the statement:  "We do not die and go to Heaven, we die and take our Heaven with us."

 

Perhaps I should say that this is what happens from time to time in our lives rather than most of the times.  Perhaps most of the time God is doing us the favor of allowing us to experience this earth as a valley of tears.  Perhaps our Daily bread consists of some of the things that I just mentioned which cause us grief.  So that would explain why St. John of Cross concludes this maxim by stating: "...and be a friend of the passion of Christ."  We can only be friends to people whom we find lovable.  Rather, from the natural point of view, we must experience people as good and lovable before we can be their friends.  From the supernatural point of view, in virtue of our faith, we can be friends even to those whom we find most unlovable because they hurt us and do us harm.  Naturally, we cannot be friends of any kind of suffering, especially the most severe form of physical and emotional suffering experienced by Jesus.  So it is only by Faith that we find the Passion - or the Cross - of Jesus lovable and worthy of our friendship.  By faith, we see all suffering that can be traced to the will of god for us as means of proving not only to God, but also to ourselves, that we love Him above all things, and that we are prepared to lose everything, even our lives, rather than to lose Him.  We also see suffering as a means of saving souls - that is - helping to earn actual graces that lead to the salvation of souls, and thus of pleasing God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who have done all that they have for the sole reason of saving souls.  As Jesus said to a certain mystic, a victim soul:  "When you save a soul, you save Me in that soul."

 

Or, we can say that the expression:  "Be a friend of the passion of Christ" really means, "Be a friend of the Person, Christ, who has suffered His Passion."  We are His friends in the best possible way when we let Him find His joy in being our Savior, our Redeemer, our Light, our Strength, our Life, our Everything.  We are His friends when we try to be exactly like Him in everything, even to sharing His Cross and redemptive sufferings.  And that is what makes us friends of His Passion.

 

 

Maxim 17

 

Be interiorly detached from all things and do not seek pleasure in any temporal thing, and your soul will concentrate on goods you do not know.

 

In the preceding Maxim, St. John+ is advising us on how to respond to things that would exert force upon us, either to push or to attract.  In this Maxim he tells us how to respond to the absence of forces either pushing or attracting.  He instructs us concerning our taking the initiative.  I say that because of the admonition "do not seek," which clearly implies that we are lacking something and experience its absence as something uncomfortable.

 

It seems to me, also, that the opening words of this Maxim indicates why we might feel or experience a lack of something, which lack we seek to overcome.  The feeling of lack, or emptiness of some kind, is caused by being "interiorly detached from all things."

 

Of course, being interiorly detached is not easy.  that is because it is next to impossible to be exteriorly detached.  As long as our souls are living in and through our bodies, we have to be involved with things, with material creatures.  As we may have mentioned before, our souls live on Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and since our souls are spirits and will exist forever, they can only live forever on the eternal Truth,  Beauty and Goodness that is God.  While living in the body, our souls seek the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of God as communicated by God in some small degree to material things when He created them.  Thus, to keep our souls alive - or rather, our souls seek to stay alive in this world by feeding on the Truth, Beauty and Goodness that comes to us through the senses of the body.  This is why we cannot be entirely detached exteriorly from all things while we are here on earth.

 

To be interiorly detached, therefore, means to be aware of the fact that the things of this world can at best give us only tiny, tiny snippets of Eternal, Infinite, Truth, Beauty and Goodness.  Thus we do not set our hearts on them, but look beyond them to God who is their author, and we desire and enjoy them only to the extent that God intends.  That is, in full accord with God's purpose in creating them and giving them to us.  It seems to me, that this notion is captured perfectly in the admonition of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:  "Do not be concerned about "what are we to eat?  What are we to drink?  What are we to wear?" (and by way of parenthesis - Where are we to live?  What means of transportation must I have?  Where am I to work? Where and how am I going to recreate?, etc.).  These are the things the Gentiles seek.  (Again by way of parenthesis - the Gentiles are whoever does not or cannot belong to the people of God.)  Your father knows you need all these things.  Seek first the Kingdom of god and His justice, and all these things will be given you besides." (Matt, 5:31 - 34)

 

Now once the void is created in us by being detached interiorly from all things, how are we to fill that void?  We, or rather, our souls, still have the need to have some kind of evidence that it continues to feed on Truth, Beauty and goodness.  That evidence, of course, would be the pleasure experienced by enjoying the Truth, Beauty and Goodness mediated to us through material things.

 

A question arises here:  When we use the material goods God gives us for the purpose of carrying out His Will in our daily lives in conformity with our vocation in the church and in society, does that mean we find no pleasure or satisfaction in that?

 

It seems to be that we would have to answer, "No! It does give rise to pleasure and satisfaction or contentment."  So then, why would we even have to think about seeking pleasure as evidence that our souls are feeding on Truth, Beauty and Goodness.  Surely the answer is found in what we said concerning the previous Maxim (16).  Doing God's Will day in and day out, choosing His Kingdom and His Justice is a Cross to our humanity. Jesus said, "Take up your Cross daily."  He did not say:  "If you have a Cross, or fashion for yourself a Cross,"  then take it up and follow me.  So a cross is part and parcel of seeking to do God's will.  As we mentioned more than once, the painfulness involved in carrying our cross, being interiorly detached, can overcome the deeper, more subtle contentment of knowing our souls are feeding on Truth, Beauty and Goodness by doing God's Will.  It is failure to perceive the delicate spiritual contentment of doing God's Will which causes us to seek sensible pleasures as evidence that we are alive.  Especially it is our bodily life that wants pleasure to compensate for the pain, discomfort and deprivation it experiences as we carry our Cross.

 

So perhaps it is only with regard to the needs of the body that we are tempted to seek pleasure.  It is not wrong to seek legitimate pleasures, since the maxim does not forbid seeking all pleasure, it only forbids seeking lasting pleasure in temporal, that is, perishable things.

 

That we are allowed and encouraged to seek pleasure in eternal,  imperishable things is suggested by the final phrase of this Maxim - "and your soul will concentrate on goods you do not know.

 

At first sight this last statement seems to contain a self-destructive contradiction.  It raises the question:  How can one concentrate on something (goods) he does not know?  To make sense out of that we have to presume that seeking delight or pleasure or compensation (for the pain of carrying a cross) in eternal rather than in perishable goods means:  contemplating the mysteries of Our "faith - calling them to mind - which are overwhelming proof of the Goodness, Beauty and Truth that is God, and which are all made known to us in Jesus Christ.  Although Jesus, after His Resurrection and His Glorification in His risen Humanity, is no longer temporal and perishable, we can still think of Him as He was before His becoming a spiritual, eternal and imperishable bodily human being.  We can seek pleasure in the Eternal Truth, Beauty and goodness He revealed to us in His mortal humanity.  when we do that, seek our pleasure in Him, in whom the Divinity was hidden, and who could say "He who sees Me sees the Father," and "The Father and I are one," then we are indeed concentrating on Someone whose Infinite Truth, goodness and Beauty cannot possibly be comprehended by our weak and finite minds.  So in that sense, we would be concentrating on "goods we do not know."  As St. Paul says:  "That you may experience the Love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge" (Eph 3:129) and also "The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Philipp. 4:7) and St. John of the Cross himself says that Jesus is like a mine of precious metal - always new veins to be discovered, inexhaustible the riches to be found in Him.  Spiritual Canticle Stanza 37 (Kavanaugh-Rodriguez translation)*

 

Then, too, perhaps a literal translation from the Spanish would have been more accurate:"...do not set your taste (pleasure) on any temporal things, and you will "reap" goods (benefits) you do not know (you cannot imagine).

 

*...There is much to fathom in Christ, for He is like an abundant mine with many recesses of treasures, so that however deep men go they never reach the end or bottom, but rather in every recess find new veins with new riches everywhere.

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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.