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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 30a
-(saying #108)
Wisdom enters through
love, silence and mortification.
(It is great Wisdom to know how to be silent, and to look at neither the
remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.)
The first things we must
consider concerning this Maxim in the nature of wisdom. That is because we want to understand
how it enters through love, silence and mortification. If we do know how wisdom enters,
the esteem we have for wisdom will give us greater esteem for all three portals
by which it enters our souls, and as we reflect upon love, silence and
mortification, we may derive a better understanding of what wisdom
is.
We can consider wisdom in at
least two ways. We can consider it
as a divine attribute and spell it with a capital W. By doing that, we recall that in God,
everything is God, as we have had occasion to say when commenting upon a
previous maxim. Thus Divine Wisdom
is God, and so an equivalent to the first sentence of this maxim 30 would
be: "God enters through love, silence and mortification." This equivalent statement, therefore,
should cause our desire to practice all three to be powerfully increased and
influenced. Can we possibly desire
anything more than to have God enter our souls? And surely, by love, silence and
mortification, God enters not only into our souls, but also into every human
situation or event in which we play a part.
Wonderful as that is, I do
think, however, that St. John is thinking of wisdom in this maxim not as
a divine attribute but as the other of the two ways of considering wisdom, that
is, as a finite (limited), created participation in divine
wisdom.
The finite wisdom that we human
creatures attain is never something merely speculative, that is,
knowledge that remains in our intellect alone. Wisdom is always practical; it
always has to do with accomplishing some task or achieving some goal. Thus there is a mere human wisdom, on
the one hand, and there is the wisdom of the children-of-God-by-adoption, on the
other hand. The first is natural,
the other is supernatural. The
former achieves merely human, natural results. The latter achieves results that are
supernatural and which participate in the divine life.
Nevertheless, the definition
remains the same, for both these kinds of finite wisdom. Each is an "understanding of things
in their deepest relationships" - another way to say it is that wisdom
enables one to perceive the "interconnected-ness of all things (beings)."
Natural wisdom involves the inter-connectedness of created things
only. Supernatural wisdom perceives not only
the interconnected-ness of all creatures among themselves, but also their
interconnectedness with God. Most
importantly, supernatural wisdom enables one to perceive or see the interconnectedness
from God's point of view, from the perspective of His over-all plan
for His created universe. That is why supernatural wisdom is a Gift
of
We've already said that wisdom
is practical. It has to do with
achieving results. Wisdom then is
most desirable as a means of guiding and directing our conduct and activity. The
greater we share in this divine wisdom, the more surely we resemble Him in all
we think, say and do, particularly in our relationship with Him (three Divine
Persons) and our relationships with other human beings.
To help us get a better
understanding of what wisdom is, and so appreciate it more, we do well to
compare it with technology, which also has to do with the achievement
of results.
Technology has to do with the
development and use of tools and instruments and materials to achieve results
that otherwise would be very difficult, if not impossible, to attain. A very good example of what technology
is can be found in the introduction each week of a T.V. series of some years
ago: The Six-Million-Dollar Man." We were shown the crash to an advanced type of
aircraft, during which the craft rolled and toppled along the ground and
burned. Then we were shown the
outline of a mutilated human body, the pilot's, missing several body parts. The voice of the man in the series in
charge of that project then was heard to say: "We have the
technology. We will rebuild
him." And then the screen showed all the missing parts being added back to
reconstitute the pilot of the plane that crashed. He became the bionic
man.
Thus technology has to do with
the making and/or remaking of things, either what had never existed before, or
what had existed but was badly damaged.
The damaged beings renewed by technology include even the living bodies
of animals and humans. In the field
of medicine alone, we are amazed at what "technology" is available. We've all heard of amazing
reconstructive and surgical procedures: organ transplants, by-pass surgery,
laser therapy, orthoscopic surgery.
Technology is indeed a profound knowledge of the inter-connect-ness of
things, including what pertains to the functioning of living bodies.
Since wisdom is the counterpart
of technology on the spiritual, supernatural plane, then it is a profound
knowledge of the interconnectedness of things in relation to the functioning of
a divinely-living humanity.
By that we mean not only the functioning of an individual who lives a
divinely-human life, but also all of humanity considered as a collective
entity. In particular we have in
mind the divinely-human and humanly-divine collective moral person
which is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
Having said that, we can now
appreciate much more fully how important it is for us to observe the conduct
and demeanor of Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, whose humanity lived divinely
to the upper limit of possibility. We also appreciate how important to observe
and learn from the life of Mary, the Co-redemptress, mother of Jesus, and
that of the community of first Christians at Jerusalem, following the descent
of the Holy Spirit.
Wisdom is spoken of at length
in Scripture, as you know. From the
Book of Wisdom we learn that it is: "...a spirit of understanding, holy,
simple, manifold, subtle, clear, mobile, pure, certain, sweet, loving of good,
sharp, un-eclipsed, beneficent, humane, benign, stable, secure, capable of all
things, seeing all things, containing all other spirits, knowable (5:22,
23).
The letter to the Hebrews
contains a passage that describes the Word of God. That reminds me of the passage just
cited from the Book of Wisdom, so that we can consider the author to have had in
mind the creative Word of God, that is, acting out of divine
wisdom. He
says:
"The Word of God
(Wisdom-at-work) is efficacious and more penetrating than any two-edged
sword. It reaches into the dividing
line between soul and spirit, between the joints and the marrow (of the body),
and [is] the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from it. All is naked and open in its eyes, of
which it speaks to us. (4:12,
13).
In those two passages we find
support for the assertion that "wisdom is practical knowledge of the
deepest inter-connectedness of all things."
In another scripture passage we
have confirmation of the statement that "Wisdom has to do with living
divinely."...[Wisdom] understands what is pleasing in Your (God's) eyes and
what is conformable to your commands." And again: "Send her (wisdom) that she
may be with me and work with me, that I may know what is your pleasure. For she knows and understands all
things, and will guide me discreetly in my affairs." (From the Canticle of Morning Prayer,
Saturday, 3rd Week.)
We have to say that this
passage is concerned with living divinely because the Psalms and
Canticles of the breviary are words pronounced by the Church, the Mystical Body
of Christ, which has no other life than God's life because God the Holy Spirit
is the soul of the Church.
So now we can begin to talk
about love, silence and mortification and try to discover how wisdom enters
through them.
First: How is love related to wisdom? How does love allow wisdom to
enter the soul?
One effect of genuine love,
whether merely human or divinely-human is that it gives rise to a set of intuitions.
Any person who genuinely loves another person, which means that self
seeking is not in that love, discovers that he/she has acquired an instinct
concerning what is best for the beloved.
We can say that love (genuine) confers a kind of sixth sense
upon the lover, which enables him/her to pick up non-verbal signals, on the
strength of which the lover can judge accurately and with certainty whether
something is good or harmful to the beloved. Closely allied to that instinctive judgment
is the understanding of what it can and must do to obtain what is good for,
or avoid what is harmful to, the beloved. This would not be possible unless that
genuine love had conferred upon the lover knowledge of the interconnectedness
of all things and all events with the welfare and best interests of the beloved.
Since that is true of mere
human love (which, however, must be totally free of self-seeking), it is all the
more true of supernatural love, or charity, which is a created participation in
the life of God the Most Holy Trinity.
Charity confers a set of intuitions, also, by means of which we know what
is GOOD for God, and therefore what is GOOD for all those identified with
God. Thereby we are able to
perceive, non-verbally, how to obtain what pleases God and promote His
interests, and also how to keep those things from happening that would offend
Him and be harmful to His interests and the interests of all those He loves
(which is everybody).
So it stands to reason: the
more we strive to increase our love for God and its fervor, and our love for our
neighbor as well, the more extensive and profound becomes our intuitive,
practical knowledge of how to conduct ourselves in the way that most pleases and
honors God and enables us to live divinely in and through our human
nature.
Since an increase of charity
brings a greater docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and to His
guidance, He is able to activate His seven Gifts within our souls more easily
and with greater, more perfect results.
Then we are able to practice the virtues, which govern all our
relationships (forms of inter-connectedness), with greater facility and
sweetness. These latter are
Prudence and Justice. But of
course, the virtues, which destroy selfishness and are a hindrance to good
relationships also, play an important part. These latter are Temperance and
Fortitude. Truly then, Wisdom
does enter with love.
Second: How is
silence related to Wisdom? How does
silence enable Wisdom to enter our souls?
Well, we have already spoken
about silence in conjunction with Maxim 21, which reminds us that God "speaks
His Word in eternal silence, and in silence it must be heard by the soul." If we equate hearing with
entering, and The Word, with Wisdom, then the first part of
this Maxim 30 repeats part of Maxim 21.
I think that enables us to say that our reflections concerning silence in
the commentary on Maxim 21 applies to the silence mentioned here in Maxim
30. Thus, whenever we allow our
understanding to be occupied with clear and distinct ideas, and allow our reason
to be occupied processing the sense impressions and other ideas fed into the
soul from without, we have failed to establish the requisite silence in our
souls that allows wisdom to enter.
We also spoke about the "clamor" of our selfish self for some kind of
gratification, or at least comfort, that destroys the requisite silence in our
souls. But now we have to ask
how wisdom enters when silence has been established, since lack of
knowledge seems to imply lack of Wisdom.
Perhaps a satisfactory answer
can be found in the fact that Wisdom enters all by itself. But since it cannot enter where there is
no silence, then it seems reasonable to say that silence opens the doors and
windows of the soul, through which wisdom enters. Conversely, the noise created by
pre-occupation with clear understanding and indulging the clamor of lower
nature for comfort is what closes the doors and windows of the soul. Then the question arises, if wisdom
enters by the open doors and windows of the soul, where does wisdom reside? Wisdom is, after all, a form of
knowledge, it is practical knowledge. I think we would have to say it resides
where Faith resides, because faith is knowledge, too, even though the truths
concerning the intimate nature of God and the other works of God. (Incarnation, Holy Eucharist) transcend
the intellect's power to understand.
So surely we have to say that Sanctifying Grace, a created participation
in God's nature, and which makes us children of God by adoption, in some way
enlarges and somehow transforms the powers of our souls so that they can
function in a divine way. If we
imagine the enlarging and transforming of our souls to be a kind of addition to
an existing house, then we can imagine wisdom as going to dwell in that
super-added part. And to refine
this image, we can imagine the addition to the soul to be made in the very
center with doors opening into it from the "natural" part of the soul, the
pre-existing house. Then we can say
that the senses are the outer doors and windows allowing entrance into the
natural soul from without, and the doors between the supernatural addition at
the center allows wisdom to enter from that center, where Faith, Hope and
Charity reside with the Holy Trinity, into the natural soul. Finally, we can imagine or say, that
silence closes the outer doors and windows and simultaneously opens the inner
doors through which wisdom enters into the "natural soul" as a function of dark,
contemplative Faith, which is supernatural light.
Now we can consider how it is
that wisdom enters through mortification.
I think we have to say that, since mortification by definition means
putting to death the "unruly" or disordered appetites and clamoring of lower
nature, then it is by means of mortification that silence is created in the
soul. Mortification also is required to enable the intellect and the will to get
complete control over the orderly and lawful appetites, which control begins to
take place as the disorderly, unlawful ones are being put to death. In this way it becomes possible for the
individual to create the silence necessary to give wisdom a chance to enter the
soul. Or as we said - close the
outer doors of the senses to open the doors between God's dwelling in the center
of the soul.
It is not always easy to tell
the difference, at the start of a program of mortification, between orderly and
disorderly desires (appetites), so as to allow the former and squelch the
latter. It is my opinion that the
best way to sharpen our ability to distinguish one from the other is to begin by
mortifying our curiosity. Our souls
are like cats, which are perpetually delving into and investigating any opening
that catches their attention. If we
can put a stop to that, and only inquire into matters we are required to know
more about in order to fulfill the obligations of our vocation and state in
life, we very soon acquire the ability to restore the proper order and harmony
that our souls would have had if it hadn't been for original
sin.
Having thus noted the necessity
of mortification for the purpose of creating silence, must we say that both
mortification and silence in turn must proceed from love? From what we've already said about love
earlier in this conference, it seems that wisdom can enter the soul that loves
even without the silence and the mortification, because love gives rise
to a set of instincts and intuitions concerning what is good for or harmful to
the beloved. Perhaps we have to say
that with the beginning of love, or rather, once love for God has first
become established in a soul, it begins to see the connection between
mortification and silence, and also the connection between silence and the
inflow of wisdom and thus how these relate to the growth of love for God
and neighbor, that is, not only how they increase the desire to love God
better, but also how to practice and manifest love of God and neighbor. This gives rise to a greater share in
wisdom, and so fosters the continuing process of getting wider insights into the
inter-connectedness of things and human conduct leading to a greater
participation in divine life. We'll
stop now, and do the rest of Maxim 30 in the next
conference.
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