| <<<Home | Maxims Directory |
Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 19
The poor man who is naked will be clothed, and the soul
that is naked of desires and whims will be clothed by God with His purity,
satisfaction, and will.
It
seems that St. John is appealing, in this Maxim, to a practice that was
prevalent in the society of his times as a means of convincing those who read
this Maxim of a comparable or analogous practice on the part of God. The practice was, apparently, that of
going to the aid of those who were too poor even to buy clothes for
themselves.
Whether it was good and devout people who clothed the
naked, as a corporal work of mercy, or whether it was the Civil authorities who
did so from mere humanitarian motives, we do not know. We can guess that good Christians would
be quick to perform that act of mercy, but that if it was not done as an act of
charity, the Civil authorities would then step in and help the poor man. Actually, we don't have to restrict the
interpretation to St. John's time.
Even today, society has a vested interest in seeing to it that poor
people don't have to go around naked, and our Welfare system is evidence of
that, which steps in if Christian charity is unequal to the
task.
The
analogous practice in God, there is also to clothe the naked. He cannot resist clothing the naked any
more than good people, whether Christian or not, can resist going to the aid of
the destitute. Of course, God is
concerned primarily with the human soul, with the spiritual component of our
humanity. We can directly
and immediately clothe the naked, and so indirectly help them
spiritually. God indirectly,
that is, through us, through people, clothes the physically naked, but is the
One who directly and immediately clothes the naked in spirit, or as St.
John says, the soul that is naked of whims and desires.
We
can ask a question: Why is it
necessary that the human soul be clothed?
Perhaps for some of the same reasons that the human body needs to be
clothed.
It
seems to me that the first and foremost reason is for the sake of human dignity.
Adam and Eve, at the very beginning
did not need to be clothed to preserve their human dignity. It was only after the Fall that they
needed to cover their nakedness.
Thus, human dignity is lost when the lower nature, concupiscence, becomes
the driving force in a person's human relationships, rather than the desire for
what is true and spiritually good in human relationships. We clothe our nakedness so that we will
be able to focus upon the fact that we are rational creatures, made in God's
image, rather than to be continually distracted and bothered by what we have in
common with brute beasts.
The
other reason why we wear clothes is to protect ourselves against the weather,
especially cold weather. We need to
maintain a constant body temperature, lest we take sick and die, lest we die, in
winter, of hypothermia.
There are probably other reasons why we wear clothes,
but what we have just mentioned seems to me to be the basic
ones.
What then, would be comparable or analogous reasons for
clothing our souls? How can we
speak of the soul being naked when it is united to our human bodies? Can we say that there is a "concupiscence"
in the soul that destroys human dignity if allowed to be in control?
Well, if St. John+ is able to say that God clothes the
naked soul - i.e. naked of whims and desires - with His purity, then yes,
there is a kind of "degrading quality" that can exist in the human soul, just as
"impurity" in the body destroys or degrades the human dignity that God desires
us to honor and preserve in ourselves and others. That degrading quality, of course, would
be selfishness, and more fundamentally, pride.
St.
John's Maxim suggests, therefore, that
selfishness and pride do make attempts to clothe the human
soul with dignity. The whims and
desires St. John+ speaks of, therefore, are for those things that the proud and
selfish person believe are evidence of dignity or worth. But the dignity the proud and selfish
person wants to assert is either an exaggerated dignity, which it really
doesn't have, or which is based on something other than the true source
of human dignity. In both cases,
falsehood is involved. To
clothe the human soul with falsehood is to render it
impure.
The
proud and selfish person thinks that in order to have evidence to convince
himself as well to convince others that he is of superior worth, it must have
great wealth, great power and prestige, be surrounded by pomp and ceremony, and
whatever dazzles the eye, and to have easy access to everything that is
pleasurable to sense and ego, and particularly what causes others to admire and
be in awe of them and otherwise treat them as superior to other human
beings. These are the objects of
that proud soul's whims and desires.
When these desires and whims clothe the soul, it becomes impossible for
God to clothe that soul with those things, spiritual gifts and graces which
confer authentic dignity upon the human soul, namely the dignity it has as an
adopted child of God who shares in God's Life of love. But even more fundamentally, which
restores the "orderliness" which is a "natural" likeness of God in the soul and
establishes its true dignity.
But
doesn't an orderly soul have desires?
Doesn't a soul clothed with God's purity, satisfaction and will also have
desires?
We
would have to say "yes," but because St. John+ conjoins whims and
desires, it is clear that he is talking about "capricious" desires, desires
that proceed from fallen human nature, from the disorder that is pride and
selfishness.
This maxim does not say it overtly, but I think it
implies that we have to work at ridding ourselves of whims (which are always
capricious and disordered) and of disorderly desires in order for God to clothe
us with His purity, satisfaction and will.
And thus everything he has to say about the effects of "appetites" in the
soul, and it is clear he means disorderly appetites, applies as well to the
whims and desires mentioned in this maxim, and also the means he suggests to be
rid of all disordered appetites is also the means to become "naked" of whims and
desires.
Before going on to talk of what is meant by God's
purity, satisfaction and will, let us consider briefly how the soul "clothes
itself" as a protection against "inclement spiritual
weather."
Just an inclement physical weather can cause the body
to be sick - that is to suffer - so also, inclement spiritual
weather is what causes the soul to suffer.
Here we must distinguish between what is naturally spiritual
and what is supernaturally
spiritual. From the natural
point of view, it is suffering of any kind, but especially psychological or
emotional suffering and pain that causes the soul to be spiritually sick. Suffering of any kind is never incompatible
with supernatural spiritual health. As pointed out in previous conferences,
the soul is spiritually, supernaturally sick only when it is in a state of
attachment to deliberate venial sin.
The soul in a state of mortal sin is supernaturally, spiritually DEAD.
Now
what causes the soul naturally to suffer is to have to endure and
experience what it does not want.
A climate in which a person never or only very
seldom gets what he wants with his natural will is what is a threat
to the soul's well-being (naturally speaking). Therefore, the whims and desires that
clothe the soul as a protection against those things it does not want are
the clothes that protect it against naturally spiritual inclement
weather.
Now
it turns out that the very things that provide a false notion of superior worth
and dignity are also the very things that help a soul avoid the experience of
not getting what it wants, they are all the things that the soul thinks
will either eliminate psychological or emotional suffering or at least
drastically diminish suffering:
great wealth, power, prestige, influence, control over one's
circumstances, in a word, whatever enables one to get whatever he wants, and to
avoid what he doesn't want.
Again we can identify all of these with the "appetites"
that St. John of the Cross says are obstacles to union with god in love, and
again, we must follow his teaching in his major works (Ascent and Dark Night) on
how to strip ourselves of them and become "naked," so that God can clothe our
souls with His purity, satisfaction and will.
We
should not have difficulty deciding what is meant by the "purity" of God. Purity is one of God's foremost
attributes. As Scripture says: nothing impure can enter into the
presence of God. That truth is
the basis of the truth of Purgatory - It makes purgatory necessary. Of course, god, being essentially
Spirit, cannot possibly have parts that might get physically dirty. And neither can the human soul become
physically dirty or stained. When
we talk about the stains and defilements left in the soul by sins and disordered
appetites, whims and desires, we are speaking metaphorically. when the disorder in our soul is
replaced by the orderliness that is found in God, the orderliness of divine
love, then it is clothed with the purity of God. True Love and selfishness are mutually
exclusive. So when we rid ourselves
of all selfishness, God clothes our souls with His Love, which is supremely
Pure.
God, in His Love, is totally for us. God, in His Love for us created us
free. God, in His Love for us does
not violate our freedom. God,
therefore in His Love exposes Himself to the pain of having His will to
fill us with GOOD frustrated by our rejection of that GOOD. True, pure Love, not only does
not insulate the soul against pain and suffering, it serves to expose one
to pain and suffering of body and psyche.
But, as we said, pain and suffering are not incompatible with
supernatural spiritual health, which is nothing less than divine
Love. Someone who truly loves
necessarily suffers. Jesus never
loved us so much as when He was enduring the Passion: both the psychological, emotional agony
of Gethsemani, and the physical and emotional sufferings of the scourging, the
crowning with thorns, the mockery of soldiers and His persecutors, and of
course, the crucifixion.
But
what does St. John+ mean by the "satisfaction" of God? Perhaps we must interpret "satisfaction"
to mean the same as "to be contented." Another possibility would be to think of
"satisfaction" as "reparation." To
satisfy has the original meaning of to "make full." Satisfaction, as reparation, would then
mean "making up what is lacking."
St. Paul speaks of "making up what is wanting" in the sufferings of
Christ.
Beginning with "satisfied" as meaning "contented," how
does god clothe us with His contentment? Is it indeed possible or God to be
"suffering" because His love is infinitely pure and yet to be contented? We can understand of course, that God
could be "contented" with those souls who allow Him to fill them with Good,
which is Himself, and to be "suffering" because of those who do not allow Him to
fill them with GOOD (Himself) but rather choose to kill the Life of God in their
souls. But is it possible for God
to feel "contented" even in the case of those who reject Him? I think we can say "yes" in the sense
that God will always have the "satisfaction" of knowing that He left nothing
undone that could have been done to save those souls, that is, to attract their
free assent to let Him give them eternal life. Therefore, if God clothes us with His
"satisfaction" in this meaning of the word, it signifies He confers upon us the
grace of never missing an opportunity to do the loving thing. It would be the grace of never refusing
the GOOD with which He wishes to fill our souls. As St. Therese was able to say: "I have never refused the good God
anything," I do believe we can say
that her soul was clothed with the "satisfaction" of God.
In
the sense of "making up what is lacking," the "satisfaction" of god would have
to be equated with the work of Redemption accomplished by Jesus. Jesus satisfied the demands of Divine
Justice. We know, of course, that
only Jesus, a divine Person, could repair the infinitely grievous injury done to
God by the disobedience of Adam and Eve.
That is, He took upon Himself the "infinite" punishment that achieved
reconciliation between God and all of the Human Race. But we also talk of the temporal, and
therefore finite (limited) punishment due to our personal sins, and it is in
Purgatory that this is accomplished, if our sufferings here on earth prior to
death do not suffice to satisfy divine justice.
Now
just as Jesus, as both Divine and one of us, was able to satisfy or repair for
all of us, so also, in the realm of temporal or finite satisfaction and
reparation, we can do so for others.
We know, of course, that our sacrifices, prayers and sufferings can be
applied to help souls out of Purgatory.
but we can also apply them to obtain the grace of repentance, conversion
and reconciliation to "God of souls still living on earth. Therefore, it would not be illogical to
believe that to be clothed with the satisfaction, or reparation, of God means to
be given that measure of the LOVE which is God that enables the soul to apply
all its prayers, good works, sacrifices and sufferings for the good of souls in
need of God's mercy. It would mean
such a soul is given the grace to be a victim-soul.
Finally, what does it mean to be clothed with the will
of God, once divested of the whims and desires that are disorderly appetites?
Well, as we said earlier in the conference, it is impossible for us
to be without desires. To desire is a form and expression of
love. So once we stop "wanting"
(the same as desiring) and willing what is error and falsehood and illusion,
we are able to want, desire and will to do or see happen what God Himself
wants, desires and wills. But
He can only want and will those things that are for the eternal welfare of
souls. Thus, since this is the same as being
united to God in LOVE, being clothed with God's Will is to receive the Holy
Spirit into our souls in the fullest measure.
| <<<Home | Maxims Directory |