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Continuation of Commentaries

on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross

by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd

 

Maxim 5.

 

Rejoice habitually in God, Who is your Salvation, and reflect that it is good to suffer in any  way for Him Who is Good.

 

This is the third time St. John enjoins upon us that we take up an habitual attitude or frame of mind.

 

In the first conference he states that an habitual attitude can be compared to a motor idling, and to the fact that we return home when we have finished conducting business or necessary affairs that take us away from home.

 

In the first Maxim, we were to habitually direct our affection toward God.  In the fourth Maxim, we were to preserve an habitual remembrance of eternal life.  Now in this fifth Maxim, we are to habitually rejoice in God.

 

I don’t remember saying this before, but the permanent disposition of soul that we call a habit almost always results in a conditioned response to certain stimuli (remember the example of Pavlov’s dog).  If we apply that to the notion of habitually directing the attention, remembering, and now rejoicing, it should be possible to identify the various stimuli which would trigger or provoke the habitual response.

 

Without going back to consider what I have already said about habitually directing the affection toward God, it seems to me now that we would automatically direct our affection toward God, that is, to adhere to Him with our hearts or wills, whenever we would perceive that the object occupying our affections is not God, or is something or someone that cannot be associated with God in any way.

 

Thus, if we find ourselves attaching our hearts to, or desiring, something or someone, first and foremost, rather than secondarily and derivatively, then we would be in a situation when we would have to re-direct our hearts and wills and desires to God as our primary object, or at least to see the something or someone as related to, and somehow identified with, God and His Will for us.

 

Somewhat the same thing could be said of habitually remembering eternal life.  If a situation that presents itself cannot be seen as an expression of eternal life, which is Charity, that is, the Life of God in our souls, then we would automatically remember what it is we have to think, say or do to bring Charity, eternal life, into the situation.  We would at least have to recall that we are destined, that is, created specifically, to spend eternity with God the Trinity in heaven, and then act accordingly.

 

And now, concerning the admonition to rejoice habitually, we can say that rejoicing (or joy) is the natural passion that is produced spontaneously and prior to any intervention of intellect, memory or will whenever we perceive that we are in possession of a GOOD.  Thus we can say that if we train ourselves to think often of the fact that through FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY we can always be in possession of God, the Supreme Good, then we would be able habitually to rejoice in Him.

 

In particular, we could remember that we always have reason to rejoice in Him, even though our lower nature and our ego perceives that a kind of evil is afflicting us.  That remembrance would, hopefully, suffice to produce the natural passion of joy, rejoicing.

 

 

One way of remembering that we always have reason to rejoice in God, then, is to practice FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY habitually.  We do this when we keep in mind the admonition, or rather, the conviction of St. Paul, which he enunciates after asking the question:  Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Trial, or distress, or persecutions, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?   He then affirms his firm Faith:  For I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor powers, either height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the Love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, Our Lord (Romans 8: 35, 38,39).  No matter what we may happen to experience it is included in what St. Paul has enumerated.  Since the Love of God IS GOD, we continue to possess Him in spite of all those things, so we can truly rejoice.  However, the rejoicing or joy would not necessarily be experienced as the ordinary human emotion of rejoicing, that is, a felt rejoicing, but it would be a spiritual, and therefore probably not a sensibly perceived rejoicing.

 

At this point, someone might be thinking:  True, these things cannot separate us from God’s Love, what about the opposite experiences?  What about rejoicing in good things and good times and everything that flatters the senses and the ego?  Would these not separate us from the Love of God?

 

Well, if we consider all of these as being included in the term life in the passage from St. Paul, these, too, would be incapable, in themselves, of separating us from the Love of God.  In fact, God makes use of these things in order to attract us to Himself and encourage us to surrender our lives to Him.

 

However, BOTH good times and bad times, good things and bad things, good experiences and bad experiences can ALWAYS tempt us to let go of God.  This can happen either because we can be tempted to find ALL OUR HAPPINESS in created good things, and in created good and pleasurable feelings.  Or we can be tempted to let go of God because we might decide that God unfairly causes or permits us to experience bad times and other forms of suffering.  So it remains all a matter of our own personal FREE WILL.  God will NEVER STOP offering us His Love, His life, His very Self, but we might freely choose to reject His offer.

 

But there is more in this Maxim than the admonition to rejoice habitually in God in just a general way, as in the above.  We are advised to rejoice in Him specifically:  as Our Salvation.  That is to say, we are to rejoice in Him as One who heals and rescues, because the notion of Salvation includes both those ideas.

 

Well then, how does God rescue us?  He does so in the ordinary sense of drawing us out of a life-threatening situation.  In all such situations, a person is powerless to free himself from the influence of forces capable of killing him or gravely wounding him.  certainly God has done that in and through Jesus, who has overcome, really crushed the power of Satan and Sin and Evil to deprive us, our souls, of a share in God’s eternal Life.

 

That does not mean, however, that Satan, Sin and Evil no longer try to kill our souls, that is, drive Divine Life out of them.  They continue to try very hard to do so, as we all know personally, and as we recognize their power in souls who commit the most grievous kinds of sins everywhere in the world.  So, when we say God rescues us in Jesus, we mean that through Him He gives each of us the necessary and sufficient POWER to reject or overcome whatever harmful influences the World, the Flesh and the devil bring to bear upon us, to some degree or another in our daily lives, in their attempts to kill our souls, that is, in their attempts to separate us from God.

 

Now that brings us back again to Faith, Hope and Charity, because these are the Theological Virtues that give us the POWER to overcome those evil influences, and eventually to render us almost immune to them.

 

Now, then, how does God heal us?  Well in order to be healed, one has to be either sick, or wounded, or both.

 

We are sick when our bodily life is not up to par, as you all know.  Or better, when our state of health is very poor.  We are wounded when our bodily integrity has been violated.  Thus we have to consider what those conditions of soul happen to be which are analogous to bodily sickness and wounded-ness.  In other words, in view of the fact that our souls are healthy when we share fully in the Life of God through Sanctifying Grace, what are those things that cause them to be spiritually sick or wounded?

 

Our souls are sick when we have great difficulty avoiding mortal sin.  Our souls are only slightly sick when, though we are able to avoid mortal sin, we have great difficulty avoiding deliberate venial sins and imperfections.  In order for our souls to enjoy perfect health, we would have to be able to avoid deliberately offending God.  So, when Holy Scripture tells us that the just man falls seven times a day, that means that his sins and faults are wholly indeliberate.  While living in this world, it is next to impossible for us to achieve that degree of holiness that excludes even un-willingly offending God in some small way, in the sense of making mistakes.

 

Therefore, God is our Salvation (our healer), when He confers upon us such a goodly share of the Holy Spirit that we are able to avoid deliberate venial sins and imperfections.  However, this requires a preparation on our part.  We have to allow ourselves to be so convinced of God’s infinite Love for us that we simply couldn’t help earnestly desiring to avoid anything that would offend him, and further, we couldn’t help being firmly determined to avoid offending Him no matter what it costs.  Of course, what convinces us of God’s infinite Love for us is the fact that He sent His Only-begotten Son into the world as one of us mortal men to suffer extreme tortures of mind and body which would bring about His death, and so redeem our souls from the grip of Satan, Sin and eternal death.  The remembrance of this alone ought to enable us to rejoice habitually in God.

 

To get back into the conviction of St. Paul, none of the things he mentions can possibly separate us from the Love of God because the Incarnation of Jesus and His Passion and Redemptive death is such overwhelming evidence of how badly, almost desperately, God wants us to share with us His Life and His Beatitude.

 

So much for how God heals our souls when they are sick.  How does He heal them when they are wounded?

 

This is more difficult to compare to bodily wounds because our souls are spiritual and do not consist of parts or members that can be crushed or pierced or broken in any way.  The best we can do is to think of the faculties of the soul, Intellect and Reason, Memory and Imagination, Heart and/or Will as being somehow damaged.  Since all of them were created to perceive the  attributes of God that He has shared with all the things, both seen and unseen, that He has created out of nothing, and since He put them there so that we might seek to unite ourselves with the uncreated Truth, the Beauty and the Goodness of God who is the source of all created truth, beauty and goodness, we can say that they are wounded whenever the Intellect and Reason are occupied with falsehood and error,  whenever the Memory and Imagination are occupied with the ugliness and disorder that are the fruits of falsehood and error, and whenever the Heart and/or Will is occupied with moral evil:  with whatever cannot be reconciled with the Will of God for us.  Of course, all of the aberrations just mentioned have to be freely and deliberately chosen.

 

It can happen, of course, that because of ignorance that is no fault of their own, people can and do deliberately and in good faith choose falsehood, error and moral evil, erroneously thinking that they are true and good.  Indeed, the soul of anyone who would freely and deliberately choose anything that he knows is contrary to the Commandments and God’s particular Will for him, would not have a soul that is wounded, but a soul that is completely dead!

 

Therefore it is again by the Supernatural, Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity that God in and through Jesus heals the wounds inflicted upon our souls.  There are, first of all, the wounds inflicted upon the soul by the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, Our First Parents.  They are:  Darkness in the Intellect and Reason, which inclines them to falsehood and error; in the imagination and memory the Inability to be repelled by disorder, that is, an inclination to accept disorder as attractiveness; Weakness in the Will, whereby it is unable at times to choose, or to adhere firmly to, what it knows to be good.  Then, along with that, the lower or sense-related aspects of our souls (our feelings, passions, emotions), are in rebellion against, and manage to escape the control of, the Reason and of the Will, all of which re-enforces the disorder in the higher faculties of the soul.

 

God begins (and we can’t emphasize too much that it is the beginning of a long process) to heal those wounds in the human souls when Sanctifying Grace along with It the Supernatural Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, are poured into our souls by the Holy Spirit at Baptism.  Jesus Himself is the Healer, since it was through His Passion and Redemptive Death, along with His Resurrection and Ascension that earned all of that for us.  And even more basically, it is the Love that IS GOD which begins and carries to completion the process of spiritual healing.  This truth is reflected in the fact that people sick and wounded in body tend to begin to recover, and recover faster, when they are surrounded by and ministered to by folks who love them with a pure love.

 

Again, because to rejoice is a spontaneous reaction to the perception of being in possession of a valuable GOOD, the command to rejoice must be interpreted to mean a command to remember and be aware of every moment that we are in possession of God at every moment of our lives, provided, of course, that we have not lost His Life through mortal sin.

 

The last part of this maxim then enjoins upon us to reflect that it is good to suffer in any way for Him Who is good.  We can set aside the meaning of suffer which is the synonym of to allow or to permit, as in the saying of Jesus Suffer the little children to come to Me.  I do believe that here St. John of the cross intends the word suffer to mean:  to experience pain and sorrow.  By identifying pain with sorrow, we see that suffering is the antithesis of being in possession of a good.

           

It is better, rather, to say that suffering is the antithesis of the pleasure that one experiences when one is aware of being in possession of something good.  Thus, it would be sadness (sorrow) that is the antithesis of rejoicing.

 

As you know, pain is the vivid perception that a good of sense is lacking.  Or to say the same thing, the vivid perception that some evil is afflicting the body.  Sorrow, on the other hand is a psychological or emotional pain.  It is the vivid awareness that a spiritual good is wanting, that is, that the soul is afflicted with a spiritual evil.  Therefore, in and of itself, suffering cannot be desirable.  it can only become so in virtue of some concomitant fact or truth  What that concomitant fact or truth consists of is found in the phrase for Him Who is Good.

 

As we reflect upon it, that expression can have at least two meanings.  It could mean to suffer in place of Him Who is Good.  Or it could mean to suffer in order to get possession of Him Who is Good.  And indeed, there can even be a third meaning:  to suffer because of being identified with Him Who is Good.

 

At first sight, it seems we may have to exclude the first:  to suffer in His place.  We do know that Jesus has suffered in our place, that is, in our stead, instead of us, in order to redeem us.  In that way He satisfied the demands of Infinite Justice.  It doesn’t seem that we could suffer in place of God, or rather, in place of Jesus, because none of the Divine Persons are deserving of a punishment that we could undergo in their stead, and so relieve Them of the necessity of suffering.  But then again, we remember that anything we do for a human soul we do for Jesus residing in, or at least identified with, that soul.  Thus we can always choose to undergo some kind of suffering, even if just a flight act of self-denial, to free a soul from a punishment its sins have merited.  In such a case, we have really suffered in place of Jesus in that soul.

 

As to the second meaning, to suffer in order to get possession of Him, we know well that this is not only possible but necessary.  The example on one end of the spectrum is to suffer Martyrdom, that is to prefer to be killed rather than to deny Jesus or any one of the essential doctrines of our Catholic Faith.  It has been well established that martyrdom does put us into direct possession of God in Heaven.  On the other end of the spectrum there would be enduring inconveniences rather than to offend God by deviating from doing His known Will for us  We might do the same also for the sake of deepening our hold on God by doing and enduring those things that increase Faith, Hope and Charity within our souls.

 

That there is a spectrum of suffering is indicated by the words in the maxim suffer in any way.

 

With regard to the latter part of this Maxim, we could paraphrase it in a negative way:  reflect that it is good to suffer anything whatsoever rather than to lose possession of Him Who is Good.  This amounts to saying:  Don’t allow yourself to love and become attached to any created, corruptible good over and above your love and attachment to Him Who is the Uncreated and Eternal Good.  Or to say it another way:  Don’t allow yourself to love any created good in a way that is not subordinated to, nor can be reconciled with, your love for God the Supreme Good.

 

Finally, the third meaning is:  to suffer because of being identified with Him Who is Good.

 

I don’t have to tell you that this IS POSSIBLE and is happening all over the world even as we speak.  As we read in the book of Revelation, Satan tried to, but was unable, to harm either the Woman clothed with the sun or the Son She gave birth to, Who was caught up to the throne of God; and so he began to pursue all the children of the Woman, brethren of Her Son, living upon the earth, seeking to harm the Woman and Her Son vicariously by inflicting suffering and harm upon them in Their stead.

 

We know well that THERE ARE people in this world who hate Jesus and His Mother, and who hate the Church, the Body of Christ, and all its members.  These folks have existed ever since Jesus Himself and His first disciples and followers were on this earth.  Surely, all of you have already experienced some kind of persecution because you are firm believers in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior.  As St. John of the cross advises, we must think of that persecution as good.  One reason why is because it puts us into the same category as the Holy Innocents, whom Herod had killed in his attempt to get at and kill the Baby Jesus.  If they were identified with Him ONLY BECAUSE they were of about two years old or under, and lived in the environs of Bethlehem, imagine how much greater is the identity established between Jesus and those  who have Him living in their souls.

 

Truly, we cannot reflect upon it enough, nor call to mind often enough, that ANY KIND OF SUFFERING for Him Who is all Good is, IN ITSELF, a great good, a way of strengthening and deepening our union with Him in Love.

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MISSION STATEMENT: This web site was created for the purpose of completing the work of Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, O.C.D These conferences may be reproduced for private use only. Publication of this material is forbidden without permission of the Father Provincial for the Discalced Carmelites, Holy Hill, 1525 Carmel Rd., Hubertus, WI 53033-9770. Texts for the Maxims on Love were taken from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, by Fr. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Fr. Otilo Rodriguez, O.C.D. 1979 Edition. Copies of the book are available at ICS Publications, 2131 Lincoln Rd., N.E., Washington, D.C. 2002-1199, Phone: 1-800-832-8489.