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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 33.
Allow yourselves to be
taught, allow yourselves to receive orders, allow
Perhaps it is necessary for us
to know how, by what mechanism, the carrying out of this Maxim causes one
who observes it to be perfect, and indeed, perhaps it is better if we do
not know how it works.
Because St. John is a reliable guide as Doctor of the Church, we can
accept and follow this teaching with utter confidence. However, it is not likely that someone
just starting out or not having progressed very far in the ways of prayer would
be able to do so without some kind of a sweetener, since this Maxim is very
bitter to someone who is not truly humble.
And just having said that, I do believe that is the clue to understanding
how this Maxim works. It
works because it succeeds in destroying pride and building up (or laying down
the foundation of) humility. As
Scripture teaches “God resists the proud and gives His grace to the
humble.” All grace either leads
to, or is, a participation in His Life, and when nothing but His Life
remains in us, we are perfect as He is perfect, namely: All-embracing in our
Love.
One first question we must ask
is: “what is the subject matter we must allow ourselves to be taught”? Does it embrace all subject
matters?
Clearly the answer is
no, because not all knowledge can be reconciled with perfection,
the Life which is God. But some of
you will object, “Does not God know everything?” His knowing everything, every subject
matter, does not deprive Him of His perfection! Why cannot I allow myself to be taught
in any and all subject matters?”
Well, you are right about God being all knowing, which is one aspect of
His perfection, so we have to qualify the answer that I gave. For us fallen creatures, striving to
overcome pride so as to become humble, knowledge of all subject matters
can be a hindrance to the attainment of perfection because it can feed our
pride. In what subject matters
then, should we allow ourselves to be taught? I believe we can answer: “Those subject
matters which are relevant to our status as, or helping us to become, upright
human beings from the natural point of view, and particularly those which
are relevant to our status as children of God by adoption, and which help us to
fulfill the obligations of our vocation in the Church.”
A further question: “What kind
of knowledge helps me to be authentically human from the natural point of
view?” The answer is, “knowledge
about virtue in general and all the virtues in particular.” Fine, but can anyone whosoever be my
teacher when it comes to virtue?
The answer is again No, because the Church has been made the
custodian and sure guide concerning all truth. Someone who is not a baptized Christian
would not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to preserve him from error when
teaching anything relevant to human perfection. Indeed, because the virtues are
inseparably related to leading a good moral life, only those who teach the
official moral doctrine of the Church, i.e. who teach what the Pope teaches, can
be relied upon to teach us, concerning the virtues, what is accurate and
true.
Now what about knowledge that
causes me to become an authentic child of God? Well, we know what this consists
of. It embraces both doctrinal
truth and supernatural moral teaching.
Doctrinal truth includes all the mysteries God has revealed to us through
Scripture and Tradition. They
concern the truths about God, His Nature, the Trinity of Divine Persons, God’s
purpose in creating the human family, the Fall, the Redemption, the Incarnation,
and all those ancillary truths that weave them together to form a coherent,
consistent, logical and beautiful whole.
Of course, we cannot omit mentioning Jesus and His extension in time,
Holy Mother Church, His Body and His Bride.
Supernatural moral teaching
includes all forms of conduct that are typical of and partake of God’s own Life,
which is LOVE, and all the kinds of conduct that manifest all His Divine
attributes. Here, both Jesus and
Mary above all, then all the canonized Saints are the exemplars of that
conduct.
We must keep in mind that that
there are both ordinary and extraordinary ways in which God Himself participates
in the process of conferring His Life and Holiness upon us, and leading us to
full and complete union with Himself.
The ordinary way is devoid of mystical phenomena, whereas the
extraordinary includes both the ordinary means and mystical
phenomena. Thus, teaching
concerning mystical phenomena, especially when connected with the practice of
prayer must also be included among the doctrinal and supernatural moral
teachings that are relevant to our attaining perfection as God’s children by
adoption.
Having said all that, I wonder
now why St. John+ uses the expression “allow yourself to be taught these
things”. Because of the hunger
for union with God, or hunger for a spiritual life that satisfies the longings
of the human heart, it seems that people in general tend to be so anxious to be
taught about these matters pertaining to spirituality that they are willing and
even anxious to be taught by anyone who presents himself or herself as an expert
in spirituality. In this there is
no apparent resistance to being taught, so the admonition “allow
yourself” does not seem applicable in most cases.
To resolve this difficulty, it
seems we have to remember who those individuals were for whom St. John+ wrote
this Maxim. We can safely say that
they were the Friars and Nuns of His time, members of his own Order, who had
already made some progress on the road to union with God. These would be the ones who are called
“Proficients”, to distinguish them from the “beginners” and the “Perfect”. The beginners would be in the Purgative
stage; the proficients in the illuminative stage, and the Perfect would be in
the Unitive stage of the journey.
The proficients, being enlightened or already well
illumined by the light of the Holy Spirit, would be the ones most likely
to resist being taught.
Indeed, as is typical or people who know an awful lot, the proficients
would tend to want to instruct others.
After all, one of the spiritual works of mercy is “to instruct the
ignorant”. As proficients, they
would surely know that, and feel obliged to practice that work of mercy at every
opportunity.
So we have to ask the question,
“When is it that the proficients in the ways of prayer and holiness of life
would have to overcome their resistance to being taught?” Does this also include overcoming the
desire to teach others?
These are valid concerns because we said earlier that the subject matter
that is relevant to our perfection as natural human beings and relevant to our
status as God’s children are precisely the subject matter proficients know very
well.
Perhaps one of the admonitions
of Holy Mother Saint Teresa may help us to answer those questions. In one of her works she wrote: “These
are not the times for believing everybody.
Believe only those whom you see patterning their lives on the example of
Christ.” For those just
beginning, these are the ones they ought to allow to instruct them. But again, these are themselves
proficients, because the enlightenment and illumination the proficients enjoy
comes precisely from their having patterned their lives upon the example of
Christ.
Well, that has not worked,
so let us try another route. How
about reflecting upon what helped the Perfect, those in the Unitive phase
or stage to arrive at perfection. To
get there, they had to allow themselves to be taught,
and to observe the other two parts of this Maxim 33, for I doubt that there
could be any other way totally different from this one.
So, what does it mean to have
reached the Unitive stage of the journey?
Or perhaps better, when is someone perfectly united to God in
Love?
The answer to that is found in
saying that the United Soul and God are so much alike that the only thing that
distinguishes both is their identity of person. It is almost the same as the Blessed
Trinity. Each of the Divine Persons
is equally God in every respect except they are personally distinct. They possess, enjoy and live by the
Divine Essence and Attributes equally and entirely. Of course, the United Soul enjoys a
created participation in the Divine Essence and all Its attributes
and perfections. If it did not, the
soul would not be just like God.
What that means is that the
United Soul has all the desires of God concerning the Divine Purposes and
devotes itself to achieving those purposes with all the faculties of its
being. Since the United Soul on
earth also possesses a humanity, what it does in this humanity must necessarily
resemble what Jesus, the second Divine person, did when He was on earth in His
Humanity. Therefore the soul in the
Unitive way participates in the Redemptive love and life of Jesus. The united Soul on earth becomes a
victim soul, and chooses to suffer and rejoice in suffering as Jesus did. Remember, He said in at least one of the
Gospels: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how straitened (how
anxious) I am to be immersed in it.”
In a more complete statement,
made to a mystic, Luisa Piccaretta, this is what Jesus said as He took the Cross
upon which He was to be crucified:
(quote) “Adorable Cross.
I finally embrace You! You
were the longing of my heart, the martyrdom of my Love, but, oh Cross, You
delayed till now, while my steps were always directed toward you. Holy Cross, You were the end
(goal) of my desires and the purpose of my existence here below. In You do I center all my Being. In You do I put all my children, and You
will be their life and their light, their defense, their guardian, their
strength. You will help them in
everything and will conduct them, glorious, into Heaven. OH CROSS, SEAT OF
WISDOM, YOU ALONE WILL TEACH THE TRUE SANCTITY. You alone will form the heroes, the
athletes, the Martyrs, the Saints.
Beautiful Cross, You are my throne; and having to leave the earth, you
will remain in my stead. I give You
in dowry to all souls. Guard them
for Me. Save them for Me. I confide them to You!” (end of
quote)
Therefore, in order to become
perfect, the Proficients have to be taught by the Cross. They have to be taught by all their
sufferings to be perfect, created copies of Jesus, the beloved of all
souls. And it is here that we
realize why there would be a resistance to being taught by suffering, why
it requires a special, generous, and at times heroic, effort to allow
oneself to be taught by the Cross.
This does not surprise us, because many great Souls throughout the
centuries have candidly admitted that they took as their “Book” their infallible
guide to Union with God, the very Cross of Jesus, indeed, Jesus Himself
crucified. They found it truly to
be a Seat of Wisdom.
We said at the beginning that
this Maxim works because it destroys pride and lays a deep foundation of
humility. Clearly, nothing destroys
pride so effectively as the willingness to learn from the Cross, from suffering,
and, nothing teaches us as clearly as suffering, gladly accepted, the greatness
of God compared to our own misery and nothingness, in which true humility is
found.
We go on now, to the next part
of this Maxim 33, namely, “allow yourself to receive orders”. We ask, how does observing this admonition
lead us to perfection?
Considering perfection from a
slightly different point of view, we may rightly assert that perfection lies in
having one’s will perfectly united to the will of God. After all, the will is the faculty of
loving, and we are united to God in Love when His Will and our own personal will
are one and the same.
Now to reach the stage where
our personal will is capable of being perfectly united to God’s will, it has to
be put to death little by little.
The resistance to putting our personal self-will to death derives from
the fact that thereby we lose freedom and control over our lives moment by
moment. Of course, this “Loss of
control” is illusory. We have made
the most perfect act of freedom and control over our lives when we freely
exchange our personal will for ourselves for God’s most perfect and holy will
for our individual selves.
As we had occasion to remark a
long time ago when we spoke about “druthers”, it helps to destroy personal
self-will when we choose to let the personal self-will of other folks, their
“druthers” prevail. This, of
course, as we pointed out, can only be done when there would be no sin on our
part to do so. As we saw at that
time, these would be with regard to neutral things: how to arrange flowers, what
food to cook, how to furnish a room, what songs to choose at a liturgy,
etc. If any of you have tried this,
you know by experience that self-will really does die and despite the pain or
repugnance experienced at the beginning, this mode of conduct produces a
delightful peace in the depths of the soul. That peace is an important sign that one
is united to God, because peace cannot exist where God is not
present.
This willingness to accept
orders is equivalent to a willingness to serve. We remember that Satan said to God when
he was tested: “I will not serve!”
Which is the equivalent of: “I will not receive orders!” Such a determination proceeds from
Pride, which cannot coexist with humility in the same soul. So letting the druthers of other folks
prevail over our own is a powerful and effective way to grow in perfection, as
this Maxim promises.
Going on to the final part of
Maxim 33, “...allow yourself to be subjected and despised”. We note first of all that this does more
violence to pride than either of the former. It would therefore be the most
difficult, and thus the most effective in leading to perfection. Also, it is unlikely that one would be
able to observe it until the first two parts become relatively easy to
observe. In fact, there seems to be
a gradation in difficulty among the three.
In all three we are told “to allow”. In the first two it is ourselves who do
violence to our wills. In the
latter, we add to it by giving to others permission to do violence of some kind
to our souls. “To be subjected”
goes beyond “to receive orders”. A
paraphrase of “to be subjected” would be “to be put down”, or more accurately
“to be humiliated”. And painful as
it is to accept humiliation, that is, not defend against them, it is even more
painful to allow ourselves to be “despised”. Thus it does not require strong
arguments for us to be convinced that the third part of the Maxim does lead to
perfection.
Nevertheless, it helps to
remember what St. John of the Cross replied to Jesus on one occasion when Jesus
spoke to him from a painting of Himself, Jesus, carrying His Cross. As St. John+ was praying before it, he
heard Jesus say: “John what do you want for the hard work done and hardships
endured on My behalf?” As you
surely know, St. John+ answered: “Lord, to suffer and be despised for
You.” If this is a surprise to
us, it is probably because we subconsciously expected to hear him say: “Lord, I
want to be more closely united to You in Love.” Or some other equivalent phrase. That is because, in all of His Poems,
that is where the soul, the Bride was tending. The poems “One Dark Night”
and the “Spiritual Canticle” both end with the Bride and Jesus the
Beloved blissfully lost in the ecstasy of a most intimate embrace. Well why can’t we say that what St.
John+ did ask for is the equivalent of the answer we were expecting? “To suffer and be despised” which
is about equivalent to the third phrase in the Maxim, would then achieve an
identity and union with Jesus that the soul aflame with love for Him so
intensely longs for. One then
becomes perfect as Jesus is perfect.
One final comment. A long time ago I heard a homily in which
the priest said that in the language Jesus used, the expression translated
as “to be perfect” means “to be all embracing in your love”. The context of the Gospel where Jesus
advises us to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” supports
this notion. In it Jesus had
just finished saying that Our Heavenly Father lets the sun shine upon good
and bad alike, and the rain fall
on good and bad alike. If we
can keep on loving, being benevolent to everyone no matter what they mete
out to us it certainly requires the highest degree of charity. Charity means “holding dear” or to “esteem
as most precious”. To be able
to value a human soul so highly that we consider our own suffering nothing
in comparison to the welfare of that soul, this clearly approaches the esteem
that Jesus has for all souls, and thus we approach Him in Humility and in
the unlimited reach of His perfection, His Love.
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