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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim 60.
Look
at the infinite knowledge and that hidden secret. What peace, what love, what silence is in that Divine Bosom.
How lofty the science God teaches there which is what we call the anagogical acts that so enkindle the
heart.
In this Maxim, St. John of the Cross starts out by
telling us to do the impossible. We are
finite, that is, limited, creatures.
There is a limit to what we can accomplish with our created faculties
and powers. And yet he doesn’t hesitate
to ask us to look at the infinite, that which knows no limits. He does so with a kind of naturalness, as if
it doesn’t occur to him that finite beings cannot comprehend the infinite.
The second impossible thing he asks us to do is look
at something which is hidden. Here he
is not saying that the hidden thing is infinite, at least not explicitly, so if
it is finite, we human beings would possibly be able to look at it and see it
but ordinarily, what is hidden is out of sight, and out of sight in a location
we’re not aware of. And not only is the
hidden thing out of sight, it is also a secret. We wonder, then, what he is driving at.
Well, in the second sentence he does tell us what is
to be the object of our gaze. Both the
hidden knowledge and the hidden secret are located in the Divine Bosom. I believe he tells us that what we are to
look at is the Heart of the Divine Nature.
I believe St. John is asking us to look at, that is, to contemplate the
mystery of the Trinity. He is
suggesting that we contemplate the Inner Life of the Three Divine Persons. Earlier I said that St. John doesn’t say
explicitly that the hidden secret is finite or infinite, but by saying it
resides in the Divine Bosom, he is telling us that it too, is without
limit. By calling it a secret,
he also says that it is identical with the infinite knowledge he speaks
of. That is because secrets are things
some people know and others don’t. Thus
the word and in the first sentence is conjunctive, it tells us that the
infinite knowledge and the hidden secret are one and the same thing.
Now I have to say that St. John of the Cross really is
not urging us, as finite creatures, to look at all the infinite
knowledge, but only to gaze upon that part of the limitless knowledge we are
capable of comprehending. The reason
why he does so with such naturalness is because he knows that God is
intelligible. That is the same as
saying that God is capable of being known. So any creature that has intelligence is capable of knowing
something of God. Only God Himself,
only the Three Divine Persons, know Divinity (Themselves) in It’s (Their) entirety. All other intelligences, being created, can
only know a limited portion of what is knowable in God, and then only in a
manner that is proper to their nature.
Of course, the intelligent creatures we know of have either angelic
natures or human natures. We don’t
know, not being angels, what the proper way of knowing is that belongs to
them. We do know, though, that our way
of knowing necessarily involves our bodily component, because we are embodied
spirits. All the knowledge we have
comes to us through our bodily senses, ultimately. Even supernatural knowledge comes to us through our sense, or
better, through our sense of hearing.
As Scripture says: “Faith
comes through hearing.” Which also reminds us that both angels and humans,
as creatures, are incapable of attaining to supernatural knowledge by their
own, unaided, natural powers.
Naturally speaking, angels and humans can never know God as He is in
Himself. So whatever we know about
God’s inner life, what He is in Himself, and what is known to Him as proper to
the Divine knowing and being known, has to be revealed to us by God
Himself. This is what we call supernatural
knowledge of God, the Trinity, and of what is related to The Trinity’s inner
life and being.
But before we talk about that supernatural knowledge,
it won’t hurt to consider what natural knowledge we have of God, and how we
have arrived at it. When I say “we”, of
course, I don’t refer to those of us here individually, but to the members of
the human race, who, using the same natural faculties and powers we have, have
learned something about God by reasoning and reflecting upon the data perceived
by the senses and by the experience of living among other people and among
others of God’s creatures here on earth.
The branch of philosophy that does this is called Theodicy.
In a previous conference we dipped inadvertently into
Theodicy when we spoke about God being the first mover. We didn’t say it then, but to say God is the
first mover is the same as saying that God is the Creator of all things, even
though we said that the reasoning process that led to the knowledge of a first,
unmoved Mover is an argument that proves the Existence of that same
Mover who is God. In that same
conference we also showed how Theodicy reaches the conclusion that God is living. This knowledge certainly comes through
reasoning upon sense experience, because we rely on two self-evident
principles: First, every effect has
its cause, and second, no effect can be greater than its cause. In this way, we humans are able to learn
quite a bit about God, including many of His attributes. As we said above, we know God is living
(lives) because we experience life - living things - in this world, and we
observe also that all living things always come from pre-existing living
things. In the same way we know that
God is intelligent, powerful, and possessed of all the other good
qualities we find or experience in His creatures, whether these creatures be
living and intelligent, or living and non-intelligent. To be more explicit, we know God possesses
all good qualities we find in creatures because no good quality can exist in a
product or an effect (like a work of art) that does not already exist in
a higher and more perfect way in the producer of the work or the
effect (the artisan). Some of these
good qualities are: wisdom, patience,
gentleness, compassion, kindness, etc....
Now because we on earth also have a sense experience
of what is not good, Theodicy can arrive at still other attributes of God by
way of negation. First we have the
experience of finiteness or limitation.
So we can reason to the truth that the intelligent, powerful, living,
uncreated Creator cannot have any limitations nor admit of any defect. What helps us come to that conclusion is the
perception that every evil or defect is the absence of a good that should
be present, but which is lacking. We
also perceive as evil or a defect the existence of elements in something that should
not be there. Thus we can say that
there is no defect or evil in God, nothing to render Him impure, and that He
possesses all goodness and good qualities to an unlimited degree. Thus He is Infinite Perfection. He is Infinite Being. But this conclusion also leads to the
further conclusion that God is eternal.
A perfection that ceases to exist cannot then be perfect. A Being that ceases to exist cannot be
Infinite. So, God always WAS, IS now, and always WILL BE. He is Eternal.
There is a reference to Theodicy, or rather to our
human capacity to arrive at the discoveries about God of Theodicy, in the
letter to the Romans. St. Paul
says: “For the wrath of God is
revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men, who by
their wickedness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it
to them. Ever since the creation of the
world His invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity (divinity), has
been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for, although
they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they
became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools....” (Romans 1:18-22).
Before we go on to speak of the infinite knowledge and
secret knowledge which is the inner life of the Trinity, perhaps we should try
to figure out how human reason, basing itself on observations of the created
universe is able to come to the conclusion that God is “SIMPLE,” and that
“Everything in God is God.” As to the
first, I think it is because we know by experience that the more complex a
thing is, the more interdependent parts it has. This means there are more ways in which things can go wrong. Thus it is more likely either to lose the
integrity it should have, or be unable to function as it should. Therefore, the element of complexity, being
the source or the occasion of one or more possible defects, cannot be found in
God, who is perfect in every way and who is eternally perfect, that is He never
ceases to be above and beyond the possibility of defect or imperfection
forever. Thus simplicity, being the
absence of complexity as well as its opposite, must be one of God’s attributes.
From the knowledge that God is utterly simple, perhaps
then we can reason to the fact that “Everything in God IS God.” If all of the attributes of God were
distinct from one another, it would be possible for God to use any one of those
attributes while leaving the others unused.
But would it be possible for a perfect, infinite, eternal, living being
to perform an act that is, say, compassionate but not wise, merciful but not
just, loving but not patient, generous but not prudent? So it seems that any act God would perform
would have to possess all His good qualities and attributes, and thus be invested with all His
infinite, eternal perfection. As such,
each act and each attribute of God would have to be One Identical Being with
Him who is the supreme, infinite Good.
Well, having said that, I am not sure my argument is persuasive. It could well be that we know that
“Everything in God IS God” only because God Himself has revealed it. Being finite, we can only think about God’s
attributes separately, one at a time.
But that is an imperfection, or rather, a want of capability in our
human intelligence, which is created and therefore limited. Even with the help of supernatural Faith,
our human minds will never be able to comprehend God in all His unlimited
perfection. And now we can go on to
talk about the most Holy Trinity and It’s Inner-Life.
The secret that exists in the bosom of the Trinity has
to do with the revealed truth that the Divine Nature is possessed by three
distinct but inter-related Persons.
Because each possesses the Divine Nature, each of the Persons is
God. There is a Person called Father,
or rather Who is revealed to us as Father, and also a Person who is revealed to
us as Son. It is this Son who is also
called the Word of the Father, and the very same Person who has revealed the
Person of the Father and His own Person.
The Son and Word also reveals that there is a third Person who is God,
and whom He names Spirit. This Spirit
is common to both the Father and the Son and yet distinct from each. The hidden secret, then, has to do with the
fact that the Father is always begetting the Son even though the Son is
always begotten. The Father, in other
words, is always communicating the Divine Nature, Divinity to the Son, and yet
the Son is always in possession of the Divine Nature. Also the hidden secret has to do with the fact that Father and
Son jointly communicate the Divine Nature to (or share It with) their Spirit,
who Himself is always in possession of the Divine Nature. The hidden secret is nothing else
than the impossibility of our human intelligence to comprehend how it is
possible that Three Persons, two of Whom receive from one or more of the others
the Divine Nature, can have always existed simultaneously with no priority in
time. To say it is hidden doesn’t mean
we don’t know about it or cannot state it accurately. It means it transcends human, and angelic, intelligence. The closest we can come to getting some satisfying
insight into the mystery (or hidden secret) is to say that the Son is begotten
in virtue of an act of Divine Intelligence.
The act of Divine Intelligence conceives, or begets, an idea of Divinity
that is so utterly perfect and complete that that Act is itself God. The One who conceives or begets the idea is
called Father and the distinct idea begotten or conceived is called Son, or
Word. But both the Begetter and the
Begotten exist simultaneously from all eternity.
Now scripture reveals that God is Love. That means that there is a divine faculty of
loving, a free Will, in the Divine Nature.
Since God is said to be Pure Act, which means no potentiality or
possibility can exist in Him, we must say, that God is always actually
loving. But there is no loving without
a Lover and a Beloved. Indeed, there
can be no loving unless the Lover and the Beloved are mutually both Lover and
Beloved at the same time. Thus the
joint act of Love by which the Father and the Son both love the Other and are
loved by the Other is so perfect and complete that Their embrace of mutual
love is Itself God, and is a Divine Person, distinct from the Father and from
the Son. That is because an act of the
Divine Will is conceptually distinct from an act of the Divine
Intelligence. This third Divine Person,
this act of mutual love, proceeding jointly from Father and Son is the Holy
Spirit, or Spirit of God, that scripture speaks of. And there being no other faculties in God other than
Intelligence and Free Will (if so, God would have revealed it), there are only Three
Divine Persons. Though all Three use
Divine Intelligence and Divine Will separately and jointly at the same time,
these acts, apparently, do not result in a fourth divine person.
We must now inquire into the reason why St. John of
the Cross talks about that Divine secret, or rather, that Divine Activity of
Intelligence and Will, as peace, love and silence. From what we have said, it is clear that there is peace because
peace is defined as the “tranquility of order.” There is Order in the Divine Bosom because an act of intelligence
must necessarily precede (in principle if not in time) an act of Love. We cannot love what we do not know, or which
we do not know to be worthy of love.
And, as we saw, the act which begot the Son necessarily had to precede
(in principle, not in time) the mutual act of Love by which the Spirit proceeds
from Father and Son.
But there is peace in the Divine Bosom also because
there is the total absence of disagreement or conflict of interest. Because all Three Divine Persons share
equally and yet possess totally the single Divine Nature with all its Infinite
attributes, it is impossible for them to be at odds with one another. Each fully possesses the one same Divine
Mind and the one same Divine Heart. In
other words, there is peace in the Divine Bosom because the Three Divine
Persons are one in Mind and One in Heart.
That there is love in the Divine Bosom is clear
because scripture says that God IS love. Also because we said above that the Act of the Divine Will by
which Father and Son mutually love and are loved IS the Divine Spirit,
the Spirit of Love. But we can probably
also say that there is love in the Divine Bosom because the most fundamental
act of love is to “cherish,” or to “hold dear.” The next most fundamental act of love is “benevolence,” i.e., to
desire good for the beloved. We
may find it difficult to understand how it is that each of the divine Persons
“feels” affection for each of the others, or how each can desire the “good” of
the others, when each is lacking in no good thing, but in some way that is
so. Thus it seems that we have to think
of love as causing Each one of the Divine Persons to be totally forgetful of
self and to identify perfectly with the others, individually and jointly. In other words Divine Love causes each of
the Divine Persons to be other-centered, so that self-centeredness is totally
absent.
It is not easy to get at what St. John of the Cross
means when he says that there is silence in the Divine Bosom. As we said in another conference on these
Maxims, where St. John of the Cross tells us that The Father speaks His one
Word in silence, and that it is in silence that we must hear it, silence means
either that the Divine Persons speak to one another without sound, or
that they speak to one another in the absence of back-ground noise. It is possible for the Three Divine Persons
to communicate with one another without having to use words, as we do, because
a word is only a verbal expression of an idea.
When one Divine Person forms an idea which He wants to share with the other
Divine Persons, He uses the Divine Intellect to form the idea. But the one Divine Intellect is common to
all Three, so each merely takes note of that very same idea in His own Divine
Mind.
Having said that, we cannot help wondering what it is
the Three Divine Persons “talk about.”
What are the ideas each Person forms that He wants to share with the
others? Well certainly they are not
ideas that express the Divine Nature completely. There is only one such Divine Idea and it is the Person of the
Son. So these ideas would have to be
formed of what is not God. They would
have to be ideas of one or more of the Divine attributes that do not include
the infinitude or the infinite perfection of the attribute in question. It seems then, that we would have to say
that what the Three Divine Persons speak among themselves about is
creation. Every creature, we know,
comes into being out of nothingness.
Every creature is nothingness to which God has given a tiny
participation in one or more of His attributes as subsistent Being. So it seems we can say that the Divine
Persons converse silently about their plans for the created universe, and
particularly about their plan for their masterpiece of visible creation, the
Human Race. In fact, we hear, in the
Book of Genesis, the Divine Persons saying among Themselves: “Let us make man in Our own image and
likeness.” It is not too
far-fetched to think that the Divine Persons converse about each and every one
of us, speaking about the good things they want to do for us, especially the
share in divine life they want to give us, and to what lengths they are
prepared to go in order to insure that They can attract us to Themselves and
draw us into their Heart for all eternity.
Perhaps, too it is precisely in this that their silent conversation is
replete with love and peace, taking place in the Divine Bosom.
We come now to the final sentence of this Maxim
60. “How lofty the science God
teaches there, which is what we call the anagogical acts that so enkindle the
heart.” We ask, “What is the subject or content of the science God
teaches?” And, “by what mechanism does
God teach whoever enters into the Divine Bosom?” It seems that the science taught is about peace, love and
silence, or better, first about silence, then about love, a fruit of silence,
and finally about peace, a fruit of silence and love. And it seems further that God teaches in virtue of being
contemplated or gazed upon lovingly as He, or rather, as the Three Divine
Persons, live out the Mystery of Their inner Trinitarian Life. From that contemplation one ought to be able
to understand how to impose silence upon all one’s appetites except the simple
desire to conform one’s will to the Will of God. From that contemplation one ought to be able to understand how to
introduce love into every aspect of one’s life and activity. From that contemplation, one ought to be
able to discern how to achieve peace with not only God, the Three Divine
Persons, but also with every person whom God in His Providence has brought into
our lives. Perhaps, too, the
contemplation of God’s peace, love and silence in the Divine Bosom enables one
to see that lofty science mirrored and exemplified in the mysteries of our
redemption: The Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, the Nativity and
Virgin-Birth of Jesus from Mary, the Hidden Life, the Public Life of Jesus, the
Passion and Death of Jesus, His Resurrection and Ascension, His sending of the
Holy Spirit, the Holy Eucharist, the Church, Jesus’ Mystical Body.
Indeed, now that I’ve said that, it occurs to me that
St. John of the Cross’ definition of an anagogical act requires that we strive
to learn the science of God’s ways by contemplating Divine peace, love and
silence as revealed through those mysteries.
He says that an anagogical act takes us out of the sphere of natural
knowledge and sense experience and introduces us into the sphere of divine
supernatural knowledge and Faith experience.
What could be more effective in enkindling the heart with love for
God and neighbor than seeing Divine Love and Mercy exemplified in those same
mysteries. Let us hope that as we
write about and hear these things, we may feel our hearts begin to glow with
grateful love. If so, then by remaining
always on the supernatural and divine level of those mysteries, by means of
anagogical acts of Faith, Hope and Charity, may we not fail to find that glow
of love fanned into the Living Flame of Love.
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