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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 18
The soul that walks in love neither rests nor grows
tired.
We
are all familiar with the phrase: "To BE in love." Here we discover that it is possible "to
walk in love." What could be
the difference between those two phrases?
Hopefully, by understanding what it is to BE in love, we can form
an accurate idea of what it is to walk in love.
It
seems to me that, first of all, to be means to exist and nothing
more. All the emphasis is on the
fact alone that a thing or person really exists. The concept of being leaves aside
the idea of that person or thing acting or being acted upon. In fact, the concept of being,
all by itself, even leaves aside any further notion of quality or
attribute. To be ,
therefore, taken all alone merely states that someone or something is real and
substantial. The fact of
being, therefore, is not a quality or an attribute. Qualities or attributes cannot exist as
real and substantial all by themselves.
Qualities and attributes always and only exist as distinguishing features
of substantial beings.
So
in this Maxim 18, it is the soul that has a separate existence, considered apart
from any of its attributes. But it
is this same maxim that reminds us that one of the qualities that can
distinguish a soul, is that it is in love. Let us consider that before we go on to
consider what it means to walk and then, to walk in
love.
It
seems to me that to be in love signifies a very special kind of quality
in a person (or soul). It signifies
a very special "orientation" in that soul.
Of course, the entire notion of orientation is something complex, and
therefore not easy to grasp in its entirety. But let's do the best we
can!
A
person in love is oriented to the one person, the beloved. I say one person, because it is
impossible to be in love, that is for us human beings, to be in
love with more than one beloved at the same time. As Jesus told us: "you cannot love God
and money." Even though Jesus is
speaking about money as something impersonal, and thus as something that cannot
be loved in the strict sense, because only "persons" are capable of loving and
being loved, nevertheless His statement tells us that to be in love is an
orientation toward a specific person that necessarily excludes every other
person as the object of love. Or
better, we can love many, many people and we are obliged to love everyone, both
friend and foe, but we can only be "in love" with one
person.
The
orientation then, that we have where we are "in love," consists in
first, desiring or
wanting always to be united with, or at least always to be in the presence of
the beloved.
2nd,
desiring what is good for the beloved, what is in the best
interests of the beloved.
3rd, desiring
that the beloved is always pleased, that is, that the beloved experience
happiness.
4th, the
orientation we call being in love includes making the beloved the object
of all the faculties of our being.
All the faculties includes those both of soul and of body. A person "in love" thinks always
of the beloved - keeps the ideas it has formed of the beloved always in
mind. A person in love
remembers the beloved, not only the memory of sense experiences of the
beloved, but also the memory of the times the lover has been with the beloved
and done things with the beloved. A
person in love takes on the value system of the beloved, and interprets
everything else in terms of its relationship to the beloved, that is, in terms
of whether it is good for the beloved and capable of making the beloved
happy.
With regard to the faculties of the body, being in love
is the orientation that places them at the service of the Beloved. The service of the beloved means
all the deeds and activities that factually contribute to promoting the personal
well being of the beloved in soul and body, and also which promote the interests
of the Beloved and which make the Beloved happy.
5th, to sum up
all the above, to be in love
means ceasing to exist for oneself and existing only for the Beloved. Being in love means "Being
FOR the beloved"..
Having said all that, it seems to me we can identify all
of the above with the admonition of Holy Scripture, re-affirmed by Jesus
Himself. Thou shalt love the
Lord Thy God with your whole mind, your whole heart, your whole soul, and with
all your strength. In effect
that statement says: Be IN
LOVE with God.
Let
us go on now to consider what it means "to walk in
love."
One
very simple meaning would be to say:
"a person in love who is walking." But obviously, it means more than
that. We know that St. Teresa of
Jesus defines Humility as "Walking in truth." Also, we hear of spiritual people speak
of their relationship with God, or the working out of their personal
relationship with God as "my walk."
Therefore, in both cases, "to walk in truth" and "my walk"
consist of a mode of conduct that engages the whole personality, the entire
humanity of the "walker," not just his feet.
So
where a person who is humble walks in truth. It means "excluding" and keeping out of
one's deeds and relationship anything that is false, anything that would be
equivalent to living a lie.
It would certainly mean never claiming as a basis for our rights, duties,
and entitlements anything that is not the truth as revealed by God in scripture
and tradition. In traditional
Catholic doctrine on the spiritual life and quest for holiness, Walking in
Truth means: knowing who we
are, knowing Who God is, knowing our limitations, our weaknesses and our
strength, knowing that of ourselves we are nothing and can do no good thing and
that God alone is the source of all our good, our natural and supernatural life,
and any good we have ever done.
Thus, it seems that "walking in love" means, at
least, sincerely trying to put all the faculties of body and soul at the
service of the Beloved. But since
it is rare that we find a person who is "perfectly" in love with
God, walking in love would include making sincere efforts to orient our entire
being and doing totally and completely around God, or in
equivalent terms, around Jesus, that not the slightest disorder can be
found in our love for Him.
Now
how are we to understand the final half of the maxim: "neither rests nor
grows tired."
To
get an answer, let us consider when it is we rest. As you all know, the only time we
crave or seek to rest is when we are tired. To rest, then, means to cease
activities that cause us to become weary or fatigued.
Another meaning of "to rest" is to be in a state of
inactivity. It is quite possible
for us to be able to choose from among several options. We may have the opportunity or the freedom
to engage in one of several different types of activity, among which is to
refrain from any activity, and thus to rest.
With regard to the first, St. John of the Cross seems to
be saying that if we truly love, if we truly have put all the faculties of our
being at the service of God, Our Beloved, we never grow weary or fatigued, so we
never rest, nor do we desire to rest.
With regard to the second meaning, St. John seems to be
saying that a soul "walking in love" never has, never allows itself to have
the option of ceasing to put all its energies and faculties at the
service of the Beloved.
Does this create a difficulty? Do we know of anyone who does not grow
tired, or who never has a lawful option to do nothing? What about Jesus? He personally would go off by Himself to
pray and rest. He invited His
Apostles: come apart (that is - come away from the crowds -) and rest with Me
awhile. Certainly He walked in
love; certainly He was training the Apostles to walk in LOVE. Thus, it seems that St. John+ is wrong
when he says "the soul that walks in love neither rests nor grows
tired."
Well, as you've probably already noticed, this maxim
does not say: the entire humanity of a person who walks in love neither
rests nor grows tired. It
says: the soul. Our soul is something entirely
spiritual. Pure spirits do not have
"parts' which can wear out.
Nor does the soul have muscles that grow weary as their cells are
depleted of energy and have to be revitalized. The faculties of the soul are created to
enable the soul to nourish itself on Truth, Beauty and Goodness, or more
accurately, it is through the occupation of Intellect, Memory and Will. with
Truth, Beauty and Goodness that the soul LIVES. Thus, when a soul walking in LOVE
is occupied with its Beloved:
Infinite and Perfect Truth, Beauty and Goodness, it is ALIVE, it lives a
joyful LIFE. So what St. John+ says
applies to the soul, a spirit, and indeed, only to the highest powers of
the soul: intellect, memory, and
will.
There is a lower aspect of the soul that is intimately
related to the senses and sense perceptions. Those are the emotions. All of the emotions have an influence on
the body, the other, the material component of our humanity. We know that certain emotions and
feelings that register in our souls can cause stress and concomitant
physiological changes in the body.
Certainly these feelings and emotions were present in the life of Jesus,
the Incarnate Word. So they would
have been in need of rest, along with His body's need of
rest.
Of
course, what would have caused emotional weariness and fatigue in Jesus'
Humanity and certainly causes it in each and every one of us, is the experience
of evil. Evil, as you know, is the
absence of a good that should be present. Jesus, being more perceptive and
sensitive must have had His soul, that aspect of His human soul where the
emotions are experienced, terribly wearied and even wounded by His encounter
with sinful human beings. We
ourselves can testify to how our souls are burdened and fatigued and sometimes
crushed by the experience of evil in our lives. (As an aside - when the awareness of our
own evil deeds crushes our souls then we are said to be contrite). So though it is true Jesus went apart to
pray and rest as a means of overcoming the fatigue and weariness caused Him by
His public ministry, He was concerned more about the emotional renewal of His
soul through communion with His Father in prayer, than with the physiological
renewal of His Sacred Body in sleep.
And we ourselves have to admit in all honesty, that often we have
recourse to prayer, especially contemplative prayer, precisely because we want
to restore the emotional well-being and strength of our souls. When we do engage in contemplative
prayer, that is when we allow Intellect, Memory & Will to rest in the
embrace of God as Truth, Beauty and Goodness through Faith, Hope and Charity, we
do experience the alleviation of stress and other forms of emotional fatigue and
are enabled to continue our "walking in LOVE" with renewed fervor and
enthusiasm.
This is proof that when the higher faculties of the soul
are occupied with God, they not only do not rest or grow tired, they
actually are busy at work renewing the "life" so to speak, of the lower
faculties of the soul.
But
perhaps, in a sense, we can say that even the body's faculties and the lower
faculties of the soul neither rest nor g row weary when the soul "walks in
love." If walking in
love really means putting our entire being at the service of the Beloved,
then, even when we go to sleep, even when we eat and drink and take some
wholesome recreation, if we do it for the express purpose of enabling us to
fulfill the manifold duties of our state in life, all for the purpose of
promoting the interests of Our Beloved and seeking to please Him, and of
deepening our union with Him, we are dedicating tired limbs and emotionally
drained psyche's to His service.
P.S. About
Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who saw Jesus, her Beloved in everyone.
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