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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 52 - My Beloved, all that is rugged and toilsome I desire for myself, and all that is sweet and delightful I desire for You.
This requires no new commentary, since we've already
touched upon the equivalent of this when seeking to interpret Maxims 31 and 32, which we considered jointly,
in our effort to put content into the word all in both of those Maxims.
Maxim
31 states: All for me and nothing
for You.
Maxim 32 states:
All for You and nothing for me.
I refer you to those commentaries.
Maxim 53.
What we need most in order to make progress is
to be silent before this great God with our appetites and our tongues, for
the language He best hears is silent love.
When
St. John of the Cross mentions progress here, he gives us an opportunity
to reflect upon what it is we are to make progress in. Because he is writing for Discalced Carmelite
Nuns and Friars, and for all Lay people who are pursuing the same goals as
Friars and Nuns, St. John can only mean progress in becoming perfect in our
Carmelite vocations.
Part of our vocation is to become perfect
in the practice of prayer, and thus this Maxim tells us how to make progress
in prayer. It is true, perhaps, that
one may not be very good at the practice of prayer, and one may need to make
a great deal of progress in the technique of prayer.
Prayer here meaning, of course, an intimate exchange, a heart to heart
conversation with God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or all three, whom we
know love us. For someone needing to make progress in this kind of prayer, the
task would involve bringing all of our heart before God, or rather before
the Heart of God and also to make progress in our conversation with God. It would also include progress in the knowledge
that our God loves us. Because any
knowledge about God comes only through Faith, this Maxim would include, for
the person striving to make progress in prayer, a deepening and perfecting
of Faith, which resides in the intellect. But there is also experiential knowledge of
God as well, namely, the experience of God's goodness and other attributes
through an awareness of them by all our perceptive faculties.
Such an awareness would not only be by mystical experiences, but also
through ordinary actual graces, and particularly through ordinary actual graces
for most of us who are committed to the practice of prayer.
And certainly, for those who need to make progress in the practice
of prayer, this maxim also would be suggesting and recommending the means
to make our conversation perfect.
So, even though I intend to consider other
areas in which St. John of the Cross wants us to make progress, since, after
all, prayer is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself.
St. Teresa calls it a royal road, and like any road, prayer includes
a point of departure and a destination point or point of arrival.
Let us now take time to reflect upon how this maxim helps one:
(a) to gather together one's entire heart;
(b) to find the heart of God; to
(c)
perfect one's Faith and experiential knowledge of God, and
(d) to perfect one's conversation, or intimate
heart-to-heart exchange with God. To
save saying it each time, by the word God lets us understand one or more of
the Three Divine persons, or all Three together.
When we talk about a person's heart
we mean, of course, the faculty by means of which we love.
We love when our hearts both cling to what is GOOD and surrender
to what is GOOD. For us human beings, love requires both
the clinging to and the surrendering to someone or something that is perceived
as good. Thus, for us, all
love is a mutual embrace, because in every embrace there is
both a clinging to and a surrendering to.
Thus the practice of prayer approaches perfection when the entire heart
of the human person clings to and surrenders entirely to the Heart of God. Prayer becomes perfect when the conversation
attains perfection as well.
From
what has been said, we can compare the human heart to a conglomerate of iron
filings. We can then compare all those
things that are presented to the heart as good, or which seem to the heart
to be good, to a magnet. Thus, the
human heart, surrounded on all sides by what seems to be good, is pulled in
several different directions at the same time.
We can imagine then that the heart is somehow divided up, some parts
of which go in different directions toward the various goods that are
exerting an attraction upon it. So,
for the human heart to stay together in one piece, it has to be made insensitive
to all attractions except one. Then
it can give itself wholly to the embrace of that unique good. This means that it must be convinced that only
one GOOD is truly GOOD, that GOOD being GOD, while all other GOODS are only
participating in some small way in the infinite, supreme, subsistent
GOOD which is GOD. And the way to
bring that about is for the human heart to discover the Heart of God.
Once the human heart is brought into the presence of the Heart of God,
nothing other than God will be able to exercise an attraction over it.
Silence with the appetites and the tongue,
are then, the means by which one puts one's self into contact with the Heart
of God, even as it becomes de-sensitized to the attraction of all created
good. So first, how does one keep
silent with the appetites?
Well, since the appetites speak by being
operative, they are silenced when they are made to be inoperative.
In another part of his teachings, St. John of the Cross calls this
the mortification of the appetites. In
the Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John first explains how the appetites,
when operative, impede union with the Beloved;
Union being the mutual embrace we have mentioned above.
In Chapter 13 of Book I of the Ascent he gives counsels that
enable one surely to conquer the appetites. They are found in paragraphs 3, 4, 6, and 9. It is eminently worthwhile to re-read them
in conjunction with this Maxim concerning being silent before God with the
appetites.
It
is not as easy to identify what is meant in its entirety by silence with the
tongue. St. John obviously means more
than the absence of audible words. So,
does he mean the absence of thinking in words?
That is a possibility, because when we think, we always have ideas
present in the mind, and ideas always concern created, perceptible things,
because the mind forms ideas based upon sense perceptions, either our own
or those of another who tells us about them.
Since God cannot be apprehended by ideas, one who thinks in the presence
of God is not being directly occupied with God. That is, he/she is not present to God in the most meaningful way.
Now, since we are talking about making progress in the practice
of prayer, being silent with the tongue has to do with the conversation that
takes place when the human heart and the Heart of God are joined in a mutual
embrace.
It seems to me that the subject of the
conversation between the human heart and the Heart of God has to include two
separate areas. One is that each is concerned about what pleases and is in the best
interest of the other. The other is
what concerns the best interests of those they jointly love. We can imagine the human soul and God to be
like a mother and father each of whom loves the other without the least hint
of selfishness. Clearly each is concerned
about the other's happiness and best interest, and jointly they are concerned
about their children's happiness and best interests.
In the example of the human father and
mother, when conversing heart to heart, each of the two wants to know what
the other thinks and feels regarding their own happiness and the welfare of
the children. Neither wishes to act
on his/her ideas and desire alone, but wants the input of the other.
Surely, the same must be said of the heart
to heart between the human person and God in the practice of prayer.
There is a natural tendency of the human soul to speak of the good
pleasure and happiness of God, and also to speak of the happiness and welfare
of souls, all of whom they eagerly want to be saved.
So it seems that here is where the tongue of the human heart and soul
must learn to practice silence. It
seems the soul must not presume to think that she knows best what it is she
must pursue in order to promote God's interests, nor must she presume to instruct
God concerning what is best for the souls they both love. Silence then, for the soul,
in that heart to Heart with God would seem to consist in an act of Faith in
the utter and total GOODNESS of God as manifested through His Infinite Love,
Mercy, Wisdom and Power. In other
words, silence with the tongue in this Maxim would seem to mean an act of
perfect trust and abandonment to the Will and Love of God.
When St. Teresa says that prayer is
the heart to heart conversation with God whom we know loves us, she obviously
means that the knowledge of God's love for us has preceded prayer.
So in order to make an act of total abandonment to God in prayer, a
soul must be convinced that God indeed is infinite GOODNESS, LOVE, WISDOM
AND POWER, with a conviction that penetrates to the marrow of one's bones.
Thus no one can really expect to be silent with the tongue in prayer
who has not heard about, read about, thought about and personally experienced
what God has done for us and how much He loves us in Christ. Such a one would have not allowed one shred
of evidence of that infinite GOODNESS to have escaped him. This requires years, perhaps, of attentiveness
to God, that is, what He and Jesus and the Holy Spirit in scripture have revealed
concerning God's action in this world for the human family.
We especially need to have participated personally in the fruits of
those deeds of God on our behalf, which are applied to us through the Church,
Jesus' Mystical Body. Without all of the above we would never be
able to be silent with our tongues, or our appetites, before God.
Now we can consider other kinds of progress
St. John of the Cross has in mind for the Friars, Nuns and Lay people for
whom he wrote. We can say that he wanted for them what St. Teresa also wanted for
her Nuns. What she looked for as evidence
that their practice of prayer was bearing fruit, and indeed that the time
set aside for prayer was not wasted, was progress in the virtues and progress
in love for the sisters with whom they lived. So we have to consider as many of those virtues
that we can think of, to see how this silence with the appetites and tongue
is able to bring about an increase of all these virtues.
But first of all, since the Friars and
Nuns St. John wrote for had professed the evangelical counsels, and since
the Lay people he wrote for were striving to live by the spirit of the counsels,
let us see how the kinds of silence in this Maxim helped them to make progress
in observing them.
Let us begin with Poverty.
A poor person, we know, is someone who lacks resources. To lack resources in this world means that one is unable to get
what he wants or to do what he wants. Admittedly,
one way of practicing poverty is to rely on God as the resource who enables
us to get what we want, or better what we need, and to get and do those things
that we know that God Himself wants us to have and do. Every Christian, then, can practice this kind
of poverty because each one has a vocation in the Church and can rely upon
God for the resources or means to obtain and to do what his/her vocation requires.
Now,
the silence of the appetites and the silence of the tongue, as we have envisioned
it, is such that one has no wants and desires other than God, nor has formed
ideas or planned projects that are an expression of personal opinion of what
God wants us to have and to do. It
seems that this is a more radical poverty, because one does not need to rely
on resources which God has supplied
or will supply. This poverty requires
no resources at all. This would seem
to be poverty in its perfection. If
so, then poverty is the same as having God alone.
With regard to Chastity, we can
say almost the same thing as we did about Poverty by considering the gift
of sexuality as a resource for the good of the human race.
One practices chastity by using the resource of one's sex according
to the vocation one has embraced in the Church.
For all members of the Church this requires one to exercise control
over one's sexual instincts. This means , too, that the sense appetites
are operative to some extent, and so we all form opinions as how best to govern
sexual instincts. But again, by means
of the silence of the appetites and the tongue as spoken of above, appetites
and opinions about chastity cease, and one does not find himself in a situation
where he is in danger of misusing the sexual resources with which his humanity
is endowed.
Next, we consider obedience.
This virtue in us causes us to set aside our own personal will in order
to follow the Will of God for us as made known to us by and through our lawful
superior in the Church. But what if
someone does not have a personal self-will?
How can one be obedient if there is no personal self-will to set aside? Perhaps the dilemma can be overcome by remembering
that obedience is difficult and costs only when there is a personal
self will to overcome. That makes
us aware of our choice of God's will over our own. But the fact that it is easy to do God's
will when we have no will of our own to oppose it does not change the fact
that we are fulfilling God's will.
Since silence with the appetites and with the tongue prevent the formation
of personal self-will, then this silence, which we have identified with total
abandonment to God's Will, really does help us to attain perfect obedience.
With regard to the other virtues, the one
St. Teresa never ceased to enjoin upon her daughters is humility.
Obviously, it was not lost on her that it was Our Lady's humility that
caught the attention of the Almighty and drew Him into her womb. She would have anticipated the scriptural passage
which says: God resists the proud
and gives His Grace to the humble. (James, 4:6).
One other reason why St. Teresa stressed the importance of humility
is that she knew it was also the foundation of peace and harmony among Sisters
living in Community.
To see how the silence of appetites and
tongue helps to make progress in humility, we only have to relate it to poverty
as we spoke of it above. It is the possession of resources that incline
a person to be proud. Awareness that
one possesses better than average resources of mind and body and material
goods often causes that person to desire to be better known and more esteemed
than most people. It even causes them
to expect marks of deference on the part of average people. A humble person is fully aware that he/she
has been drawn from nothingness by the creative power of God, and really has
nothing he/she has not received as an outright gift. Humility and poverty of spirit then go hand in hand. Silence with the appetites frees one from the
desires typical of proud people to be shown marks of esteem, and silence of
the tongue frees one from forming opinions based on superior qualities of
intelligence which opinions he/she might then expect God to accept and act
upon. In this way, one makes progress
in humility by acting as this Maxim suggests.
Actually, one really has to have reached an advanced degree of humility,
it seems to me, before one would be attracted to strive for the humble posture
before God that this Maxim defines for us.
One
of the virtues St. Teresa does not mention explicitly, but which is one she
had to a high degree is the virtue of Religion. This is the virtue that inclines a person to give God the worship,
the praise, the love and the gratitude He deserves as
our Creator, Father and Saviour. Worship
consists of any and every outward act that is a sign of our inner acknowledgment
that God is the source of all the good He has conferred upon us, particularly
in creating us and endowing us with life and every other good thing.
Praise is the verbal or intellectual acknowledgment of His supreme
Majesty and perfection that we make. Gratitude is the acknowledgment that
we did not merit any of His gifts to us, and love is the only appropriate
response to the Goodness He has revealed Himself to be.
If we equate the silence of the appetites and of the tongue with an
act of total abandonment to the GOODNESS who is God, then clearly we are rendering
God all four of these components of the virtue of Religion.
And really, since anything we say or do in acknowledgment
of the infinite Perfect Goodness which is God falls far, far short of the
mark, silence before Him says it best of all.
Of course, that is when one is relating to God directly. We can and should resort to verbal acknowledgment
and non-verbal expressions of the virtue of Religion when we are with people
and the situation calls for it. We
only have to look at a few pages of her works to see how prone St. Teresa
was to falling into acts of adoration, praise, love and thanksgiving when
speaking of God to her daughters and to us, and to recall how much those digressions
of hers have helped us.
Now, there are two other ideas in this
Maxim that deserve some attention. One is God hears, and
the other is the language of silent love. With regard to God hears we ask
whether this means: God merely
takes note of, that is, becomes aware of the language of silent
love, or whether it means God grants any petition made known to Him
by that language of silent love. It
seems to me that the second possibility is the meaning of the word hears. If we wonder what the petition is that is directed
to God by the silence of appetites and tongue, by an Act of total abandonment,
it would have to be "Please, God, help me," or "Please God,
teach me," or some other similar petitions. God does grant these petitions. He does help the petitioner in whatever
way the person stands in need, and He does teach and enlighten the
petitioner. The humility of the posture
and the humility of the petitioner is what the Lord finds impossible to resist.
With regard to the language that
is silent love, since to love a person is to always seek to
be in the presence of that person, perhaps just being with the beloved
is the language of silent love. Or, can we say that love expressed in deeds
alone is the language of silent love. I guess I would have to say that both are required. Seeking the presence of the Beloved when one
does not have to be engaged in pursuits that divert the attention or awareness
from God is a way of saying, without words: I love you. On the
other hand good deeds that mediate God's love to people we have to attend
to, or which bring God's love to any situation we are party to, are also ways
of saying to God, without words, I LOVE YOU.
And let us not kid ourselves, that is exactly what God wants to hear
from us more than anything else: a
simple, unconditional, I LOVE YOU. After
all, if we would only pay attention, that is what He is un-interruptedly saying
to us by means of everything that is or is happening, namely:
I LOVE YOU!
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