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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 41.
If a person has more patience in suffering
and more forbearance in going without satisfaction, it is a sign he is more
proficient in virtue.
As we have had occasion to say
when commenting on previous maxims, virtues are acquired habits
that together constitute a second nature in the sense that they confer upon the
human person a new set of instincts to replace the natural, sinful instincts of
fallen human nature. As a result of
these newly acquired habits and instincts, an individual responds to external
stimuli, and even to stimuli originating within his own humanity in a manner
that is in perfect accord with right reason. In the case of a Baptized Christian,
once the virtues have been acquired, the Christian responds and reacts to those
stimuli in perfect accord with God's Will for him as known through the
Theological Virtue of Faith. The
Virtues, in other words, perfect an individual as a human being by restoring the
original order that existed among the various powers and other aspects of his
humanity when God created Adam and Eve.
For the Baptized Christian, it also restores the right relationship
between God and the individual that existed between God and Adam and Eve before
their sin. Therefore, a person who
has all the virtues in their fullness is perfect from the natural point of view,
and in the case of the Christian, is a Saint.
With all of that, I think we
can see more clearly what it is St. John of the Cross wants us to learn from
this maxim 41. I believe he wants
us to use it as a gauge, a means of measuring the degree of our advancement
toward holiness of life. He could
have said, "the more patience a person has in suffering, and the more
forbearance in going without satisfaction, the holier that person
is."
Underlying this maxim is the
truth that all the virtues are connected in such a way that if we
increase in one virtue, we necessarily increase in all of them. So, strictly speaking, St. John of the
Cross could have used any other two, or even any one virtue and said the same
thing. For example, he could have
said, "the easier it is for a man to be just in all his relationships, is a sign
that he is more proficient in virtue."
Or in the alternative, "is a sign that the person is farther along on the
way to complete holiness of life."
Now is there any reason why St.
John of the Cross should use the virtues of patience and forbearance rather than
any others? As you know patience is
affiliated with and subordinate to the virtue of fortitude, and forbearance is
related to the virtue of temperance.
Fortitude has to do with enduring pain, and temperance has to do with
going without pleasure. It seems to
me that these virtues therefore are intimately concerned with sense impressions,
and thus with our feelings. Since
we tend to be led and guided by our feelings more than by cold reason and
spiritually perceived, i.e., not felt pleasure or pain, we can rely upon
these virtues as indicators more easily than on indicators based on knowledge,
reason and faith.
But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there are other virtues more
closely related to our feelings than patience and forbearance. Why not name a few? Is it easier, for example, to
feel that we are practicing humility, than it is to know by our feelings
that we are patient or long-suffering?
(long-suffering is another name for forbearance. This virtue enables us to cope with
waiting a long time for a desire, good result or happening to occur that we have
every right to expect God to allow as part of our loving and serving Him in
accordance with His Will).
To get back to the virtue of
humility, can we really feel that we have it? Now it is true that we can feel it when
we are humiliated, either because of some serious mistake we make or some
serious fault we commit in the presence of other people, as well as because of
someone else deliberately saying things about us or revealing something about us
that causes us great shame and embarrassment. But this is not evidence (the feelings
that go with the humiliation) of humility.
It is evidence of the lack of humility. Stated positively, feeling
humiliations keenly is evidence of Pride.
But another reason why feelings cannot be a gauge of advancement in
humility is because a really humble person gets beyond the feelings of
humiliation when his/her defects become known to others, or when someone speaks
of him/her in derogatory fashion.
When pride is gone, feelings of humiliation cannot arise because pride is
their cause. One might object,
recalling something said in a conference on one of the first Maxims in this
series, that a truly humble person is made joyful when his/her defects and
miseries become known to others or receives an insult of some kind. Though this is true, the joy is one that
is perceived more spiritually, by Faith, than by the feelings. But since I did say then that a humble
person smiles, whereas a proud person would be angered, at an attempt to
humiliate, yes, advancement in humility can be a gauge of advancement in all the
virtues, but surely not as good an indicator as are patience and
forbearance. Another reason why
this is so, perhaps, is that most of the time we are among people who love us
and would never dream of trying to cause us humiliation, and so we would seldom
have occasion to use humility as a gauge of our growth in holiness. And even though most of our time is
spent among people who love us and strive to protect us from suffering and pain
of any kind, nevertheless, "the life of man on earth is a warfare, and whoever
strives to live piously in Jesus suffers persecution," so that not even those who love us can
insulate us from the need to acquire the virtues of patience and
forbearance. Also, no matter how
advanced we are in virtue, the words of Jesus always apply: ...take up your cross daily, and
follow in my footsteps."
At this point we can ask
whether our advancement in holiness can itself be a cause of suffering in our
lives, and so be the occasion of the need to practice patience, and whether
holiness can also be the cause of one's having to practice the virtue of
forbearance (long-suffering)? I
think we have to say that the answer is yes. Holiness is a cause of suffering because
genuine love is a cause of suffering. In other words, holiness and a high
degree of love, that is, supernatural charity are identical. We have to say this
because it was LOVE in Jesus who is also Incarnate Holiness, that caused Him to
suffer, and He is our Model, the goal of all our
strivings.
The LOVE, the holiness of
Jesus, caused Him to suffer in two ways.
It caused Him to suffer in His Human body, and it caused Him to suffer in
His Human Heart (or soul). Because
of His Infinite Love, Jesus always had to speak and do the truth,
because it is the Truth, as He said, that sets us free from the power of Satan,
sin and death. But to always speak
and do the truth regardless of the consequences in a world ruled by the
devil through evil men, his henchman is what opens the door to persecution, physical suffering and death. That was how LOVE (Holiness) caused
Jesus to suffer in His human body.
LOVE also caused Jesus to
suffer in His human heart. Love is
the cause of both sympathy and empathy.
When one truly loves another deeply, he/she so closely identifies with
that beloved person that any harm that befalls him/her is also truly inflicted
upon the heart of the lover, in that the lover experiences grief and
sorrow. This grief and sorrow is
greater when the harm is done to the soul of the beloved and places the
salvation of that beloved soul in jeopardy. And this kind of suffering, of the
heart, far exceeds physical suffering.
So we see now another reason why patience and forbearance are the best
indicators of growth in holiness (love).
They become more necessary as one grows in virtue (love and
holiness). Patience is needed to
bear up under the grief experienced by the heart, so as not to be
disabled or crippled by that sorrow, also so as to be able to fulfill faithfully
and generously all the duties of one's state in life. Forbearance is needed so as not to give
in to discouragement if one has to wait a long, long time to have one's prayers
and sacrifices for the soul of a beloved person to bear fruit in that beloved's
return to God and to the salvation of his/her soul. One saint who exemplifies this need for
patience and forbearance is Saint Monica, because it took 18 years of suffering
patiently in heart and persevering in prayer and sacrifice before her son,
Augustine, came back to God and eventually became, himself, a great
Saint.
Maxim
42.
The traits of the solitary
bird are five: first, it seeks the highest place; second,
it withstands no company; third, it holds its beak in the air; fourth, it has no definite color; fifth, it sings sweetly. These traits must be possessed by the
contemplative soul - It must rise above passing things, paying no more heed
to them than if they did not exist.
- It must likewise be so
fond of silence and solitude that it does not tolerate the company of another
creature.
- It must hold its beak in
the air of the Holy Spirit, responding to His inspirations, that by doing so it
may become worthy of His company.
- It must have no definite
color, desiring to do nothing definite other than the will of
God.
- It must sing sweetly in
the contemplation and love of its spouse.
We've had occasion to speak of
contemplation when commenting on other maxims, but we've done little more than
say that it is a loving attentiveness to God, or a loving awareness of God, in
which the intellect and imagination are not engaged by distinct knowledge and
distinct memories of sense perceptions.
We saw that if the intellect knows, it is by a very vague and indistinct
apprehension and understanding. It
would be like the eye seeing things as amorphous shapes and shadows in a
darkened room, as compared to seeing them distinctly and in minute detail as
when in a room filled with bright sunshine. We also tried to explain what
contemplative prayer is like by comparing it with the conduct of young children
clinging to their parents during Mass.
I'm not aware of anything else we've said about contemplation in these
commentaries on the maxims.
So perhaps we can take
advantage of this maxim 42 as a means of learning a bit more about
contemplation, even though St. John of the Cross is speaking here of
contemplative souls rather than contemplative prayer. I don't think it is presumptuous to
assume that contemplative souls tend to practice, or at least strive to practice
contemplative prayer.
But now it just occurs to me
that when we traditionally have spoken of religious life in the past, we used to
speak of three kinds of religious "life-style:" the active, the contemplative, and the
mixed. In the latter, we found
elements of the contemplative life and the active exercise of one or more
of the works of mercy, corporal or spiritual.
Therefore we can, and often
still do, speak of a contemplative way of life. As the name suggests, it is designed to
dispose and help a person to practice contemplative prayer during the hours in
the daily schedule set aside for prayer.
Now that we are on the subject
of a contemplative life style, these 5 traits of maxim 42 help anyone called to
contemplative prayer to dispose themselves to attain it. This is particularly true for
lay-people. In contemplative and
mixed religious congregations, these traits are built into the schedule and
regimen of the monasteries and convents where they live. Well, almost. The opportunities to practice these
traits abound, it is up to the individual religious to make the most of those
opportunities.
The first trait that St. John
of the Cross mentions - to rise above passing things - is built
into the contemplative life-style by the vow and virtue of poverty. The vow of poverty allows one to rise
above passing things because it frees the religious from the necessity of
earning his/her own living and supplying all his/her own person needs. It is in the process of doing all that,
that one must necessarily be involved with passing things, or with people whose
principal preoccupation is with passing things. You all know how easy it is to get drawn
into discussions about all kinds of nonsense going on in the world when you are
with folks preoccupied with such things.
What a hindrance they are to inner peace, recollection and
prayerfulness!!
The second trait is built into
the life-style of contemplative religious in virtue of the rule to maintain
silence, that is, all un-necessary talking. Also, found in the rules of monasteries
of contemplative religious is the admonition to remain in one's cell, meditating
on the law of the Lord and watching in prayer, except for those times when one's
duties in the monastery require that one be elsewhere.
Perhaps St. John's description
of the love of solitude and silence sounds a bit harsh, it seems to speak of
intolerance, that is, not tolerating the company of others. We can only say that by this he means
being unable to tolerate what happens when people are providing company
for someone who is all alone and feeling lonely. That necessarily involves an exchange of
ideas and feelings and relating experiences and verbal exchanges of that
sort. This is exactly what prevents
the verification of the first trait, rising above passing things. But perhaps an exception to this would
be when the two or more people being company for one another speak only
of spiritual things, that is, of the Divine Mysteries of God's love that helps
each to grow in Faith, Hope and Charity.
But this kind of keeping company cannot be maintained at a very high
level for a long period of time.
Eventually, persons speaking about God and eternal truths realize that
speech is so inadequate to express these truths, that it is far better to just
shut up and go to seek the Lord in silence and solitude. So we can finally say that a
contemplative soul can tolerate the presence of other people in
the monastery, who themselves also love silence and
solitude.
As to the third trait,
holding it's beak in the air of the Holy Spirit, and responding to
His inspirations, by it St. John of the Cross is suggesting that these
inspirations consist of that action of the Holy Spirit which enlighten the
intellect and enkindle the heart.
The enlightenment concerns the ways and means to carry out God's will
with greater perfection and purity of intention. The will is inflamed to love God
exclusively because He alone is worthy of all love so that love of Him is free
of any thought of reward or recompense of any kind. The more the heart is enkindled in love
of God, the more surely one's love is purified of all traces of
self-seeking. The reason we may
surmise that these are the results of responding to the inspirations of the Holy
Spirit is because St. John of the Cross says these inspirations make the
contemplative soul more worthy of the company of the Holy Spirit. Thus a contemplative soul tends to be
engaged in the same kind of exchanges in the company of the Holy Spirit as do
people who are keeping one another company, as we had occasion to say when
talking about the second trait.
The fourth trait of the
contemplative soul is built into all religious life-styles, not only those that
are contemplative, by means of the vow and virtue of obedience. Both are required because the vow is
what creates the status of being a religious is a formal, public or surrender of
one's own will to the Will of God, and the virtue is required because it is
extremely rare that a religious is formally ordered to do or not do something in
virtue of the vow. But once a
contemplative soul has begun to respond faithfully to the inspirations of the
Holy Spirit that makes the soul worthy of His company, that is cause for the
soul to resemble God more closely, then the individual's will becomes ever more
perfectly conformed to the Will of our Heavenly Father.
The firth trait, singing sweetly
in the contemplation and love of its spouse, means the equivalent of joyful
sounds and utterances of delight and happiness. The solitary bird does just that, so we
can reasonably presume that there are no words involved in this singing sweetly.
As we said in a commentary on a previous maxim, the highest and purest
form of joy is experienced in the human will, when it is in possession of
an exalted good, the object of its keenest desires.
What this trait tells us, then, about contemplation, is that contemplative
prayer really and truly puts the soul in the possession and embrace of God,
it's Supreme Good, and in that prayer, whether the soul is aware of it or
not, the soul sings because it cannot help but taste a tiny
sip of eternal bliss.
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