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Continuation of Commentaries
on the Maxims on Love of St. John of the Cross
by Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Maxim - 77 (Part C)
Twelve
stars for reaching the highest perfection: love of God, love of neighbor,
obedience, chastity, poverty, attendance at choir, penance, humility, mortification,
prayer, silence, peace.
In
parts A and B of the reflections on this Maxim, we have gotten as far as “attendance
at choir.” Now we can begin to
consider the next six.
We
have said many times in the course of these reflections that it is the practice
of virtue that makes a human being perfect both from the natural point of view,
and if he is Catholic, also from the supernatural point of view. It is virtue instructed by right reason that
makes a human naturally perfect as the image and likeness of God. It is virtue instructed by Faith under the
influence of the Holy Spirit that makes a Catholic supernaturally perfect as a
child of God by adoption. Our task now
is to show how “penance” can be considered a virtue, and also why it must be a
star in the constellation “highest perfection.” As we have been saying, “highest perfection” means applying all
the faculties of our human nature to their proper objects and activity in
complete and perfect accord with God’s will for the individual.
Since all virtues are habits, and thus basically constant habitual tendencies toward goodness in one’s conduct, we can ask: “What particular good deeds are we habitually inclined to by the “penance” spoken of in this Maxim? To help us identify them, we recall what it is penance is concerned with as its proper object. As you all know or have surmised. The proper object of penance is “sin”. In other words, penance inclines us to do something about sin. Strictly speaking, penance is concerned with one’s personal sins. It is also possible to be concerned with the sins of others, indeed the sins of the whole world. There are two ways in which we can be concerned with personal sin. First, we can do something about the fact that we have committed a sin, that is, about the guilt we incur when we commit sin. Second, we can do something about the harm that every sin inflicts upon the human soul and upon others, notably, God and the entire Church. With regard to the first, penance enables us to repent, then it urges us to have the guilt removed.
For
us Catholics that is accomplished by absolution, which, in order to obtain,
we must confess our sins to a priest in Sacramental Confession, or use other
methods when we have committed venial sins.
The guilt of mortal sin can only be removed by the merits of Jesus
as applied in the Sacrament of Penance. The guilt of venial sin, since the effect of
venial sin is to diminish the fervor or intensity of charity (divine Life)
in our souls, can also be removed by a fervent Holy Communion as well as by
a fervent act of charity, either love of God or love of neighbor. With regard to the second, penance inclines
us to do something to overcome the “disorder” sin introduced into one’s own
soul and into society, chiefly, the Church.
The purpose of these acts is to “make things right again.” And thus it appears that by the word penance
St. John of the Cross means the Sacrament of Penance or better yet, the habitual
tendency “frequently to receive” the Sacrament of reconciliation. We can call this the “virtue” of penance.
From
all that has been said therefore, it is evident that this is a complex virtue,
which includes repentance, acknowledgment of guilt, firm purpose of amendment,
and reparation. The last named is the
habitual tendency and willingness to repair the damage one has done by his
sins. Actually, it would be possible to
reduce all four into the one “tendency to repent,” provided we properly see the
other four as contained “germinal form” in repentance. Perhaps we don’t have a proper appreciation
of what it means “to repent.”
Since
every sin includes a violation of some objective truth, we can think of sin as
stepping outside the boundaries of truth and taking up a position in
falsehood. An act of repentance then is
the only way that one is able to step back within the boundaries of Truth. By it a person states truthfully about
himself: “I have overstepped the boundaries between truth and falsehood. I have done a lie.”
I
should have said above that, since God is truth, stepping outside the
parameters of Truth is the same as stepping outside of God. Of course, this would only apply to mortal,
or deadly sins. Perhaps then we could
imagine a venial sin to mean putting part of one’s body outside of Truth, and
keeping part of one’s body in the Truth, like a person leaning out of the
window of a building. Hence, a better
analogy would be to compare sinning mortally with going outside the building of
Truth and having the locked door close behind one. A person, who leans out a window of the building of truth, can
come back in by himself. The one locked
out by mortal sin has to be re-admitted by someone inside opening the door for
him.
I say
the other three elements of penance are included in the act of acknowledging
that one has stepped outside of truth by sin because the acknowledgement
includes awareness that one should not be living a lie, and hence
contains the intention never to go out into falsehood again. Also, the notion of falsehood is included in
the idea of disorder or harm inflicted by the sin. So intending to come back into truth by repentance would include
the intention to repair the harm. It
would include the confessing of a sin to a priest, in the case of a mortal sin,
because to get back in the building of Truth the one outside has to notify
someone inside that he is outside and ask to be readmitted.
Thus
far we have been dealing with penance for personal sins. Because the sins of others cause damage to
souls and to the Church, it is possible for us to do something about that
damage. We can help to repair it. So the penance St. John of the Cross speaks
of in this Maxim extends to include sorrow or sadness on our part that the
damage exists, and includes also a desire and willingness to do what we can to
set things right.
Surely,
there are two ways of setting things right after damage has been done by
sin. One is to take upon oneself
directly the work necessary to make complete reparation. We know that this is so because Jesus, by
His Incarnation, Passion and Death, has done what was necessary to repair the
rupture in the relationship of friendship and kinship between God and the
entire human race. He has in effect,
made reparation for the eternal guilt of the human race for the sin of our
first parents. This is direct
reparation.
The
other way is indirect. Jesus has earned
for us by His Incarnation, passion and death all the graces we need to make
acts of repentance and do all that is implied in the acts of the virtue of
penance. But He doesn’t do it for
us. We have to reach out and take hold
of those graces, and then we, with what Jesus earned for us, do the repenting
and all the rest for our personal sins.
He even earned for us the graces to remove venial sins by fervent
communions and fervent acts of love. We
on our part, once fully within the building of truth can, by our deeds of
penance (suffering) (and self-denial in doing God’s will) can also merit that
graces of repentance be given to souls outside the building, including the
grace of reaching out, taking hold of those graces, and using them. In other words, through this virtue of
penance, we all, if we’re totally inside the building of “Truth” through
sanctifying grace, can become little redeemers allied to Jesus and Mary, our
Chief Co-Redeemers.
Now
how can we show that “penance” is an indispensable “star” in the constellation
of “highest perfection?” I think that
there are two ways of doing so. One is
based upon the fact that sin utterly destroys perfection. In other words, sin and perfection are
mutually exclusive. Perfection is
synonymous with order, whereas we have seen that sin is the worst kind of
disorder. Highest perfection must be
capable of canceling its opposite, sin, and because it is penance precisely
that does that, penance has to be a component of, or rather a star in the
constellation of, highest perfection.
This first way helps achieve “personal” highest perfection.
The
second way of showing that there is no higher perfection than “penance” is
taken from Genesis, the first Book of the Bible. Certainly we have to admit that if anywhere, highest perfection
has to be found in God Himself. Well,
what did God do as soon as He found out about the sin of Adam and Eve? He formulated a plan to nullify that sin and
its effect upon the human race. It is
true God questioned both Adam and Eve before announcing part of His plan to
overcome sin, and we wonder to what extent that plan would have been modified
if, right away, Adam and Eve had humbly admitted their guilt. Instead, they compounded it by trying to
blame somebody else for their individual disobedience. In any event, the prompt, constant and
powerful tendency of God to overcome the sin of the human race indicates that
God Himself has the virtue of penance in the sense that sin pains Him deeply
and He has done all in His power to destroy it wherever He sees it. Therefore, we must admit that penance has to
be a star in the constellation of highest perfection.
The
next star mentioned by St. John of the Cross in this maxim is humility. Why must it be a component of highest
perfection? Surely because of its
relationship to truth. We saw above
that sin causes a person to step out of the building of truth either entirely
by mortal sin, or partially, by venial sin.
Humility is the most efficacious guarantee of never ever stepping
outside the truth because it has been described by St. Teresa as “walking in
truth.” Perhaps, when thinking about
its power to help one avoid “doing a lie,” which is how we described sinning earlier,
it would be better to say that humility is “being rooted in truth” or “anchored
in truth.” Another way of getting to
appreciate adequately the extraordinary value of humility is by seeing it as a
great “love” of truth. It is a love of
“order.” The more we love order, in
virtue of an increase of humility, the stronger one is against anything that
inclines a person to embrace disorder.
The more one loves God, too, because God is supreme “order.” Also it increases (more humility) one’s love
of neighbor because it loves more orderliness in all personal relationships,
which is the same as growing in all the virtues affiliated with justice.
The
truth and the order that humility loves has to do with what God is and what we
are. God is the supreme, all-good
being, eternal and infinite and source of all created being and goodness. By His act of creation He communicated a
tiny bit of His Being and goodness to nothingness. True all things created by God possess a share in His Being and
Goodness in varying degrees, the highest of all being found in angels, and then
we humans are just a little less than the angels. Human Beings represent God’s masterpiece in the visible, material
universe, but still we are “nothing” compared to God. One of the things humility loves and delights in is the truth
that God is All and we are nothing.
Humility also loves the truth that we depend upon God our Creator in
everything, and it loves the “order” inherent in keeping that truth ever in
mind and remaining in a permanent posture of worship before God so as always to
conduct ourselves in a manner that does not disturb that order.
And
likewise humility loves the truth and order willed by God in all His
relationships with His human Creatures.
We are misery, He is Mercy. We are
sinners, He is Saviour and Redeemer. We
are intelligent, capable of knowing, He is supreme Truth and supremely
Knowable. We are capable of loving, He
is the supreme lovable Good. We are
capable of being delighted by Beauty, He is the supremely beautiful, which is
how our spiritual perceptive faculty perceives the truth in God’s Goodness and
the Goodness in God’s Truth. And all of
this which is natural, has its counterpart in God as source of our supernatural
share in His Being and Life. Humility
loves the fact that our participation in God’s life is His free gift to us, and
loves to acknowledge that without God’s grace we can do nothing that is
supernaturally good and meritorious of one day possessing a share in His
eternal life and happiness forever, free of any possibility of losing it.
There
is no need to adduce reasons why humility must be among the stars that comprise
the constellation of “highest perfection.”
It is the indispensable foundation for all holiness. And what is perfection but the fullness of
God’s Life in our souls? All holiness,
as intimated above, is the fruit of divine grace conferred upon and poured into
the human soul. But God resists the
proud and gives His grace to the humble.
Humility opens the door of the soul wide to all the graces of God. He Himself enters through the door of
humility. It is probably a good thing
there is only one Blessed Virgin Mary, that is, only one woman after Eve whose
soul was created free of original sin and also as humble as she. If there were another woman like Our Blessed
Mother, it seems to me the second person would be constrained to become
incarnate in both their wombs, and we would have two of Jesus. Really, that is how completely God is
willing to give Himself to the soul that has attained the highest degree
possible in humility. And, I can’t omit
mentioning what the Cure’ of Ars heard the devil shout in a rage on one
occasion. The devil said: “There’s
no doubt about it, the souls that sink deeper into humility are the ones who
rise highest in sanctity.” As I
say, I don’t need to try to convince you that the constellation called “highest
perfection” must include the star of humility.
Next
on the list of Maxims 77 is “mortification.” Let us now try to see why it is necessary for anyone who strives
to achieve “highest perfection”.
We
said earlier that penance and humility both had sin, considered as placing
oneself outside the truth, as their proper object. Penance had to do with getting back into Truth, humility with
never stepping outside the Truth.
Mortification also has to do with sin, but not as directly as penance,
and even less indirectly as humility.
There is truth and order in mortification, too, in that it recognizes
that it is in the perceptive faculties of our humanity, both of body and soul,
that sin begins to exercise its attraction upon the human free will. The human perceptive faculties, taken
together, are capable of perceiving and hungering after the whole gamut, or
spectrum, of goodness in its various forms.
There are goods of sense, emotional goods, rational or intellectual
goods, and spiritual goods. But these
perceptive faculties are in disarray, disorder, in the sense that the less
noble goods exercise a more powerful influence upon human free will than the
more noble ones. The physical, sensual
goods tend naturally to be more appealing to the human will than the emotional
and rational goods, and these latter tend to be more appealing than the
spiritual goods (like humility, for example.)
The order intended by God in creating our humanity was just the
reverse. The spiritual goods were most
appealing, then the rational and emotional, and finally, in last place, the
bodily, sensual goods. It is the
purpose of mortification to restore the order originally intended by God.
If
you wonder how Adam and Eve could sin when spiritual goods were most appealing
to them, far more appealing than physical, sensual goods, it was because the
devil convinced Eve that God was trying to deprive herself and Adam of the most
wonderful of all spiritual goods, namely to be Divine as God was Divine. No wonder she gave in to the devil’s
suggestion so readily. And that is good
for us who are striving for holiness, a holiness that God wants also for us, to
be constantly on guard against the wiles of the devil. He tempts us according to where we are in
restoring the proper order within our humanity, so that we are attracted to
higher, more noble goods over all the lesser ones. The holier a person is, the more the devil tempts him to fall
into subtle pride, into wanting to be a god unto himself.
Mortification
is an exercise, then, of the spiritual life, by means of which a person
inflicts unpleasantness, and even pain, upon the lower perceptive
faculties. In the olden days people
striving after holiness would scourge themselves, wear hair shirts next to
their skin, sleep on hard boards, expose themselves to extremes of heat and
cold, fast, and other things that punished their bodies. The idea behind it was to get their bodies
and senses so used to being punished and in pain that when the soul chose a
more noble good, such as an act of virtue, over the good the senses were
desiring at the same time, the body would not mind being deprived of comfort
and easily give in to the nobler desires of the soul. Then gradually, the body became the servants of the soul and
obeyed the dictates of reason and Faith.
Order would be restored. Before,
the body was commanding the intellect and imagination to find ways to gratify
the senses and the body, and the soul was the slave of the body.
With regard to mortification, though, there is always the danger that the soul striving for holiness will get stuck at bodily mortification, and neglect mortifying the ego and the “natural” perceptive faculties of intellect and imagination. This amounts to the mortification of the emotions. Although the emotions are greatly influenced by the senses of sight and hearing, fundamentally they are spiritual (as opposed to sensual) in nature. The emotions are gratified when the intellect perceives that a person is loved, honored, esteemed, well-thought-of, in a position that carries dignity and responsibility with it, and is generally free of difficulty and opposition in the carrying out of its duties and responsibilities. It is probably in the area of the emotions that we best understand the saying of Jesus: “If anyone wishes to be my disciple, let him take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” The Cross, and the Wisdom of the Cross, is a spiritual supernatural good of the Highest Order, because of its relationship to LOVE, which is of God.
Without
the Cross of Jesus, we would never know how much God loves us, indeed we would
have no proof that God IS LOVE. So the only way we know that we share in God’s
life, which is LOVE, is by our embracing the Cross cheerfully. So in order to find in the Cross a source of
inner peace and contentment, a result of knowing we are living a life of genuine
divine love, we have to accustom our emotions to being deprived of the things
mentioned above which gratify the ego and the psyche. St. John of the Cross speaks of mortification
in terms of stripping the soul of all its appetites, which hinder union with
God, for which all souls have been created, and which alone brings us eternal
blessedness. We can fittingly conclude
this teaching on mortification by quoting St. John’s advice for stripping
the soul of those same appetites: He writes:
“The
following maxims contain a complete remedy for mortifying and pacifying the
passions..[read, emotions] Endeavor to be inclined always:
not to the easiest, but to the most
difficult
not to the most delightful, but to
the harshest;
not to the most gratifying, but to
the less pleasant;
not to what means rest for you, but
to hard work;
not to the consoling, but to the
unconsoling;
not to the most, but to the least;
not to the highest and most
precious, but to the lowest and most despised;
not to the wanting something, but to
wanting nothing;
do not go about looking for the best
of temporal things, but for the worst;
and desire to enter for Christ into
complete nudity, emptiness, and
poverty in everything in the world
(Ascent, Book I, Ch. 13, pars. 5,6).
Then
St. John gives advice which is directed at mortifying the ego, which is also
closely related to the emotions, although he relates the advice to
mortification of the three-fold concupiscence: of the eyes, the flesh and the
pride of life. He states:
First, try to act with contempt for
yourself and desire that all others do likewise.
Second, endeavor to speak in
contempt of yourself and desire all others to do so.
Third, try to think lowly and
contemptuously of yourself and desire that others do the same. (Ascent,
Book I, Ch. 13, par. 9)
St.
John, in paragraph eight of the same chapter also tells us why mortification
is a star in the constellation of “highest perfection.” It is because from the three-fold concupiscence arise all the other
appetites: for sense gratification, emotional gratification and ego gratification.
When all these are mortified, i.e., put to death, there is nothing
to stand in the way of God uniting the soul completely to Himself.
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