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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim - 36
Love consists not in feeling great things but in having
great
The first idea this maxim
requires us to think and meditate about is the word LOVE. That is because the word LOVE, although
a noun in this sentence, must also be thought of as a verb. Considered as a noun LOVE is an
entity, a thing that exists.
Considered as a verb, LOVE is an activity, a dynamism. In addition, LOVE is a transitive verb,
that is to say, when used in a sentence as a verb, there is always a direct
object of the activity that is LOVE.
All this is proved by the fact that GOD is LOVE. God considered as a noun means
the DIVINE NATURE or DIVINITY. GOD
is one, unique, but a Unity of three Distinct Persons. Within ITSELF, the Divinity is
active. The perfect activity
which is perfect LOVE means that the First Person in the Trinity is always
begetting His only-begotten Son to Whom He communicates and shares the Divine
Nature, making them equal in every respect as GOD, yet distinct as Persons. Within the Divine Nature God the Father
and God the Son are jointly active in their mutual Love for one another, and
from that mutual active LOVE proceeds the Holy Spirit, the Third Divine Person,
equal in every respect to Father and Son, yet a distinct individual. Thus, whenever we use the word LOVE it
is either as a noun which we can interpret as a capacity to
act, that is, the ability to love, or as a verb, meaning active
LOVE.
Let us now turn to examine each
third of this maxim. The
three parts are separated by the words but and and. [Love consists not in feeling great
things, but...]
At first sight we are inclined
to deduce that, because the word feeling in the first part is
never an activity but an experience, it would be impossible for
LOVE to consist in feeling. But
right away we have to realize that the third part of the Maxim forbids us to
draw that conclusion. That is
because suffering is itself an experience. Even without the meaning of feeling
pain or sorrow, one meaning of to suffer means to be acted upon. So again we turn to the Divine Nature,
the Trinity, for help. Yes indeed,
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not only the principals or the initiating
agents of LOVING activity, each of them singly or jointly is and are the
recipients or objects of the LOVING activity of the other Divine Persons. (Gods
receiving Love is God) (All in God is God). We can only say the LOVE, considered, as
an Activity alone, cannot be identified with certain types of feelings. In particular, Active LOVE cannot be
identified with feeling great things, as St. John of the Cross tells
us. And so we do have to try to
discover what those great things are.
Perhaps we can begin with the
feelings associated with mystical experiences. Since I have never had any mystical
experience I can only speculate about them based upon what I have heard or
read. If I am not mistaken,
mystical experiences result from God's direct action upon a human
soul. The feeling that results is
usually called ecstasy. Ecstasy is
ordinarily understood to be a feeling of great delight that accompanies the
sensation of the soul going our of the body, that is, the higher powers of the
soul leave the body. Perhaps St.
John of the Cross intends also to include in the word feeling the
mystical experience of visions and locutions. Whether or not these are the feelings he
has in mind for this maxim, one thing is clear, these are not instances
of the soul engaging in active love, rather, they are instances of the soul
receiving, or being the recipient of, God's love. In the mystical experiences that cause
ecstasy and visions and locutions, God is communicating Himself to the soul
under the aspect of goodness when the communication causes ecstasy, under
the aspect of beauty when it causes visions, and under the aspect of truth when
it causes locutions.
Then again, we know that for
a soul to experience ecstasy when God communicates Himself to a soul is a
sign of weakness and imperfection. According to St. John of the Cross in
other of his works. When a soul
has attained a high degree of holiness, or participation in GOD'S life, which
is LOVE, God's communicating more of Himself does not cause ecstasy. He relates this to the degree of purification
of a soul. Also, St. Teresa says
that the imperfect soul to whom God communicates Himself in a mystical experience
has to go out of the body - at least the higher powers - to receive the communication,
to keep the person from dying as a result of the experience.
But again, as the soul becomes purified of all that is not God, she
tells us, the soul can receive these communications without having to leave
the body. So it seems that not only is the person
who experiences the feelings that are associated with mystical experiences
not loving actively in those circumstances, but also that person's ability
to love is not very great. Such
a person who receives them has yet to become a great lover.
Well, having said that, it now
occurs to me that what St. John of the Cross has in mind when he says "feeling
great things" is really the sentimental feelings that are associated with
love. These would be, for example,
the feelings associated with thinking about an absent person whom we
love. They are also associated with
the feelings that arise (sentimental feelings) when we look upon a person whom
we love, even when he/she is present, but unaccompanied by any deed or activity
of love that has the beloved person as its direct object. Perhaps the best example of what I mean
is the feeling of a mother or father when looking at a sleeping baby, or just
watching a very young child as a toddler getting in touch with its own body or
its surroundings. Thus it is
possible for us to have great, that is powerful and deeply felt sentiments of
love for God, or any other beloved person.
These of course, proceed from love considered as benevolence, namely, as
a wish or a will that the beloved experience only good, and which is
based upon the great esteem in which the beloved is held. It proceeds from the very great value
placed upon the beloved, and which causes the lover to cherish the
beloved. This is indeed, charity or
love, but unless it leads to active love or the performance of deeds that
actually enrich, perfect and please the beloved, it is an illusion. These kinds of feelings then are
incomplete love, or incipient love.
But they are not by themselves alone, the LOVE that St. John of the Cross
has in mind, that is active LOVE.
But while we are on the subject
of the feelings that proceed from love, let us consider for a moment other
feelings besides the sentimental ones that proceed from benevolence or the love
that cherishes and wants good things for the beloved. In order to do this, we must think of
those we love, God first and foremost, in their relationships and interaction
with other free agents. In
particular of what our beloved people, God, family, relatives and friends are
experiencing or undergoing. In this
respect we know that our love for them gives rise to a variety of
feelings. Perhaps it would
be better to speak of the emotions we experience when we see, or hear of, or
consider what is happening to our loved ones. But then, all the emotions are
accompanied by feelings. What then are the emotions and feelings that arise in
us because we love God and others with benevolence? Well, all we have to do is think of all
the things that ordinarily happen to people, to each one of us, who live here on
earth, this valley of tears. They
are both good things and bad things.
In general, we experience joyful and grateful feelings when
our loved ones have good, desirable experiences, and we experience sorrowful and
angry feelings when misfortune afflicts our loved ones. Along with the joyful and grateful
feelings, which can be differing degrees and intensity, we also have feelings of
satisfaction and thus of feeling at rest, or at peace, that is free of
anxiety, a feeling.
Along with the sorrowful and
angry feelings, which also admit of degrees and differing intensity, we can have
feelings of indignation (at the cause of the bad experience), discouragement,
anxiety, helplessness, etc. but also of compassion.
Although St. John of the Cross
says that LOVE does not consist in these feelings, nevertheless, they are
indications that we do really cherish and value the beloved, and really
are made one with the beloved and identify so closely with him/her that
we are affected more than they are by the good and evil experiences that befall
them. Thus we can say that the
greater the joy and allied feelings we experience at the good fortune of our
loved ones, the more we love them.
And the same is true as regards the sadness and allied feelings when we
learn of the evil fortune that afflicts them. Let us keep this in mind when we get to
the last third of this maxim.
The second part of the maxim then is: Love consists... in having great
detachment.
If we consider that the effect
of love is a union and identification of the lover with the beloved, then
it seems that St. John of the Cross is wrong when he tells us that "love
consists in great detachment." What
is detached becomes separated. So
one way of speaking of the effect of love is to say that it causes the lover to
become greatly attached to the beloved. How then, get at the true meaning
of the words of St. John of the Cross?
I'm quite sure that St. John is
speaking in this maxim about Love for God, and not just love in
general. Our Love for God
should cause us to be so greatly attached to Him that the thought of
being separated from Him would represent the greatest evil and affliction we
could possibly suffer. And that is
as it should be. For a tremendously
great and pure lover of God to "feel" separated from God would be equivalent to
the torments of Hell. But
then, in this life, feelings are not reliable. "Feeling" the absence of God or
"feeling" abandoned by God as Jesus and most great Saints have experienced at
one time or another in their lives does not mean that they ever were actually
separated from or abandoned by Him.
Therefore I think this part of
the Maxim, "Love consists... in great detachment" means: When a person really
and truly loves God as he/she ought to love Him, then the esteem and the value
with which he/she cherishes creatures, including members of his/her family and
others God has commanded to love are as nothing compared to that person's
great love for God. Thus, if and
when, in God's Providence, He should ordain or permit these loved ones or
cherished things to be taken away from us, a great, great lover of God, that
person feels no pain, no anger, no indignation, no sadness, or any other
"feelings" that ordinarily accompany the loss of things we really love, i.e.,
cherish and value as precious.
Because love for them as compared to love for God is as nothing,
it cannot possibly cause such feelings.
The detachment would be indicated by the absence of such
feelings, just as the attachment to God is also indicated as the other side of
the coin, also God, being pure spirit, offers nothing to our human faculties to
which they can attach.
But we can also think of
detachment in terms of our own will vis-a-vis the Will of God. When we have a very great love for the
will of God, we want His Will alone to prevail at all times. When we do not have such a great love of
God, we tend to want our own personal will to prevail. (In one or more previous conferences, we
spoke of these as druthers).
Without a great love for God and His Will (God and God's Will are One and
the same), we easily become attached to our own personal will, or
preferences. So if we find that we
get upset, angry, vindictive, abusive, condemnatory when our personal will is
frustrated, then we have yet to have the degree of love that consists in
detachment. When we remain
perfectly calm and content and almost devoid of any other feeling except that
"contentment" no matter how badly our personal preferences are trampled upon and
frustrated, it really does mean that we have attained a very high degree of love
for Him. And so, when we read this
Maxim, we have to include as implied by it, certain qualifying terms. Repeating it with these notions made
explicit, it would read: (True and
pure) Love (for God) consists not in feeling great things, but in having great
detachment (from created goods and from one's own personal
preferences)...and...
Now we go on to consider the final and third phrase of the Maxim [36]:
Love consists...in suffering for the Beloved.
Right away, let me say that
perhaps it wasn't correct to leave the words "for the Beloved" out of the first
two-thirds of this Maxim. Just as
we kept "Love consists" as a part of each third; it appears now that we should
have included the last three words as part of the first two. Thus the phrase "for God" as I stated in
the modified version would be replaced as expressly belonging to the first part,
and would have to be added as expressly belonging to the second part of this
maxim as restated with the other implied notions.
Perhaps we need spend very
little time on this last part. In
our commentary on Maxim 5 we commented on the admonition: "...reflect that it is
good to suffer in any way for Him Who is good, and I refer you to
it. There we spoke of suffering
to obtain Him Who is Good; suffering in place of Him who is Good,
and suffering of God because of being identified with Him Who is
Good. Here we can go a bit further
and think Love of God (for the Beloved) as the cause of suffering. Or better, we can say that if a person
did not have Love for any Beloved, he/she would not be able to
suffer.
We have already spoken in this
and previous conferences about the pain or sorrow that arises in us when things
or people we cherish are damaged or hurting in anyway. We saw that it is Love that causes this
grief in a soul because love brings about union between lover and beloved and
the wounds or damage that afflict the beloved are truly experienced by the
lover, through "com-passion" (meaning: "suffering-with"). But it seems, though, that St. John of
the Cross means by suffering here in this maxim not just emotional suffering or
suffering of soul, but actual physical suffering. How can we accept the notion that bodily
pain and suffering pertains to the essence of Love (for the Beloved),
since this third part says Love consists in ...suffering. What makes the notion difficult to
accept is that most good and holy people are not actually suffering physical
pains most of the time! Or can we
equate this physical suffering with great physical exertion which leaves us weak
and weary? Probably not, because we
recall the response St. John of the Cross gave to Jesus, who asked him what
reward he, St. John of the Cross, wanted for his great physical exertions in the
service of Jesus: St. John of the cross said: "Lord, to suffer [physical pains]
and be despised for Love of You."
So let's consider the life
of Jesus. It does appear that,
despite His immense physical exertions during the entire span of His adult
life, He only suffered real physical torments and excruciating pain during
and after His scourging, crowning with thorns, and crucifixion. Though He surely suffered physically from
cold, from harsh circumstances, from hunger and thirst, and of course at His
circumcision, these were not nearly as great as at the very end of His earthly
life - it's earthly phase. However,
the agony in the garden involved indeed an extremely painful physical suffering
because it caused Him to sweat blood and brought Him close to death.
So, there might well have been physical pain that Jesus suffered all
His life long on earth, based upon His compassion for the sufferings that
evil, sin and death were inflicting upon the human race, and of which He was
a witness and an observer during the years of His growing up and during hidden
life. Since the Gospels do not
speak of that kind of suffering, He would have chosen to keep it secret, if
such suffering of body did constitute
His daily experience as a true human individual on this earth. Well, I am of the opinion that Jesus did
suffer physically, all of His earthly life, because I believe in the truth
of a prayer He allegedly made to His Father during the Way of the Cross. At the Seventh station He is purported
to have said: "...O my most loving Father, that if now my humanity is reaching
the peak of its sufferings, my Heart also explodes (my emphasis) for
the bitterness's and intimate (interior) pains and the un-heard-of torments
that It has suffered during the space of thirty four years, beginning from
the first instant of my Incarnation.
You know, Father the intensity of these internal bitterness's which
would have been capable of making Me die at each moment of pure agony, if
our Omnipotence had not sustained Me in order to prolong My suffering unto
these extremes!..."
I guess we have to say that,
because of the very close connection between body and soul, the one always
shares to some extent in the suffering of the other. We already have proof of this since
stress (an emotional suffering) does have its physical repercussions in the
body. Thus we can assert that only
that can be called true and authentic Love for the beloved which does
have its physical repercussions in our body as a result of so closely
identifying with Jesus and His interests - the salvation of souls - which close
identification means that we too suffer emotionally through compassion when we
observe the harm being inflicted upon souls here in this valley of tears by sin,
evil and death.
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