In Book Three, the final book of the Adornment, Ruysbroeck unveils the summit of the spiritual journey: the God-seeing life. Here, the soul passes beyond all images, virtues, and selfhood into the direct, unmediated vision of God. This contemplative union unfolds in stages, from the soul’s loving response to God through virtue and desire, to being drawn into the eternal birth of the Son in the soul, and finally to participation in the hidden unity of the Divine Essence. Ruysbroeck describes how only those purified by virtue, consumed with love, and surrendered in utter inwardness can be lifted into this superessential vision. There, in divine darkness, the soul sees the uncreated light and becomes one with it, not by knowledge or effort, but by God’s own act.
This eternal beholding is no static moment but an unceasing procession of divine life and love. The Father eternally begets the Son in the soul, and the Holy Spirit breathes forth as their mutual love, drawing the soul into an ever-deepening fruition. In this union, all distinctions, between Creator and creature, between the Persons of the Trinity, are gathered into the abyss of the divine Unity, where the soul loses itself in love. What remains is a still, radiant silence where the soul, now free from every image and mode, dwells in blessedness. This is the culmination of the spiritual marriage: to see and be seen in God, to live in the eternal Now of divine life, tasting at last the formless glory of Love itself.
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Chapter 1 discusses three ways to enter into The God-Seeing Life. The inward lover of God, who holds God in fruitive love, embraces himself in active love, and lives a life marked by virtues, is led into the God-seeing life through these three elements. Such a person may be chosen by God to be lifted into a higher state of superessential contemplation. This contemplation is beyond human understanding and cannot be attained by effort, knowledge, or subtlety. Only those whom God unites with Himself in spirit can see God in this way.
In the essential unity of God, the three Persons of the Trinity eternally behold, love, and have fruition in an embrace of divine love. All inward beings are one with God in this unity, immersed in love, sharing the eternal bliss of God. And, the Father is the origin in this unity of every work in heaven and on earth, and He speaks in our depths: Behold, the Bride groom cometh; go ye out to meet Him.
These words open onto that superessential contemplation which is the source of all holiness. No one can really understand them in any creaturely way since that is far below their Truth. Only the one who is united with God, for to comprehend God as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance. Such a person has died to himself and lives in God. He has turned his gaze to the Hidden Truth that reveals Itself without intermediary, in one unique abysmal word in which He utters Himself in the hiddenness of our spirit. This is the birth of the Son.
To enter this God-seeing life, three things are necessary. First, a person must be perfectly ordered in virtues, inwardly empty, and free from all distractions. Second, they must cleave to God with unquenchable love and intention, like a fire that never dies. Third, they must lose themselves in a waylessness and darkness where all self-consciousness ceases, entering into the manifestation of God and eternal life. In this divine darkness, the soul sees an incomprehensible light (the Son of God) and becomes united with God’s own brightness. This divine light, given to the simple sight of the spirit, transcends all gifts and creaturely activities. The contemplative, in his emptiness and spiritual nakedness, becomes one with the light by which he sees, achieving a state of blessedness and eternal life.
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Chapter 2 emphasizes that the eternal birth of God in the spirit is a ceaseless process, wherein the soul continually beholds and is transformed by the ever-new presence of God.
In the God-seeing life, one experiences the constant birth of God’s presence in the soul as a perpetual enlightenment, an unceasing renewal and an uninterrupted manifestation of the Divine Light. The Bridegroom, who symbolizes Christ, is always coming anew into the soul, bringing an ever-fresh illumination that transcends time. This coming is both instantaneous and eternal, constantly bringing new joy and delight. The soul’s spiritual “eyes” are opened wide to receive the endless revelation of God’s presence, never to close again.
In this state, all earthly actions and virtues cease because God alone works in the innermost nobility of the spirit. Here, the soul is absorbed in an eternal act of seeing and being illuminated by the Divine Light. The spirit, in receiving this unending divine coming, becomes one with the Light itself, finding all blessedness in this divine unity. This ongoing process of receiving and becoming is what constitutes the eternal life and joy of the soul.
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Chapter 3 explores the most profound depth of union with God in which the soul, called to go out in eternal contemplation and fruition, shares all riches that are in God by nature, by way of the unmeasured love of the Holy Ghost. Through this love, we are dead to ourselves, and go forth in waylessness embraced by the Holy Trinity in the superessential Unity where the Father dwells in the Son, and the Son in the Father, and all creatures in both, beyond the distinction of the Persons which are the fruitfulness of the Divine Nature. It is here that an eternal going out without beginning begins: the Father generates the Son in perfect self-understanding and in this eternal generatioin, all creatures were conceived in God as ideas distinct from Himself, but not fully other. Thus, we exist eternally in God before being created in time, and our eternal being is like God’s being, having immanence in the Divine Essence without distinction. In the birth of the Son, our being obtains an outflowing and distinction according to the Eternal Idea.
Both our eternal indwelling in God’s essence (being in God before creation), and our eternal outflowing in distinction (through the Son as divine ideas), makes us so like God that He can eternally reflect Himself in us. We may appear “other” than God, but in the eternal Image (the Son), our likeness remains one with God. God sees Himself and all creation in this one eternal act of seeing – no before or after, just now. This eternal Image is both God’s own reflection and also our true self. We are made after this eternal Image and are called to go out from ourselves and return and unite with it in love and bliss, because it is our “proper life.”
The bosom of the Father is our ground and origin, from which we begin to exist. From the Father shines forth the eternal brightness, the Son, in whom the Father knows Himself and all that lives in Him. Everything in the Father, except His Fatherhood, remains unmanifested in Himself, yet is given to the Son and made manifest through Him. Our eternal Image remains hidden and wayless in the Father, but is revealed through the Son’s radiant Light. Those raised into the God-seeing life become one with this Divine Light, recognizing their uncreated essence as rooted in the same onefold ground. This leads them beyond created being, reason, and distinction into a contemplative union, where they are transfigured by and into the Divine Light itself.
God-seeing men follow the Eternal Image in which they were created, seeing God and all things, without distinction, in a simple seeing, in the Divine brightness. This is the noblest contemplation to which one can attain, leaving man master of himself and free. Each loving introversion increases his soul’s nobility beyond understanding. This gazing at the Divine Light lifts the soul beyond all virtue and merit. We now possess the reward after which we strive and participate in a heavenly life. Freed from earthly exile, the soul is more fully capable of receiving God’s brightness.
This path of contemplation is a transcendent “way above all ways,” where the soul is transformed in Divine radiance. In love, the soul goes out beyond itself, tasting God’s inexhaustible richness in a secret, inward union where it becomes like God.
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Chapter 4. When the inward, God-seeing person reaches their Eternal Image and enters the bosom of the Father through the Son, they continually receive the Eternal Birth in each moment, and are continually enlightened in a Divine contemplation. This is the final stage: a loving meeting, and our blessedness.
The Father, as the living ground, is always turned toward the Son (His Eternal Wisdom); and the Son, in turn, is always turned back toward the Father. Out of this mutual turning flows the Holy Spirit, their mutual love, who shares their nature. This love is so profound that all creation must remain silent before it, for it surpasses all understanding. Yet the soul that is above itself and is united with God sees without measure, as God does, the riches in the unity where it possesses itself according to its uncreated essence.
This rapturous union between Father and Son is continually renewed within us: the Father endlessly gives Himself to the Son, and the Son to the Father, in a perpetual exchange of love. Just as the Father forever beholds all things in the Son’s birth, so too are all things constantly loved anew by both Father and Son through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who embraces us in this eternal love.
This loving embrace is both fruitive and wayless. The abysmal waylessness of God is so unconditioned that it swallows up every Divine way and activity, as well as the attributes of the Persons, and brings about Divine fruition in the abyss of the Ineffable. Here the soul dies in fruition and dissolves into the pure, formless simplicity of God’s ineffable oneness, where all Divine names, images and distinctions lapse in waylessness and without reason. In the unfathomable abyss of divine simplicity, all distinctions fall away. Everything is gathered into fruitive bliss, an abyss that only the Essential Unity can comprehend. All that live in God, even the Persons of the Trinity, yield to this stillness where nothing remains but eternal rest in the outpouring of Love. This “wayless being” is what contemplative souls chose above all else -a dark, radiant silence where they lose themselves completely. To approach it, we must let go of everything and surrender to the vast, unknowable sea of God.
Ruysbroek ends his work with a prayer, “May we possess in fruition the essential Unity, and clearly behold unity in the Trinity; this may Divine Love, which turns no beggar away, bestow upon us. Amen.”
“The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage” by John van Ruysbroeck – Book 2 of 3.
In Book Two of the Adornment, Ruysbroek turns to the God-seeking man and his soul’s journey toward union with God. The point of departure is the story of the wise virgin awaiting the Bridegroom, Christ. The divine call to “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him,” represents illumination, virtuous action, and final union with God. Ruysbroek understands the soul as a threefold unity of 1) its essential connection to God, 2) the higher powers of memory, understanding, and will fostering spiritual life, and 3) the bodily powers sustaining physical life. Grace flows from the spirit’s unity with God, empowering the soul’s faculties, illuminating and freeing it from worldy distractions, and drawing it toward virtue, peace, and divine love. To arrive at an full understanding of this unity in the spirit, Ruysbroek proceeds by expanding the above quoted passage. The coming of the Bridegroom is marked by the threefold inward coming of Christ, the first of which is marked by four degrees. The final union is then meeting Him. The following is a summary of the entire work, followed by a chapter by chapter summary.
The first degree of Christ’s first inward coming into the soul is marked by a profound stirring of desire, drawing a person toward union with God. This divine influence works through the lower part of man, purging and transforming the heart and bodily powers while igniting a longing for virtue and spiritual perfection. Christ’s presence acts like the sun, enkindling and illuminating the heart and senses, fostering a fiery ardor that gathers all one’s powers into unity and inward peace. From this unity springs inwardness, allowing the soul to perceive its inner workings and God’s communications, leading to a deep, sensible love for God that prioritizes Him above all else. This love transforms into devotion, which moves the whole person to serve God and purifies body and soul. Devotion naturally leads to gratitude, expressed through desire, action, and service, and culminates in eternal praise. However, this inward journey also brings two forms of grief: one from a sense of inadequacy in thanking and serving God, and another from the struggle to grow in holiness. These griefs refine the soul and represent the highest effects of this degree of inward exercise. Through constant praise, humility, and the enduring fire of divine love, the soul produces spiritual fruits, just as sunlight draws forth growth in nature. This transformative process completes the first stage of the inward life, adorning the lowest part of man and preparing him for deeper union with Christ.
The second degree of Christ’s first inward coming is likened to the sun’s effect on ripening fruit, symbolizing Christ’s transformative influence on the heart. When the soul, having achieved the virtues of the first degree, fully offers its charity, pleasure, and peace back to God with thanksgiving, Christ enters anew with a profound influx of consolation and divine sweetness. This coming elevates the heart to a higher state, filling it with a joy and solace that surpass any earthly pleasure. The intensity of this divine embrace can overwhelm the heart, fostering an acute awareness of the misery of those who live apart from God’s love. This experience, often described as spiritual inebriation, brings an ecstatic delight that overflows the heart’s capacity, manifesting in spontaneous expressions of joy such as singing, weeping, or silent awe. The person responds to these gifts with humility, recognizing their unworthiness and the boundless goodness of God, which spurs growth into greater virtues. However, dangers accompany this state, represented by hoar-frost, symbolizing self-attachment and pride, and fog, representing complacency in spiritual sweetness. Both can obscure true understanding and hinder spiritual growth. To navigate these perils, the behavior of the bee serves as a guide. Just as a bee gathers resources from flowers without attachment, transforming them into honey and wax for the hive’s unity, the soul must approach spiritual gifts with discretion, integrating them into a unified devotion focused entirely on God. This ensures that fleeting sweetness does not distract from the eternal union with God, completing this second degree of inward working.
The third degree of Christ’s first inward coming is described as the soul’s intense longing and striving for unity with Christ, which transcends all earthly or spiritual consolations. At this stage, the soul no longer seeks any comfort other than Christ Himself. Christ draws the heart and soul towards Him, causing an open wound of love that, while painful, is also sweet. This love is transformative, drawing the soul ever closer to God, but it also brings restlessness, as the soul cannot yet fully attain the union it desires. The inner pain intensifies, as the soul is agitated by the fierce longing for God, with no earthly or heavenly consolation providing relief. The soul is exiled from the divine and may even long to escape the body and be united with Christ. Amid this fervor, the soul may experience ecstasies or divine revelations. These moments, whether through visions, raptures, or jubilant joy, are fleeting glimpses of the Divine that lift the soul beyond the senses. But such experiences should be measured against Scripture and spiritual truth to avoid deception. While some may be misled by false spiritual experiences, those grounded in faith will discern the difference and stay true to the path. However, this stage also carries dangers. The intensity of divine love can lead to spiritual and physical suffering, resembling the extreme heat of summer, which withers both the body and the soul’s peace. At times, the soul may experience brief moments of sweetness, but the overall intensity of love causes continued inner pain. There is also the risk of being deceived by false sweetness, similar to honey-dew that spoils fruit in the heat of summer. This deception can present itself as spiritual nourishment, but it corrupts the soul if not recognized for what it truly is. Those who are vigilant and well-grounded in spiritual practices will be able to resist such deception and maintain the integrity of their journey. The soul must persevere through this spiritual heat, much like the ant in the parable. The ant, diligent and patient, works through hardship, storing up provisions for the future. Similarly, the soul must endure, focusing on God’s glory and cultivating virtues. By staying steadfast and avoiding distractions, the soul will ultimately ascend towards the divine, just as the ant eventually takes flight.
The fourth degree of Christ’s first inward coming is symbolized by the transition of the sun into Virgo, which represents a time of unfruitfulness and spiritual desolation. As the soul experiences a withdrawal of God’s presence, it feels abandoned, losing the vibrant love and joy it once had. This stage may involve external hardships and temptations, testing the individual’s perseverance and faith as they endure spiritual poverty and isolation. In response, the soul must completely surrender to God’s will. It should accept both suffering and joy with equanimity, offering everything for God’s glory. This resignation, symbolized by the sun in Libra, leads to spiritual maturity, turning all experiences into spiritual fruits that endure eternally. However, a danger arises when spiritual fervor cools, as complacency and neglect of virtue can diminish the soul’s appetite for virtue and divine truth, leading to spiritual illness. Attachment to material possessions further obstructs spiritual growth, inflating desires that block God’s grace and vitality, like dropsy does to the body. If the soul can detach from these worldly concerns, it may overcome this hindrance and continue to grow. The soul is also in danger of four types of spiritual “fevers” that impede spiritual progress: the Quotidian Fever (restlessness), the Fever of Fickleness (inconsistency), the Quartan Fever (estrangement from God), and the Double Quartan Fever (indifference). These spiritual ailments arise from neglecting inner life and detaching from God, and overcoming them requires self-awareness, humility, and a focus on God to maintain spiritual health.
Christ’s life exemplifies these four degrees, serving as the perfect model for all who seek union with God. In the first degree, Christ embodies oneness and inwardness, uniting all virtues within Himself as the Father’s Only Begotten Son. The second degree is characterized by overflowing love and grace, as Christ’s heart overflows with mercy, gentleness, humility, and generosity, drawing all people toward Him. The third degree, inclination toward glory and beatitude, marks Christ’s natural and supernatural desire for the highest glory, though He willingly remained in exile until the appointed time. In the fourth degree, humility, suffering, and redemption, Christ humbles Himself, enduring extreme suffering and forsakenness to redeem humanity. His ultimate sacrifice leads to His exaltation and eternal glory at the right hand of the Father. Only when one aligns one’s heart and actions in this way, bears all difficulties with patience and offers gratitude to God in all circumstance, is one ready for divine illuminiation.
With his discussion of the first inward coming of Christ completed, Ruysbroek next turns to the second. This coming is marked by a profound spiritual transformation as the soul receives grace poured into its higher powers followed by their return to God. Ruysbroek uses the metaphor of a fountain pouring water into three rills like grace illuminating the soul’s three faculties. The first rill of grace purifies the soul’s memory and creates simplicity, allowing the soul to focus on divine unity. This grace raises the soul above multiplicity and distractions, freeing the memory from distractions and fickleness. Through this simplicity, the person is called to go out of themselves and is established in the unity of spirit where the memory becomes fixed on the “nudity” of divine unity, above all multiplicity and distractions of sensible images. This essential and supernatural unity of spirit becomes their dwelling place, eternal heritage, and a point of eternal loving union in the bond of the Holy Spirit, Father, and Son, together with all the saints.
The second rill of grace illuminates the intellect, helping the enlightened person discern virtues and mysteries of the faith. It arises from the unity of the spirit through God’s inward charity to illuminate the understanding. This illumination enables the soul to discern between virtues. This light, always within us but not under our control, is revealed or concealed by God according to His will. Enlightened individuals, operating in this light, do not rely on external revelations but perceive God’s will directly from within, even gaining insight into unknown or future events when divinely inspired. Christ calls such individuals to examine their lives and compare them to His, both in His human and divine natures. The soul contemplates the attributes of God: His Simplicity, Oneness, incomprehensible Dimensions, dark Silence, and the eternal Rest of the saints in the Unity. The enlightened man perceives the Trinity’s attributes distinctly: the Father as Omnipotent Creator and Origin of all; the Son as Wisdom, Truth, and Enlightenment; and the Holy Spirit as Love, Mercy, and the Flame uniting all things in God. These attributes, while distinct, are perceived in the simple nature of the Godhead and marvelously shared between God and creation. The soul, filled with wonder at God’s universal generosity and incomprehensible richness, finds profound joy, trust, and gladness.
The third rill enkindles the will with spiritual love and leads to every perfection. Flowing from the unity of spirit like a consuming fire, this rill enkindles the will, filling all the soul’s powers with effortless spiritual love. Christ now calls the soul to “go out” with love according to the gifts of his second coming: the first rill has elevated the memory above distractions and grounded it in spiritual unity; the second rill has enlightened the understanding and enabled the discernment of virtues and divine mysteries; and the third rill has enkindled the will with love and spiritual richness, leading to enlightenment. God’s grace, acting like a fountainhead in the unity of the spirit, flows out into the soul’s powers and virtues but demands a return to its Source, maintaining the cycle of divine outpouring and re-absorption.
Ruysbroeck outlines four ways the enlightened person “goes out” with love and generosity. The first going-out is towards God and the saints. Here, the enlightened man observes the continuous cycle of giving and receiving between God and His creatures. He realizes that while no finite spirit can love God according to His infinite worth, this recognition leads to a profound delight and unity in divine love. Enriched by God’s abundance, the man distributes glory and gifts to all angelic choirs and heavenly hierarchies. The second going-out is towards sinners. The enlightened man descends with compassion and intercedes for them through fervent prayer, aligning himself with God’s will and trusting in His goodness. This love extends universally to all humanity, including unbelievers, that God’s glory and joy might spread to the ends of the earth. The third going-out is towards souls in purgatory. Here, the enlightened man prays for these souls with deep compassion, pleading for God’s mercy on their behalf. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he sometimes feels an intense urge to pray for specific souls, experiencing a spiritual confirmation when his prayers are heard. The fourth going-out is towards himself and all good men. The enlightened man, recognizing his unity with others in love, prays for God’s customary gifts to confirm them in love and eternal worship. Acting as a mediator, he teaches, reproves, and serves others with humility and discretion. Turning inward, he rests in the unity of spirit, finding peace in God’s ultimate Unity, the resting place of all spirits.
However, there are those who fail in true charity and spiritual enlightenment. These can be identified by three signs: First, such individuals lack simplicity and stability, experiencing restlessness and complex thoughts instead of the inward unity that comes without images. Second, their teachings are barren, marked by spiritual pride and a focus on external matters, leading others astray. Third, they exhibit isolation and self-importance, craving admiration and neglecting justice, humility, and generosity. Rather, self-awareness and gentle correction over harsh judgment will preserve the heart’s openness to Divine truth. Christ is the ultimate model of a universal love that benefits all who seek salvation. Christ’s mission, while initially directed to the “lost sheep of Israel,” ultimately extends to all chosen souls. Christ’s life, death, ministry, and gifts were entirely for the benefit of others, reflecting His perfect loyalty to the Father and His infinite love for humanity. His glory and merits, shared in eternity, remain the ultimate redemption and salvation for all.
The third in inward coming of Christ is the most profound. It is a divine touch which occurs within the depths of the spirit, where God dwells and all powers are gathered in unity. It is likened to a duct feeding the fountain which then flows into the three rills which are the grace of God flowing into the higher faculties, inspiring virtue, and then returning to the unity of the spirit from which it originates. This grace springs from God’s infinite richness, manifesting in a perpetual outpouring of faithfulness and love. Within this unity, the soul is passive, transcending all virtues, as God alone acts in His goodness. This touch is a direct act of God, beyond reason’s comprehension, an influx of all graces proceeding from the incomprehensible brightness of the Trinity. Here, God reigns within the spirit, and the spirit abides within God.
Through this divine touch, Christ calls the soul to act in harmony with its experience, drawing it into the most profound practices possible in created light. The spirit, moved by love, ascends beyond all actions to the unity from which the touch originates. Here, understanding strives to know God in His brilliance, and love seeks to enjoy Him without intermediary. Yet reason falters before the overwhelming radiance of the Supernal Brightness, which blinds all created understanding. Despite this, the spirit is continuously beckoned to explore this mystery, but it ultimately concludes that it cannot grasp the divine touch, for it belongs entirely to God’s infinite nature. While reason halts at the threshold, love, blind and driven by yearning, presses onward, tasting the fulfillment that lies beyond understanding. This awakens an insatiable hunger in the spirit, a yearning for the Uncreated Good that can never be fully satisfied in a created vessel. The more the soul experiences God’s touch, the greater its longing becomes, a perpetual hunger that transcends reason and understanding. This eternal yearning reflects the boundless capacity of the spirit to grow in love and desire for God. In this dynamic relationship, God touches the soul, and the soul responds, creating a mutual yearning and a loving struggle. Each spirit demands all of the other, offering all of itself in return, until their love becomes one simple, overflowing fountain of divine communion. In this state, the soul forgets itself and even God, knowing only love and becoming entirely consumed in it.
This love, the root of all virtues, resides at the core of the soul’s being, uniting all creaturely actions in their origin and end. Touched by God’s incomprehensible brightness and boundless love, the spirit becomes fruitful in virtue. It enters a heavenly cycle: consumed by love, it empties itself entirely, only to rise again to fresh endeavors. This cycle of divine love, born of grace and love, surpasses all works, uniting charity and virtue in an eternal flow back to God. It is the highest spiritual exercise possible in created light, enduring in grace and culminating in the eternal union of love with God.
Ruysbroek closes this work in chapters 56 to 67 by revisiting the central themes of Christ’s call to attentiveness and His inward coming, which occurs in three distinct ways. The first of these has four degrees, each requiring specific practices in response to God’s movement. The ultimate goal is the final meeting and union with Christ, the Bridegroom, representing the culmination of all spiritual efforts. This union is a mutual encounter, where Christ descends to meet the soul, and the soul ascends to meet Christ. This essential meeting between the spirit and God occurs in the nakedness, without intermediaries and above all created gifts and above all likeness. In its essence, the spirit continuously receives Christ directly and reflects God’s eternal image. This union is sustained by God alone as the spirit rests in Him, and possesses and is possessed by the Holy Trinty. The soul loses itself in God’s being, finding eternal blessedness before returning through the eternal birth of the Son. The spirit is impressed by God’s archetype, like a flawless mirror, maintaining its connection with Him. The spirit’s union with is the source of the transformation of its higher powers and the foundation of its holiness and blessedness: Christ enters the soul through grace, while the soul responds through virtues, and this reciprocal dynamic elevates the spirit, deepens its union with God and transforms it into the divine likeness. Damned souls, on the other hand, lack grace, remain in darkness and are unable to unite with God, while the faithful are drawn ever closer to Him through this transformative process. But for the God-seeking man, God continually visits his spirit’s unity with constant renewals, as Christ desires the soul to dwell uninterrupted in this divine unity. The Holy Ghost bestows His gifts through the divine birth, Christ’s inward coming, and the soul responds by aligning its works and intentions with God. The soul directs all its effort with a single, pure intention to meet God. This intention unifies the scattered powers of the spirit and aligns every action with divine love. It embodies faith, hope, and charity, fostering inner peace and clarity of purpose. This simplicity of intention enhances virtues, cleanses sin, and prepares the soul for its ultimate rest in God.
Chapter 63 is an excursion into how the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit guide and perfect the virtues in a soul, leading to a deeper likeness to God and ultimate union with Him. Each gift contributes uniquely to this transformative journey: 1) Fear of the Lord instills reverence and obedience, aligning the soul with God’s will through simplicity of intention and faithfulness. This fosters rest in God beyond mere outward resemblance. 2) Piety encourages the soul to act with gentleness, mercy, and meekness, cultivating virtues that deepen likeness to God and enhance the soul’s rest and fulfillment in Him. 3) Knowledge provides discernment to recognize and avoid actions contrary to virtue. The gift brings clarity and anchors the soul in the likeness of the Holy Trinity, ensuring virtuous living free from error. 4) Strength moves the soul from external practices to the inner truth of God, freeing it from earthly attachments. It fosters steadfastness, inner recollection, and the ability to transcend all for the sake of God’s love. 5) Counsel awakens a restless yearning for God above all else, leading to self-abandonment and total submission to God’s will. This gift deepens freedom, love, and joyful surrender, even in suffering, aligning the soul perfectly with God’s purposes. 6) Understanding illuminates the spirit with divine truth, fostering simplicity, unity, and universal love. It enables the soul to perceive God’s attributes, the richness of creation, and the eternal realities, all while living in active charity and restful union with God. 7) Wisdom perfects the soul’s love and union with God, making it wholly united with Him in eternal fruitfulness. This gift allows the soul to live in harmony with the divine essence, sharing God’s simplicity, clarity, and universal love. This journey involves humility, reverence, gratitude, intercession, mercy, and generosity, mirroring the divine attributes. Through these gifts, the soul transitions from outward forms to inward truth, resting in God while actively loving all creation in His light. The closer the soul aligns with God’s essence of simplicity, clarity, and love, the deeper its union and fruitfulness.
Finally, Ruysbroek turns to the heights of the most interior spiritual life and the practices that lead to union with God, and he describes how the Immeasurable Splendour of God penetrates and transfigures the human spirit in a way beyond comprehension. The spirit immerses itself in the Uncomprehended Light, experiencing a fathomless fruitive rest that can only be known through direct experience. Any attempt to comprehend this state would impose limitations, disrupting the infinite nature of this rest. In a simple, loving immersion, the soul enters an abysmal love where the abyss of God calls to the abyss of the soul. This divine influx enfolds the spirit in such profound love that it becomes lost to itself, flowing into the infinite darkness of the Godhead. In this union, without intermediaries, the spirit eternally meets and possesses God, sharing in the joy of eternal bliss. This is experienced in three ways. The first way, often called the way of emptiness, involves a deep inward turning of the soul, transcending all actions and virtues to focus solely on love’s fruition. In this practice, the soul encounters God directly without intermediaries. The simple light of Divine Unity reveals profound mysteries: in darkness, the soul loses its way in the immensity of divine mystery; in nakedness, it is stripped of all discernment and penetrated by a simple, divine light; and in nothingness, all activity ceases as the soul is overwhelmed by God’s abysmal love. This experience lifts the soul above all activity and virtues, filling it with divine delights and riches. It brings a sense of immovable interior peace, free from distraction or interference. The second way is the way of longing, where the soul turns to God with ardent desire and active love. This longing is ignited by Savouring Wisdom, a divine gift that stirs an insatiable hunger for God. In this state, the soul empties itself completely in love, surrendering all its works and desires to God. Each touch of God renews and deepens the soul’s longing, causing it to die to itself and live anew in love. This way of longing is more fruitful than the first, as love is the source and sustainer of union with God. Without active love, divine rest cannot be attained or maintained, and attachment to anything other than God becomes a hindrance to this union. The third way combines the previous two, uniting action and fruition in a harmonious balance. In this state, the soul lives wholly in both work and rest, responding to God’s call to continually renew its virtues while remaining immersed in fruitive rest. The soul becomes like a double mirror, receiving God’s gifts while also engaging the world through love and virtue. Although human instability may lead to distractions or minor failings, these are consumed in divine love during moments of inward turning. This balance of work and rest represents the supreme summit of the inward life, where the soul progresses toward God in eternal activity while resting fruitively in His presence. In this union, the soul dwells fully in God, extending universal love and virtue to all creatures while sharing in the bliss of divine union.
In the last two chapters, Ruysbroek exposes those who appear righteous but live contrary to the virtues necessary for union with God. Lacking divine love and enlightenment, they turn inward, seeking rest in themselves and outward things, which leads to various errors. One such error is a false natural rest, where people empty themselves of activity but lack the inward touch of God. This deceptive state fosters spiritual pride and blindness, contrasting with supernatural rest found in divine union. Similarly, self-directed natural love leads to self-indulgence, as individuals seek consolation for personal gain rather than turning to God in charity. This love isolates the soul and perpetuates sins inherited from Adam’s fall, in contrast to the virtues exemplified by the Virgin Mary, who conquered pride, avarice, gluttony, and lust through humility and self-renunciation. Another error is the unrighteous life of bare vacancy, where people reject virtue and divine commandments, considering themselves above the Church and free from sin. They indulge bodily desires and live without charity or likeness to God. Similarly, “God-passive” individuals falsely attribute all their actions to God’s will, believing they cannot sin. This belief leads to grave deception, as true union with God requires active love, virtue, and cooperation, not passive idleness or self-deception. In contrast, Christ embodies the perfect life of union with God, balancing fruitive rest and active love. Through humility, virtue, and charity, the soul encounters God, flows outward in love, and returns inward in peace. This eternal union with God reflects the harmony of divine likeness, inviting us to live in righteousness and love. May God’s grace guide us to this blessed state. Amen.
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The following is a map of Book Two of The Adornment. Following the passage “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him,” Ruysbroek structures the work as follows:
The first point, “Behold,” is discussed in the prologue and chapters 1-4.
The second and third points are “The Bridegroom cometh, Go ye out.” This is the inward coming of Christ and it is discussed in chapters 5-55. This coming is three-fold: the first is covered in chapters 5 and 8-34, the second in chapters 6 and 35-50, and the third in chapters 7 and 51-55. The first ways has four degrees. These are discussed, respectively, in chapters 8-16, 17-21, 22-27 and 28-32. Ruysbroek counts Christ’s inward coming as two points because there is a statement “The Bridegroom cometh” and a command “Go ye out”, the former being God’s inflowing and and the latter is our outflowing.
The fourth point, “to meet Him,” is the last point and is covered in chapters 56-65.
The last two chapters, 66-67, are dedicated to exposing those who appear to be living righteously, but are false.
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In the Prologue, the wise virgin, representing the pure soul, has devoted herself to God by forsaking worldly things and living a virtuous life. She has filled the vessel of her heart with the oil of charity and godly deeds, guided by the light of an unsullied conscience. However, when Christ, the Bridegroom, delays in sending His consolations and renewing His gifts, the soul may become drowsy and inattentive. At an unexpected hour, a spiritual call arises within the soul: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes; go out to meet Him.”
In this call, we discern four essential teachings. First, Christ desires our understanding to be illuminated by supernatural light, as indicated by the word “Behold.” Second, He reveals what we are to perceive: the inward arrival of the Bridegroom, who is the Eternal Truth. Third, He instructs us to undertake inner exercises of righteousness, embodied in the command “Go ye out.” Finally, He highlights the ultimate goal: the meeting with our Bridegroom Christ in the unifying presence of the Godhead.
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Chapter 1 addresses the first point: Christ commands us to “Behold.” To achieve supernatural vision in our inward exercises, one must cultivate three essential elements:
The Light of Divine Grace: This light must be of a higher degree than what we experience in our external, active lives. It transcends the ordinary and requires profound inward diligence.
The Removal of Distractions: We must cleanse the heart of all distracting images and attachments. This process involves becoming free from external influences and emptying ourselves of all creaturely attachments.
The Turning of Our Will: We need to direct our will and gather all our bodily and spiritual powers, purging them of any disordered affections. This allows the will to merge with the unity of God and align with the divine mind, enabling us to experience the highest unity of God in a supernatural way.
God created everything, including heaven and earth, for this purpose. He became man, taught us, lived for our sake, and became the Way to unity. Through His death and ascension, He opened the path to this unity, offering us the potential for eternal bliss.
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Chapter 2 explores the threefold unity present in every person by nature and how it is enhanced through supernatural means.
Firstly, the highest unity is found in God, the essential source of all creation and life. This unity is fundamental and exists regardless of our actions but does not make us holy or blessed on its own. Without it, we cease being.
Secondly, there is the unity of the higher powers, the memory, understanding and will. This originates from the unity of mind or spirit and stands above our senses, from which emerge the higher powers. These differ in that the latter is active, whereas the former is essential. In this unity the soul is called spirit.
Thirdly, the unity in our bodily powers is rooted in the heart, which energizes all physical activities and senses. This unity sustains our physical life.
These three unities function as a single life and kingdom within us. In the lowest we are animal, in the middle we are spiritual, and in the highest we are essential. The first is supernaturally adorned by the moral virtues, by charity and outward works in the active life. The second is more gloriously adorned by the divine virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, by inward exercises and a spiritual life. And the third is most gloriously adorned by a contemplative life, beyond human comprehension.
The soul prepares for a deeper God-desiring life by directing all actions and intentions toward God’s glory, surrendering with humble patience and trust. In doing so, the soul becomes like a vessel ready to receive God’s grace, resting in Him beyond all intentions and desires.
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Chapter 3 discusses the inflow of God’s grace into our spirit.
From the unity where our spirit is united with God without intermediary, grace flows into us. Christ, the Eternal Light of the Father without whom there is no light, says “Behold”, and His speaking is the inrush of His light into us. This grace enters our higher powers and spirit, empowering them to become active in all virtue, and to return to God.
The unity of our spirit is the beginning and end of all natural and supernatural works performed by the creature’s own strength and by the grace poured by God into this unity. Above all, He gives His very self to this unity which is our dwelling-place, so that we live a life of simplicity in His peace and charity. Grace is an inward force of the Holy Spirit, and moves our spirit towards virtue. It works from within outwards, for God is more intimate to us than our own inner workings. In contrast, creatures work from without inwards by means of sensible images through the imagination.
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Chapter 4 explores how to establish an inward life based on three elements – divine grace, unity of spirit and freedom from images.
Christ says to the inward looking man, “Behold.” To experience this in one’s inward exercises, three key elements are necessary. First, there is the grace of God which, like a candle in a lantern, illuminates the righteous man. This becomes manifest to him if he is inwardly attentive, and through him to others as virtues. This grace is the swift movement which first brings him to inward sight. From this springs the second element, a gathering together of all inward and outward powers into the unity of the spirit. The third element is freedom from images. A person must be able to turn inward without hindrance from sensible images. This means being indifferent to joys and sorrows, gains and losses, or any strange cares, and remaining detached from any creature. These three elements form the foundation for a true inward life.
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Chapter 5 addresses the three-fold coming of Christ into the inward man.
Even with clear sight, a person needs a worthy and desirable object to make that sight meaningful. So, Christ reveals to those with enlightened understanding what they will behold: His inward coming. This coming occurs in three distinct ways, each enhancing the depth of the inward life.
The first way involves Christ urging the inward feeling. This divine influence pulls a man towards heaven and calls for union with God. It affects the heart and the unity of bodily powers, particularly the desire, and works in the lower part of man which must be wholly purged and adorned. The changes it brings causes hope and despair, happiness and sadness, and other contraries that are challenging to articulate.
This first coming operates through four distinct degrees, each progressively deeper, shaping and purifying the lower part of the person involved in the inward life.
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Chapter 6 describes the second way Christ comes inwardly, characterized by greater nobility and radiance. This coming involves the outpouring of Divine gifts into the higher powers of the soul, which strengthens, enlightens, and enriches the spirit. In this process, the soul receives abundant divine riches and is called to return these gifts to their Source. This exchange is marked by an intense and profound experience of divine wonders, which surpasses anything achievable by mere creatures. This second coming is more elevated and divine than the first, adorning the three higher powers of the soul (memory, will, intellect) with a more profound spiritual richness.
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Chapter 7 addresses the third and most profound way Christ comes inwardly. This coming involves a deep stirring or touch within the unity of the spirit, where the higher powers of the soul reside. Here, the soul flows forth and returns, remaining united with God in bonds of love. This represents the highest and most interior state of the inward life, adorning the unity of the spirit in numerous ways.
In each of these inward comings, Christ requires a corresponding going out of ourselves which accords with His coming, urging us to align our lives with the way His grace directs us. We must progress according to how the Spirit of God moves us, or else we risk losing the inward inspiration and the virtues that accompany it.
The chapter concludes by noting that understanding these three comings requires personal experience. Each coming will be explored in detail, and those unfamiliar with these experiences may find them challenging to grasp.
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Chapter 8 further elaborates on the first coming of Christ in the exercise of desire, which involves an inward urging from the Holy Ghost towards all virtues. This coming can be compared to the sun, which, from the moment it rises, illuminates, warms, and affects the world. Similarly, Christ, the eternal Sun, shines upon the lowest part of man-the fleshly heart and the senses-enlightening and enkindling them in an instant.
The effect of this coming is experienced differently depending on one’s spiritual elevation. Just as the sun has varying effects on different regions-bringing early summer and fruitful harvests to higher lands, while producing less impact in colder, lower regions-so does Christ’s influence vary. Those who dwell in higher, more spiritual realms, with a gathered and uplifted heart, experience the full warmth and illumination of Christ’s presence. Conversely, those focused on external virtues and moral work might see some fruits but less of the inward joy and consolation.
To fully experience this inward coming, one must cultivate a free and uplifted heart, detached from earthly joys and sorrows, allowing Christ to shine fully upon it. This first coming of Christ in the exercise of desire is characterized by its fiery ardor, which enkindles every heart that is ready and open.
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Chapter 9 focuses on the concept of unity of heart. This unity springs from the fiery ardor which transforms the person to be like it. It is an ardor without which we could never achieve true unity, and is experienced as a gathering together of all one’s powers in one’s heart. It is a bond which draws together body and soul, heart and senses, inner and outer powers, and results in inward peace and restfulness
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Chapter 10 explores the concept of inwardness, which emerges from unity of heart. Inwardness means the person is turned inwards to his heart so he can understand his inner workings and divine communications. It is a sensible fire of love ignited by the Spirit of God, which drives a person from within without knowing its origins or what has happened to him.
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Chapter 11 delves into the concept of sensible love, which arises from inwardness. Sensible love is a deep, yearning affection that fills the heart and the soul’s desire, allowing one to experience the delight of God as the ultimate good. The person forsakes all creatures regarding pleasure, but not regarding need. It is a strong inner movement driven by Eternal Love, causing the person to cherish and prioritize this divine love above all else, willingly renouncing other things to attain it.
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Chapter 12 discusses how devotion arises from sensible love for God. Devotion is sensible love directing its desire towards God. It moves a man both from within and without to serve God and it ennobles body and soul before God and man. Devotion is essential in all acts of service to God, and it purifies the soul and body by removing any hindrances to spiritual progress. Ultimately, devotion guides one to blessedness.
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Chapter 13 discusses how inward devotion leads to gratitude. The truly devout person, filled with inward love for God, is best equipped to thank and praise Him. Gratitude is due to God for creating us, for making heaven, earth, and angels to serve us, and for becoming man to save us from sin. God’s gifts to us include His teachings, His sacrifice, His promise of eternal life, and His continual presence through grace, sacraments, and the Eucharist. We should also thank Him for giving us nature and the scriptures as a mirror in which we can see ourselves and turn to virtue, for giving us health and even the occasional sickness for our edification, for establishing inward peace and happiness, and for giving us Christian parents and names.
We should express gratitude and praise through every aspect of our lives-desire, action, words, and service-both outwardly and inwardly. This praise of God, which begins on earth, will continue eternally as our ultimate joy and fulfillment.
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Chapter 14 explores two kinds of grief that arise from deep, inward gratitude and praise. The first type of grief emerges from a sense of inadequacy in our efforts to thank, praise, and serve God. This feeling of falling short in our devotion causes inner turmoil. The second grief stems from our recognition that we are not growing as much in charity, virtue, and faith as we would like. This lack of progress in personal holiness and perfect conduct leads to a deep sense of dissatisfaction.
These two forms of grief are fundamental to the development of inward virtues. They represent the the beginning and end of the spiritual journey. This grief is considered the highest effect of the first degree of inward exercise and signifies its complete perfection.
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Chapter 15 uses a similitude to illustrate how we should practice the first degree of inward exercise. Just as natural fire causes water or another liquid to bubble and stir continuously, the inward fire of the Holy Ghost works in the soul. This divine fire stirs and motivates the heart and all the soul’s powers, leading them to continually thank and praise God. Even after reaching a state of fervent praise, one must remain humble, continually seeking to do more while recognizing the smallness of one’s own efforts compared to the greatness of what is desired. Thus, the heart remains in constant, fervent praise and lowliness, driven by the ever-burning fire of divine love.
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Chapter 16 uses another similitude to describe the effects of the first degree of inward exercise. As summer and the sun draw moisture from the earth into trees, leading to foliage, flowers, and fruit, so does Christ, the Eternal Sun, bring about spiritual growth in the heart. When Christ’s light and heat rise within us, they draw the heart away from earthly distractions and foster unity and inwardness. This divine influence leads to the development of inward love, ardent devotion, and the fruits of thanksgiving and praise. These fruits, marked by humble grief over shortcomings, are meant to endure eternally.
This chapter concludes the first of the four key degrees of inward working that adorn the lowest part of man.
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Chapter 17 describes the second degree of inward exercise, likening it to the sun’s effect on ripening and increasing fruit. As the sun, when it rises high and enters the sign of Gemini, influences nature to draw moisture from the earth, leading to increased and multiplied fruits, so does Christ, the divine Sun, impact our hearts.
When Christ rises above all things in our hearts, when our bodily nature has been set in order, when we have achieved the virtues of the first degree, and when all our charity, pleasure and peace found in these virtues have been devoted back to God with thanksgiving, then there arises a new influx of inward consolation and divine sweetness, making the virtues double if we don’t hinder their growth. This is a new coming of Christ into the loving heart that lifts man to a yet higher state. Christ then says: Go ye out according to the way of this coming.
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Chapter 18 describes how the sweetness of divine consolation leads to a profound well-being in both the heart and bodily powers. This divine delight is more fulfilling than any earthly pleasure. It envelops the heart in a deep embrace of God’s love, causing an overflow of joy and solace. This experience makes one understand the misery of those who live outside of this divine love, as the intensity of this inward joy is so overwhelming that it can make the heart feel as though it cannot contain itself.
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Chapter 19 explores spiritual inebriation, a state of intense joy and delight that surpasses the heart’s capacity to contain or desire. This state can manifest in various outward behaviors: singing, weeping, restlessness, clapping one’s hands, dancing, crying out with joy or melting away in silence. Some feel that everyone can experience this joy, while others think that only they can. Yet others think that this state will never be lost, or wonder why not everyone would want to become God-desiring, or what nature these delights may be. This rapturous life is the most ecstatic experience our bodies can attain, and it leads to such an intense sense of joy that one feels as if their heart might break. For all these gifts, the person will thank the Lord with a humble heart, acknowledging his unworthiness and his need for God’s boundless goodness. Such humility leads him to yet higher virtues.
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Chapter 20 addresses the potential hindrances to spiritual inebriation. Even if this coming and this degree are granted to such men, and even if their conversion is complete and they are solely God’s, they may still be feeble and needy. Like new shoots of plants in spring, they are susceptible to dangers:
Hoar-Frost: This represents the danger of being attached to one’s self, believing that you earned these consolations and are worthy of them.
Fog: This symbolizes the temptation to rest complacently in the sweetness of spiritual experiences. Such a fixation can obscure true understanding, leading to a false sense of contentment and potentially guiding one astray with deceptive comforts offered by the devil.
These hindrances can weaken or destroy the virtues cultivated, and thus must be vigilantly avoided to maintain one’s spiritual journey.
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Chapter 21 uses the behavior of the bee to illustrate how one should handle spiritual inebriation and divine gifts wisely. Just as a bee lives in unity within the hive and gathers resources from various flowers without becoming attached to any single one, a person should approach spiritual gifts with attention, reason, and discretion. The bee does not rest on any flower but transforms what it collects into honey and wax, contributing to the hive’s unity and productivity. Similarly, one should not fixate on individual spiritual experiences but rather integrate them into a unified devotion, continually returning to God with gratitude and praise. This approach ensures that one maintains focus on the eternal union with God, rather than being distracted by the fleeting sweetness of specific gifts.
This analogy illustrates the second degree of inward working.
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Chapter 22 describes the third degree of the spiritual coming of Christ by drawing an analogy with the sun’s movement and its effects. Just as the sun, when it reaches the zenith and stands in the sign of Cancer, brings the fiercest heat of the year and causes the earth to dry and fruits to ripen, so too, when Christ, the Divine Sun, rises to the highest point in our hearts, surpassing all gifts and consolations, He draws all our powers and desires towards Himself. At this stage, the soul no longer seeks or is swayed by spiritual consolations but yearns directly for Christ.
The third degree of inward exercise arises when the heart would rather forgo all consolations and gifts that it may be united with Him Whom it loves. Christ initiates this by drawing the heart, the desires and all the soul’s powers towards unity with Him. He spiritually calls us: Go you out of yourselves. This inward drawing is more joyful than any other experience and it readies the heart to fulfill what is demanded by God and by His unity. The heart is opened so widely that it can never be completely closed again, causing a profound wound of love. This wound, while painful, is also sweet, as it is a sign of deep spiritual healing and renewal. Christ shines into the wound and open heart and calls it to oneness again.
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Chapter 23 delves into the profound pain and restlessness experienced in the third degree. This state arises when, despite the soul’s elevation and its complete offering of itself, it is unable to attain the unity with God that it desires. This inner wound of love, caused by an insatiable yearning and the inability to achieve the desired unity, leads to intense spiritual pain. As Christ, the Divine Sun, reaches the zenith of the heart, His rays penetrate the deepest desires, consuming the soul’s strength and causing perpetual pain.
In this state, both external and internal agitation ensue, as the soul cannot find solace in anything earthly or heavenly. The heart, fiercely illuminated by Christ’s divine light, suffers from a restlessness that no creature can alleviate. This inner tumult often inspires sublime thoughts and profound wisdom but also fuels an intense, almost irrational, impatience. This fury of love, more intense than any previous stage, consumes the soul and hastens the ripening of virtues.
In the natural world, this period is marked by the sun’s entry into the sign of Leo, symbolizing fierceness. Similarly, when Christ’s rays blaze with such intensity, the heart’s blood boils with fervent desire. This fierceness prevails over all ways and works, for it wills to be wayless and without manner. The soul might even experiences a yearning to be freed from the physical body to unite with Christ.
In this state, the soul glimpses the heavenly glory and longs deeply for what it lacks, often leading to outward tears and profound sorrow in his exile. These tears, while soothing, also reflect the soul’s intense longing and its struggle to endure in virtue despite its suffering.
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Chapter 24 explores the nature of ecstasies and divine revelations that can occur when individuals are consumed by intense ardor and impatience in their spiritual journey. Such fervor can lift individuals beyond their sensory experiences into a realm where divine truths are revealed. Bodily images are perceived through the imagination and may be delivered by an angel, while intellectual or spiritual revelations are received through the understanding, and can sometimes be articulated with difficulty. Sometimes, a man is drawn above himself into the Incomprehensible Good, where they experience and direct encounter with the Divine. This is a rapture in which one is carried away, and it is called Raptus. In this state, the traditional senses of seeing and hearing merge into a singular, undivided experience. These moments are sudden spiritual glimpse, like a flash of lightning, and are entirely the work of God.
Other instances God acts through means and an intense light enters the soul resulting in an overwhelming joy that bursts forth in jubilant cries. It is called Jubilus. This is a joy so profound that one cannot contain oneself but must go out with opened heart to meet this light. In contrast, those who remain in the state of outward multiplicity and have not been deeply touched by love, may experience dreams or inspirations, but without the intense inner tumult. These experiences can be natural or divinely inspired but should be measured against Holy Scripture and truth to avoid deception. Trust in such experiences should be cautious and grounded in the validation of spiritual and scriptural truth.
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Chapter 25 illustrates the challenges and dangers faced by those who are immersed in the fervor of divine love. This period, analogous to the unhealthy dog-days of summer when the sun is in the sign of the Lion, is marked by intense heat and its detrimental effects on the natural world, causing withering plants, dying fish, and illness in people. But this doesn’t depend on the sun only, but on the corruption of the land in which the sun’s rays land. Similarly, in the state of spiritual impatience, the intense divine rays and the inner fervor of love can become overwhelming. Just as the sun’s heat exacerbates natural decay, the fierce ardor of divine love can lead to deep distress and suffering.
In this state, the intensity of love’s fire can cause such impatience and suffering that, if the man becomes fixed on his wounded heart and on Him Whom he loves, his distress grows without ceasing, akin to a woman in labor who struggles to give birth, but can’t. He shrivels in his bodily nature even as a tree withers in a hot country. Such individuals may feel as though they are perishing from this excessive love, yet they might enter heaven without passing through purgatory due to the purifying nature of their suffering. As long as he bears good fruit, he should not be uprooted.
Sometimes, amidst this turmoil, the soul may experience moments of divine sweetness and bliss, similar to a fish swimming in water. Yet even in these moments of delight, the underlying intensity of love can cause continued inner suffering. While prolonged exposure to this fervor can weaken the body, those who can manage their state effectively may endure without succumbing to the physical and spiritual strain.
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Chapter 26 provides another caution about a particular danger that can arise during the spiritual fervor of love. Just as, during the intense summer heat, honey-dew can fall from the sky and spoil fruit with its false sweetness, so can individuals experience a deceptive spiritual sweetness. This false sweetness is often characterized by a devilish light that can overwhelm and entrap the senses, presenting a mix of true and false visions and messages.
When people are drawn to this false sweetness, mistaking honey-dew for true rain, they may find pleasure in it, mistakenly believing it to be true spiritual nourishment. This deception can lead them to error if they accept these false experiences as genuine, thus corrupting the fruits of their virtues. However, those who are well-grounded in the spiritual practices and insights described previously will be able to recognize and resist these deceptions, thereby protecting themselves from harm and preserving the integrity of their spiritual journey.
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Chapter 27 uses the parable of the ant to offer guidance to those enduring the tumultuous state of intense love. The ant, a small yet wise and resilient insect, serves as a model of perseverance. It lives among its peers in a harsh, dry environment, diligently working through the summer to store up provisions for the winter. The ant splits its grain to prevent spoilage, sticking to a consistent path, and patiently awaits the time when it can fly.
Similarly, those in the fervor of spiritual love should exhibit strength and wisdom, resisting the temptations and deceptions that may come their way. Their focus should be solely on God’s glory and the pursuit of new virtues, rather than desiring death. They should immerse themselves in the intense heat of their spiritual journey, diligently gathering the fruits of virtue for eternity. Like the ant, they must split their spiritual efforts into two parts: one dedicated to the highest fruition of Eternity, and the other to exercising reason and patience to preserve virtue. They should avoid following unconventional paths, remaining steadfast in love through all trials. By enduring and persevering, they will ultimately witness the divine Mystery and ascend towards it, like the ant taking flight.
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Chapter 28 delves into the fourth degree of the coming of Christ, which involves the deepening and perfecting of a person’s spiritual journey through inner exercises focused on the lower aspects of their being. This stage is symbolically aligned with the season when the sun begins its descent from the zenith to the nadir, entering the sign of Virgo-a time associated with unfruitfulness and the gathering of lasting fruits, similar to how the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven rich in virtues.
As Christ, the spiritual Sun, begins to withdraw His radiant presence from the soul, the intense heat of spiritual love diminishes. The individual experiences a sense of abandonment and loss as the once vibrant inner life of love and consolation fades into a spiritual autumn. This transition marks the beginning of a new phase where the soul feels impoverished and forsaken, akin to the unfruitful season of Virgo. The passionate love, inward joy, and spiritual gifts that once flourished now seem to disappear, leaving the person feeling desolate and as if all their spiritual efforts have been in vain.
In this state of spiritual poverty, the person may also face external hardships, such as the loss of earthly possessions, friends, and even their reputation. They might be misunderstood, rejected, and subjected to physical or spiritual temptations. This profound sense of loss and desolation can lead to a fear of falling into despair, and the soul teeters on the edge of hopelessness.
During this challenging time, the individual often seeks out the company of the devout, sharing their suffering and seeking the prayers and support of the Church and the just. This degree represents a critical moment in the spiritual journey, where perseverance is tested, and the soul must endure the seeming withdrawal of God’s presence while maintaining faith and striving towards spiritual maturity.
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Chapter 29 discusses the appropriate response for a person who feels forsaken by God and is enduring intense spiritual desolation. Such a person should humbly recognize their own misery and emulate the attitude of Job, acknowledging that everything, whether given or taken away, comes from God. The forsaken individual should completely surrender to God’s will, accepting poverty or wealth, suffering or joy, with equal willingness, in service to God’s glory. This resignation is not just a passive acceptance but should be embraced with inner joy, as it allows the person to feel a deep belonging to God.
The chapter uses the metaphor of the sun entering the sign of Libra, the Scales, symbolizing balance and equality. Just as the sun balances day and night, the spiritually resigned person should balance all experiences-whether sweet or bitter, light or dark-as equal in the eyes of God, except for sin, which is entirely rejected. Even in this state of apparent loss and abandonment, the person can still offer up their suffering to God, turning it into a harvest of spiritual fruits that will endure eternally.
The virtues practiced during earlier phases, especially those nurtured in the “fire of love,” should now be maintained with renewed diligence and offered to God, despite the absence of consolation. This period is likened to the harvest time when all the fruits of one’s spiritual labor are gathered and perfected. Through this process, the individual not only grows in virtue but also influences and improves those around them.
Ultimately, this chapter emphasizes that the path of resignation-renouncing one’s own will in favor of God’s-leads to a singular perfection, making it an essential practice for all who seek salvation. This complete surrender is portrayed as the foundation for spiritual growth and the means by which one becomes adorned and perfected in both the bodily and lower spiritual faculties.
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Chapter 30 uses a parable to illustrate the dangers and hindrances that may arise during the fourth degree of spiritual development, particularly when a person becomes lax or careless. The chapter draws an analogy between the change of seasons, specifically the cooling weather after the equinox, and the spiritual cooling that can occur in a person’s life.
As the weather cools, some individuals may become prone to “noxious humours” that lead to sickness, disease, and even death. These humours symbolize the spiritual maladies that can afflict those who were once on the path of perfection but have strayed from it. Just as physical illnesses can spoil appetite and taste for good food, spiritual illnesses can diminish one’s appetite for virtue and divine truth, leading to a decline in spiritual health.
The parable warns that when a person’s spiritual fervor cools, they may become sluggish in practicing virtues and good works, and may seek comfort and bodily ease without proper discernment. This craving for comfort can lead to overindulgence in bodily pleasures, which further hampers spiritual growth. Moreover, those who seek solace in created things rather than in God risk falling into greater spiritual harm.
In times of spiritual desolation, it is crucial for a person to exercise strength and follow the guidance previously provided to avoid being deceived by these temptations. The unwise man, who does not govern himself well, is particularly vulnerable to these spiritual maladies, which can ultimately lead to the loss of taste for virtuous living and enjoyment of divine things.
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Chapter 31 addresses another significant hindrance that can impede spiritual progress: the desire for and attachment to earthly possessions. He likens this attachment to dropsy, a condition where the body retains excessive fluids, causing swelling. Spiritually, this condition manifests as an insatiable thirst for material wealth and possessions. The more a person acquires, the more they desire, leading to a swelling of their appetites and lusts.
This condition causes the “face of conscience and discretion” to become “small and thin,” meaning that the person’s ability to discern right from wrong and to act wisely is diminished. This happens because their excessive desire for earthly things blocks the inflow of God’s grace. When the heart becomes submerged in these “waters” of earthly wealth and desires, the individual loses the capacity to engage in true acts of charity, as they lack the vital spirit and breath of God’s grace and love.
Those who allow their hearts to be overwhelmed by material possessions are at risk of spiritual death, as they become so entangled in worldly desires that they may choke and die an eternal death. However, there is hope for those who can keep their attachment to earthly riches in check. If a person maintains a proper distance between their heart and their possessions-meaning they do not let their desires control them and are willing to renounce their possessions when necessary-they may still suffer from these inclinations but can ultimately be cured.
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Chapter 32 discusses four types of spiritual “fevers” that can afflict individuals who are burdened with inordinate inclinations towards bodily comfort and external consolations. These fevers symbolize various spiritual ailments that can hinder a person on their path to spiritual perfection.
The Quotidian Fever: This daily fever represents the restlessness of the heart, where a person becomes overly concerned with knowing, discussing, and judging everything around them while neglecting their inner life. Such individuals are constantly troubled by various concerns and are easily disturbed by even the smallest things. Their thoughts are scattered, moving from one thing to another, making it difficult for them to maintain inner peace or focus on God. Although this condition may exist within a state of grace, it hinders deep spiritual practices and diminishes the experience of God and virtue, leading to a significant spiritual loss.
The Fever of Fickleness: This fever occurs on alternate days and manifests as a lack of consistency and stability in one’s spiritual life. It can arise from either excessive heat (enthusiasm) or coldness (lack of commitment). In the case of excessive heat, it affects good men who, after being touched by God and then feeling forsaken, become unstable in their spiritual practices. They oscillate between different spiritual paths and decisions, unable to maintain a steady course. This instability can hinder their understanding of spiritual truth and destroy their ability to cultivate inwardness. To overcome this, they must learn to rest in God above all virtues and external practices. In the case of excessive cold, individuals love God but are also attached to other things, leading to a lukewarm charity. Their spiritual life becomes unstable as they secretly seek their own interests in all that they do, often without realizing it. Such people are inconsistent in their choices and actions, and their virtues lack depth and sincerity. This fickleness can lead them dangerously close to spiritual ruin, as they are motivated by self-love and hidden pride.
The Quartan Fever: This fever represents estrangement from God, oneself, truth, and virtues. It leads to confusion and disorientation in the spiritual life, causing a person to lose their sense of direction and purpose. This condition is more dangerous than the previous fevers, as it signifies a deeper level of spiritual alienation.
The Double Quartan Fever: This represents indifference, where a person becomes so detached and indifferent to spiritual matters that they risk falling into sin and losing all sense of spiritual awareness. This fever is extremely perilous, as recovery from it is difficult. Indifference can lead a person to a state where they are spiritually dead, as if they never knew anything of God or the spiritual life.
Ruysbroeck emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, humility, and a steadfast focus on God to avoid falling into these spiritual fevers. He warns that those who govern themselves poorly, especially in times of spiritual abandonment, are at great risk of severe spiritual decline.
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Chapter 33 illustrates how Christ exemplifies the four degrees of inward spiritual exercise in their perfection, serving as a model for all who seek to follow His path. These degrees adorn and elevate a person’s bodily powers and lower nature, drawing them to divine union.
First Degree: Oneness and Inwardness. Christ embodies perfect oneness, where all virtues are gathered and united within Him. As the Father’s Only Begotten Son, He became one with human nature, bringing the divine fire that inflamed all saints and good men. With sensible love for His Father and loyalty to those who shall enjoy Him in eternity, Christ’s life was a continuous act of thanksgiving, praise, and glorification of the Father, expressed through His words, deeds, and inner devotion. This inwardness is the foundation of the first degree.
Second Degree: Overflowing Love and Grace. In Christ, we find the fullness of all graces and gifts. His heart overflowed with mercy, gentleness, humility, and generosity, making Him supremely gracious and lovable. His presence and actions attracted all people of goodwill. Christ constantly gave thanks and praise to the Father for all the gifts bestowed upon His humanity. He rested above all gifts in the most high Unity of God, from which all gifts originate. This resting in divine unity constitutes the second degree.
Third Degree: Inclination Towards Glory and Beatitude. Throughout His life, Christ’s bodily powers and senses were destined for the highest glory and beatitude, which He now enjoys. Despite His natural and supernatural inclination toward this glory, He chose to remain in exile until the appointed time, as ordained by the Father. This willingness to endure until the right moment marks the third degree.
Fourth Degree: Humility, Suffering, and Redemption. When the time had come that Christ should reap the fruits of His virtues and carry them into the Eternal Kindom, He humbled Himself, allowing His bodily life to be taken by His enemies. In His deepest suffering, He was forsaken by friends and stripped of all consolation, both inward and outward. Yet, in this state of extreme distress, Christ accomplished the greatest work of love by redeeming humanity and restoring their eternal heritage. His suffering, patience, and ultimate sacrifice adorned His noble manhood, earning Him the title of Saviour of the world. As a result, He is glorified, exalted, and set at the right hand of the Father, where all creation bows in eternal reverence to His name.
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Chapter 34 outlines the practices necessary for a person to be receptive to divine illumination.
A person must live in true obedience to God’s commandments, practicing moral virtues not only outwardly but also inwardly. This involves living justly in both word and deed, without seeking personal gain, whether in this life or the next. Beyond moral virtues, the person should be attentive to the inward virtues that arise from the guidance and stirring of the Holy Spirit. This includes a deep commitment to the inward life, where one’s heart and actions are aligned with divine will. The individual must bear all kinds of difficulties-darkness, heaviness, and miseries-with equanimity and patience. Gratitude towards God in all circumstances and a humble resignation of self to His will are essential. Such a man has received the first coming of Christ by inward exercise, gone out from himself to the inward life, and adorned with virtues his heart and lower powers (body and senses).
Then, when a person has undergone purification and found rest, gathering the lower powers into unity, they become ready for enlightenment. This prepares the person for the possibility of divine illumination, should God deem it the right time. Enlightenment may come to those who, from the beginning of their conversion, completely surrender to God’s will and renounce all forms of selfhood. Such individuals, even if enlightened early, must still progress through the spiritual degrees and practices previously outlined. However, their journey may be easier, as they possess more light and understanding compared to those who progress from the lower stages upward.
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In Chapter 35, Ruysbroek begins his discussion of the second coming of Christ. This is likened to a fountain with three rills which represents the flow of divine grace into the soul’s highest powers. The fountain-head is the fulness of Divine grace within the unity of our spirit where grace abides essentially and the three rills are the inflowing of grace into the memory, intellect, and will, wherein God works in many diverse ways.
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Chapter 36 describes the first rill of grace as a pure simplicity that flows from the fountain in the unity of spirit into all powers of the soul, both lower and higher. It raises them above any multiplicity and distractions, and produces simplicity, freeing the memory-understood here as the mind-from distractions and fickleness.
Christ calls the person to go out from themselves in conformity with this simplicity, and so he finds himself to be established in this unity of spirit. This results in the person being lifted to a new state, where the memory becomes fixed on the “Nudity” above all multiplicity and distractions of sensible images. This essential and supernatural unity of spirit is his dwelling-place, his personal eternal heritage. He will forever have a natural and supernatural tendency towards this unity, and this unity shall have an eternal loving tendency towards the most high Unity, in the bond of the Holy Spirit, Father and Son, united with all the sains.
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Chapter 37 delves into the second rill of divine grace, which, by God’s inward charity, arises from the unity of the spirit and illuminates the understanding to discern diverse things and distinguish between virtues. While this light is always within us, it is not under our control; rather, God reveals or conceals it according to His will. These men have no need of revelations since their being is in the spirit above the senses, and God shows them His will and what is needful for them or others. He can even deprive such men of their outward senses and show them from within unknown or future things.
Christ desires that the enlightened person walk in this light, examining his life and comparing it to Christ’s, both in His human and divine natures. The enlightened person uses this light to understand the nature of God and His fathomless attributes: His Simplicity, His Oneness, his incomprehensible Dimensions, His dark Silence, a Desert, the Rest of all saints in the Unity, and eternal Fruition of Himself together with His saints. Because of the limits of our senses we must use sensible similitudes to describe them, yet these things are perceived inwardly as an abysmal and unconditioned Good.
The enlightened man perceives the attributes of the Trinity. He sees the Father as Omnipotent, Creator, Mover, Preserver, and Origin and End of all creatures. He sees the Son, the Eternal word as Wisdom, Truth, and the Pattern for all creatures, Eternal Rule, Seeing and Seeing Through all things, Transillumination and Enlightenment of all saints. And he see The Holy Spirit as Incomprehensible Love, Generosity, Compassion, Mercy, Faithfulness, Benevolence, Greatness, outpouring Richness, limitless Goodness, a Flame which burns all things into Unity, a Fountain, the Preparation of saints for eternal bliss, an Embrace and Penetration of the Father, the Son, and all the saints. These attributes are perceived without differentiation in the simple nature of the Godhead, yet they abide abid as the Persons do, in manifold distinctions. For the Father begets distinction and eternally begets the Son, and the Father and the Son breathe forth the Spirit who is their common Love. And all the attributes and their works are common to all three Persons who work by virtue of their Onefold Nature.
The Divine Nature’s incomprehensible richness and loftiness fill the enlightened man with wonder. He marvels at God’s universal outpouring of generosity, the incomprehensible Essence of God shared between Him and all saints, the activity of the Divine Persons outpouring grace and glory into nature and above nature. He reflects on God’s universal workings in all places and times, influencing saints, men, heaven, earth, and all creatures. He recognizes that heaven, earth, celestial bodies, the elements, and the course of the heavens are created for the common good of all. He contemplates the soul’s indivisibility despite its divisions into spirit and powers. He sees God as wholly present and unique to each individual and marvels at the multiplicity of His gifts, yet shared universally by all creation. This leads to a profound joy, trust in God, and gladness that saturates the soul and spirit.
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Chapter 38 describes the third rill of divine grace which establishes the will and leads to every perfection. This rill is born of the gladness flowing from the same unity of spirit and, like a fire, it enkindles the will and consumes everything into unity. It fills and flows through all the soul’s powers and creates a effortless spiritual love in the will.
Now Christ calls the soul to act according to the gifts of this second coming: The first rill elevates the memory above the distractions of sensible images, grounding it in the unity of the spirit. The second rill enlightens the understanding and enables discernment of virtues and the mysteries of the Scriptures. The third rill enkindles the will with tranquil love and spiritual richness, leading to a state of spiritual enlightenment.
God’s grace acts like a fountainhead in the unity of his spirit and its rills flow out into the spirit’s powers and into the virtues. But this flowing-out necessarily demands a flowing-back into the same source from where the waters began.
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Chapter 39 outlines the four ways in which the person should now go out. The man established in love will dwell in the unity of spirit and will go out with enlightened reason and overflowing love. He will discern and distribute all things with generosity because of his richness in God.
He is then invited to go out, first towards God and all the saints, second toward sinners, third to purgatory and lastly to himself and all good men.
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Chapter 40 discusses the first going-out: towards God and all the saints.
The enlightened man will observe how God’s delights and His very self are generously poured out to all the saints according to their desires, and how the saints return all they have received to the same Oneness from which they came, in a continuous cycle of giving and receiving between God and His creatures. But God desires to be loved according to His infinite worth, which no spirit can do because they are finite, and so their love becomes wayless since they don’t know how to fulfill God’s desire. All blessed spirits gather together to form a burning flame of love to fulfill this task, but they realize they can’t. However, this is a great delight to the enlightened reason that realizes God so transcends created powers that can only be adequately loved by Himself.
The enlightened man, now enriched, will distribute gifts to all the angelic choirs and spirits according to their merits. He moves through all the heavenly hierarchies, bestowing fresh glory from the divine abundance of the Trinity and the Divine Nature.
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Chapter 41 discusses the second going-out: towards sinners.
The enlightened man descends towards sinners with deep compassion and mercy and intercedes for them with fervent prayer, reminding God of His goodness. Even though God never forgets, He wants us to align ourselves with His will and to urge Him on behalf of others. The enlightened man’s charity obtains what he asks for, but remains humble and not self-willed, trusting in God’s goodness and generosity and finding peace in this surrender. This man’s love is universal, extending to Pagans, Jews, and all unbelievers that God may be praised in heaven and our glory, joy and peace spread to all the ends of the earth.
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Chapter 42 discusses the third going-out: towards souls in purgatory:
The enlightened man will occasionally turn to his friends suffering in purgatory and pray to God for His pity. He will plead for their good will, their yearning for God’s goodness, and remind God that they died in love, resting all their hope in His passion and mercy. Sometimes this man is specifically urged by the Holy Spirit to pray for a particular sinner, soul, or spiritual benefit. In such moments, he recognizes that this intense urge is not from his own will but from the Holy Spirit.
When the prayer is particularly fervent, the man may experience a spiritual confirmation that his prayer has been heard. This confirmation often brings a sense of completion and reduces the intensity of the prayer.
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Chapter 43 discusses the fourth going-out: towards himself and all good men.
The enlightened man sees how he and all good men are united in love, and he prays God to bestow His customary gifts on them so that they may be confirmed in His love and eternal worship. He shall discreetly teach, reprove and serve others out of his love for them and thus act as a mediator between God and man. He turns inward with all the saints and possesses a peaceful unity of spirit, and therewith the most high Unity of God wherein all spirits rest.
This is the true spiritual life since all the virtues, both inward and outward, and all the highest powers of the soul are supernaturally adorned.
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Chapter 44 offers a way to recognize those who fail in true charity and spiritual enlightenment. It describes three signs that distinguish such individuals. By the first, you can recognize the fault in yourselve, and by the second and third, you can recognize it in others.
First Sign: Lack of Simplicity and Stability: The enlightened man experiences a simple, stable unity free from overthinking. In contrast, those lacking in charity are restless and filled with subtle reasonings and complex thoughts. They do not experience the inward unity or the satisfaction that comes without images. This self-awareness is crucial for them to recognize their condition.
Second Sign: Barren Doctrine and Spiritual Pride: While the enlightened person receives wisdom directly from God and can discern truth effortlessly, these individuals rely on their shrewd, imaginative ideas. Their teachings are complex and focus on external matters, often leading others astray rather than guiding them towards unity. They are stubborn in their opinions, spiritually proud, and lack commitment to virtues. This pride is evident in their behavior and doctrine, which do not bear fruitful results.
Third Sign: Isolation and Self-Importance: Unlike the loving, enlightened man who overflows with charity towards all, these individuals isolate themselves, considering themselves wiser and better than others. They crave admiration for their teachings and look down on those who do not follow them. They are indulgent in satisfying their bodily needs, disregard minor faults, and lack justice, humility, generosity, and fervor. This indicates a profound disconnection from true virtue and a lack of knowledge of God and self.
Ruysbroeck advises that these signs should be observed and corrected within oneself and in others, but without condemnation. Judging others harshly can harm one’s heart and obstruct the understanding of Divine truth. Instead, self-examination and gentle correction are encouraged.
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Chapter 45 portrays Christ as the ultimate model of a love common to all who seek salvation, in order that we may seek this state of being common to all above all others since it is the highest state. Christ was sent to earth for the benefit of every person who turns to Him. While He initially states that His mission is for the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Ruysbroeck explains that this includes not just the Jews but all who are destined to see God in eternity. This inclusivity shows that Christ’s love and mission extend to all chosen souls.
Christ gave Himself, in perfect loyalty through His inward prayer to His Father, to all who desired to be saved. His love, teachings, consolations, gifts and merciful forgiveness was common to all. His sould and body, His life and death, His ministry and sacraments and gifts, were lived for the sake of others. Christ’s actions, whether eating, drinking, living, or dying, were done with the intention of benefiting all those who would be saved. Christ owned nothing; everything was in common: His body and soul, mother and disciples, even his clothing. His personal sufferings were His alone, but their spiritual benefits became the redemption and salvation of all. The glory and merits of Christ’s actions will be shared by all in eternity.
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Chapter 46 addresses the misuse of spiritual goods by those in religious and ecclesiastical positions, contrasting their behavior with that of the early Church leaders. Christ left behind the seven sacraments and outward goods of the Church, which should be held in common. Therefore, those who live off these goods, particularly those in religious orders, should be devoted to the common good, especially in their prayers.
In the early Church, religious leaders like popes, bishops, and priests lived communal lives. They were united, rich in faith, and overflowing with love for God and humanity. Their commitment was evident as they converted people, established the Church, and even sealed their faith with their blood. But now, many contemporary religious leaders have become worldly, unstable, and in multiplicity. Their prayers are mere words, lacking the spiritual engagement that should accompany them. They are often preoccupied with physical comforts and, worse, might even be involved in fleshly sins! They shall never be enlightened living thus. They should examine themselves, and if they find they are living unsaintly lives, contrary to the common way of life, they should correct their ways. If they are living rightly, they should rejoice in a clear conscience and continue to serve God for His glory and the good of all.
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In Chapter 47, Ruysbroek shifts his focus from praising Christ’s gift of being in common to yet another treasure He left us through His Holy Church, the Sacrament of the Altar in which He gives His very self to all believers. During the Last Supper, knowing His time on earth was ending, Christ took bread and consecrated His sacred Body. He then consecrated His sacred Blood and gave it to His disciples and so left it to all good men for their eternal profit. This was the culmination of the old law and the beginning of the new covenant.
In the Eucharist, Christ gives Himself in three ways: First, He offers His flesh, blood and bodily life, glorified and full of joy. Remembering his precious bodily martyrdom in which He was pierced for our sake, the lower part of our human nature is nourished and adorned. Second, He imparts His Spirit, filled with glory, virtues, and divine gifts. His indwelling nourishes, adorns and enlightens us in the unity of our spirit and the higher powers of the soul. And third, He gives His personality which elevates and unites us with the Father who receives His adopted sons. Thus we enter into our inheritance of the Godhead in eternal bliss.
When a man worthily considers these things, then he goes out to meet Christ as Christ comes to meet him. He lifts himself up to receive Him with all his heart, desire, love, power, and joy, even as Christ receives him. This union is marked by a craving which can never be too great since we receive our very nature through it. It unites man with Christ’s glorified humanity, bringing profound joy and revealing the hidden riches of God. Reflecting on Christ’s sufferings can stir such deep compassion that the man longs to share in His martyrdom, pressing into His wounds and heart. Through this devotion, many blessings and divine revelations have been bestowed.
The sensible love, compassion, and imagination united with inward contemplation of Christ’s wounds can be so intense that a man feels them in his own body and makes him capable of receiving Christ’s stigmata. This satisfies Christ with regard to the lower part of His humanity. We also dwell in the unity of our spirit and flow forth in love and discernment, and so resemble Christ with regard to the spirit. And through Christ’s personality, we transcend ourselves and created being to rest in our inheritance, God’s eternal being. Christ desires to give us this grace when we prepare ourselves spiritually and sacramentally. Even without strong feelings, one may worthily approach the Eucharist if free from mortal sin, seeking God’s glory and growth in blessedness.
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Chapter 48 delves into the profound mystery of the Divine Unity within the Holy Trinity, exploring the nature of God as a unified being expressed in three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The Unity of the Divine Nature is beyond human comprehension. It resides in a state of perfect and absolute stillness whose existence is beyond all created light and understanding. This Unity is not static but fruitful, for out of the Divine Unity, the Eternal Word (the Son) is eternally born of the Father. This eternal generation is the means by which the Father knows the Son, and in the Son, knows all things. Similarly, the Son knows the Father and all things in the Father, as they share a single, simple nature. From the mutual contemplation of the Father and the Son flows forth a fathomless love, which is the Holy Ghost. Through the Holy Ghost and Eternal Wisdom, God inclines Himself towards all creature, enkindling each with love according to its state. This divine inclination guides all good spirits, both in heaven and on earth, towards virtue and righteousness.
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Chapter 49 delves into how God interacts with the soul in both natural and supernatural ways, using an analogy of the cosmos to illustrate these concepts. It describes the highest heaven as a realm of pure, unchanging Radiance, encompassing all creation. This divine Radiance is immovable and constant, without time or space. Just below this divine Radiance is the sphere known as the First Movement. This is where all celestial movement begins, influencing the firmament and planets, and subsequently affecting all creatures. The chapter likens this First Movement to the essence of the soul, which is considered a divine kingdom filled with God’s Radiance. In this analogy, the unity of the soul’s spirit is compared to the First Movement. Just as the First Movement generates all celestial movement, so does God’s divine influence stir the soul both naturally and supernaturally. The soul’s essence is moved by God’s power, reflecting how celestial bodies are governed by divine order. God’s supernatural influence on the soul not only initiates virtues but also bestows the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, akin to the seven planets that illuminate and enrich the celestial world. These gifts are instrumental in shaping and guiding a person’s spiritual life.
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Chapter 50 summarizes how we attain the most profound inward exercise of the spirit by first cultivating the moral virtues of outward life and achieving a state of nobility and divine peace through internal practices. Such a person possesses a unity of spirit, illuminated by supernatural wisdom, and flows forth in generous love to both heaven and earth, raising himself through reverence and merits, and returning to the ground from which all things originate, the most high Unity of God.
God invites us into him, and we desire to enter into Him. The degree to which we receive His gift is the degree to which we ascend in love and tend inwardly into our origin, God.
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Chapter 51 treats the third coming of Christ which is an inward touch in the inmost part of our spirit. It occurs through our glowing love and through God’s loving inclination, working inwardly in the unity of our spirit where God dwells and where all our powers are gathered.
While the second coming was compared to a fountain pouring forth in three rills, the third coming can be likened to the duct that feeds the fountain. Just as there can be no stream without a fountain, and no fountain without a duct, the grace of God flows like rills into our higher faculties, inspiring all virtue. This grace springs up within the unity of our spirit and returns to the same unity from which it came, like a living spring flowing from the boundless richness of the Divine, where faithfulness and grace are ever-present.
The soul passively endures this inward touch for the higher faculties are united within the spirit’s unity, transcending the multiplicity of all virtues. Here, God alone acts in His pure goodness as the source of all virtues and blessedness. In this unity of the spirit, where the Divine duct flows, one is beyond activity and reason, yet not without reason for this Divine touch is felt, particularly through love. Reason cannot fully understand the means and nature of this touch, for it is an act of God, an inrusghin of all graces and gifts. It is the last mediator between God and man. Above this Divine touch, in the stillness of the spirit’s being, there broods an incomprehensible brightness – the highest Trinity, from which this touch proceeds. Here, God lives and reigns within the spirit, and the spirit within God.
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Chapter 52 discusses, how Christ speaks inwardly through this divine touch, urging the spirit to act in harmony with this experience. The spirit is drawn toward the most inward practices achievable by a creature in the created light. Here, the spirit, through the power of love, rises above all actions into the unity from which this life-giving touch springs forth. The touch invites the understanding to know God in His brightness and draws the power of love to enjoy God without any intermediary. The loving spirit longs for this experience, both naturally and supernaturally, above all else.
Guided by enlightened reason, the spirit ascends in inward contemplation, gazing into the depths where this touch resides. Here, all reason and created light reach their limits, for the Supernal Brightness that gives rise to this touch is so profound that it blinds any created sight, rendering all understanding akin to the eyes of a bat in the light of the sun. Yet, the spirit is constantly beckoned by God and by its own nature to explore the depths, to discern what stirs within, to understand the nature of God and this divine touch. But, even on the first day, the spirit finds itself as wise as it will ever be. Reason, baffled by this divine mystery, concludes: “I know not what it is,” for the Supernal Brightness, in its overwhelming clarity, strikes down all understanding whenever they meet.
God dwells in His brightness, surpassing all spirits in heaven or on earth, and those who journey through their innermost selves by means of virtues and inward practices, reach this source, the door to eternal life, and experience this touch. The Brightness of God shines so powerfully here that reason and all understanding are overwhelmed, unable to advance further, forced to yield before God’s incomprehensible radiance. However, even though reason and understanding falter before the Divine Brightness and must remain outside the door, the power of love yearns to move forward. Like the understanding, love has also been invited and urged forward. Love is blind and seeks fulfillment, a fulfillment that resides more in tasting and feeling than in understanding. Therefore, love presses onward, while understanding lingers behind.
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Chapter 53 delves into the eternal hunger that arises in the spirit, a yearning that will never be satisfied. The spirit, driven by God’s urgings and its longing for fruition, perpetually desires to reach a fulfillment that can never be reached because a created vessel cannot contain the Uncreated Good. Such are the poorest of all men. Even tasting the richness of God’s presence in every conceivable way, there is no satisfaction because what is lacking is God Himself, leaving the hunger ever renewed. The more God touches the spirit, the greater this desire grows, transcending reason and understanding, driven purely by the Divine love. In this state, the soul realizes that there can never be a separation from God. The divine touch, though experienced in a created way, continues to intensify as long as we live, reflecting the boundless capacity for growth in love and yearning for God.
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Chapter 54: In the profound depths of love, there unfolds a struggle between the Spirit of God and our own spirit. Through the Holy Ghost, God reaches out to us, touching us with His love. In response, our spirit, moved by God and the power of love, reaches out towards God, touching Him in return. From this mutual reaching and touching, a loving strife arises, where each spirit is deeply wounded by love.
Both spirits reflect each other, each showing its face to the other, and each yearning for the other in love. Each spirit demands all of the other and offers all of itself in return, making the two melt into one another. This is a communion where God’s love and ours flow back and forth, causing the fountain of love to overflow until God’s touch and our loving craving become one simple love.
In this state, the soul is so possessed by love that it forgets itself and God, and can only know love and do nothing but love. It is so consumed in love, and enters so deeply into the Divine touch, that it loses and becomes nothing in its own works, but empties itself completely. It moves beyond mere surrender to become love itself. This love is the root and origin of all virtues, residing in the very core of the soul’s created being, where all creaturely actions begin and end.
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In Chapter 55, the spirit, united with divine love, becomes fruitful in its virtues. Touched by God’s incomprehensible brightness and boundless love, the spirit cannot remain idle, but acts with a more sublime and inward desire than before. As the spirit engages in these higher works, it is quickly consumed and brought to nothing in love, only to go forth once more into fresh endeavors. This cycle is “heavenly love.” The spirit, driven by an insatiable hunger, yearns to fully consume God, but finds itself instead consumed by God’s touch, and its efforts ultimately fall short since its highest powers are unified in the spirit. Here, grace and love exist above all works, as the very source of charity and every virtue. There is an eternal outpouring from the source into charity and the virtues, and an eternal return to the spirit with a renewed hunger for God and the perpetual dwelling in pure love.
This cycle constitutes the most inward spiritual exercise possible for a creature in the created light, both in heaven and on earth. Above there is nothing but the God-seeing life in the Divine light. Here one cannot be deceived as this exercise begins in grace and last forever in eternal perfect union with God in love.
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Chapter 56 reminds us of what he has discussed so far in Book 2. The first point discussed is what Christ demands of us when He says “Behold”. The second and third points is what Christ desires when He says “The Bridegroom cometh, Go ye out.” This is the inward coming of Christ and there are three ways in which it happens. In particular, the first way has four degrees and we are to go out with practices responding to each of the degrees according to how God moves us.
The fourth point is the last point to be discussed, “to meet Him.” This is the final meeting and union with Christ, the Bridegroom, and it is the ultimate goal of all our spiritual efforts. Any meeting involves two parties coming together from different places. In this case, the meeting is between Christ, our Lord and generous Giver who descends from above to meet us, and us who come from below in need of everything. He comes to us from within outwards, and we go to Him from without inwards and we meet spiritually either by means or without means.
[Note: Here “with means” indicates that the encounter involves mediated experiences of God through gifts, symbols, forms, and conceptual images. These means guide us towards a deeper understanding and relationship with Christ. “Without means” indicates that the encounter is unmediated, occurring as a direct and intuitive experience in the unity of the spirit. There is nothing between the spirit and God.]
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Chapter 57 explores the essential meeting between the spirit and God that occurs in the nakedness of our nature, without any intermediary. The unity of our spirit comprises two aspects: essential and active. In its essence, the spirit receives Christ’s coming directly, without any means or interruption, for our very being in God, who is our Eternal image, is without means and indivisible. Our spirit continuously receives the impression of its Divine Archetype and dwells eternally in God’s presence, experiencing His perpetual comings and new illuminations of divine brightness. God is always present where He is, and He never leaves or changes, and the spirit, in its essence, holds God within itself, as God resides in the spirit. Thus, the spirit is able to receive divine brightness and fulfillment directly, without any intermediary. The spirit plunges and loses itself in God’s Being, finding eternal blessedness, and then flows forth again through the eternal birth of the Son to be placed in created being by the Holy Trinity, in the image of which it was made. In created being, it is continuously impressed by the image of its Eternal Archetype which it reflects like a flawless mirror. This essential union with God is not self-sustained but is maintained by God. It flows from God, depends on Him, and returns to Him as its Eternal Origin. This union, which transcends time and space, is incessantly active according to God’s will. While this essential union is present in every human being, whether good or evil, it does not alone confer holiness or blessedness. It is, however, the first cause of all holiness and blessedness. This union represents the deepest meeting between God and the spirit, occurring in the nakedness of our nature.
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Chapter 58 delves into the profound truth about how our spirit relates to God through grace and mortal sin. The spirit remains in its unity when acting, as it exists in its created and personal being. This unity is the source of all the soul’s higher powers and the beginning and end of all creaturely works, both natural and supernatural. However, this unity itself does not actively work; rather, all the soul’s powers draw their strength from it.
In this unity, the spirit is either like God through grace and virtue or unlike God through mortal sin. Being made in the likeness of God implies that we are created with a God-formed light that shines through us and makes us like God. Without this grace, we cannot achieve union with God even though we retain His image and our natural unity with Him. Losing this likeness, or grace, leads to damnation. So, whenever God finds in us the capacity to receive His grace, He freely infuses us with life and likeness to Himself. This transformation occurs when we fully turn our will to Him, at which point Christ comes to us with and without means-through virtues and beyond them. He imprints His image and likeness upon us, redeeming us from sin and making us like Himself. This process involves a union with God that transcends nature and means, representing our highest blessedness. Though God’s gifts are natural to Him, for us they are supernatural. Initially, we were separate and unlike God, but through grace, we become united with Him, reflecting His likeness and enjoying divine union.
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Chapter 59 explores how we possess God in union and rest above all likeness. This union with God, achieved without means, occurs in the essential intuition and remains hidden from our understanding except in a simplified manner. In this state, the spirit rests above all created gifts, natural or supernatural, and exists solely in union with God. We are possessed by the Holy Ghost, and in turn, we possess the Holy Ghost, the Father, and the Son-all of the Divine Nature, which remains ever undivided.
The fruitive tendency of the spirit, which seeks rest in God above all likeness, receives and possesses all that it has in its natural state in a supernatural way. Though this profound state is experienced by all good men, its full nature remains hidden unless one becomes inward and empty of all creatures. When a man turns away from sin, he is received by God in the essential unity of his being, at the highest point of their spirit, and find eternal rest in God. Grace and likeness to God are given at the source of one’s powers, allowing for continuous growth in virtues. This union and rest endure as long as the likeness endures through charity and virtues and can only be lost through mortal sin.
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Chapter 60 explains that we need God’s grace which makes us like Him and leads us to Him without means. All holiness and blessedness lies in our spirits being led upwards, through likeness and by means of grace to the essential unity. Here we enter into this naked essence in which God gives of Himself without means. Damned spirits dwell in darkness because they lack this grace, which should enlighten them and guide them to unity with God. Our essential being is so noble, that even the damned cannot will their annihilation, but are merely led into darkness preventing unity with God.
To overcome this darkness, grace is necessary to remove the sin that causes it, and make our lives fruitful. Christ enters us through means, that is through grace and various gifts, while we approach Him through means, that is through virtues and practices. As Christ gives us more profound gifts, our spirit’s workings become more inward and delightful in a continuous cycle growth into a higher life. This active meeting is completely through means, for God’s gifts and our virtues are means. These means are necessary for all men, because without the mediation of God’s grace and our loving response, no one can be saved.
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In Chapter 61, the focus is on how God and the spirit visit each other in the unity and likeness that God has made in us and through us. He sees this dwelling place and desires to continually visit it with a new coming of His noble birth. He wills to dwell blissfully in the loving spirit, bringing a new outpouring of His boundless love, enriching our spirit’s likeness to Him and enhancing our virtues with divine gifts.
Christ similarly desires that we also continuously dwell in the essential unity of our spirit, enriched by Him above all creaturely work. Our abiding in this unity should be without interruption in every work that we do. In each moment, God is born anew in us, and from this divine birth, the Holy Ghost bestows His gifts. So we should go forth to meet God’s gifts through the likeness, and hist most high birth through the unity.
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Chapter 62 turns to how we should go out to meet God through our works and intentions. To enhance our likeness to Him, we must direct every good work, no matter how small, towards Him with love and with a single, pure intention. As the end, beginning, and adornment of all virtues, this single intention unifies the scattered powers of the spirit and unites us to God. Its simplicity seeks only God in everything through their connection with God, cutting through all distractions and finding Him in the simple ground of its own being. It eliminates all hypocrisy and duplicity, keeping us focused on God, clear in understanding, diligent in virtue and fearless both now and in the Day of Doom. Singleness of intention gives light to man’s works and life, cleansing it of sin. It is the foundation of spirituality: it is the spirit’s inwardness, enlightenment and loving tendency. It embodies faith, hope, and charity, trusting in and remaining faithful to God. It fosters inner peace, drives away spiritual discontent, and maintains fullness of life in all the virtues.
In the unity of the spirit, in grace and likeness, we meet God through the means of virtues and offer Him our whole life with a simple intention. With every work we do, we increase our likeness to Him; and ultimately, we come to meet God without intermediaries, rest in Him in the abyss of simplicity, and possess our eternal heritage. All spiritual life and virtuous actions are rooted in divine likeness and simplicity of intention, and supreme rest lies in simplicity above likeness. Each spirit progresses in virtue and likeness according to its own nobility, and God provides for each according to their measure of love, both in this life and in eternity.
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Chapter 63 treats of the ordering of all the virtues through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit by which we resemble God, and rest in Him in unity.
1. The Gift of Fear involves living in the reverence of God, demonstrating obedience to the Church and divine commandments, and having a willingness to do good with a simple intention. Through faithfulness and aligning one’s will with God’s will, a person resembles God and does what he should do and does not what he should not. He finds rest in Him above mere likeness through faithfulness and singleness of intention.
2. The Gift of Piety involves exerting oneself in what God has given, leading to the bestowal of the spirit of Piety and Mercy. This results in becoming gentle, meek, and merciful, which enhances one’s likeness to God, deepens one’s virtues, and increases one’s sense of rest and fulfillment in God. The more one resembles God, the greater the enjoyment of this likeness and rest.
3. The Gift of Knowledge is received when one exerts oneself with great zeal and single intention while fighting against what opposes virtues. This gift brings reason and discernment, enabling one to know what actions to take or avoid. Through simplicity of intention and godly love, one rests in God above oneself in the unity. He possesses himself in likeness and his works in delight, becoming obedient to the Father, gaining reason through the Son, and mercy through the Holy Ghost. Thus he resembles the Holy Trinity.
This is the whole of the active life: zealously pursuing virtue with discernment and humility before Christ, avoiding all that opposes virtue. In this way, he cannot error and will grow in likeness. However, those who focus more on outward practices, sacraments, and symbols than on the ground of the truth they signify, remain outwardly oriented. Such individuals will be saved by their good works and sincere intention, but will ever remain an outward man.
4. The Gift of Strength: To draw closer to God and elevate his practice and life, a man must move from external works and forms to their inner reason and truth, and thus come into the inward life. God then gives him the spirit of Strength which allows him to overcome joy and grief, profit and loss, hope and care in earthly things, and all hindrances and multiplicity. He becomes free from all creaturely images, masters himself, effortlessly becomes inward and recollected, and turns without hindrance to God with devotion, desire, thanksgiving, praise and singleness of intention. The whole of his life reaches fruition, both inwardly and outwardly, for he stands before the Holy Trinity, receives consolation from God and continually possesses inward peace through the singleness of his intention. By abiding steadfastly before God, the spirit of Strength within him is doubled, freeing him from attachment to bodily desires and longings for consolations, or even for rest and peace of heart. He will renounce all gifts to find Him who he loves. Thus he is strong in overcoming the unrest of the heart, and doubly strong in foregoing all consolations. He transcends all creatures to possess himself through the Gift of Strength.
5. The Gift of Council: When no creature can impede a man in his upward intention, and when through the Gift of Strength he is steadfast in seeking God above all His gifts, then God gives him the Gift of Counsel. The Father draws him inwardly, the Son invites him to follow to the Father, and the Holy Ghost ignites his heart with fiery love. This awakens a restless yearning of love in him which only God can satisfy. He abandons himself and all things to find Him in Whom he lives and in Whom all things are one. He should master his reason, renouncing self-will, and patiently awaiting the unity he seeks until its God’s pleasure to give it.
This Gift works in Him in two ways: 1) A man is great when he follows God’s precept and counsel by abandoning himself and all things, declaring with burning love, “Thy Kingdom come.” 2) A man is even greater when he overcomes and abandons his own self-will in love, submitting reverently to God and saying with insatiable burning love, “Thy Will be done in all things, not mine.” This is what Christ said to the Father when He approached his passion. These were to Him most happy, to us most wholesome, to the Father most lovable and to the devil most terrible, because by this renunciation of self-will, we were saved. Thus, for the loving and humble person, God’s will becomes their greatest joy and deepest desire, even if it were to lead to hell, which is impossible. Human nature is cast down and God exalted above all, and man becomes capable of receiving all of God’s gifts, having denied himself and given all for all. So, he asks for nothing but what God wills since this is his joy. He is the most free of all men since he has surrendered himself to God in love, and he lives without care for God cannot lose what is His.
Although God knows every heart, He often permits trials and temptations to test whether this man can truly renounce himself in freedom. This serves to enlighten the soul, allowing the person to live for God’s glory and his own salvation. This is why God sometimes lead such a man from joy to suffering, from heaven to hell, and from blessedness to great misery, so it seems that God and all creatures have forsaken him. If a man had previously renounced himself and his will out of love and joy for God’s pleasure, he will more easily do so in times of pain and misery, continuing to seek God’s glory rather than his own comfort. If he is willing to do good things, then he is willing to suffer great things, although the latter is nobler, more pleasing to God, and more satisfying to our spirits, since it is more contrary to our nature. Thus, in suffering our spirit is more exalted and our nature more cast down, than in a work with done with equal love. When a man remains steadfast in resignation, without any preference, then he possesses the spirit of Council in two ways: 1) He fulfills God’s will in his working and suffering by self-surrender and obedient submission. 2) His nature is gloriously adorned and capable of being enlightened.
6. The Gift of Understanding: God grants the sixth gift, the spirit of Understanding, which resembles the fountain with three rills: it anchors the spirit in unity, unveils Truth, and fosters general love. It is also like sunlight, which illuminates the sky with simple brightness, reveals all distinctions, and displays its power through warmth and nurtures fruitfulness. Its first ray instills simplicity within the spirit, like sunlight fills the sky with brilliance. God’s grace, the foundation of all gifts, is like a simple light in our potential understanding, and through this light, the spirit becomes stable, unified, and enlightened, resembling God in grace and love. However, since the spirit now loves God above all gifts, it cannot be satisfied by created likeness or brightness, and longs, both natural and supernatural, for the Abysmal Being from which it originated. The Unity of the Divine Being eternally draws all created likeness into itself. The spirit is enkindled with fruition and melts into God as its eternal rest. Just as sunshine is to the sun, so the grace of God is to God and the means to Him. This grace illuminates the spirit with simplicity, making it God-like. This likeness continually merges, dies, and unites with God, becoming one with Him through charity and causing it to dwell in the One. We retain the eternal likeness and maintain union with God beyond all activity even as we actively engage in charity and virtue. For, in the nakedness of spirit in the Divine light, we possess God in rest above virtues. Thus, charity in likeness is ever active while union in God is ever at rest, yet fruitive in love. This is the dynamic of love: it is simultaneously active and yet rests in its Beloved. Each strengthens the other and is inseparable: the higher the love, the deeper the rest, and the deeper the rest, the greater the love. Some devout men feel they neither love nor rest in God because their desire to love Him more makes their love seem insufficient. Yet, even in this striving, they both love and rest, although they don’t realize it. Only those who are resigned, emptied, and spiritually enlightened can comprehend how one can simultaneously labor in love and rest in fruition: they are one with God in rest and mirror God in acts of love, for they are like God Himself who eternally rests in His Essential Unity, and eternally works in the Trinity. To love God is to taste Him, and anyone satisfied with other things will not taste what God is. We must keep ourselves in simplicity, virtue and likeness, and God above ourselves in love, rest and unity. This is the first degree of enlightenment, in which a man common to all is made stable.
Just like when the sun illuminates the sky and the beauty of the world is revealed so our eyes can perceive its rich diversity; similarly, when we achieve inner simplicity and our understanding is enlightened by the Spirit of Understanding, we can perceive the sublime attributes of God which are the causes of all the works that flow from Him. Although some know God through His works, only the man who receives the Spirit of Understanding can grasp the divine attributes that ground these works. This gift allows him to recognize his nobility, discern virtues, and live without error in the eternal Truth. He can dwell in the spirit, and rightly understand all things in heaven and on earth by enlightened reason. He walks in heaven and perceives the nobility of his Beloved along with the saints – His abysmal height, depth, length and breadth, and the perfection of His wisdom, truth, generosity, and goodness. All these attributes are not separate from Him but are His very essence. The enlightened man lowers his gaze to himself and to all creation and sees clearly how God generously made all things in nature and offered Himself above nature to those who seek and desire Him. The richness of Gods blessings fills him with joy if he has died to self in God, lives in the spirit and tastes eternal realities. In addition to his naked state of being in unity with God in fruitive love and bearing likeness to Him in charity and virtuous work, the Gift of Understanding gives him an *awareness* of his state. It illuminates him so he walks with spiritual discernment and recognizes God in spiritual similitudes, including himself and all things according to the modes and measures of the divine illumination accroding to God’s will and the greater nobility of our understanding. This is the second degree of englightenment of a man common to all.
Proportionately, as the sun increases its heat, it brings all things to fruition. So too, as our understanding is increasinly enlightened and recognizes Divine Truth, our soul’s will, that is its power of love, intensifies towards all men in common, for the knowledge of Truth imparted by this Gift grounds us in a universal love. Those most simple in their being are the most peaceful, deeply immersed in God, richly enlightened in their understanding, most fruitful in good works, outflowing in love to all and hindered least because they are most like God. God is simplicity in His essence, clarity in His understanding, and outflowing universal love in His works. The closer we are to God in these three qualities, the deeper our union. Thus, we are called to remain simple in our innermost being, to perceive all things with enlightened reason, and to extend love universally. This is like the sun’s simplicity as it abides unchanged in the sky, and yet sends forth its rays to heat the whole world in common.
To live with enlightened reason in universal love, we must align our lives with the Divine attributes and purposes revealed in God. This involves several key dispositions and actions: 1) Humility and Awe: Recognize the Father as the Origin of the Godhead, both in Essence and Personality, and bow in humble reverence before His sublimity. This humility is the foundation of all virtues. 2) Adoration and Reverence: Honour the might of the Father, who creates and sustains all things from nothing. This adoration elevates the soul in a spiritual manner. 3) Gratitude and Service: Offer praise, thanks, and continual service to God’s faithfulness and love, who has redeemed us from sin and eternal death. Through this, we experience true spiritual freedom. 4) Intercession for Enlightenment: Present before God the blindness and ignorance of humanity, praying that all people may be enlightened and come to know the truth, so God is glorified and honoured. 5) Mercy for Sinners: Pray for the conversion and growth of sinners in virtue, that they may come to love God fervently and desire Him above all else. 6) Generosity: Share the riches of God’s gifts with those in need, helping them find fulfillment and guiding them to flow back to God, so that He may be possessed and glorified in all. 7) Offering of Christ’s Work: Present to the Father, in awe and reverence, all the works and loving service of Christ’s humanity, ensuring our prayers and efforts are heard and accepted. 8) Communion with Saints and Church: Unite with the devotion of angels, saints, and the faithful, offering their fervent love and the service of Holy Church, including the Holy Sacrifice, as a collective worship to the Father. 9) Union through Christ: Present the entire service of Holy Church, including the Holy Sacrifice, all our works, thoughts, and prayers in the name of Christ, striving to meet God through Him, becoming like Him in universal love, transcending likeness in simplicity, and uniting in the Essential Unity. 10) Continual Praise and Return: Abide in oneness with God, flow forth in universal love with Him and all saints, and return in perpetual thankfulness, immersing ourselves in fruitive love within the Eternal Rest. This is the richest life possible with the Gift of Understanding.
7. The Gift of Wisdom: We receive this Gift when we turn inward in contemplation with love and simplicity, encounter the fruitive unity of God as an unconditioned and incomprehensible darkness, and offer ourselves up to this fruition above the virtues. This Gift then saturates our simplicity wisdom and spiritual savor. It is a spiritual touch within the unity of our spirit, bringing all grace and virtue, which each experiences according to the intensity of the touch and of his love. This touch is the inmost mediator between God and ourselves, rest and activity, condition and unconditioned, eternity and time. God touches us before receiving any gifts, but we taste it last of all. Only after having sought God to the depts of our being, do we feel with certainty the inflow of all graces in the unity of our highest powers.
This touch is above reason but not contrary to reason because we can’t know its origin. The sun illuminates the sky so we can see, but if we follow its rays back to their origin, the sun itself is so bright that we would be blinded. Likewise, the reflection of the Incomprehensible Light in the unity of our higher powers is too intense for any creaturely activity. Here we can only passively endure God’s inner working. God can’t give himself to us more directly because our faculties are too small. So He pours His gifts into us according to our limits: the fruition of God abides above the unity of our powers and demands of us a likeness in love and virtue. So we are repeatedly touched and renewed, becoming ever more like Him. With each touch, the spirit’s desire increases and it craves to pass through the abyss of love to be satisfied. This is an eternally unsatisfied desire for all loving creatures desire God according to their nobleness and the intensity of the touch, yet God remains eternally incomprehensible. With all the saints, we are left with an eternal desirous introversion. His radiance is so limitless that all spirits fail in their ability, melt away in the sensible love in the unity of their spirits, and endure passively the working of God. In this state, our spirit, the Divine grace, and all virtues are one in a sensible love without outward activity. The spirit is simple, open to all gifts, and capable of all virtues. This ground of sensible love is where God works inwardly and causes us to move ever inward and flow outward in virtuous works.
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Chapter 64 discusses the highest degree of the most interior life. The Immeasurable Splendour of God, which is the cause of all gifts, transfigures and penetrates our fruitive spirit in a way that is wayless. The spirit immerses itself in the Uncomprehended Light in a fruitive rest which is wayless and fathomless, and cannot be know except by the experience of the rest itself. If we could comprehend it, then it would be limited by mode and measure, leading to eternal unrest. So, the simple, loving and immersed spirit is drawn into an abysmal love where the abyss of God calls to the abyss of those united with Him in love. This inward call is an influx of divine brightness, enfolding the spirit in a love so deep that it becomes lost to itself and flows into the wild darkness of the Godhead. United without any intermediary, the spirit becomes one with God’s Spirit, allowing it to meet and eternally possess God through God, sharing in eternal bliss.
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Chapter 65 deals with how the most inward life is practiced in three ways.
First, the inward man may engage in simple introspection, above all actions and virtues, through an inward gaze focused on the fruition of love. In this practice, he meets God without intermediaries. A simple light emanates from Divine Unity, revealing Darkness, Nakedness, and Nothingness. In Darkness, the soul becomes lost, unable to find its way; in Nakedness, it loses all discernment, and is penetrated by a simple light; in Nothingness, all activity ceases as the soul is overwhelmed by God’s abysmal love, ultimately uniting with Him in spirit. In this oneness, the soul experiences a fruitive tasting and possession of God, filled with divine delights and riches, which flow into the soul and the body, bringing a sense of inward immovability and a radiant, sensible well-being. This “way of emptiness” empties the soul of all things, lifting it above activity and virtues, leading to a profound perseverance in the most interior practices. However, any intermediaries or images impede this exercise, as it requires a going beyond all things into Emptiness.
Second, the inward man may turn to God with ardent desire and active love, seeking to glorify and honor God, annihilating all selfhood in the love of God. Here, God is met through an intermediary-the gift of Savouring Wisdom, the root of all virtues, which stirs and enkindles the soul with a desire that nothing but God Himself can satisfy. This desire leads the soul to surrender all its works and empty itself completely in love. And with each new touch by God, his desire is renewed and increased. Thus, “living he dies, and dying he lives again.” This “way of longing,” in which the sould longs to unite itself with God, is more profitable than the first, as it serves as its source, for no one can enter the rest except the man who has loved love. The soul’s longing for God precedes and follows the divine rest, and without active love, one cannot attain or retain God. Any attachment to God’s gifts or created things will hinder this exercise, as it is driven by a hunger that only God can satisfy.
Third, these two ways combine in the “inward life according to justice,” where God comes both with and without means, demanding both action and fruition. Here, the inward man lives wholly in both work and rest, responding to God’s call to continually renew both. He remains whole and undivided, united with God in fruition while actively loving in his deeds. Each divine illumination turns the spirit inward, renewing its virtues and immersing it deeper into fruitive rest. God gives Himself and His gifts, while the spirit offers itself and its works. This dual exercise leads the spirit into rest and keeps it active in love, striving for divine union. This just man is like a double mirror, receiving God’s gifts on one side and bodily images on the other, able to turn inward at will and practice justice without hindrance. However, human instability often leads him outward into unnecessary activity, resulting in venial sins, which are consumed like drops of water in a glowing furnace during loving introversion. This state, where both rest and work coexist in a single exercise, represents the supreme summit of the inward life. Those who do not achieve this balance have not yet attained true justice. In this union, the just man progresses towards God in eternal activity and rests in God with fruitive inclination, dwelling in God while extending universal love and virtue towards all creatures.
With this understanding, the discourse on the inward life is concluded.
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Chapter 66 explores how some individuals, despite appearing righteous, actually live contrary to the inward practices and virtues described in earlier chapters. These individuals fall into various forms of error because anyone lacking divine enlightenment and supernatural love is inclined to himselves and finds his rest in outward things. All creatures tend towards rest, both the good and the evil.
False Natural Rest: Some men achieve a natural rest by emptying themselves of all images and activity, which is opposed with the supernatural rest found in divine union. But the loving man cannot find stillness in this rest because it lacks the inward touch of God. This is a deceptive rest leading to spiritual blindness and self-indulgence rather than simple gaze into the Incomprehensible Brightness. Supernatural rest, which is sought by inward longing, is as far above natural rest as God is above creatures. Natural rest is not a sin per se, but if it is sought without virtue, he falls into spiritual pride. We see this with the angels: those who turned inwards towards God in love and fruition found beatitude, while those who sought rest in themselves found a short lived rest. They were separated from the eternal light, became blind and fell into darkness.
Self-Directed Natural Love: Others, desiring inward rest in idleness without God, are open to all sorts of errors for they are turned towards themselves, seek consolations in self-love and reject any self-renunciation. They engage in acts of penitence so that they might gain recognition on earth for their sanctity, and merit great rewards in heaven, because self-love desires honors and eternity. They ask for many favors and when they sometimes receive them through the devil, they ascribe it to their sanctity because they are proud. Even a small consolation may satisfy them because they don’t know what they lack, so attached are they to spiritual refreshment. This is spiritual lust since it is an inordinate attachment seeking its own profit in all things.
Such men, being proud and self-willed, are vehemently set on what they desire. So they are often deceived and might even become possessed. They live contrary to charity and inwardness whereby one offers oneself up to God, which alone can satisfy him. Charity moves us to renounce ourselves, draw up to God, and be united to Him; whereas, natural love turns us towards ourselves in eternal isolation. Outwardly their works look the same, but the inward intentions are different. The good man always seeks to glorify God, but a man in natural love always seeks his own profit. So, when natural love wins out, a man falls into four sins: spiritual pride, avarice, gluttony and lust. Thus was human nature corrupted when Adam fell: he scorned God’s commandment in pride, he avariciously desired knowledge, he gluttonously sought pleasant tastes and he was moved by lust. But Mary, the Mother of Love, found the grace Adam lost when she turned towards God in charity. She conceived Christ in humilty [vanquishing pride], she offered Him to the Father [vanquishing avarice], she never tasted consolation [vanquishing gluttony] and lived in purity [vanquishing lust]. Whoever follows her will similarly conquer all that is contrary to the virtues and enter the kingdom where she reigns with her Son.
The Unrighteous Life: When a man rests in bare vacancy and remains disobediently self-willed, he lives without charity and in unlikeness to God. This is third contrary way: the unrighteous life of error and perversity. These men think they are God-seeing men and believe themselves the holiest men alive, yet they are completely unlike God, His saints and all good men. Because of their natural rest, they think they are free and united to God without means, above all the Church’s customs, above all God’s commands, above the law and above every virtuous work. They believe their idleness is so great that it should not be troubled by work, and so remain in pure passivity, without work aimed above or below. According to them, any work they do would hinder God’s work and so they strive to remain empty of every virtue: they don’t praise or thank God. They have no knowledge, love, will, prayer, desire, for they think they already possess these and not even God can add or subtract anything. They maintain that they have surpassed all the virtues by this pure emptiness which is harder to obtain than any virtue and releases one from all the virtues. So they inwardly reject all authority, pope, bishop or parson, despite outwardly appearing to be submissive. For them, striving after virtue to fulfill God’s will is a sign of imperfection since such men lack knowledge of the spiritual emptiness. Rather, they fancy that they deserve a greater reward since their virtues have reached a maximum and they cannot sin anymore, for they say they live without will and are nothing and completely surrended to God in baren rest. They think they live in the state of innocence beyond law, and so no longer hinder any bodily desire. If the emptiness of their spirit is troubled by natural lust, they yield to it to assuage the desire. So they don’t keep Lent, or Ember-days, or commandments and live without conscience. Hopefully there aren’t too many such men, but they are most vile! Sometimes they are even diabolically possessed and beyond reasoning. Nonetheless, we know from scripture and our faith that they are deceived.
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In Chapter 67, Ruysbroeck describes another group of perverted men who, while distinct in some ways from those previously discussed, also believe themselves to be above all forms of human activity. They claim to be mere instruments of God’s will, existing in a state of passivity so complete that they attribute all actions, whether virtuous or sinful, to God working through them. They consider themselves “God-passive” men, believing their works to be more meritorious than any other human effort, as they view themselves to be empty vessels in whom God alone acts. These men are convinced that they cannot sin, as they believe that everything occurring within them is the will of God. These individuals appear humble and resigned, often displaying equanimity in all circumstances because they see themselves as mere instruments of God’s will. Outwardly, they may resemble good men, but their beliefs diverge significantly, as they assume that all their inner impulses-virtuous or otherwise-are from the Holy Spirit. However, this is a grave deception, for the Spirit of God never leads anyone to act against the teachings of Christ and the principles of true Christianity.
Such people are difficult to recognize because they often present themselves cleverly and can be very persuasive in their arguments. They are obstinate, holding their beliefs so rigidly that they would rather die than renounce even a single point of their misguided convictions. They consider themselves to be the holiest and most enlightened of all people.
These men differ from the previously described perverted individuals in that they claim they can still grow in merit, while the others believe they have reached a state of unity and emptiness from which no further progress is possible. Nonetheless, both groups are perverted and wicked, the latter even more so, as they claim a merit that surpasses others because they believe God alone acts through them. But God’s activity is eternal and unchangeable, with no potential for growth or merit for any creature. Without their own love for God and co-operation with Him, no created being can be blessed. The emptiness they claim is a deceit used to justify their own wickedness, presenting it falsely as superior to virtue. Such people, he says, are akin to the damned in hell, who also lack charity, praise, and adherence to God.
Rather, we should consider Christ who, while united with the Divine Essence, always lived in love, longing, and praise toward His Heavenly Father. His soul, like all who are blessed, continues in an eternal, loving striving, never reaching a state of idleness or complacency. This union with God, both fruitive and activie, constitutes the eternal bliss of Christ and His saints. It is a life of righteousness that never fades, calling us to adorn ourselves inwardly and outwardly with virtues and humble actions before God. Through these gifts, we encounter God, are touched by love, and filled with loyalty, enabling us to flow outward in charity and return inward in peace, achieving a Divine likeness. In this likeness, we are melted into unity, meeting God directly in fruitive rest while remaining in eternal flow, a perfect inward life of unity and love. May this grace come to pass in us through God’s help. Amen.
“The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage” by John van Ruysbroeck – Book 1 of 3.
In the first of three books of John van Ruysbroeck’s “The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage”, the author explores the “active life”—the foundational stage of the soul’s spiritual ascent. This section outlines the cultivation of virtues essential for detaching from worldly attachments and aligning with God. Humility, as the first step, draws the soul into self-knowledge and reliance on God’s grace. This grounding opens the way to a love that embodies patience and compassion, followed by generosity and a zeal for righteousness, nurturing a spirit ready to serve and sustain others.
Purity is central to this process, requiring the soul’s detachment from distractions to focus entirely on God. This leads to an internal ordering through temperance and righteousness, where the soul learns to withstand spiritual trials and worldly temptations. Ruysbroeck likens the soul to a well-ordered kingdom, directed by free will and grace, which culminates in divine charity and a heartfelt desire to live fully for God.
This first book lays the groundwork for the journey, emphasizing virtue as the soul’s preparation for deeper union. In the subsequent books, Ruysbroeck shifts from the “active life” to the “God-seeking life,” where the soul enters deeper contemplation, and finally to the “God-seeing life,” reaching mystical union. Each stage builds on the last, with the active life as the essential beginning of the soul’s ascent toward divine communion.
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In the Prologue, John van Ruysbroeck uses the parable of the virgins to illustrate the relationship between Christ, the Bridegroom, and human nature, the bride. Created in God’s image and placed in Paradise, human nature was endowed with grace and given dominion over creation to be eternally united with Christ. However, human nature was seduced by the devil, becoming alienated from God and trapped in misery. God, moved by compassion, sent His Son, born of the Virgin Mary, to unite with human nature, teach divine truths, and liberate it through His death and sacraments.
Christ’s words, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him,” convey four teachings: the command to “Behold” highlights the danger of spiritual blindness; the phrase “The Bridegroom cometh” reveals Christ’s approach; “Go ye out” instructs us to act; and “To meet Him” underscores the ultimate purpose of our endeavors, union with Christ. Ruysbroeck explains these teachings through three paths: the Active Life for beginners, the God-desiring life attainable through virtue and grace, and the superessential, God-seeing life, reserved for a select few due to its profound nature.
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Chapter 1 begins with the fall. Since Adam’s time, Christ instructs humanity to behold, emphasizing the need for divine and supernatural sight. For such sight, three essentials are necessary: Divine grace, a free will towards God, and a pure conscience free from mortal sin. God offers prevenient grace, a universal light available to all, which prepares individuals for salvation, just as fruitless trees are pruned and grafted with fruitful branches. Yet, many resist, unwilling to shed disbelief and disobedience. Divine grace requires prevenient grace, voluntary conversion, and a cleansed conscience, marking the transition from prevenient to efficacious grace.
God’s prevenient grace manifests externally through life’s hardships, encouraging self-reflection and the desire for goodness. This grace, which readies the soul for salvation, culminates when God, in His generosity, grants the soul a higher light, sparking a union with God that births charity, leading to a pure conscience and sincere contrition. This spiritual journey fosters a profound repentance and a desire for virtuous living. Such readiness for divine sight embodies Christ’s command to behold, initiating a path to spiritual awakening and enlightenment.
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Chapter 2 delves into understanding the threefold coming of Christ, the Bridegroom. The Latin word Venit, spoken by Christ, conveys past, present, and future tenses. These encompass His initial coming as a man, His continual coming into loving hearts through grace, and His final coming at Judgment or death. Each coming invites reflection on its reasons, inner workings, and outward expressions.
God’s unfathomable goodness motivated the creation of angels and humans, allowing them to experience divine bliss. His incomprehensible love drove Him to become human, addressing mankind’s fallen state. Christ’s earthly mission was fueled by divine and created love, humanity’s dire need, and His Father’s glory.
To emulate Christ, one must explore His virtues and deeds. While His divine nature remains beyond human grasp, His human virtues like humility, charity, and patient suffering form the foundation of all virtues and perfection. These are key to following Christ’s example and understanding His work.
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Chapter 3 explores the profound humility of Christ in His dual nature as both divine and human. In His divinity, Christ exemplifies two distinct types of humility. The first is His willingness to become human, embracing a nature condemned to hell. This act makes Christ the Son of God, a brother to every person, good or evil. The second divine humility is His choice of a humble mother, a poor maiden rather than a princess, to be the mother of God, demonstrating His connection with all creation, regardless of status.
Christ’s humility, stemming from His divine essence, is reflected in all His humble deeds. Shifting focus to His humanity, Christ’s humility shines through the grace and gifts bestowed upon Him by God. His soul and its powers reverently bowed before the Father’s supreme might, directing all His actions toward glorifying the Father rather than seeking personal acclaim.
Christ’s humility manifested in His adherence to the old law, commandments, and rightful customs. This is evident in His circumcision, temple presentation, and payment of tribute to Caesar. His humility extended to His relationships, as He dutifully served His mother, Mary, and Joseph with reverence. He chose the poor and marginalized, the Apostles, as His companions to spread His message. Christ’s meekness and readiness to serve all, addressing both their spiritual and physical needs, underscores His role as a servant to humanity.
This comprehensive portrayal of Christ’s humility forms the foundation of understanding His nature as the Bridegroom.
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Chapter 4 focuses on Christ’s charity, the foundation of all virtues. His charity elevated His soul in continual reverence and love toward the Father, manifesting in fervent prayers and offering all His works for God’s glory.
This charity compelled Christ to address both spiritual and physical needs. He taught through profound teachings and miracles, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, restoring sight and speech, and raising the dead. Christ’s charity, stemming from the Holy Spirit, surpasses all human understanding as it was both divine and human nature in one Person.
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Chapter 5 highlights Christ’s patient endurance, a key virtue throughout His life. His sufferings began with His birth, marked by poverty and bloodshed, and continued through His life with hunger, temptation, and scorn. He faced betrayal, mockery, scourging, and the grueling path to His crucifixion. Spiritually, He endured the hardness of hearts, the ingratitude of humanity, and the separation from God’s grace, exclaiming His desolation but still forgiving His tormentors.
Christ’s virtues of humility, charity, and patient endurance were evident throughout His life and death. His ultimate act of sacrifice opened the way to divine grace and eternal reign at the Father’s right hand. This marks the completion of the first coming of our Bridegroom, now in the past.
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In Chapter 6, the second coming of Christ, which occurs daily within the hearts of the devout, is explored through the lens of continuous spiritual renewal. This coming, marked by the daily infusion of new graces and virtues, unfolds through four primary reasons: God’s mercy towards human frailty, the recognition of one’s own spiritual destitution, God’s generous nature, and the deep human longing for divine virtues and service. Just as a valley, illuminated by the sun’s rays, becomes bright and fertile, so does a humble heart, aware of its own limitations and needs, attract the light of Christ, the “Sun of righteousness,” shining from the Father’s right hand. This humility transforms the heart into a receptive vessel, resulting in three profound effects: an increased radiance from divine grace, a heightened fervor in charity, and a greater fruitfulness in virtues and good works. Thus, through this daily coming, Christ enriches the soul, making it more radiant, loving, and virtuous.
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In Chapter 7, the focus shifts to the daily coming of Christ through the reception of the sacraments, which offers growth in grace and renewal of divine gifts. This sacramental coming is contingent on receiving the sacraments with a humble and pure heart, free from obstacles such as disbelief in Baptism, unrepentant sin in Confession, or approaching the Eucharist with mortal sin or ill intent. When approached properly, these sacraments bestow new grace and deepen the recipient’s spiritual life. Conversely, those who partake in the sacraments unworthily only exacerbate their sinfulness. This aspect of Christ’s coming is essential for spiritual progress and perseverance in eternal life, emphasizing the need for sincere preparation and reverence in receiving the sacraments.
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Chapter 8 addresses the third coming of Christ, which is anticipated at the time of the Last Judgment or the hour of death. This coming is characterized by its alignment with the appointed time, the necessity of judgment, and the righteousness of Christ as the Judge. The fitting time for this coming is the moment of death, when each soul, having been created and bound to a body, must leave temporal existence and face the Divine presence. The due cause of this coming is that every soul must account for every word and deed before the Eternal Truth. The righteousness of the Judge lies in Christ’s role as the Son of Man and the Wisdom of the Father, who is entrusted with all judgment, knowing the hearts of all beings in heaven, earth, and hell. These factors define both the general coming on the Day of Doom and the individual coming at the moment of each person’s death.
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Chapter 9 is about the Day of Doom, in which Christ, both our Bridegroom and Judge, will administer divine justice by rewarding and punishing each individual according to their deeds. To those who have performed good works in God’s name, He will grant an immeasurable reward: Himself, which no creature could earn on its own. Through God’s grace working within them, they receive this ultimate reward. Conversely, those who have rejected the Eternal Good in favor of transient pleasures will face eternal torment. Their choice to turn away from God and oppose His glory and will leads to their rightful condemnation.
At this Judgment, witnesses include the angels and each person’s own conscience, while the adversary is the devil. Christ, as the Judge, is beyond deception and will execute justice with perfect fairness.
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Chapter 10 covers the kinds of men that will appear at the final Judgment. Christ will encounter five types:
Christians in Mortal Sin: The worst category, these individuals have died without repentance or regret, having despised Christ’s death and sacraments or having received them unworthily. They failed to practice mercy and charity, and are condemned to hell.
Unbelievers: Pagans and Jews who lived without Divine grace or love. They were already in eternal death during their lives but will face less suffering than the evil Christians due to having received fewer gifts from God.
Repentant Christians: Those who sinned but sought forgiveness through contrition and penance, yet did not fully satisfy justice. They will endure purgatory.
Faithful Christians: Those who kept God’s commandments, repented for their sins, and performed acts of charity. These individuals will ascend directly to heaven without passing through purgatory.
Saints: Those who lived a life so aligned with God that they are united with Him. They enter eternal bliss immediately upon death, do not face judgment themselves, but will judge others with Christ.
The third coming, anticipated by all, is the Day of Judgment. In contrast, the first coming (Christ’s incarnation and death) calls us to imitate His humility and virtues, and the second coming (His grace within hearts) encourages us to seek and nurture divine grace. The third coming should be awaited with hope and reverence, as it marks the end of earthly suffering and entry into eternal glory.
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In Chapter 11, the focus is on the spiritual journey of “going out” in virtue, which is essential for following Christ and preparing for the coming of the Bridegroom. After seeing through grace and charity and understanding the threefold coming of Christ, we are commanded to “go ye out,” which involves three forms of spiritual action. First, we strive towards God, maintaining a relationship with Him through charity. Second, we undergo a continual personal transformation, growing in virtues. Third, we extend our virtues and charity to others, embodying the love and righteousness we receive from God. Charity and righteousness are foundational for spiritual growth. Charity directs us towards God, the source of all unmediated love and the ultimate end of our spiritual journey, helping us remain steadfast and grow in humility and other virtues. Righteousness reflects the eternal truth of God, guiding us to know the truth and accurately fulfill virtue. Humility underpins both charity and righteousness, bringing us to recognize God’s supreme greatness and allowing us to stay small and lowly before Him. This virtue helps us surrender our selfhood and grow continually in new virtues. Thus, the spiritual “going out” involves actively pursuing God, transforming ourselves, and serving others through the virtues of charity, righteousness, and humility, essential for preparing for Christ’s coming and living a life worthy of His call.
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In Chapter 12, humility is presented as the essential foundation upon which all other virtues are built. Described as an inward bowing or self-abasement of the heart and conscience before God, humility arises from a profound reverence for God’s transcendent worth. It is through righteousness that humility is demanded, and through charity that a loving heart willingly adopts it. When a humble and loving person contemplates the humble service God has rendered and reflects on the contrast between God’s greatness and human littleness, a deep awe and veneration for God naturally emerge. This reverence compels the individual to offer homage to God in both actions and thoughts, making it the most delightful aspect of charity and a fitting component of righteousness. Such an individual constantly feels that their worship and service are insufficient and falls short of what God deserves. The humble person is meek, showing reverence to the Church and its sacraments, and practices discretion in every aspect of life, from food and speech to dress and behavior, avoiding hypocrisy and pretense. Their devotion, both outward and inward, is characterized by sincerity and a desire not to cause offense. Through humility, they conquer pride, the root of all sin, dismantle the devil’s snares, and establish themselves firmly in virtue. This humility opens the gates of heaven, brings God’s attention to their prayers, fills them with grace, and establishes Christ as their solid foundation. Therefore, anyone who bases their virtues on humility is assured of staying on the right path.
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Chapter 13 illustrates how obedience naturally follows from humility, as only a humble person can genuinely be obedient. Obedience is defined as an attitude that is unassuming, submissive, and adaptable, with a will that is ready for all that is good. It prompts a person to adhere to the commands and prohibitions of God and aligns their sensory and animalistic impulses under the governance of higher reason, enabling a life that is both decent and rational. This obedience extends to respecting and following the teachings and commandments of Holy Church, the sacraments, the prelates, and the wholesome customs of Christendom. It also ensures a readiness and flexibility in dealings with others, whether in spiritual or physical matters, approached with prudence and discretion according to the needs of each situation.
Obedience eradicates disobedience, a vice born of pride, which is more detestable than venom or poison. Demonstrating obedience in both intention and action enhances and manifests a person’s humility. It fosters peace within the community and, if exhibited by the leader, attracts those under his guidance. It promotes harmony and agreement among peers, and the obedient person earns the affection of both superiors and those they are responsible to. Moreover, God favors the obedient by advancing them and bestowing upon them His everlasting gifts.
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Chapter 14 discusses the concept of renouncing one’s own will as a natural extension of obedience. It highlights that true obedience involves more than just outward compliance; it requires a deep surrender of personal will and opinion. This surrender enables an individual to act without personal bias or preference, aligning their actions with the glory and commandments of God, the directives of their spiritual leaders, and maintaining harmonious relations with others as wisdom allows.
By letting go of self-will in actions, omissions, and enduring difficulties, the root of pride is eradicated, and humility reaches its pinnacle. In this state, God becomes the complete master of the person’s will, unifying their desires with His divine will, leaving no room for personal inclination. Such an individual embodies the essence of the ‘new man,’ who is transformed in alignment with God’s will. This transformation reflects the beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” signifying those who have surrendered their self-will and are thus granted the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Chapter 15 discusses how patience is a natural result of renouncing self-will. Perfect patience is attainable only for those who have fully aligned their own will with that of God and in all appropriate ways with the will of others. Patience is described as a serene acceptance of all events, whether they originate from God or other beings. A patient individual remains untroubled by any misfortune, such as the loss of material possessions, the passing of loved ones, illness, dishonor, the struggles of life, the inevitability of death, purgatory, or the threats of the devil and hell. This calm endurance stems from the person’s complete surrender to God’s will, underpinned by profound charity. Since he is unencumbered by mortal sin, everything God assigns, both in this life and the next, is perceived as manageable. Through patience, a person is also fortified against irritability, sudden anger, and impatience during hardships-traits that can lead to numerous temptations.
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Chapter 16 delves into how meekness and kindness naturally emerge from patience. A patient individual can maintain meekness even when facing adversity, as meekness fosters peace and tranquility in all situations. Such a person can endure harsh words, uncivil behavior, and any form of injustice without losing their inner calm because meekness embodies peaceful endurance.
Through meekness, one’s propensity for anger or aggression remains still and calm; the inclination toward virtue is uplifted; the rational mind recognizes and rejoices in this state, and the conscience finds peace. This is because meekness expels anger and wrath, allowing the Spirit of God to dwell within. As Christ teaches, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” meaning they will possess their own nature and all earthly things with meekness, and ultimately, they will attain the eternal Country of Life.
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Chapter 17 elaborates on the virtue of kindliness, which arises from the same source as meekness. Kindliness is expressed through a friendly demeanor, compassionate actions, and sincere words, even towards those who are quarrelsome. This virtue aims to encourage others to reflect on their behavior and improve themselves.
Kindliness sustains and nurtures charity within a person, likened to a lamp filled with precious oil. This oil symbolizes mercy, illuminating the sinner with positive examples and providing comfort and healing to those who are troubled. It acts as a guiding light for those practicing virtue, fueled by the fire of charity. Kindliness is impervious to jealousy and envy, maintaining its peaceful and benevolent nature.
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Chapter 18 discusses how compassion naturally emerges from kindness, as only a kind person can genuinely empathize with the sorrows of others. Compassion is described as an inner stirring of the heart, prompted by pity for both the physical and spiritual sufferings of people. This empathy allows one to share in Christ’s suffering during His passion, contemplating the reasons for His pain, His patience, and His deep love despite the shame, misery, and disrespect He endured, culminating in His crucifixion. The profound and unprecedented sorrows of Christ evoke deep pity and compassion in all kind-hearted individuals.
Compassion leads to introspection, prompting a person to acknowledge their own shortcomings, weaknesses in virtue, and lack of devotion to God. It highlights one’s lukewarm attitude, idleness, numerous failures, wasted time, and current imperfection in moral and other virtues. This realization fosters a genuine sense of pity and compassion for oneself. Additionally, compassion notices the faults and disturbances in others, their indifference toward God and eternal happiness, and their ingratitude for God’s blessings and sacrifices. It sees their lack of virtue and proficiency in wickedness, their concern for material loss and gain, and their disregard for God and eternal matters. Observing this, a compassionate person feels empathy and concern for the salvation of all.
Compassion also extends to the physical needs of neighbors and the numerous hardships of human existence, such as hunger, thirst, cold, sickness, poverty, and grief over lost loved ones, friends, possessions, honor, and peace. The countless afflictions faced by humanity inspire the righteous to share in these sufferings. Their greatest anguish, however, arises from witnessing how people’s impatience in suffering often causes them to forfeit their rewards and potentially endanger their souls.
This chapter emphasizes that the act of compassion and universal love for neighbors conquers and dispels the third mortal sin, which is hatred or envy. Compassion is depicted as a heart wound that produces a universal love for all humanity, a wound that cannot heal as long as any suffering exists in the world. God has placed grief and sorrow at the forefront of virtues, leading Christ to proclaim, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This comfort will be realized when the compassionate reap in joy the harvest sown in tears.
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Chapter 19 delves into the virtue of generosity, which emerges from compassion and entails a faithful and benevolent disposition towards all. Generosity is the outpouring of a heart that has been moved by charity and pity. When one contemplates the suffering of Christ with compassion, generosity naturally arises, inspiring a person to offer praise, thanks, and adoration to Christ for His sacrifices, with a joyful and humble dedication of their entire being, both now and forever. This virtue also leads to self-reflection, prompting an individual to consider their own shortcomings and the good God has done for them, thus fostering a deeper reliance on God’s mercy and a sincere commitment to serve Him wholeheartedly.
A generous person, filled with compassion for others’ errors and shortcomings, fervently prays for God’s generosity to be extended to all, so they may turn towards truth. They are attentive to the physical needs of others and are eager to serve, give, lend, and comfort each individual to the best of their ability, guided by wise judgment. This spirit of generosity encourages the practice of the seven works of mercy, with both the wealthy and the poor participating according to their means and intentions.
Through generosity, all other virtues are enhanced, and the soul becomes enriched. The generous person is characterized by a joyful spirit and a serene heart, their actions and desires extending universally. Regardless of their material wealth, they embody a likeness to God, as they selflessly share all they possess. In doing so, they overcome the vice of avarice, aligning with Christ’s teaching: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” and will ultimately be welcomed into the kingdom of God, prepared for them since the foundation of the world.
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Chapter 20 explores how supernatural zeal and diligence naturally emerge from generosity. This zeal is an intense, restless drive towards embodying all virtues and imitating Christ and His saints. It leads an individual to dedicate their entire being-heart, senses, soul, body, and all aspirations-to the glory and praise of God. This zeal fosters growth in reason and prudence, enabling the practice of both spiritual and physical virtues in righteousness.
Supernatural zeal opens all the soul’s faculties to God, preparing them for every virtue. The conscience finds joy, God’s grace increases, and virtues are practiced with happiness and enthusiasm, enhancing the beauty of outward actions. Those who receive this zeal from God overcome the fifth mortal sin, sloth, both of the mind and often of the body, as it pertains to necessary virtues. Christ promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied when God’s glory becomes fully apparent to them, filling them according to their love and righteousness.
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Chapter 21 explores the virtues of temperance and sobriety, which stem from zeal and diligence. True temperance and sobriety, both inward and outward, are attainable only by those who are zealous in maintaining righteousness in both soul and body.
Sobriety helps separate the higher spiritual powers from the lower animal instincts, preventing excess and intemperance. It avoids indulgence in what is forbidden and encourages a focus on the righteousness necessary for spiritual life. Sobriety also involves understanding and respecting the incomprehensibility of God’s nature, recognizing that our human capacity is too limited to fully grasp His essence. The teachings of faith should be believed and not overly analyzed beyond what can be understood through the lives of Christ and the saints.
Temperance, meanwhile, requires moderation in all aspects of life-food, drink, speech, and actions-following the customs of the Church and the example of the saints. This leads to inward spiritual peace, constancy in faith, purity of thought, and a deep tranquility of heart. Outwardly, temperance and sobriety help maintain physical health, good reputation, and harmony with others.
Through temperance and sobriety, one can overcome the sixth mortal sin of gluttony or intemperance. Those who achieve this are blessed as peacemakers, akin to the Son of God, who brought peace to all who desired it. Such individuals are promised a share in the eternal inheritance with Christ.
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Chapter 22 explores the virtue of purity, which arises from temperance. Purity manifests in three forms: purity of spirit, purity of heart, and purity of body.
Purity of spirit involves not clinging to any creature with excessive affection, but rather, directing all desires towards God. This purity leads a person to seek God above all understanding, feelings, and even the spiritual gifts that God may provide. The focus is on God’s glory and growth in virtue rather than on personal satisfaction or pleasure. It means approaching sacred practices, such as the Sacrament of the Altar, with a pure intention of glorifying God.
Purity of heart is the constant, unwavering choice to turn to God during every temptation or natural inclination. It requires a firm resolve to remain faithful to God and not give in to sinful desires. This form of purity prevents the heart from consenting to bodily temptations, which would draw one away from God.
Purity of body entails avoiding all unchaste actions and anything that the conscience recognizes as contrary to God’s commandments and honor. It requires vigilance in guarding against any behavior that could defile the body and separate one from God’s will.
These three forms of purity together overcome the seventh mortal sin, which is unchastity. Unchastity is defined as the turning of the spirit away from God towards creaturely things, engaging in unchaste deeds, or indulging in sensual pleasures contrary to the teachings of the Church.
Purity of spirit keeps a person aligned with God, free from the distractions of creatures and united with the divine. Purity of body is likened to the beauty of lilies and the cleanliness of angels, symbolizing innocence and resilience. When maintained for God’s glory, it is as radiant as the sunflower, symbolizing one of the highest forms of natural beauty. Purity of heart, meanwhile, renews and increases God’s grace, safeguarding the senses and restraining inner lusts. It serves as a protective barrier against earthly temptations, while welcoming heavenly truths.
Christ promises that the pure in heart will see God, a vision that is the source of eternal joy, reward, and entry into bliss. Therefore, one should be vigilant and temperate, avoiding any actions or circumstances that could defile purity of soul or body.
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Chapter 23 addresses the importance of righteousness in overcoming three powerful adversaries: the devil, the world, and our own flesh. These adversaries continuously tempt and wage war against us, aiming to lead us away from virtue and towards sin.
The flesh, being the closest to us, often poses the greatest threat, as our fleshly desires are the tools our enemies use to attack us. Idleness and indifference to virtue and the glory of God are the root causes of this internal struggle. Our weak nature, along with carelessness and ignorance of truth, are the weapons our enemies use to wound and sometimes even defeat us.
To defend against these adversaries, we must create an inner division within ourselves. The lower, beastly part of our nature, which opposes virtue and seeks to separate us from God, must be despised, persecuted, and subjected to reason through penances and an austere lifestyle. This ensures that righteousness and purity of heart remain dominant in all our virtuous actions.
The chapter also emphasizes the importance of enduring suffering, grief, and persecution sent by God through these enemies for the glory of God and the honor of virtues. Righteousness that is maintained in the face of suffering and through virtuous deeds is compared to a valuable coin, worth as much as the kingdom of God, with which eternal life is purchased.
In summary, to overcome the devil, the world, and the flesh, we must hold fast to righteousness, practicing and preserving it in purity of heart until death. This will allow us to go out toward God, ourselves, and our neighbors with good customs, virtues, and righteousness, ultimately leading to the Kingdom of Heaven, as Christ promised: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
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In Chapter 24, the soul is likened to a kingdom that must be ruled and adorned with virtues to maintain spiritual integrity. The soul’s “king” is free will, which is naturally free and made even freer by grace. This king, crowned with charity, receives his kingdom from God, the Emperor, and must rule it in His name. Free will resides in the soul’s desirous power, wearing a garment of strength on the right side to overcome obstacles and ascend to God in love and surrender, while the left side is adorned with moral force to suppress immorality and fulfill virtues.
The king, free will, appoints two divine virtues, knowledge and discretion, as his closest advisors, residing in the rational power of the soul. They are clothed in temperance, guiding the king’s actions to cleanse conscience and ensure that all decisions are made wisely. Righteousness, the judge of the soul, is another key figure, dwelling in the heart’s irascible power, adorned with prudence. This judge exercises authority with the wisdom of the advisors, ensuring that all things in the soul are ordered according to righteousness.
The common people of this kingdom are the other powers of the soul, grounded in humility and godly fear, each serving God according to its nature. A soul governed in this manner, with love and virtue directed toward God, self, and neighbor, is considered well-ordered and spiritually sound. This is the third of four principal points under consideration.
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In Chapter 25, the author emphasizes the importance of a spiritual meeting with God, which he describes as the culmination of all virtue and the source of true bliss. This meeting is essential for anyone who wishes to live in union with Christ, the Bridegroom, and attain eternal life.
To meet Christ, one must prepare by focusing on three key points. First, the person must keep God in mind in all actions that lead to eternal life. Second, the person must love God above all things, without allowing anything to rival that love. Third, the person must seek rest in God, above all creatures, divine gifts, virtuous deeds, and spiritual experiences.
The text explains that truly “meaning” God involves having a clear and godly conception of Him in the mind, whether as the Lord of all creation, a Divine Person, or under attributes like Creator, Redeemer, or Bliss. Despite the many names we give to God, His divine nature remains a simple, nameless nobility beyond human comprehension. The author stresses that knowing God must be accompanied by love, for knowledge without charity is of no value.
For those turning from sin, the first step is meeting God with sincere contrition and a firm resolve to avoid sin in the future. In this initial meeting, they receive forgiveness and the foundation of virtues like Faith, Hope, and Charity.
To advance spiritually, one must continually go out to meet Christ with gratitude for His works and promises, allowing these reflections to strengthen faith and inspire further virtues. Self-renunciation, wisdom, and discretion are essential in this process, focusing solely on God’s glory and continuing steadfastly in virtue until death.
Throughout life, one should maintain an upright intention, seeking rest in God rather than in His gifts. This path, called the Active Life, is necessary for all. Those who do not live in virtue live in sin, as there is no middle ground. The author concludes by urging each person to examine themselves and live according to the virtues outlined.
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In Chapter 26, the text explores the deep desire to know Christ, the Bridegroom, in His true nature, especially for those who live a life devoted to God, offering their actions and love to Him above all else. This longing to see and understand Christ beyond His works drives one to seek a more intimate knowledge of Him.
The text draws a parallel with the story of Zaccheus, who climbed a tree to see Jesus. In a similar way, a person must rise above the distractions and multiplicities of the world-symbolized by the crowd-to truly see God. This ascent is described as climbing the “tree of faith,” which is rooted in the Godhead and has twelve branches representing the articles of faith. The lower branches concern the Divine Humanity and our salvation, while the upper branches pertain to the Trinity and the Unity of God’s Nature.
Upon reaching the highest part of the tree, where God’s unity is found, one encounters Christ, who reveals Himself as immeasurable, incomprehensible, and beyond all human understanding. This highest knowledge acknowledges that God cannot be fully known or comprehended by the created mind. Christ then invites the soul to “make haste and come down,” symbolizing a descent into the abyss of the Godhead through desire and love-where reason cannot reach, but where love and longing can dwell.
When the soul transcends all created things, natural senses, and the light of nature, it meets Christ in the light of faith. Here, it becomes enlightened and acknowledges God’s unknowable nature. Through this intense longing and love, the soul encounters Christ and is filled with His gifts. Ultimately, when the soul loves God above all gifts and creatures, it dwells in God, and God dwells in it.
This chapter concludes by stating that this union with God through faith, love, and righteousness constitutes the true active life. When one has laid the foundation of these virtues, one truly dwells in God and experiences His presence in daily life. This is the culmination of the spiritual journey in the active life, where Christ is met and known in the deepest, most profound way.
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 10 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 40
- In this chapter, St Teresa focuses her concern on not being deceived in “this dangerous war.” She posits love of God and fear of Sin as the two guides. But this begs the question, how do you know you are loving and fearing correctly? If you possess love, you are in a state of grace, but how can you be certain? You can’t be completely certain, but “there are some signs that even the blind … see.” St Teresa elaborates on these signs:
“Those who truly love God, love every good, desire every good, favor every good, praise every good. They always join, favor, and defend good people. … Do you think it is possible for a person who really loves God to love vanities? No, indeed, he cannot; nor can he love riches, or worldly things, or delights, or honors, or strife, or envy. … These persons go about dying so that their Beloved might love them, and thus they dedicate their lives to learning how they might please Him more.”
- Love of God has all the signs of bing “love sickness” which cannot be hidden in its intensity:
“Hide itself? Oh, with regard to the love of God — if it is genuine love — this is impossible. … Within three days [St Paul] began to realize that he was sick with love … The Magdalene knew from the first day. … Thus, the love makes itself known according to its intensity. … But, where there is love of God, whether little or great, it is always recognized.”
- Contemplatives are already great lovers of God, else they should question their vocation, and the deception the devil brings are not few. So St Teresa adds more specific advise:
“[A contemplative’s love] is a great fire; it cannot but shine brightly. And if this splendor is not present, they should walk with serious misgivings. … But if one proceeds with humility, strives to know the truth, is subject to a confessor, and communicates with him openly and truthfully … [then] the things by which the devil intends to cause death will cause life, however many the haunting illusions he wants to scare you with.”
- She also warns that the devil might make us fear that God doesn’t grant favors:
“In order to disturb your soul so that you will not enjoy these wonderful blessings the devil will set a thousand false fears before you and strive that others do so. Since he cannot win us over, he can at least try to make us lose something. … First, those who listen to him are struck with a terror of approaching prayer, for they think they will be deceived. Second, if it were not for these fears many more would come closer to God in seeing that He is so good … and that it is possible for Him now to communicate so much with sinners.”
- St Teresa further argues that when it comes to worldly love, “the more we do to hide it the more it is revealed”. Then how much more so is this the case with love for God which always increases as it is always being repaid?”
“This other love can no longer be doubted since it was shown so openly and with so many sufferings and trials, and with the shedding of blood even to the point of death in order that we might have no doubt about it. Oh, God help me, how different must the love of God be from the love of creatures for whoever has experienced the former!”
- Nonetheless, we should never presume that anyone is safe “in the dangers of this tempestuous sea.” Backsliding is always possible.
- St Teresa ends the chapter meditating on fear, the other pillar keeping us from delusion. She reminds us of the Four Last Things. For those who love God:
“[I]t will be a great thing at the hour of death to see that we are going to be judged by the One whom we have loved above all things. We shall be able to proceed securely with the judgment concerning our debts. It will not be like going to a foreign country but like going to our own, because it is the country of one whom we love so much and who loves us.”
- But for those who have not loved God:
“What will become of the poor soul … How mangled as it goes to hell! … If it is hard for a self-indulgent person … to spend one night in a bad inn, what do you think that sad soul will feel at being in this kind of inn forever, without end?”
- So she concludes that we should ask God that if we are to receive sufferings, we receive them here “with the hope of being freed from them”, and “beseech Him to give us His grace in this life so that we will not walk unawares into temptation.”
Chapter 41
- St Teresa begins the chapter by contrasting love of God for love of the world. The latter is a childish delusion which can only lead to weariness:
“I laugh to myself when I hear it said: “That person repaid me badly.” “This other one doesn’t love me.” What does anyone have to repay you for, or why should anyone love you? This experience will show you what the world is, for your very love for it will afterward punish you. And this is what wears you down: you realize you have let your affection become involved like children in their games.”
- She next turns to fear of God, which develops over time, and becomes recognizable as one begins to turn away from sin, its occasions and bad companions. It is readily manifest in contemplatives:
“For no matter how long we observe them, the Lord keeps them in such a way that even if a thing very much to their own interest come along, they will not advertently commit a venial sin; mortal sins they fear like fire.”
- Nonetheless, contemplatives may have illusions about their ability to resist sin. So, St Teresa prays God that He keep us from temptation on His part, and we strive never to offend him for our part:
“Let us beseech God always that the temptation may not be so strong as to make us offend Him, that its strength might not outweigh the fortitude He gives us to conquer it. This fear is what is important; it is what I desire may never be taken from us, for it is what will help us.”
“Oh, what a great thing it is to have resisted offending the Lord so that His slaves and servants in hell may be bound …”
- St Teresa eleborates on this, and warns against committing any deliberate sin, even venial ones. We must avert them deliberately if we do not first avert them out of habit; but, under no circumstances should we commit them deliberately!
“[T]here is an advertence [of sin] that is very deliberate; another that comes so quickly that committing the venial sin and adverting to it happen almost together in such a way that we don’t first realize what we are doing. But from any very deliberate sin, however small it be, may God deliver us.”
- Until we cultivate this fear and it becomes a virtue, we should avoid occasions and companions that don’t bring us closer to God.
“[I]t is very helpful to understand the seriousness of an offense against God … for it is worth our life and much more to have this virtue rooted in our souls. And until you have it, you must always proceed carefully and turn from every occasion and companion who does not help you come closer to God.”
- Once this virtue has been well established, its no longer necessary to be so tense since our confidence will be in God to protect us. We will be free to interact even with those who were previously a danger to our soul and will become a help to them:
“When we are more determined we are less confident of ourselves, for our confidence must be placed in God … [and] there will be no need to go about so tense and constrained; the Lord will protect us, and the habit acquired will now be a help against offending Him.”
“For those who, before you possessed this authentic fear of God, were a poison and a means of killing the soul will afterward often be a help to your loving and praising God more because He has freed you from that which you recognize as a glaring danger. If previously you played a part in contributing to their weaknesses, now by your mere presence you contribute to their restraint; this happens without their having any idea of paying you honor.”
- This fear of God, once it becomes a virtue, has an apostolic effect on others around us. Like how one avoids speaking ill of someone in front of their friend, our friendship with God causes others to refrain from sinful behavior.
“I often praised the Lord, thinking it comes about that often a servant of God, without uttering a word, prevents things from being said against God. This must happen for the same reason that something similar happens here below: there is always some restraint so as not to offend an absent person in the presence of someone known to be his friend.”
- This happens passively, and “without uttering a word,” so St Teresa warns against being overly tense since this discourages others even if they recognize the virtue of a godly life.
“So do not be tense … such a feeling will be very harmful to everything good … this constraint will be good for you but it will not bring many souls to God, because they will see so much repression and tenseness. Our nature is such that this constraint is frightening and oppressive to others, and they flee from following the road that you are taking, even though they know clearly that it is the more virtuous path.”
- Being overly tense can also lead to judging others, especially when they pursue holiness by a different path. If you do so, it can only be detrimental to others.
“Another harm derives from this attitude; it is that of judging others … There are those who advance with greater holiness [but] since they do not journey by your path they at once seem to you to be imperfect. … This constraint is a very dangerous [and] detrimental to your neighbor.”
- But be careful, because the opposite extreme is also a danger:
“And there is another harm: in some things of which you must speak, and it is right that you speak, you don’t dare do so for fear of going to extremes; rather, perhaps, you speak well of something that it would be very good for you to abhor.”
- But in general, a holy person should be affible to others to make his way of life appealing rather than repulsive.
“So .. strive … to be affable and understanding in such a way that everyone you talk to will love your conversation and desire your manner of living and acting, and not be frightened and intimidated by virtue. [E]ven … if [the] conversations do not go as you would like them to, never turn away …”
- God doesn’t look at trifles, so there’s no need to be tense, since this leads to losing many blessings, and don’t withdraw from the world.
“He doesn’t look at trifles … so don’t … allow your soul to be constrained, for many blessings could be lost. … Don’t let your soul withdraw into a corner, for instead of obtaining sanctity you will obtain many imperfections …”
- St Teresa concludes the chapter restating her thesis that love and fear of God are the two virtues that lead you forward calmly, and carefully.
Chapter 42
- St Teresa begins this chapter noting how life-weary Jesus was in anticipation of His Passion, but this was nothing compared to His suffering due to the offenses committed against the Father.
“[W]e already see how tired He was of this life when He said to His Apostles at the last supper; I have greatly desired to eat this supper with you … What was His whole life if not a continual death, in which He always saw beforehand that most cruel death they were going to inflict on Him? And this was the least of His sufferings; but how many offenses committed against His Father …”
- Turning to her own weariness, she tells us that she awaits the end of all things (as indicated by the word “amen”), when temptations, imperfections, and sin will cease. Although, not in this world, nor is it wise to be without them.
“Amen … all things come to an end … It is useless, Sisters, to think that while we live we can be free of many temptations and imperfections and even sins … if we turn to bodily ailments and hardships, who is without very many and in many ways? Nor is it good that we ask to be without them.”
- St Teresa feels this way because she knows she is a sinner.
“I am not speaking about the saints … but sinners like myself. I see myself closed in by weakness, lukewarmness, and a lack of mortification, and many other things. I see that it behooves me to ask the Lord for a remedy … [but] I do not find this remedy while living … What good do we find in this life, Sisters, since we lack so much good and are absent from Him?”
- And like Jesus, she prays for deliverance:
“Deliver me, Lord, from this shadow of death, deliver me from so many trials … that would tire anyone who can bear to live. This weariness must come to me because I have lived so badly … And what is unendurable, Lord, is not to know for certain that I love You or that my desires are acceptable before You.”
- It is a clear sign of contemplatives that they desire heavenly blessings. They want to leave this life so they can enjoy these goods without obstacles. However, St Teresa thinks that in her case, its because she has lived so badly and so she is wearied by life.
“To ask for these blessings with great desire … is a clear sign for contemplatives … [But] In the case of my asking for these things the same is not true … [S]ince I have lived so badly, I fear living still longer; and so many trials weary me. It is no surprise that those who have a share in the consolations of God desire to be there … [and] they do not want to remain in a life where there are these many obstacles.”
- Life here would have to be very different for us to want to remain here! Our will wants the opposite of what God desires for us. So it is good to ask God to be freed from these dangers!
“Oh, how different this life would have to be in order for one not to desire death! … He wants us to love truth; we love the lie. He wants us to desire the eternal [the sublime, the secure] ; we, here below, lean toward what comes to an end [the base, the dubious]. Everything is a mockery … except … beseeching God to free us from these dangers forever … Even though our desire may not be perfect …”
- Harking back to her considerations on vocal prayer, St Teresa adds here that this is what it means to pray vocally with perfection. And even if not perfect, we should ask God to perfect it for us! An excellent entry into the spiritual life is the Our Father, a vocal prayer, which St Teresa meditated on in depth earlier in the Way of Perfection.
“[Praying] vocally with perfection … means that you be aware of and understand whom you are asking, who it is that is asking, and what you are asking for … [and] what you do not understand about prayer, beseech the Lord to teach you.”
“Now see, Sisters, how the Lord by giving me understanding of the great deal we ask for when reciting this evangelical prayer [The Our Father] has removed the difficulty involved in my teaching you and myself the path that I began to explain to you … for now you have seen the entire spiritual way contained in it.”
- At this point, St Teresa closes the work on a humble note, as one would expect. She asks forgiveness for her boldness in speaking on spiritual matters and says she doesn’t know what more to add. She refers her sisters to The Book of Her Life which is in the hands of her confessor, Fr Banez. He can make it available at his discretion.
“Sisters, beg this good Master to pardon me, for I have been bold to speak of such sublime things. … Well, Sisters, it now seems the Lord doesn’t want me to say any more, for I don’t know what to say … The Lord has taught you and me the path that I have described in the book I said I wrote, how one reaches this fount of living water, what the soul feels there, how God satisfies it, takes away thirst for earthly things, and makes it grow in the things pertaining to the service of God. … If he [Fr Banez] thinks this book will be helpful and gives it to you, I will be consoled that you are consoled.”
Closing Remarks: St. Teresa begins this section expressing concern about the dangers of spiritual deception, emphasizing the importance of love for God and fear of sin as two key guides. However, how one can be sure one is loving and fearing God correctly? While you can’t be absolutely certain, St. Teresa offers signs to help recognize love for God, likening it to “love sickness” that cannot be hidden due to its intensity. She advises contemplatives, who should already be great lovers of God, to be especially wary of the devil’s deceptions. He may try to incite fear that God does not grant favors, but she reassures us that God’s love grows as it is repaid. Nevertheless, backsliding is always a risk, and St. Teresa adds that fear of sin is as essential as love for God to avoid delusion.
Reflecting on this fear, St. Teresa emphasizes the Four Last Things and cautions that we should pray to receive sufferings in this life in reparation for our sins to avoid them in the next. She contrasts the love of God with worldly love, calling the latter a childish delusion that ultimately leads to weariness. Fear of God develops gradually and becomes evident as one avoids sin and bad companions that lead us astray. St. Teresa also emphasizes the importance of avoiding deliberate sin, even venial ones, stressing the need to cultivate fear of God and avoid dangerous occasions until this virtue is firmly established. Once fear of God becomes a virtue, one can engage more freely with those who were previously a danger, helping them instead. Their conversion to God occurs passively, as others refrain from sinful behavior in the presence of someone devoted to God. However, St. Teresa cautions against being overly tense, which can discourage others and lead to judgmental attitudes. Rather, she advises that holy persons should be affable to attract others to their way of life.
In reflecting on Jesus’ weariness in anticipation of His Passion, St. Teresa notes that His greatest suffering was due to the offenses committed against the Father. She mirrors this weariness herself, longing for the end of all things, when temptations, imperfections, and sin will cease, though she recognizes that this is not possible in this life. St. Teresa feels this way due to her awareness of her own sinfulness, and like Christ, she prays for deliverance. A clear sign of contemplatives is their desire for heavenly blessings and their longing to leave this life to enjoy these goods without obstacles. However, St. Teresa humbly attributes her own weariness to having lived poorly. She acknowledges the difference between God’s will and our own, explaining that we often desire the opposite of what God desires for us. It is, therefore, good to ask God for deliverance from these dangers. Returning to her earlier discussion of vocal prayer, St. Teresa concludes that this is what it means to pray vocally with perfection, and even if our prayer is not perfect, we should ask God to perfect it for us.
St. Teresa concludes the work humbly, asking forgiveness for her boldness in speaking on such spiritual matters. She directs her sisters to The Book of Her Life, available through her confessor, Fr.Banez, for further spiritual insights.
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 9 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 37
- St Teresa does not yet proceed to the next lines of the Our Father at this point, but steps back and gives a summary of what she has found so far in her meditation. The Prayer is of “sublime perfection” since it scope encompasses everyone who prays it. Each can find the the prayer his own needs. For the contemplative, St Teresa sees in the prayer everything about contemplation and perfection in so few words that no other book is needed.
“We ought to give great praise to the Lord for the sublime perfection of this evangelical prayer. Each of us, daughters, can apply the prayer to her own needs since it was composed by such a good Master. I marvel to see that in so few words everything about contemplation and perfection is included; it seems we need to study no other book than this one.”
- The Lord left the prayer open to interpretation (“in obscure form”) so that each could petition according to his state in life, his needs and intentions. Contemplatives could ask for heavenly things while others (“those who still live on earth”) could ask for earthly things. But giving Him our will (“thy will be done”) and forgiving others (“forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”) is clear since it pertains to everyone. The degree may differ, but the essence of the surrendering of our will and of forgiving is the same for all.
“I have wondered why His Majesty did not explain more about these sublime and obscure things that we might all know about them. It has seemed to me that since this prayer was intended for general use so that each one could petition according to his own intention, be consoled, and think that he has a good understanding of the prayer, the Lord left it in this obscure form … Contemplatives … ask for the heavenly favors that can … Those who still live on earth … may ask also for bread.”
“But both should consider that two of the things mentioned pertain to all; giving Him our will and forgiving others. True, there is a more and a less in the degree to which this is done … The perfect will give their will in the way perfect souls do and forgive with that perfection that was mentioned.”
- Not only is the Our Father a perfect prayer, but it can be said with such perfection that you will receive the graces necessary to reach a high state. You don’t have to repeat it mindlessly, but just say it once with sincerity. The perfect, or nearly perfect, no longer fear anything since they have the greatest hope in these favors and are absorbed in their delights.
“We can say this prayer only once in such a way that the Lord will enrich us since He sees that we do so sincerely and are determined to do what we say … He knows that those who ask with perfection will be filled with such favors from His Father that they will reach a high state. In fact, those who are already perfect or those who are approaching it are not afraid of anything, nor should they be … they have the greatest hope … in the effects of the favors He grants them. Absorbed in these delights they don’t want to remember even that there is a world or that they have enemies.”
- But we do have enemies in this world, so the Lord needs to remind us lest we fall asleep, absorbed in His delights. So, the Our Father continues with the petitions to “lead us not into temptation” and to “deliver us from evil.”
“Thus since the Lord sees that it is necessary to awaken and remind us that we have enemies … and that we need much more help from the Eternal Father because our fall will be from a higher place … He makes the following petitions … ‘And lead us not, Lord, into temptation; but deliver us from evil.'”
Chapter 38
- Contemplatives not only do not avoid trials, but look for them, because there is much to be gained in undergoing trials. They are not afraid of public enemies, but of devils who tempt us to destroy our virtues. It is for this that we ask the Lord not to lead us into temptation, but bring us into the light where we can see the deception.
“This is another very great and certain effect of the contemplation … these persons desire, ask for, and love trials. They are like soldiers who are happier when there are more wars because they then hope to earn more.”
“… those who experience contemplation and engage in prayer, are eager to fight. They never fear public enemies very much … Those whom they fear … are the traitorous enemies, the devils who transfigure themselves into angels of light, who come disguised … They suck away our blood and destroy our virtues … With regard to these enemies, daughters, let us ask and often beg the Lord in the Our Father to free us and not let us walk into temptation, so that they will not draw us into error or hide the light and truth from us, that the poison will be discovered.”
- The devils can feign delights from the Lord, but these are the least of harms because, even if the delights are not from God, the result is that we seek him more and still advance. The remedy against these false delights is humility, to think we do not deserve them and to not seek them out.
“Consider, daughters, the many ways these enemies can cause harm. Don’t think they do so only by making us suppose that the delights and consolations they can feign in us are from God. This seems to me the least harm … it could be that by means of this they will make one advance more quickly. For, in being fed on that delight, such a person will spend more hours in prayer … [So] strive always, Sisters, for humility and to see that you are unworthy of these favors; do not seek them.”
- We must beware that the devil can make us think we have virtues that we don’t! This makes us weak in humility and careless about growing in the virtue we think we already have. We can’t forget that God gives us virtue and He can take it away, and He often does to remind us of our utter dependence on Him! This is why sometimes we feel very detached and another time very attached to the same thing. If we are not genuinely walking in poverty of spirit, we are deluded and think we don’t need God. He will then abandon us for our own good! So we might learn humility, that there is nothing we haven’t received.
“The way the devil can do a great deal of harm, without our realizing it, is to make us believe we have virtues when we do not … it seems we are serving and giving and that the Lord is obliged to pay. Thus little by little this latter notion does great harm. On the one hand it weakens humility, and on the other hand we grow careless about acquiring that virtue we think we have already acquired.”
“If it seems the Lord has already given us virtue, let us understand that actually it has been received and that He can take it away, as in fact often happens, but not without His wonderful providence … Sometimes I think I am very detached … At another time I will find myself so attached, and perhaps to things that the day before I would have made fun of”
“Now since this is true, who will be able to say of himself that he is virtuous or rich? For at the very moment when there is need of virtue one finds oneself poor … The treasure will have to come from elsewhere … True, if we serve with humility, the Lord in the end will succor us in our needs; but if this poverty of spirit is not genuinely present at every step, as they say, the Lord will abandon us. And this abandonment by the Lord is one of His greatest favors, for He does it so that we might be humble and understand in truth that we have nothing we haven’t received.”
- St Teresa closes this chapter deepening her insight into the nature of pride. Whereas humility allows us to see ourselves as we truly are, pride blinds the sinner, as the psalmist says “But who can detect their own errors? From hidden faults acquit me. From presumption restrain your servant; may it not rule me. Then shall I be blameless, clean from grave sin. ” (Psalms 19:13-14) This is why we must always resist the temptation to think we possess some virtue. The humble person does not focus on how far he’s come, but how much further he has yet to go to achieve perfection. Focusing on his poverty in spirit, he sees how he is lacking, how he is incomplete, insufficient, and how he falls short.
“[If] the devil makes us think we have a virtue, let’s say of patience … I advise you not to pay any attention … For it will happen that with one displeasing word spoken to you, your patience will go tumbling to the ground. When you suffer often, praise God that He is beginning to teach you this virtue of patience and strive to endure, for the suffering is a sign that in this way He wants you to pay for the virtue.”
“The devil brings about another temptation. We think we are very poor in spirit and have the habit of saying that we don’t desire anything or that we couldn’t care less about anything. But hardly does the occasion arise to receive a gift … than our poverty of spirit is completely ruined. So often do we say we have this virtue that we end up believing we have it.”
“Great is the importance of always being careful to understand this temptation, both in the things I have mentioned as well as in many others … The truly humble person always walks in doubt about his own virtues, and usually those he sees in his neighbors seem more certain and more valuable.”
Chapter 39
- In this chapter, St Teresa gives us important advice regarding the discernment of humility. Since false humility can be very destructive to our spiritual growth she not only tells us how to identify it, but also how to remedy it.
- True humility calms the soul. Even though you see how wretched you are, this comes with a satisfaction you wouldn’t want to avoid and so the soul is not disquieted no matter how painful the self-knowledge is. Rather the suffering causes the soul to expand so it can serve God all the more. False humility, on the other hand, is from the devil and is very disquieting. It shrinks the soul. You feel unworthy to approach God in Communion or in prayer, and you waste your time on scrupulous self-examination. You feel abandoned by God and despair of His mercy. Everything seems dangerous and futile, and you are paralyzed with self-doubt.
“Now be also on your guard, daughters, against some types of humility given by the devil in which great disquiet is felt about the gravity of our sins. This disturbance can afflict in many ways even to the point of making one give up receiving Communion and practicing private prayer … the time they used to spend in receiving favors is now spent in wondering whether or not they are well prepared … the soul thinks God has abandoned it … it almost doubts His mercy. Everything it deals with seems dangerous …”
“… sometimes it will be through humility and virtue that you hold yourselves to be so wretched, and at other times it will be a gross temptation … Humility does not disturb … it comes with peace … Even though a person upon seeing himself so wretched understands clearly that he merits to be in hell … if the humility is genuine, [it] comes with a sweetness in itself and a satisfaction that he wouldn’t want to be without. The pain of genuine humility doesn’t agitate or afflict the soul; rather, this humility expands it …”
- This is a grave situation since you are mistaking false humility with a loss of confidence in God. St Teresa gives us a remedy: stop focusing on your misery; rather look to the mercy of God and how He suffered for us. If you can’t do that, at least recognize this as a temptation. Similarly, avoid excessive penances. If you want to hide them, you’re clearly going to far! Rather let your confessor know and strive to obey because there is greater perfection in obedience than in penance.
“I think the devil’s aim is to make us think we are humble and, in turn, if possible, make us lose confidence in God.”
“When you find yourselves in this condition, stop thinking about your misery, insofar as possible, and turn your thoughts to the mercy of God, to how He loves us and suffered for us. And if you are undergoing a temptation, you will not even be able to do this … It will be enough if you recognize that this is a temptation.”
“Likewise he tempts us in regard to excessive penances … If you hide them from your confessor or prioress, of if when told to stop you do not do so, you are clearly undergoing a temptation. Strive to obey, even if this may be more painful for you, since the greatest perfection lies in obedience.”
- Believing that you are forever stuck in sin is itself a sin, but another is the belief that we have grown past sinning. We should never rest in the idea that we will never return to past faults, no matter how many spiritual delights we experience. Rather, we should be ever vigilant that we can fall again. It might be helpful to discuss our spiritual experiences with others so that we remain in humility.
“The devil sets up another dangerous temptation: self-assurance in the thought that we will in no way return to our past faults and worldly pleasures … Thus, however many delights … the Lord gives you, never proceed with such self-assurance that you stop fearing lest you fall again; and be on guard against the occasions of sin.”
“Strive … to discuss these favors and consolations with someone who will enlighten you … however sublime the contemplation, let your prayer always begin and end with self-knowledge. And if the favor is from God, even though you may not want to follow the advice, you will still follow it most of the time because God’s favor brings humility and always leaves greater light that we may understand the little that we are.”
- Our worldly enemies are nothing compared to the knots into which the devil ties our soul. “More tortuous than anything is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) For this, only God has the remedy so we understand ourselves. We must pray for this since the devil especially tempts those on the path of prayer. Yet so few who recite the Our Father as St Teresa taught are actually deceived by the devil, that it really is surprising when it does happen.
“Let public enemies come … But these other treacheries; who will understand them, my God? We always need to pray to You for a remedy. Instruct us, Lord, so that we may understand ourselves and be secure.”
“What a strange thing! It’s as though the devil tempts only those who take the path of prayer. And everyone is more surprised by a mistake of one of those who are nearing perfection than by the public mistakes and sins of a hundred thousand others … people are right in being surprised, for among those who recite the Our Father … there are so very few deceived by the devil that … their mistake causes surprise.”
Closing Remarks: Reflecting on her meditation so far, St Teresa finds that the Our Father is a prayer of “sublime perfection” because of its generality. Anyone who prays it can find in it something for their needs, no matter their state in life. Contemplatives can ask for heavenly things while others can ask for their earthly needs. Only the lines “thy will be done” and “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” are clear and pertain to everyone. The degree of surrendering our wills or forgiving others may differ between people, but the essence is the same. We can reach a very high state of spiritual life just by saying this prayer with perfection. We don’t have to recite it repeatedly but need only pray it once with sincerity. The perfect find great hope in these favors and are so absorbed in their delights, that they forget that the have enemies! The Lord reminds them of this with the last lines of the Our Father, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Contemplatives are not afraid of trials because they know there is much to be gained spiritually from them. They are not afraid of public enemies. Its the devils who tempt us to destroy our virtues that they fear. This is why they need to ask the Lord not to lead them into temptation, but bring them into the light so the devil’s deception is revealed. He can even feign delights from the Lord, although these are of a lesser harm because they can lead us to seek God and still advance. The remedy against them is humility, the understanding that we do not deserve any spiritual delights and to not go out seeking them.
A much greater danger comes from the devil making us think we have virtues that we don’t actually possess. This can make us weak in humility and careless about the need to grow in virtue. We must always remember that God gives us everything, even virtue, and He can and does take it away to remind us of our utter dependence on Him! Just when we think we are detached from something, we find that later we are actually very attached to it! We must sincerely walk in poverty of spirit, always mindful that without His continuous outpouring of grace, we will loose strength and fall. If He sees us deluding ourselves about the source of our virtues, He will abandon us for our own good! To learn humility and that we depend on Him totally.
St Teresa shares with us her deep insight into the nature of pride. Whereas humility allows us to see ourselves as we truly are, all our defects, pride blinds the sinner to his sins. As the psalmist says “But who can detect their own errors? From hidden faults acquit me. From presumption restrain your servant; may it not rule me. Then shall I be blameless, clean from grave sin.” (Psalms 19:13-14) This is why we must always resist the temptation to think we possess some virtue. The humble person does not focus on how far he’s come, but how much further he has yet to go. Focusing on his poverty in spirit, he sees what is lacking, what is incomplete, insufficient, and fallen.
Discernment of humility is important because false humility can be spiritually destructive and needs to be remedied. We can recognize true humility because it calms the soul despite the fact that you see yourself as you truly are. This self-knowledge comes with such satisfaction that you willingly endure any pain in the disclosure of this knowledge and your soul is not disquieted. Rather the suffering causes the soul to expand so it can serve God more fully. On the other hand, false humility is from the devil and is very disquieting. You feel unworthy to approach God in Communion or in prayer and you waste your time in scruples. You despair of God’s mercy, feel abandoned and experience everything as dangerous and futile. This causes your soul to shrink and you are less able to serve God.
Thus false humility is a grave situation in which you are mistaking what you think is humility with a loss of confidence in God. The remedy is to shift your focus from your misery to God’s mercy and how He suffered for us. Sometimes the temptation is so great that you can’t even do that, so at the very least you can recognize that you are in temptation. Sometimes people in this state are given over to excessive penances. You should not hide these from your confessor and obey him in this regard because there is greater perfection in obedience than in penance.
Despairing that you are stuck in sin is a sin, and presumptuously believing that you have forever overcome sin is a sin. We can always return to past faults no matter how many spiritual delights we have received, so we must remain forever vigilant. Discussing our spiritual delights with a confidant may help to keep them in perspective and remain in humility.
Our worldly enemies are nothing compared to the devil which harms our soul with temptations against virtue. For the latter, only God can help so we can understand ourselves. The devil especially tempts those who pray! Yet few who recite the Our Father as St Teresa taught are actually deceived by the devil. It can happen, but when it does, it is surprising.
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 8 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 33
- St Teresa begins this chapter with her meditation on the words of the Our Father “give us this day our daily bread”. She connects these to the previous chapter in which she meditated on the line “your will be done”. The Son understands that we are weak and don’t always understand the Father’s will; yet, it is critical that we do his will since it would be to our detriment if we did not. So, the Son found a way to help us since “all our gain lies in giving this”. Here the gain she is referring to is perfect contemplation and not doing God’s will is an impediment to this, as she writes in previous chapter: “Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us He might do what conforms with His will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation …” Quoting from this chapter, she writes:
“He knows our weakness, that we often show we do not understand what the Lord’s will is. We are weak and He is merciful. He knows that a means was necessary. He saw it would not be in any way to our benefit if we failed to give what He gave, because all our gain lies in giving this. He saw that doing the Father’s will was difficult.”
- So what is this way that the Son found to help us do the Father’s will so that we can come to perfect union with him? He asked the Father to give us “daily bread”, ie the Eucharist, ie Himself. Even after Chist’s death on the Cross, He asked to remain with us perpetually in the Eucharist to help us.
“Now then, once Jesus saw the need, He sought out a wonderful means by which to show the extreme of His love for us, and in His own name and in that of His brothers He made the following petition: “Give us this day, Lord, our daily bread.”
- The Eucharist reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice. His love and courage awakens in us the desire to daily overcome our weakness which we have by nature. This is the grace of the Eucharist, the sacrament of God’s love for us. (Recall, that a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace.)
“… Jesus observed what He had given for us, how important it was that we in turn give this, and the great difficulty there is in our doing so, as was said, since we are the way we are: inclined to base things and with so little love and courage that it was necessary for us to see His love and courage in order to be awakened — and not just once but every day. After He saw all this, He must have resolved to remain with us here below.”
- The Son, in his humility, desired that this be a gift from the Father, and so the Son asked the Father to make a gift of Himself to us: The Eucharist (ie Christ) is the Father’s gift to us at the request of the Son.
“Since to do this was something so serious and important, He desired that it come from the hand of the Eternal Father. For even though they are one … the humility of Jesus was such that He wanted, as it were, to ask permission.”
- In the remainder of the Chapter, St Teresa breaks into a prayer of gratitude for their great love, and for the consent of the Father to give over His Son to sufferings for our sake, a suffering which continues even today every time the sacrament is abused:
“what great love from the Son and what great love from the Father! … But You, Eternal Father, how is it that You consented? Why do You desire to see Your Son every day in such wretched hands? … How can You in Your compassion now see Him insulted day after day? And how many insults will be committed today against this Most Blessed Sacrament! In how many enemies’ hands must the Father see Him! How much irreverence from these heretics!”
- Yet the Son does not complain. As the perfect self-sacrifice is his a silent victim for our sins. This moves us “to speak for this most loving Lamb”, in other words, it moves us to be transformed in how we think, speak and act, so as to “speak” for Him and thus become like Him.
“Why must all our good come at His expense? Why does He remain silent before all and not know how to speak for Himself, but only for us? Well, shouldn’t there be someone to speak for this most loving Lamb?”
- The Father gave us the Son historically on the Cross, but now the Son asks the Father not to take Him from us until the end of the world. The Eucharist is Christ’s remaining with us and suffering with us: “may this move your hearts,” that is, transform us be like Him “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
“first He says and asks the Father to give us this daily bread, and then repeats, ‘give it to us this day, Lord,’ invoking the Father again. It’s as though Jesus tells the Father that He is now ours since the Father has given Him to us to die for us; and asks that the Father not take Him from us until the end of the world; that He allow Him to serve each day. May this move your hearts, my daughters, to love your Spouse, for there is no slave who would willingly say he is a slave, and yet it seems that Jesus is honored to be one.”
- The Son shares in our nature and in God’s nature. Since the Son belongs to the Father, the Father can give the Son to us in “our” daily bread — the word “our” shows the unity of the Son with us, unless we fail to give ourselves up for him. In this way we too belong to the Father. We come to the Father through the Son.
“… to buy Him, no price is sufficient. Since by sharing in our nature He has become one with us here below — and as Lord of His own will — He reminds the Father that because He belongs to Him the Father in turn can give Him to us. And so He says, “our bread.” He doesn’t make any difference between Himself and us, but we make one by not giving ourselves up each day for His Majesty.”
Chapter 34
- St Teresa continues her meditation on the words “give us this day our daily bread” and on the Eucharist into this chapter. She focuses on the word “daily” and see in it the continuous struggle of this life leading up to the last things:
“In saying “this day,” it seems to me, He is referring to one day: that which lasts as long as the world and no longer. And one day indeed! With regard to the unfortunate ones who will be condemned … He doesn’t stop encouraging them until the battle is over … He asks again for no more than to be with us this day only, because it is a fact that He has given us this most sacred bread forever.”
- Here St Teresa interprets the “sacred bread” as the spiritual food that brings us to “sublime contemplation” like our Lord, not actual bread. That’s what we should be asking for when we pray “give us this day our daily bread”, not something base that our Father in heaven already knows about. We should not be afraid to pray boldly.
“I don’t want to think the Lord had in mind the other bread that is used for our bodily needs and nourishment … The Lord was in the most sublime contemplation for whoever has reached such a stage has no more remembrance that he is in the world … He is teaching us to set our wills on heavenly things and to ask that we might begin enjoying Him from here below … we are such temperate people that we are satisfied by little and ask for little!”
“Ask the Father … to give you your Spouse “this day” … To temper such great happiness … He remain disguised in these accidents of bread and wine. This is torment enough for anyone who has no other love than Him … Beg Him not to fail you, and to give you the dispositions to receive Him worthily.”
- St Teresa urges that, in prayer, you should “carefully avoid wasting your thoughts at any time on what you will eat”. There’s time enough for working for worldly bread and our prayer time should be focused on God, like a servant who first serves his master who in turn provides for his servant.
“Don’t worry about the other bread … I mean during these times of prayer when you should be dealing with more important things; there are other times for working and for earning your bread. Have no fear that you will be in want of bread if you are not wanting in what you have said about the surrender of yourselves to God’s will … Your attitude should be like that of a servant … his care is about pleasing his master … [and] the master is obliged to provide his servant”
“[So] let us ask the Eternal Father that we might merit to receive our heavenly bread in such a way that the Lord may reveal Himself to the eyes of our soul and make Himself thereby known since our bodily eyes cannot delight in beholding Him, because He is so hidden.”
- Rather, we should fully benefit from the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Speaking of herself as “someone she knows”, she tells of the many benefits, both spiritual and natural, that come from being present in the Presence:
- The Eucharist cures bodily illness:
“Do you think this heavenly food fails to provide sustenance, even for these bodies, that it is not a great medicine even for bodily ills? I know that it is. I know a person with serious illnesses, who often experiences great pain, who through this bread had them taken away.”
- The Eucharist presents us with the Lord as He truely is, beyond what our imagination can present us:
“But the Lord had given her such living faith that when she heard some persons saying they would have liked to have lived at the time Christ our Good walked in the world, she used to laugh to herself. She wondered what more they wanted since in the most Blessed Sacrament they had Him just as truly present as He was then.”
“[W]hen she received Communion … [s]ince she believed that this Lord truly entered her poor home, she freed herself from all exterior things … to recollect the senses … that they would not impede the soul from recognizing it. She considered she was at His feet and wept with the Magdalene, no more nor less than if she were seeing Him with her bodily eyes in the house of the Pharisee.”
“Receiving Communion is not like picturing with the imagination … In Communion the event is happening now … There’s no reason to go looking for Him in some other place farther away.”
- The accidents of the Eucharist merely hide the glory that we are incapable with our perceiving senses, but He does reveal Himself imperceptibly to the soul. We should not loose the opportunity of being with Him during the hour after communion.
“To see Him in His glorified state is different from seeing Him as He was when he walked through this world. On account of our natural weakness there is no person capable of enduring such a glorious sight … Beneath that bread He is easy to deal with. … Even though they fail to see Him with their bodily eyes, He has many methods of showing Himself to the soul, through great interior feelings and through other different ways. Be with Him willingly; don’t lose so good an occasion for conversing with Him as is the hour after having received Communion.”
- Like with the imagination, looking at the Lord in an image is still inferior to the Eucharist where he is present in his totality. This is such a great blessing that we should not waste it.
“If you have to pray to Him by looking at His picture, it would seem to me foolish. You would be leaving the Person Himself in order to look at a picture of Him.”
“But after having received the Lord, since you have the Person Himself present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart … you can desire to see Him so much that He will reveal Himself to you entirely.”
- St Teresa closes this chapter with a warning about what constitutes true friendship with our Lord: He gives us ample opportunity to see Him. Those who run off quickly after communion to worldly affairs show where their allegiance lies. Our Lord will not force them to be with Him as He well knows the kind of mistreatment the world gave Him when he was rejected on Calvary. Our friendship with Christ manifests itself in our desire to spend time with Him.
“Must He force us to see Him? … No, for they didn’t treat Him so well when He let Himself be seen openly by all … He doesn’t want to show Himself openly, communicate His grandeurs, and give His treasures except to those who He knows desire Him greatly; these are His true friends. I tell you that whoever is not His true friend and does not draw near to receive Him as such, by doing what lies in her power, will never trouble Him with requests that He reveal Himself. Such a person will hardly have fulfilled what the Church requires when she will leave and quickly forget what took place. Thus, such a person hurries on as soon as she can to other business affairs, occupations, and worldly impediments so that the Lord of the house may not occupy it.
Chapter 35
- Continuing on the same theme as the previous chapter, St Teresa begins by emphasizing that recollecting oneself through the Eucharist is so beneficial that you should at least make a spiritual communion if you don’t receive the Eucharist during Mass. She compares this to approaching a fire and exposing oneself to it to get warm. She is speaking in the context of Mass, but spiritual communions can be extended to anytime during the day and can become a habit as a prelude to any prayer of recollection, along with an examination of conscience, act of contrition and sign of the cross as she suggests in Chapter 26.
“Spiritual communion is highly beneficial; through it you can recollect yourselves in the same way after Mass, for the love of this Lord is thereby deeply impressed on the soul. If we prepare ourselves to receive Him, He never fails to give in many ways which we do not understand. It is like approaching a fire … If the soul is disposed (I mean, if it wants to get warm), and if it remains there for a while, it will stay warm for many hours.”
- We should persevere in this practice and never abandon it since it shows you love Him and follow Him in his trials. He suffered everything to find even one person who would receive Him, and receiving Him is our loving response. This is why the Father allows Him to remain with us in the Eucharist.
“… consider that if in the beginning you do not fare well … the devil will make you think you find more devotion in others things and less in this recollection after Communion. Do not abandon this practice; the Lord will see in it how much you love Him. Remember that there are few souls who accompany Him and follow Him in trials … And since He suffers and will suffer everything in order to find even one soul that will receive Him and lovingly keep Him within, let your desire be to do this. If there isn’t anyone who will do it, the Eternal Father will rightly refuse to let Him remain with us.”
- St Teresa exhibits great insight in realizing that we will lose Christ-among-us in the Eucharist if there is no one to lovingly accept Him. She effectively elevates this to a duty of her Order and urges her sisters, “let us be the ones” to worthily accept Him and speak out for Him against abuse of the Eucharist.
“[T]here has to be someone … who will speak for Your Son since he never looks out for Himself. Let us be the ones … [that] He might in His compassion desire and be pleased to provide a remedy that His Son may not be this badly treated … [that] this precious gift may avail; that there’ll be no advance made in the very great evil and disrespect committed and shown in places where this most Blessed Sacrament is present among those Lutherans, where churches are destroyed, so many priests lost, and the sacraments taken away.”
- This is of eschatalogical urgency for St Teresa and she prays the Father,
“Either bring the world to an end or provide a remedy for these very serious evils … Behold that Your Son is still in the world … He doesn’t deserve to be in a house where there are things of this sort … We don’t dare beseech You that He be not present with us; what would become of us? … Since some means must be had, my Lord, may Your Majesty provide it.”
- Like all the saints before her, St Teresa does not focus her blame for these evils on others, but asks herself, what sins have I committed that might have brought them about. She resolves to offer back to the Father the Son which she receives in the Eucharist. This can be read as her willingness to do the Father’s will and suffer as Christ for the world’s sins.
“… perhaps I am the one who has angered You so that my sins have caused these many evils to come about. Well, what is there for me to do, my Creator, but offer this most blessed bread to You, and even though You have given it to us, return it to You and beg You through the merits of Your son to grant me this favor since in so many ways He has merited that You do so? Now, Lord; now; make the sea calm! May this ship, which is the Church, not always have to journey in a tempest like this. Save us, Lord, for we are perishing.”
Chapter 36
- In this chapter, St Teresa turns to the next line of the Our Father, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” She begins by noting that, if we are already surrendered to the Father’s will and we have already asked for the daily bread to help us do it, we should already have forgiven those who have sinned against us. Only then can we dare to ask for forgiveness ourselves. That’s why the saints were pleased with persecution, because then they could forgive much. St Teresa herself felt that she deserved the mistreatment she received and so had little to pardon!
“We can thereby understand that whoever asks for a gift as great as the one last mentioned [“our daily bread”] and whoever has already surrendered his will to God’s will [“your will be done”] should have already forgiven. So, He says, ‘as we forgive.’ … You see here why the saints were pleased with the wrongs and persecutions they suffered; they then had something to offer the Lord when they prayed to Him.”
“If the world were to treat me very badly, such mistreatment would be just.”
- St Teresa takes this opportunity to warn against false sin and revisits the dangers of human honor. We are to forgive the offenses we give one another, but how many of these offenses are mere human inventions of custom. The world and the devil love to create various honors which do not honor God! “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God” [John 5:44] Rather, we should look at the example of Christ who was humiliated onto death, and yet was raised up on high by God. Speaking of her own experience, St Teresa tells us that
“… I prized honor without understanding what it was. I was following the crowd through what I heard. Oh, by how many things was I offended! I am ashamed now … I didn’t consider or pay any heed to the honor that is beneficial; that is, the honor that benefits the soul.”
“O Lord, Lord! Are You our Model and Master? Yes, indeed! Well then, what did Your honor consist of, You who honored us? Didn’t you indeed lose it in being humiliated unto death? No, Lord, but You won it for all.”
- Forgiving offenses stemming from honor is not some great accomplishment that then we can expect God’s pardon in return! We go to the Lord with empty hands and only obtain pardon through His mercy.
“And then we shall reach the point of thinking that we have done a great deal if we pardon one of these little things that was neither an offense, nor an injury, nor anything. Like someone who has accomplished something, we shall think that the Lord pardons us because we have pardoned others. Help us understand, my God, that we do not know ourselves and that we come to You with empty hands; and pardon us through Your mercy.”
- St Teresa remarks that our Lord chose love of others as the virtue which merits us the Father’s forgiveness, not penance or prayer or fasting or even love for Him! Rather the love we show others in forgiving them.
“But yet, how the Lord must esteem this love we have for one another! Indeed, Jesus could have put other virtues first and said: forgive us, Lord, because we do a great deal of penance or because we pray much and fast or because we have left all for You and love You very much. He didn’t say forgive us because we would give up our lives for You, or, as I say, because of other possible things. But He said only, “forgive us because we forgive.”
- The desire to pardon all injury, even grave injury, is a gift of perfect contemplation, and we should be suspicious of anyone’s prayer life who doesn’t experience it. A soul in union with God cannot experience personal insults and is, in fact, distressed when it receives wordly honors. It has learned by experience that there is much to be gain in suffering for God and welcomes it. They are completely self-forgetful and cannot believe what offends others.
“for when among the favors God grants in the prayer of perfect contemplation that I mentioned there doesn’t arise in the soul a very resolute desire to pardon any injury however grave it may be and to pardon it in deed when the occasion arises, do not trust much in that soul’s prayer.
“And I don’t refer to these nothings that they call injuries. For the soul God brings to Himself in so sublime a contemplation is not touched by these wrongs nor does it care at all whether it is esteemed or not … for it is much more afflicted by honor than by dishonor and by a lot of ease and rest than by trials. For when truly the Lord has given His kingdom here below, the soul no longer desires honor in this world.”
“it has already seen through experience the great gain and progress that comes to it by suffering for God. Very seldom does God give such great gifts, save to persons who have willingly undergone many trials for Him.
“Self-esteem is far removed from these persons … In what amounts to His greater service, they are already so forgetful of self that they can’t even believe that others feel some things and consider them an affront.”
- This point is so important to St Teresa that she closes this chapter by repeating it. How can one be in union with God if you do not will with the will of God? Unity means precisely unity of the will, hence the words of the Our Father, “forgive us as we forgive”. Not forgiving one another is a dis-unity with the will of God which is to forgive. Thus, St Teresa concludes that if prayer doesn’t result in resolving to “suffer wrongs even if painful”, but only gives you a spiritually uplifting feeling, then its an illusion, the devil’s gift!
“But of the first effect, which is the resolve to suffer wrongs and suffer them even though this may be painful, I say that it will soon be possessed by anyone who has from the Lord this favor of the prayer of union. If one doesn’t experience these effects and come away from prayer fortified in them, one may believe that the favor was not from God but an illusion, or the devil’s gift bestowed so that we might consider ourselves more honored.”
“I cannot believe that a person who comes so close to Mercy itself … would fail to pardon his offender immediately … Such a person is mindful of the gift and favor granted by God, by which he saw signs of great love; and he rejoices that an opportunity is offered whereby he can show the Lord some love.”
Closing Remarks: Jesus understood that our wills and intellects are weakened by sin. We do not always understand the Father’s will, and even if we do, we don’t always have the strength to carry it out. This separates us from God and makes union with Him impossible. Yet, out of an over-abundance of love, the Son found a way to over come this by asking the Father to give Him to us — that is the meaning of the words “Give us this day our daily bread”. Historically, this is His sacrifice on Calvary. Perpetually, this is the Eucharist, the sacrament of God’s love for us and the means by which He stays with us. Since we are invited to be sons of the same Father and carry out His will, we must imitate the Son by sacrificing ourselves for our brothers and sisters. The daily inclination to overcome our lack of love and courage is awakened by daily seeing His love and courage in the Eucharist. In this way, the Eucharist is the grace to do the Father’s will. So important was this that the Son asked the Father to make a gift of Himself to us: The Eucharist is the Son as the Father’s gift to us at the request of the Son.
St Teresa’s prayer in Chapter 33 helps us appreciate just how much the Father and the Son love us. This was not something that happened “once upon a time” when the Father sent the Son into the world despite knowing what suffering this would mean for his Son, but daily in the Eucharist which is our sacrament of God’s love. Seeing the Eucharist, we are remind that the Son asked the Father to remain with us until the end of time, even though this meant continued suffering at the world’s hands even to this day. Meditating on the Son’s suffering for our sake is transformative: it makes us want to avoid sin, that is, to stop causing Him more suffering and even alleviating some of His burden.
Meditating on the line “give us this day our daily bread”, St Teresa interprets the words “this day” as the totality of creation’s temporal existence, and the request that the Father give us “our daily bread” as His gift of the Son to creation. This bread is sublime contemplation, not actual bread, and we should not be afraid to pray for it boldly. If we serve God in prayer, it is a waste of time asking for bread to eat since He will provide for us as any good master does for his servants. There are so many benefits from receiving Communion: we are presented with the Lord as he truely is beyond what we can imagine. The accidents of the bread and wine merely hide His glory that we cannot perceive, but He does reveal Himself imperceptibly to our soul.
The hour after Communion is a good time to be together with our Lord as friends. We should recollect ourselves in prayer through the Eucharist at mass if we can, or through a spiritual communion if we can’t. Even if we find recollection difficult, we should persevere in this practice since it shows our willingness to follow in His trials who suffered everything to find even one person who would receive Him. The Father only allows Him to remain with us in the Eucharist because there is someone to receive Him, so she urges her sisters “let us be the ones”. In the shadow of the Protestant Reformation and their abuses of the Eucharist, St Teresa prays the Father for the End: “Either bring the world to an end or provide a remedy for these very serious evils.” But St Teresa doesn’t aim her blame outwards and asks what sins she might have committed to have brought about these evils. As reparation, she offers back the Son in the Eucharist to the Father.
St Teresa next considers the line “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” By the time we reach this line in the Our Father, she reasons that we have already prayed “thy will be done”, so we have resigned ourselves to doing His will by forgiving, and we have prayed “give us this day our daily bread”, so He has given us the strength to forgive. We are now ready and able to forgive and can dare to ask the Father for forgiveness in return. In fact we should be pleased with mistreatment because we deserve it for our sins and it gives us the opportunity to forgive. But forgiveness must be done with humility. It is not some great act of magnanimity to forgive when our pride is offended. The world and the devil create many categories of offenses for our ego to indulge in. Since we deserve mistreatment for our sins, we always go to the Lord with empty hands and only obtain pardon through His mercy, not because we are self-justified by acts of magnanimity.
Of all the virtues, our Lord chose the love we show in forgiving as that which merits the Father’s forgiveness in return. It is a gift of perfect contemplation, and we should mistrust the prayer life of anyone who is lacking in the desire to forgive. A soul in union with God is completely self-forgetful. It cannot experience personal insults, cannot understand why others are offended in this way, and shuns wordly honors. It welcomes suffering for God because it understands the gain to be obtained. Unity means unity of the will, so not forgiving necessarily means disunity with the will of God which is to forgive. If prayer only results in an uplifting feeling, and not a firm resolve to suffer wrongs, then it is an illusion.
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 7 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 29
- In this chapter, St Teresa continues her discussion of mental prayer and emphasizes the importance of developing it as a habit. But first she makes an unexpected detour in which she urges her nuns not to worry about whether or not they enjoy the Bishop’s favor. This digressions seems like it is only distantly related to her discussion so far; but, her advice is important at this point because she reminds us that the fruits of a contemplative life are not always appreciated. This should not disturb us because we should always focus on what is lasting, not transient opinions. In fact, we should even go so far as to be unappreciated, looking inwardly for our reward from our Lord who will favor us to the degree we are despised by the world. These earthly favors, like being appreciated, divert the soul and are a lie.
“… Let each nun strive to do what she ought; if the bishop doesn’t show gratitude for what she does, she can be sure that the Lord will … Let us always direct our thoughts to what is lasting and pay no attention to things here below … Today the bishop will favor one Sister, and tomorrow he will favor you … Give no room to these thoughts … Cut them off with the thought that your kingdom is not here below and of how quickly all things come to an end.”
“But even this kind of remedy is a lowly one and not indicative of great perfection. It is better that this disfavor of your superior continue, that you be unappreciated and humbled, and that you accept this for the Lord who is with you. Turn your eyes inward and look within yourself, as has been said. You will find your Master, for He will not fail you; rather, the less you have of exterior consolation the more He will favor you.”
“O my Lord, if we truly knew You we wouldn’t care at all about anything, for You give much to those who sincerely want to trust in You! Believe, my friends, that it is a great thing to have knowledge of this truth so that you can then see that all favors here below are a lie when they divert the soul somewhat from entering within itself.”
- St Teresa next returns to the main subject of the chapter which is the prayer of recollection. To be clear about what St Teresa means by recollection, she emphasizes that it is something we can “desire”, that is it is an act of our will and something we can initiate ourselves, unlike contemplation in which are faculties (intellect/imagination, memory, will) are suspended and therefore not something we can just make happen. This is important for what St Teresa will say later in the chapter, namely that, since we have control of our will in recollecting, it is something that we can perfect by practice and therefore make a habit. Recollection is not a suspension of the faculties, just their redirection inward to the soul.
“I would like to know a way of explaining how this holy fellowship with our Companion, the Saint of saints, may be experienced without any hindrance to the solitude enjoyed between the soul and its Spouse when the soul desires to enter this paradise within itself to be with its God and close the door to all the world. I say “desires” because you must understand that this recollection is not something supernatural, but that it is something we can desire and achieve ourselves with the help of God — for without this help we can do nothing, not even have a good thought. This recollection is not a silence of the faculties; it is an enclosure of the faculties within the soul.”
- The next two paragraphs are of central importance for an understanding of Teresian recollection. When praying mentally, it is important that we focus our attention on God to whom we are speaking. Letting our minds wander while praying is like talking to someone while turning our backs on them. This happens, St Teresa says, because we don’t imagine him close to us, for if we did, it would be easy to look on his face. So, we want to form a habit of recollecting our senses, disengaging them from the world and drawing them inwards to focus on Him. Even if we do this for a moment during our busy life, it is so beneficial for us to remember we have Him with us always. The delight we feel helps us cultivate the habit. Knowing that he is close to us makes it unnecessary to struggle to speak to Him, to “shout” or repeat many vocal prayers. He’s so close to us he understands the subtle movements of our souls as if reading sign language.
“… we should see and be present to the One with whom we speak … for I don’t think speaking with God while thinking of a thousand other vanities would amount to anything else but turning our backs on Him. All the harm comes from not truly understanding that He is near, but in imagining Him as far away … Now, is Your face such, Lord, that we would not look at it when You are so close to us? … This alone is what I want to explain: that in order to acquire the habit of easily recollecting our minds and understanding what we are saying, and with whom we are speaking, it is necessary that the exterior senses be recollected and that we give them something with which to be occupied.”
“We must, then, disengage ourselves from everything so as to approach God interiorly and even in the midst of occupations withdraw within ourselves. Although it may be for only a moment that I remember I have that Company within myself, doing so is very beneficial. In sum, we must get used to delighting in the fact that it isn’t necessary to shout in order to speak to Him, for His Majesty will give the experience that He is present.”
“With this method we shall pray vocally with much calm, and any difficulty will be removed. For in the little amount of time we take to force ourselves to be close to this Lord, He will understand us as if through sign language. Thus if we are about to say the Our Father many times, He will understand us after the first. He is very fond of taking away our difficulty. Even though we may recite this prayer no more than once in an hour, we can be aware that we are with Him, of what we are asking Him, of His willingness to give us, and how eagerly He remains with us. If we have this awareness, He doesn’t want us to be breaking our heads trying to speak a great deal to Him.”
- St Teresa closes the chapter by reminding us that recollection is an act of the will that we make, and so we have to train the will until it becomes a habit. This does requires some struggle, but St Teresa assures us that the effort is well worth it.
“… get used to praying the Our Father with this recollection, and you will see the benefit before long. This is a manner of praying that the soul gets so quickly used to that it doesn’t go astray, nor do the faculties become restless, as time will tell. I only ask that you try this method, even though it may mean some struggle; everything involves struggle before the habit is acquired.”
“I conclude by saying that whoever wishes to acquire it — since, as I say, it lies within our power — should not tire of getting used to what has been explained. It involves a gradual increase of self-control and an end to vain wandering from the right path; it means conquering, which is a making use of one’s senses for the sake of the inner life. If you speak, strive to remember that the One with whom you are speaking is present within. If you listen, remember that you are going to hear One who is very close to you when He speaks.”
- While throughout the work St Teresa concentrates on vocal and mental prayer, she cannot help but at least broach the topic of contemplation since she sees it as a natural progression. While we cannot make contemplation happen, we certainly can prepare ourselves so the Lord can give it to us. The closeness to God we acquire in practicing recollection, makes us ready, if the Lord so desires, for contemplation.
“If then the Lord should desire to raise you to higher things He will discover in you the readiness, finding that you are close to Him.”
Chapter 30
- St Teresa dedicates this chapter to asking the question, what exactly are we asking for when we pray. She begins by having us focus on the following lines of the Our Father, “Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come”, and wonders why, since God knows what we need before we even ask it, isn’t it enough to just say “Give us what we need?”. While this may have been sufficient for the Son who was totally surrendered to the Father’s will, it is not good for us to not carefully consider what we are asking for. Anyone who has had to undergo a great trial, like a serious illness or the loss of a loved one, knows that one of the most difficult prayers to make is “Thy will be done” in complete submission to the Father’s will. We can’t understand why God has sent us this great trial and we don’t want to accept it. Only as our faith matures can we begin to see the long term good that comes from the transient evil at hand.
[As I write these words, it has been less than two weeks since I lost my dog of over eleven years who succumbed to heart disease. As you can imagine, I prayed “God please cure my Daniel!” But could God make him eternal? Yes! He could, but that would just have made my dog into an idol for me, a creature that could be the focus of my eternal love rather than the Creator. The transient nature of all of life on earth, the fact that all our loved ones and we ourselves will die, forces us to look elsewhere for the Eternal. Intellectually this is easy to understand, but very difficult to internalize.]
“Couldn’t You, my Lord, have concluded the Our Father with the words: “Give us, Father, what is fitting for us”? … Between You and Your Father these words would have sufficed. Your petition in the garden was like this. You manifested Your own desire and fear, but You abandoned them to His will. Yet, You know us, my Lord, that we are not as surrendered to the will of Your Father as You were. You know that it was necessary for You to make those specific requests so that we might pause to consider if what we are seeking is good for us … If we aren’t given what we want, being what we are, with this free will we have, we might not accept what the Lord gives. For although what He gives is better, we don’t think we’ll ever become rich, since we don’t at once see the money in our hand.”
- St Teresa next presents us with what she admits is a speculative reflection on her part regarding why the two petitions “hallowed be thy name” is juxtaposed to “thy kingdom come”. She suggests that, in order for us to fittingly give God the honor He is due, He gives us His kingdom here on earth because we do not have the capacity to properly hallow his name on our own. How this works is not really explained, but from later chapters one can surmise that she’s referring to contemplation and its attendant inner peace — particularly in chapter 31. Perhaps in her mind, she equates this inner peace to the peace of a well governed kingdom where everyone cooperates with everyone else, or as she puts it, where “everyone hallows … His name”.
“Well, Jesus says that we may recite these words in which we ask for a kingdom like His to come within us: “Hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come within us.” … I am reflecting here on what we are asking for when we ask for this kingdom … since His Majesty saw that we could neither hallow, nor praise, nor extol, nor glorify this holy name of the Eternal Father in a fitting way, because of the tiny amount we ourselves are capable of doing, He provided for us by giving us here on earth His kingdom.”
“Now, then, the great good that it seems to me there will be in the kingdom of heaven, among many other blessings, is that one will no longer take any account of earthly things, but have a calmness and glory within, rejoice in the fact that all are rejoicing, experience perpetual peace and a wonderful inner satisfaction that comes from seeing that everyone hallows and praises the Lord and blesses His name and that no one offends Him. Everyone loves Him there, and the soul itself doesn’t think about anything else than loving Him; nor can it cease loving Him, because it knows Him. And would that we could love Him in this way here below, even though we may not be able to do so with such perfection or stability.”
- St Teresa realizes at this point that we need reassurance. She understands that life can be wearisome with all its trials, and that surrendering to the Father’s will amounts to carrying our cross. That’s why he quiets the soul and gives us a foretaste of what we will enjoy later. At this point, the Lord is starting to draw us into pure contemplation, and the transition in which He calms our faculties, she calls the “prayer of quiet”.
“… there are times when, tired from our travels, we experience that the Lord calms our faculties and quiets the soul … And to those to whom He gives here below the kingdom we ask for, He gives pledges so that through these they may have great hope of going to enjoy perpetually what here on earth is given only in sips … [this is] the beginning of pure contemplation; those who experience this prayer call it the prayer of quiet.”
- St Teresa closes by extending her reassurance to even those who are not adapt at mental prayer. She tells the story of a nun who’s mind would wander if she didn’t practice vocal prayer but who was nonetheless raised to pure contemplation. This nun may not have been aware that she was being raised to union with God, but it was clear to St Teresa from her deeds and how she lived. In this way, St Teresa is echoing St John’s insight that “since the wisdom of this contemplation is the language of God to the soul, of Pure Spirit to pure spirit, all that is less than spirit, fails to perceive it.” (Dark Night of the Soul, 2.17.4) In other words, contemplative prayer is not something that is directly experienced because it is purely spiritual, and the senses, being inferior to spirit, cannot perceive it. Rather, contemplative prayer is transformative and can only be indirectly inferred by its effect on the soul.
“… it may seem to anyone who doesn’t know about the matter that vocal prayer doesn’t go with contemplation; but I know that it does … I know a person who was never able to pray any way but vocally … Once she came to me very afflicted because she didn’t know how to practice mental prayer nor could she contemplate … I saw that though she was tied to the Our Father she experienced pure contemplation and that the Lord was raising her up and joining her with Himself in union. And from her deeds it seemed truly that she was receiving such great favors, for she was living a very good life.”
Chapter 31
- In the previous chapter, St Teresa briefly mentions “the prayer of quiet” as a transitional prayer between natural prayer, ie prayer where we make the effort to reach out to God by the exercise of our natural faculties, and supernatural prayer, ie prayer which is beyond our ability and where God does the work and our faculties are suspended/silenced. In this chapter, she expands on what is meant by the “prayer of quiet” and she gives some advise to those who experience it.
- St Teresa begins by explaining that the prayer of quiet is supernatural and not something we can initiate on our own. In this prayer, God’s presence puts us at peace and he communicates himself to our soul as he did to Simeon who recognized the infant Jesus as the messiah. Just like Simeon understood that the infant was the Christ but did not understand how he understood, so too does the soul in the prayer of quiet see that it is near God who will give it contemplation without knowing how it knows.
“… I nonetheless want to explain this prayer of quiet … In this prayer it seems the Lord begins … to give us His kingdom here below so that we may truly praise and hallow His name and strive that all persons do so.”
“This prayer is something supernatural, something we cannot procure through our own efforts. In it the soul enters into peace or, better, the Lord puts it at peace by His presence, as he did to the just Simeon, so that all the faculties are calmed. The soul understands in another way, very foreign to the way it understands through the exterior senses, that it is now close to its God and that not much more would be required for it to become one with Him in union …”
“Simeon could have easily judged the babe to be the son of poor people rather than the Son of our heavenly Father. But the child Himself made Simeon understand. And this is how the soul understands here, although not with as much clarity. For the soul, likewise, fails to understand how it understands. But it sees it is in the kingdom, at least near the King who will give the kingdom to the soul.”
- All supernatural prayer is characterized by some suspension of the faculties, since it is God and not our faculties that are doing the work. In the prayer of quiet, the faculties of the intellect and memory are very calm, while the will is completely suspended (“captive”). And while the intellect and memory are still free, nonetheless they don’t want to be occupied with anything more than God, so even saying a vocal prayer can be disturbing to them! The soul no longer feels that it is in the world and is so absorbed in satisfaction that it doesn’t think there is more to desire.
“A person feels the greatest delight … The faculties are still; they wouldn’t want to be busy; everything else seems to hinder them from loving. But they are not completely lost; they can think of who it is they are near, for two of them are free. The will is the one that is captive here … The intellect wouldn’t want to understand more than one thing; nor would the memory want to be occupied with anything else … It pains them to speak; in their saying “Our Father” just once a whole hour passes … they see that He is beginning to give them here His kingdom. It doesn’t seem to them that they are in the world, nor would they want to see or hear about anything other than their God. Nothing pains them, nor does it seem anything ever will. In sum, while this prayer lasts they are so absorbed and engulfed with the satisfaction and delight they experience within themselves that they do not remember there is more to desire …”
- The prayer of quiet has a transformative effect on the soul which persists after the prayer is completed. For days afterwards, one doesn’t feel they are wholly in the world, and that their will is still suspended, while the remaining two faculties are dulled. Still one can go about one’s business while still in a contemplative state, thus joining both active and contemplative lives.
“When this quiet is great and lasts for a long while, it seems to me that the will wouldn’t be able to remain so long in that peace if it weren’t bound to something. For it may happen that we will go about with this satisfaction for a day or two and will not understand ourselves … and they definitely see that they are not wholly in what they are doing, but that the best part is lacking, that is, the will. The will, in my opinion, is then united with its God, and leaves the other faculties free to be occupied in what is for His service … But in worldly matters, these faculties are dull and at times as though in a stupor.
“… the active and the contemplative lives are joined … the will is occupied in its work and contemplation without knowing how; the other two faculties serve in the work of Martha. Thus Martha and Mary walk together.”
- St Teresa finds it necessary at this point to remind us that this prayer really is a gift, and not something we can make happen or hang on to. In a paradoxical way, the best we can do to hang on to this favor is to remember that there is nothing we can do to hang on to this favor! We can only remain open to God’s grace by persisting in humility as the publican did when he prayed “God have mercy on me a sinner” (Luke 18:13).
“… since they see themselves in that contentment and do not know how it came on them — at least they see they cannot obtain it by themselves — they experience this temptation: they think they’ll be able to hold on to that satisfaction and they don’t even dare take a breath. This is foolish, for just as there’s nothing we can do to make the sun rise, there’s little we can do to keep it from setting. This prayer is no longer our work, for it’s something very supernatural and something very much beyond our power to acquire by ourselves. The best way to hold on to this favor is to understand clearly that we can neither bring it about nor remove it; we can only receive it with gratitude, as most unworthy of it; and this not with many words, but by raising our eyes to Him, as the publican did.”
- We can’t make the prayer of quiet happen, but we can dispose ourselves so that God can it if he wishes. St Teresa gives us some advice here: Pray in solitude. Pray gently without trying to make the prayer happen since any attempt by the will to make it happen will make it not happen. If the intellect is distracted, don’t try to settle it down since this would amount to exercising the will and preventing it’s suspension. Rather, you should just ignore the intellect’s unruliness. In the prayer of quiet, the will is self-forgetful and simply loves God without trying to understand anything; rather, it gives over any self-consideration to God who doesn’t forget to observe what is fitting for us.
“It is good to find more solitude so as to make room for the Lord and allow His Majesty to work as though with something belonging to Him. At most, a gentle word from time to time is sufficient, as in the case of one who blows on a candle to enkindle it again when it begins to die out. But if the candle is burning, blowing on it will in my opinion serve no other purpose than to put it out. I say that the blowing should be gentle lest the will be distracted by the intellect busying itself with many words.”
“… you’ll often see that you’ll be unable to manage these other two faculties. It happens that the soul will be in the greatest quiet and the intellect will be so distracted … it knows little about how to remain stable … Thus when the will finds itself in this quiet … it shouldn’t pay any more attention to the intellect than it would to a madman. For should it want to keep the intellect near itself, it will necessarily have to be somewhat disturbed and disquieted. And in this state of prayer everything will then amount to working without any further gain but with a loss of what the Lord was giving the will without its own work.”
“… for without effort of the intellect the will is loving, and the Lord desires that the will, without thinking about the matter, understand that it is with Him … [the will] doesn’t desire to understand how it enjoys the favor or what it enjoys; but it forgets itself during that time, for the One who is near it will not forget to observe what is fitting for it. If the will goes out to fight with the intellect so as to give a share of the experience, by drawing the intellect after itself, it cannot do so at all …”
- While the prayer of quiet is supernatural, it is not yet contemplation because not all the faculties are suspended. There is still the tiniest of effort on our part to “swallow this divine food” — St Teresa here uses the metaphor of a suckling child. The transition to contemplation occurs because the supernatural delight experienced by the will draws the intellect in without any effort, for if it exerts itself, it will lose! This delight is supernatural in that it occurs internal to the will, not external, and so draws the intellect away from the world and inward to God.
“This is the way this prayer of quiet is different from that prayer in which the entire soul is united with God, for then the soul doesn’t even go through the process of swallowing this divine food. Without its understanding how, the Lord places the milk within it. In this prayer of quiet it seems that He wants it to work a little, although so gently that it almost doesn’t feel its effort.”
“… they feel this prayer within themselves, a quiet and great contentment of the will, without being able to discern what it is specifically. Yet the soul easily discerns that it is far different from earthly satisfactions … The delight is in the interior of the will, for the other consolations of life, it seems to me, are enjoyed in the exterior of the will … When the will sees itself in this degree of prayer so sublime (… very recognizably supernatural), it laughs at the intellect … when [it] goes off to the more foolish things of the world … In this prayer the will is the ruler and the powerful one. It will draw the intellect after itself without your being disturbed. And if the will should desire to draw the intellect by force of arms, the strength it has against the intellect will be lost.”
- St Teresa equates the Father answering our petition for His Kingdom to granting the prayer of quiet. When we are in His Kingdom, we are no longer in this world, and so we are forgetful of the things of this world. This doesn’t mean complete detachment, but at least an awareness of what is lacking and the humility to grow in detachment.
“… let’s conclude by saying that to the soul placed in this prayer it seems the Eternal Father has already here below granted its petition for His kingdom. … For when this favor is granted by God, we shall forget the things of the world … I don’t say that all those who experience this prayer must by necessity be completely detached from the world. At least, I would like them to know what is lacking and that they humble themselves and try to go on detaching themselves from everything …”
- Unfortunately some people think the goal of prayer is to simply recite a large volume of prayers in a day, like units of a commodity produced in a factory. This misses the point of prayer. It is not to say lots of words, but to raise “one’s mind and heart to God” (CCC 2559). For St Teresa, this ultimately means the prayer of union. For those that merely recite volume upon volume, even if God does offer them the gift of His Kingdom, they don’t receive it since they remain stuck on their mistaken ideas about prayer.
“When individuals do not respond by service that is in conformity with so great a favor … the Lord goes in search of those who do love Him so as to give more to them … For they are so fond of speaking and reciting many vocal prayers very quickly, like one who wants to get a job done, since they oblige themselves to recite these every day, that even though, as I say, the Lord places His kingdom in their hands, they do not receive it. But with their vocal prayers they think they are doing better, and they distract themselves from the prayer of quiet.”
Chapter 32
- St Teresa continues with her meditation on the Our Father in this chapter and moves on to the next lines, “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. She reminds us that the Son, in teaching us to pray “Our Father” brings us into the family of the Trinity. This doesn’t just mean that the Father has paternal obligations to us as his children, but also that we have filial obligations to the Father, and the model for those obligations is summarized in “your will be done” as Jesus prayed in the Garden. Our complete participation in the Divine will makes us the vehicle of the Father’s will being done on earth as the Son did when he carried the cross to Calvary.
“Now … that He has granted us so wonderful a favor as to make us His brothers, let us see what He desires us to give His Father.”
“‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ … Lord, if You hadn’t made the petition, the task would seem to me impossible. But when Your Father does what You ask Him by giving us His kingdom here on earth, I know that we shall make Your words come true by giving what You give for us. For once the earth has become heaven, the possibility is there for Your will to be done in me.”
- St Teresa’s meditation here reminds us of that line in the Gospel of John where Christ promises “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) The first part of this line can be read as saying, if you are in union with God, or as St Teresa puts it here, if you have been given the kingdom, then you are no longer willing with your own will but with God’s will, and so it will be done. But most people don’t understand that praying “your will be done” means trials, so St Teresa goes on to add
“I would like to question those who fear to ask for trials … about what they say when they beseech the Lord to do His will in them. Perhaps they say the words just to say what everyone else is saying but not so that His will be done.”
“His will must be done whether we like this or not … [so] take my advice, and make a virtue of necessity … I freely give mine to You [Lord] … For I have felt and have had great experience of the gain that comes from freely abandoning my will to Yours.”
- Paradoxically, surrendering your will to His makes you a participant in His Divine Will that will be done regardless, so its not like you are not adding or subtracting anything. Rather, there is great spiritual merit in doing so. It is an expression of pure love for God. Still, knowing that surrendering one’s will is meritorious does not make it easy! So St Teresa continues
“… to say that we abandon our will to another’s will seems very easy until through experience we realize that this is the hardest thing one can do if one does it as it should be done … Don’t fear that it means He will give you riches, or delights, or honors, or all these earthly things. His love for you is not that small … Do you want to know how He answers those who say these words to Him sincerely? Ask His glorious Son, who said them while praying in the Garden … see if the Father’s will wasn’t done fully in Him through the trials, sorrows, injuries, and persecutions He suffered until His life came to an end through death on a cross.”
- As St Teresa prepares to conclude this chapter she reminds us what this is all about: the total giving of ourselves to God is a necessary condition for perfect contemplation, without which we will never achieve union, that is, the our transformation into Himself. We then don’t have to worry about whatever trials He may want us to undergo, He will also give us the strength with the favor of His kingdom.
“… everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our wills to His, and detachment from creatures … For we are preparing ourselves that we may quickly reach the end of our journey and drink the living water from the fount we mentioned. Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us He might do what conforms with His will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation …”
“In this contemplation … we don’t do anything ourselves. Neither do we labor, nor do we bargain, nor is anything else necessary — because everything else is an impediment and hindrance — than to say fiat voluntas tua … If You want it to be done with trials, strengthen me and let them come … grant me the favor of Your kingdom that I may do Your will …”
“… what strength lies in this gift! It does nothing less, when accompanied by the necessary determination, than draw the Almighty so that He becomes one with our lowliness, transforms us into Himself, and effects a union of the Creator with the creature.”
- In this union, God finds delight in the soul and the two commune in intimate friendship. However, this does not dissolve the soul’s personality since God gives it back its own will and along with His own, and he even takes joy in doing what the soul asks of it because the soul does His will! This intimacy might be compared to the Trinity of three Persons, ie three centers of will, that act in union.
“Not content with having made this soul one with Himself, He begins to find His delight in it, reveal His secrets, and rejoice that it know what it has gained and something of what He will give it. He makes it lose these exterior senses so that nothing will occupy it. This is rapture. And he begins to commune with the soul in so intimate a friendship that He not only gives it back its own will but gives it His. For in so great a friendship the Lord takes joy in putting the soul in command, as they say, and He does what it asks since it does His will.”
- St Teresa concludes by reminding us that union is far beyond our strength and it we try to reach it, we will only be discouraged. Only a humility in which we experience, not merely intellectualized, our smallness and God’s greatness, can open us up to the gift of perfect contemplation.
“Only humility can do something, a humility not acquired by the intellect, but by a clear perception that comprehends in a moment the truth one would be unable to grasp in a long time through the work of the imagination about what a trifle we are and how very great God is … don’t think that through your own strength or efforts you can arrive, for reaching this stage is beyond our power; if you try to reach it, the devotion you have will grow cold. But with simplicity and humility, which will achieve everything, say: fiat voluntas tua.”
Closing Remarks: St Teresa makes it clear throughout her work that to be a contemplative means a rigorous life of prayer, not something readily valued by the world. Nonetheless, the reward is nothing less than union with God!
The first step in this prayer journey is the prayer of recollection, so-called because you recollect your senses from the world and turn them inward to encounter God within your soul. You don’t go looking for God somewhere out there, far away; rather, you begin by imagining our Lord very close as you speak to Him, maybe even picturing His face. Praying to God while our mind wonders is like being distracted when talking to a friend and turning your back on him! Picturing Him close helps us focus.
Recollecting is a natural process since you have complete control of your faculties. And like any exercise of our faculties, it is something that you can habituate by repeated effort. It may be hard at first to start praying this way if you are not used to it, but it won’t take long before you find delight in it. In time, you will start recollecting automatically during the day, even for brief moments, because you find it so delightful to easily be with God!
As you pray mentally, you should consider carefully what you are asking for. Just saying “Give me what I need” is not sufficient because we are not that surrendered to God’s will. Are you sure you can handle the trials? Rather, in praying the Our Father, we ask for His kingdom which is that inner peace we need to carry our cross as we surrender completely to his will.
As the Lord quiets the faculties and begins to draw you into contemplation, you enter the prayer of quiet. This is the beginning of supernatural prayer because it is not something you can initiate yourself. God’s presence captivates the will, while the intellect (aka imagination) and the memory are still free, but very subdued. They don’t even care to pray vocally as they don’t want to be disturbed! In this prayer, the soul knows it is very close to God but doesn’t know how it knows. The will simply loves God without trying to understand anything. It is completely absorbed in God in self-forgetfulness.
The prayer of quiet has a transformative effect on the soul which lasts even after the prayer ends. Your will remains suspended and you go about your work as if you were not fully in the world. It is important to remember that this is a gift which is given to you. You can’t make it happen and you can’t hang onto it. The best you can do is be open in humility. While supernatural, the prayer of quiet is not yet contemplation because not all the faculties are suspended, but it leads into it. The delight experienced by the will during the prayer of quiet draws in the intellect without any exertion on the will’s part, for if the will were to act to pull the intellect in, it would no longer be totally absorbed in God and lose!
Next, consider what you are asking for when you pray “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. As part of God’s family, we have obligations to the Father as he has to us. The model of obedience here is Jesus praying in the Garden, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39). The degree to which you are willing to say “yes” to the trials God sends your way is the degree to which you channel the Father’s will on earth. Paradoxically, surrendering one’s will to God is simultaneously accompanied with an experience of great difficulty and gain. But you might as well make a virtue of a necessity because evading God’s will is impossible!
Keep your eye on the goal, union with God, our transformation into Himself. Unless you totally surrender your will to the Divine will, union cannot happen. This is terrifying, but remember that God will give us his kingdom to have the strength to withstand any trial, as Christ did. In union, the soul and God live in intimate friendship as a bridge and bridegroom, with a unified will while not loosing their individual personalities. It is a gift far beyond what you can achieve naturally, so only humility can predispose you to accept it from God.
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 6 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 25
- This short chapter is a nice summary of what St Teresa understands by vocal, mental and contemplative prayer, and the relationship between them.
- Vocal prayer is a simple reciting of any formal prayer:
“To recite the Our Father or the Hail Mary or whatever prayer you wish is vocal prayer.”
- Mental prayer, on the other hand, is praying with our attention focused on God:
“Mental prayer consists of what was explained: being aware and knowing that we are speaking, with whom we are speaking, and who we ourselves are who dare to speak so much with so great a Lord. To think about this and other similar things, of how little we have served Him and how much we are obliged to serve Him, is mental prayer.”
- Finally, contemplative prayer is God speaking directly to our souls. He suspends our faculties so they won’t get in the way as he silently teaches and transforms us.
“And it is His grandeur that speaks to the soul, suspending one’s intellect, binding one’s imagination, and, as they say, taking the words from one’s mouth; for even though the soul may want to do so, it cannot speak unless with great difficulty. The soul understands that without the noise of words this divine Master is teaching it by suspending its faculties, for if they were to be at work they would do harm rather than bring benefit.”
- Unlike vocal and mental prayer, where we make the effort in reaching out to God, in contemplative prayer, all the work is on God’s part. The soul is enkindled in love while the understanding is suspended. Only afterwards can it understand that the good the soul just received was not of its own efforts.
“They are enjoying without understanding how they are enjoying. The soul is being enkindled in love, and it doesn’t understand how it loves. It knows that it enjoys what it loves, but it doesn’t know how. It clearly understands that this joy is not a joy the intellect obtains merely through desire. The will is enkindled without understanding how. But as soon as it can understand something, it sees that this good cannot be merited or gained through all the trials one can suffer on earth. This good is a gift from the Lord of earth and heaven, who, in sum, gives according to who He is. What I have described, daughters, is perfect contemplation.”
- St Teresa also summarizes the relationship between the different categories of prayer. Its not like one form is better or worse than the other, but all three are interrelated. In summary:
- Vocal prayer can and should be joined to mental prayer
- Mental prayer can be performed without vocal prayer, as long as you are meditating on God or his mysteries
- Both vocal and mental prayer are our efforts to reach God.
- Perfect contemplation is God communicating to our soul without any effort on our part
“To keep you from thinking that little is gained through a perfect recitation of vocal prayer, I tell you that it is very possible that while you are reciting the Our Father or some other vocal prayer, the Lord may raise you to perfect contemplation. By these means His Majesty shows that He listens to the one who speaks to Him.”
“To recite the Our Father or the Hail Mary or whatever prayer you wish is vocal prayer. But behold what poor music you produce when you do this without mental prayer. Even the words will be poorly pronounced at times. In these two kinds of prayer we can do something ourselves, with the help of God. In the contemplation I now mentioned, we can do nothing; His Majesty is the one who does everything, for it is His work and above our nature.”
Chapter 26
- In the chapters leading up to this one, St Teresa goes to lengths to distinguish vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. Much of this was to address her critics as well as to clarify what is necessary for prayer to be authentic. She never really touched on techniques for prayer, simple step by step instructions that one should habituate so that we make authentic prayer second nature. In this and the following chapters, she begins to address this, culminating in chapt 28 with what she calls the “prayer of recollection”.
- Prayer should have a clear beginning. You should first examine yourself to see if you are carrying any offenses against God before approaching him. You can then begin your prayer with the sign of the cross and enter the Lord’s presence.
“… the examination of conscience, the act of contrition, and the sign of the cross must come first. Then, daughters, since you are alone, strive to find a companion. Well what better companion than the Master Himself who taught you this prayer? Represent the Lord Himself as close to you and behold how lovingly and humbly He is teaching you.”
- St Teresa wants us to habituate having him present at our side in prayer. He will then never fail us in trials and be with us everywhere. She recognizes how difficult this may be for those who are easily distracted, but she consoles us that we can acquire the habit as she did. God will help.
“If you grow accustomed to having Him present at your side, and He sees that you do so with love and that you go about striving to please Him, you will not be able — as they say — to get away from Him; He will never fail you; He will help you in all your trials; you will find Him everywhere. Do you think it’s some small matter to have a friend like this at your side?”
“O Sisters, those of you who cannot engage in much discursive reflection with the intellect or keep your mind from distraction, get used to this practice! Get used to it! See, I know that you can do this; for I suffered many years from the trial — and it is a very great one — of not being able to quiet the mind in anything. But I know that the Lord does not leave us so abandoned …”
- It is not important that we strain our intellect with subtle reflections. Its just important that we look at him. Like a wife who sympathizes with her husband, so too does our Lord sympathize with us. He took on our humanity to experience our humanity, so we can see him joyful when we are joyful or sorrowful when we are in sorrow.
“I’m not asking you now that you think about Him or that you draw out a lot of concepts or make long and subtle reflections with your intellect. I’m not asking you to do anything more than look at Him … He has suffered your committing a thousand ugly offenses and abominations against Him, and this suffering wasn’t enough for Him to cease looking at you. Is it too much to ask you to turn your eyes from these exterior things in order to look at Him sometimes?”
“They say that for a woman to be a good wife toward her husband she must be sad when he is sad, and joyful when he is joyful, even though she may not be so … The Lord, without deception, truly acts in such a way with us. He is the one who submits … If you are joyful, look at Him as risen.”
“If you are experiencing trials or are sad, behold Him on the way to the garden … Or behold Him bound to the column … left so alone that you can console each other. Or behold Him burdened with the cross …”
- At this point, St Teresa breaks into prayer. She gives us an example of the kind of prayer we say to this Lord as he is present to us, with an explanatory parenthesis to her readers. Here is paragraph six in its entirety:
“O Lord of the world, my true Spouse! (You can say this to Him if He has moved your heart to pity at seeing Him thus, for not only will you desire to look at Him but you will also delight in speaking with Him, not with ready-made prayers but with those that come from the sorrow of your own heart, for He esteems them highly.) Are You so in need, my Lord and my Love, that You would want to receive such poor company as mine, for I see by Your expression that You have been consoled by me? Well then, how is it Lord that the angels leave You and that even Your Father doesn’t console You? If it’s true, Lord, that You want to endure everything for me, what is this that I suffer for You? Of what am I complaining? I am already ashamed, since I have seen You in such a condition. I desire to suffer, Lord, all the trials that come to me and esteem them as a great good enabling me to imitate You in something. Let us walk together, Lord. Wherever You go, I will go; whatever you suffer, I will suffer.”
- Her prayer leads St Teresa to return to the question of our representation of the Lord to ourselves during prayer, and remarks that his presence means not only that he sympathizes with us, but that we sympathize with him on the cross. Our trials and sufferings are laughable by comparison, and thus we are consoled.
“Take up that cross, daughters … in falling with your Spouse, do not withdraw from the cross or abandon it. Consider carefully the fatigue with which He walks and how much greater His trials are than those trials you suffer, however great you may want to paint them and no matter how much you grieve over them. You will come out consoled because you will see that they are something to be laughed at when compared to those of the Lord.”
- St Teresa is sensitive to the criticism that representing the Lord to ourselves is not the same as having been present to him in real life, and that if we had witnessed his passion we would have found it easy to sympathize. But St Teresa inverts this and asks, if you are unable look upon the passion from a distance, would you have been able to look at it up close? Either way, you have to see Christ through the eyes of faith, as an innocent victim suffering because of our sins, otherwise even if you were physically present, all you would have seen is another criminal crucified by the Romans.
“You will ask, Sisters, how you can do this, saying that if you had seen His Majesty with your bodily eyes at the time He walked in this world that you would have looked at Him very willingly and done so always. Don’t believe it. Whoever doesn’t want to use a little effort now to recollect at least the sense of sight and look at this Lord within herself … would have been much less able to stay at the foot of the cross with the Magdalene, who saw His death with her own eyes … So, Sister, don’t think you are capable of such great trials if you are not capable of such little ones.”
- St Teresa closes this chapter with some simple aids to help us in representing the Lord to ourselves in prayer. She suggests an icon or a devotional book. The important thing is that we speak with God often as we would a close friend; otherwise, you become caught up in your own life and become estranged from your friend.
“What you can do as a help in this matter is try to carry about an image or painting of this Lord that is to your liking, not so as to carry it about on your heart and never look at it but so as to speak often with Him; for He will inspire you with what to say … Otherwise, the failure to communicate with a person causes both estrangement and a failure to know how to speak with him.”
“It is also a great help to take a good book written in the vernacular in order to recollect one’s thoughts and pray well vocally, and little by little accustom the soul with coaxing and skill not to grow discouraged. Imagine that many years have passed since the soul left the house of its Spouse and that until it returns to this house there’s a great need that it know how to deal with Him. For so we sinners are: our soul and our thoughts are so accustomed to wandering about at their own pleasure — or grief, to put it better — that the poor soul doesn’t understand itself.”
Chapter 27
- In chapter 21, St Teresa promised that she was going to “mention some thoughts on the words of the Our Father” as an excellent vocal prayer to which mental prayer can be joined. While at times St Teresa seems disorganized, she does return to her earlier points after a digression, usually at the beginning of a new chapter. So, in this chapter, she begins teaching us how to pray with the Lord’s prayer, and concentrates on the words “Our Father”.
- We are reminded that this is the prayer that the Son himself says to the Father, and by giving it to us, he invites us to join in. We are thus called by the Son to approach his Father as our Father, making us his children and Christ’s siblings. Even from the first words, the path to contemplation is laid open to us since we are presented with so overwhelming a gift from God that it could “occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word”. As we say “Our Father”, God says back to us “My Child”, and we are drawn into the life of God — “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20)
“Our Father who art in heaven. O my Lord, how You do show Yourself to be the Father of such a Son; and how Your Son does show Himself to be the Son of such a Father! May You be blessed forever and ever! This favor would not be so great, Lord, if it came at the end of the prayer. But at the beginning, You fill our hands and give a reward so large that it would easily fill the intellect and thus occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word … Oh, daughters, how readily should perfect contemplation come at this point!”
“Since You humble Yourself to such an extreme in joining with us in prayer and making Yourself the Brother of creatures so lowly and wretched, how is it that You give us in the name of Your Father everything that can be given? For You desire that He consider us His children …”
“O good Jesus! How clearly You have shown that You are one with Him, and that Your will is His and His, Yours!”
- While the Our Father is a vocal prayer, St Teresa argues that it immediately inspires us to mental prayer because our intellects and affections are drawn to the Father because of his overflowing goodness.
“Well, daughters, doesn’t it seem to you that this Master is a good one, since in order to make us grow fond of learning what He teaches us He begins by granting us so wonderful a favor? Does it seem right to you now that even though we recite these first words vocally we should fail to let our intellects understand and our hearts break in pieces at seeing such love? What son is there in the world who doesn’t strive to learn who his father is when he knows he has such a good one with so much majesty and power?”
- The Our Father is also a remedy for any arrogance we might garner from a noble lineage, a problem St Teresa has addressed numerous times throughout the work. Since our heavenly Father is so good, we have no need to speak of the nobility of our earthly father.
“But the one who is from nobler lineage should be the one to speak least about her [earthly] father … You have a good [heavenly] Father, for He gives you the good Jesus. Let no one in this house speak of any other father but Him.”
- St Teresa closes the chapter by inviting us to continue her reflection, confident that the Holy Spirit, the bond of Love between the Father and the Son, will enkindle and bind our will in prayer.
“How much there is in these words to give you consolation. So as not to enlarge any more on this matter, I want to leave it to your own reflection. For no matter how unruly one’s mind may be, the truth is — leaving aside our gain in having so good a Father — that the Holy Spirit must be present between such a Son and such a Father, and He will enkindle your will and bind it with a very great love.”
Chapter 28
- This chapter follows chapter 26 in which St Teresa taught us that, in mental prayer, we should represent the Lord to ourselves, look upon him in his sorrow or joy and join ourselves to him in sympathy. Having explored the first line of the Our Father in chapter 27, she now turns to the next line, “Who art in heaven”, as a springboard to develop what she calls the “prayer of recollection”.
- She begins by considering that God is in heaven, which is to be found within us as St Augustine discovered. There is no need to go searching for him outside of ourselves; all we need do is turn our faculties inward and we will find him there. It is important that we not only believe this, but experience it, since that will settle our wandering minds. The indwelling of God in our souls is a wonderful gift that we should humbly accept and delight in, abiding there with him in intimacy.
“Who art in heaven. Do you think it’s of little importance to know what heaven is and where you must seek your most sacred Father? Well, I tell you that for wandering minds it is very important not only to believe these truths but to strive to understand them by experience. Doing this is one of the ways of greatly slowing down the mind and recollecting the soul.”
“Consider what St. Augustine says, that he sought Him in many places but found Him ultimately within himself. Do you think it matters little for a soul with a wandering mind to understand this truth and see that there is no need to go to heaven in order to speak with one’s Eternal Father or find delight in Him? Nor is there any need to shout. However softly we speak, He is near enough to hear us. Neither is there any need for wings to go to find Him. All one need do is go into solitude and look at Him within oneself …”
“You see, humility doesn’t consist in refusing a favor the King offers you … but in … being delighted with it … I have the Emperor of heaven and earth in my house (for He comes to it in order to favor me and be happy with me) … speak with Him as with a father, or a brother, or a lord, or as with a spouse; sometimes in one way, at other times in another; He will teach you what you must do in order to please Him.”
- St Teresa defines the prayer of recollection as praying with your faculties drawn inward and away from the world outside. There one can freely, and with little effort, meditate on Christ.
“This prayer is called “recollection,” because the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God. And its divine Master comes more quickly to teach it and give it the prayer of quiet than He would through any other method it might use. For centered there within itself, it can think about the Passion and represent the Son and offer Him to the Father and not tire the intellect by going to look for Him on Mount Calvary or in the garden or at the pillar.”
“Those who by such a method can enclose themselves within this little heaven of our soul … grow accustomed to refusing to be where the exterior senses in their distraction have gone … they will not fail to drink water from the fount”
- St Teresa employs a couple of metaphors to describe the effects of recollection. She likens it to being out at sea while not necessarily away from land, and to rising from a table after winning a game and seeing “what the things of the world are”. She is implying here that the prayer is heading towards contemplation and even if it doesn’t end in contemplation (which is ultimately God’s choice), after praying one better sees the difference between the Eternal and his transient creatures. This echoes back to chapter 6 where St Teresa discusses pure spiritual love, a love centered on God, which leads to a certain spiritual knowledge: “This clear knowledge is about the nature of the world, that there is another world, about the difference between the one and the other, that the one is eternal and the other a dream; or about the nature of loving the Creator and loving the creature” (chapter 6, paragraph 3).
“Those who know how to recollect themselves are already out to sea, as they say. For even though they may not have got completely away from land, they do what they can during that time to get free from it by recollecting their senses within. If the recollection is true, it is felt very clearly; for it produces some effect in the soul. I don’t know how to explain it. Whoever has experienced it will understand; the soul is like one who gets up from the table after winning a game, for it already sees what the things of the world are.”
“So, anyone who walks by this path keeps his eyes closed almost as often as he prays … It is a striving so as not to look at things here below. This striving comes at the beginning; afterward, there’s no need to strive; a greater effort is needed to open the eyes while praying.”
- The prayer of recollection may be a pathway to contemplation, but it isn’t contemplation because it requires effort on our part, although the practice can be habituated. The senses can then be recollected effortlessly and do not become unruly when they turn outwards again.
“the soul should get used to this recollection; although in the beginning the body causes difficulty … If we make the effort, practice this recollection for some days, and get used to it, the gain will be clearly seen … And this recollection will be effected without our effort … When the soul does no more than give a sign that it wishes to be recollected, the senses obey it and become recollected. Even though they go out again afterward, their having already surrendered is a great thing; for they go out as captives and subjects and do not cause the harm they did previously. And when the will calls them back again, they come more quickly, until after many of these entries the Lord wills that they rest entirely in perfect contemplation.”
- Once practiced in the prayer of recollection, it is easy for the intellect (the faculty representing the Lord to itself) to enkindle divine love (bind the faculty of the will to God). After all, there is nothing else for the will to bind to when the soul is alone inside with God.
“These souls are safer from many occasions. The fire of divine love is more quickly enkindled when they blow a little with their intellects. Since they are close to the fire, a little spark will ignite and set everything ablaze. Because there is no impediment from outside, the soul is alone with its God; it is well prepared for this enkindling.”
- Since the prayer of recollection entails drawing its faculties inward to be with God “within this little heaven of our soul”, St Teresa closes the chapter with some words about the soul. She uses another extended metaphor in which she compares it to a palace whose beauty is the virtues which we furnish it with. Since God is to dwell there, enthrone at its center (the heart), it only makes sense that St Teresa spent about 1/3 of her text discussing the virtues necessary to prepare the soul for God’s indwelling so we can meet him there in the prayer of recollection.
“Well, let us imagine that within us is an extremely rich palace, built entirely of gold and precious stones; in sum, built for a lord such as this. Imagine, too, as is indeed so, that you have a part to play in order for the palace to be so beautiful; for there is no edifice as beautiful as is a soul pure and full of virtues. The greater the virtues the more resplendent the jewels. Imagine, also, that in this palace dwells this mighty King who has been gracious enough to become your Father; and that He is seated upon an extremely valuable throne, which is your heart.”
- Knowing that God dwells in our souls draws are attention inward and away from worldly things. Conversely, if we are draw to the vanities of this world, we will pay less attention to God who dwells within us. So, we are encouraged to keep our souls in a state worthy of such a Guest and empty it so he can expand it and place whatever he wants there. Of course, he doesn’t force us, so we should give ourselves to him with complete determination.
“I consider it impossible for us to pay so much attention to worldly things if we take the care to remember we have a Guest such as this within us, for we then see how lowly these things are next to what we possess within ourselves.”
“I understood well that I had a soul. But what this soul deserved and who dwelt within it I did not understand because I had covered my eyes with the vanities of the world … if I had understood as I do now that in this little palace of my soul dwelt so great a King, I would not have left Him alone so often. I would have remained with Him at times and striven more so as not to be so unclean.”
“So that the soul won’t be disturbed in the beginning by seeing that it is too small to have something so great within itself, the Lord doesn’t give it this knowledge until He enlarges it little by little and it has the capacity to receive what He will place within it. For this reason I say He is free to do what He wants since He has the power to make this palace a large one. The whole point is that we should give ourselves to Him with complete determination, and we should empty the soul in such a way that He can store things there or take them away as though it were His own property … And since He doesn’t force our will, He takes what we give Him; but He doesn’t give Himself completely until we give ourselves completely.”
- St Teresa only discusses the Our Father as a springboard for mental prayer, but does mention that the Hail Mary is also a good vocal prayer to join mental prayer to. However, the Hail Mary does not address God directly, but his mother, so one might wonder how this would work because it is God who dwells within the soul. St Teresa explains that, where God is, there heaven is also with all his court attendants, ie the saints in communion with him. So one does not only find God within, but his mother and all the saints who can intercede on our behalf. While St Teresa doesn’t explicitly say so, when we recollect and turn our faculties inward to “this little heaven of our soul” we are in God’s court and can speak with any of his attendants.
“Do you think, daughters, that He comes alone? Don’t you see that His Son says, ‘who art in heaven’? Well, since He is such a King, certainly His court attendants would never leave Him alone, but they will always be with Him; and they beseech Him on our behalf since they are full of charity.”
Closing Remarks: There are three different modes of prayer: vocal, mental and contemplative. Vocal prayer is the reciting of any formal prayer (eg the Our Father), mental prayer is praying with our attention focused on God, and contemplative prayer is where God suspends our faculties and silently communicates directly to our souls. However, these are not mutually exclusive. Vocal and mental prayer should always be joined, else we are just speaking mindless gibberish. These two modes represent an effort on our part to reach God and are active. Contemplative prayer, on the other hand, is passive since it is God who reaches back to us. The soul is enkindled in love while the understanding is suspended, and only after the understanding returns does the soul see that the prayer was not due to its own efforts. Mental prayer can lead to contemplative prayer, but since the latter is purely God’s action, it is a gift and not something we can initiate ourselves.
Prayer should have a clear beginning. You should examine yourself before approaching God, make any necessary act of contrition, and then make the sign of the cross and enter his presence. You should establish the habit of representing him at your side in prayer, and resist distractions but not be too hard on yourself and trust that God will help you to focus. You don’t want to strive for some deep reflection, just look at him and sympathize with him as he sympathizes with you. If you are undergoing trials, you will be consoled by sympathizing with his passion that was so much greater by comparison. You shouldn’t think that representing the Lord to yourself is any less than if you were with him in real life. Even if you had seen him hanging on the cross you would still have had to look on him with the eyes of faith to see who he is, and not just another victim of Roman crucifixion. If you have difficulties representing him to yourself, don’t be afraid to use an icon or a good devotional book to help.
The Our Father is a good vocal prayer to join to mental prayer by meditating on each line: When you say “Our Father” you are invited by the Son to join in his prayer to the Father as his adopted child. The prayer immediately opens the path to contemplation since, from the first line, it presents you with so great a gift that it will “occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word”. By continuing in these reflections, the Holy Spirit, the bond of love between the Father and the Son, will enkindle our hearts and bind our will to theirs in prayer.
The next line, “Who art in heaven”, should remind you of where heaven is — not somewhere out there, but inside yourself, in your soul as St Augustine discovered. The indwelling of God is a wonderful gift, and you should accept this gift humbly when praying by turning your faculties inward to be with God in intimacy. St Teresa calls this the “prayer of recollection” because “the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself”. The prayer takes some effort, but with practice it can become second nature and will help you grow spiritually: your senses will be less unruly when they turn outward again and you will better see the difference between the eternal things of God and the transient things of this world. You are now prepared for contemplation because, when the faculties are turned inward and alone with God, there is nothing else for your will to bind to except God. Since the locus of this prayer is your soul, you should do your part and furnish it appropriately by adorning it with virtue. God, for his part, will further expand and furnish “this little heaven of our soul” where he can dwell with all his court attendants (the saints).
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 5 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 20
- This chapter, which on the surface appears to lack focus, needs to be seen in light of previous chapters where St Teresa states that, on the one hand, not everyone is a contemplative (chapter 17), while on the other, God invites everyone to drink from the fount of life (chapter 19). Here she resolves this apparent contradiction by adding that God doesn’t exclude anyone from contemplation but also doesn’t force anyone and gives this water to everyone that follows him.
“It seems I contradicted … what I said before. When I was consoling those who were not contemplatives, I said that the Lord had different paths by which to go to Him just as there are many dwelling places … But He did not say: ‘some come by this path, and others by another.’ Rather, His mercy was so great He excluded no one from striving to come to this fount of life to drink … He does not force us; on the contrary, in many ways He gives drink to those who wish to follow Him so that no one will go without consolation or die of thirst … You must always proceed with this determination to die rather than fail to reach the end of the journey.”
- Having established that no one is excluded from drinking from the fount of life, St Teresa tells us that the journey must begin with determination, even if imperfect at first. She will return to this theme several times in the remainder of the work, repeatedly reminding us of this.
“let us deal a little with how this journey must begin … I don’t say that if a person doesn’t have the determination of which I shall speak here, he should stop trying; for the Lord will continue perfecting him. And if that person should do no more than take one step, the step will contain in itself so much power that he will not have to fear losing it, nor will he fail to be very well paid.”
- No sooner does St Teresa seem to be narrowing down her focus on how the journey is to begin, then she interjects the non-sequitur “Thus, daughters, in reference to all the persons who speak with you …” and turns her attention to the kind of persons and conversations her nuns should entertain. While not completely unrelated, its not at all clear why she makes this transition. Nonetheless, her insight here is wise: she advises that you should only speak with the language of God, and those who do not understand this language, nor wish to learn it, will simply not be interested. You don’t need to shun such people, they will simply go their own way because you have nothing in common.
“Let truth dwell in your hearts, as it should through meditation, and you will see clearly the kind of love we are obliged to have for our neighbor.”
“There’s no longer time, Sisters, for children’s games, for these worldly friendships, even though they may be good, seem to be nothing else … God is your business and language. Whoever wants to speak to you must learn this language; and if he doesn’t, be on your guard that you don’t learn his; it will be a hell.”
“If those who speak with you wish to learn your language, though it is not your business to teach anyone, you can tell about the riches that are gained in learning it since telling of this is beneficial to the other, and when he learns about the great gain that is to be had, he may go and seek out a master who will teach him. It would be no small favor from the Lord if you were to succeed in awakening some soul to this good.”
Chapter 21
- As is typical of her style, after a digression at the end of her last chapter, St Teresa begins this chapter picking up on the theme of determination where she left off to divert into her aside. Here she exhorts her nuns to be resolute to the end, whatever diabolic obstacles may be placed as stumbling blocks a long the way. These come in the way of numerous criticisms from scoffers of mental prayer.
“They must have a great and very resolute determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever work is involved, whatever criticism arises, whether they arrive or whether they die on the road, or even if they don’t have courage for the trials that are met, or if the whole world collapses. You will hear some persons frequently making objections: ‘there are dangers’; ‘so-and-so went astray by such means’; ‘this other one was deceived’; ‘another who prayed a great deal fell away’; ‘it’s harmful to virtue’; ‘it’s not for women, for they will be susceptible to illusions’; ‘it’s better they stick to their sewing’; ‘they don’t need these delicacies’; ‘the Our Father and the Hail Mary are sufficient.'”
- Of these criticism, St Teresa says she only agrees with one, that “the Our Father and the Hail Mary are sufficient” as prayers. But in agreeing, she is not abandoning mental prayer in favor of vocal prayer; rather, in the remainder of the text, she will use the words of the “Our Father” as a springboard to teach how one should pray properly. In this way, St Teresa silences her critics by teaching mental prayer with the very prayer that her critics themselves say is sufficient.
“It is always good to base your prayer on prayers coming from the mouth of the Lord … So it seems to me now that I should proceed by setting down some points here about the beginning, the means, and the end of prayer … I don’t say that I’m going to write a commentary on these divine prayers … But I will mention some thoughts on the words of the Our Father.”
“Hence, don’t pay any attention to the fears they raise or to the picture of the dangers they paint for you … For when you are about to gain the treasure … by a royal road and by a safe road, the road chosen by our King and all His elect and saints, they will tell you that there are so many dangers and so many things to fear.”
- Here, the “royal” and “safe” road can be understood as the “Our Father”.
- At this point, St Teresa issues an important warning here to her critics: unless you engage in authentic prayer, your spiritual life will dry up. Since she will argue that for any vocal prayer to be authentic it must be joined with mental prayer, by arguing against mental prayer, her critics are advocating for an inauthentic form of prayer which will end in killing the spiritual life of those who follow their advice.
“So you see, how will one journey without a drop of this water on a road where there are so many struggles? It is clear that when it is needed most they will not have it and will die of thirst. Because whether we like it or not, my daughters, we must all journey toward this fount, even though in different ways. Well, believe me; and don’t let anyone deceive you by showing you a road other than that of prayer … Should anyone tell you that prayer is dangerous, consider him the real danger and run from him … There will be danger in not having humility and the other virtues. But that the way of prayer be a way of danger — God would never will that.”
“And see how blind the world is, for they fail to consider the many thousands who have fallen into heresies and great evils because they didn’t practice prayer but engaged in distractions.”
- While it is not irrelevant for us today, this chapter is actually aimed at arming her nuns against the kinds of criticisms they would have heard in their days. Her nuns would have been sensitive to these criticisms and therefore hesitant to engage in mental prayer as St Teresa taught them. The saint had to reassure them. She argues that people have gone astray regarding authentic prayer, and that’s why God raises up servants to remind us of the goodness of prayer. Her closing argument, in my opinion, is the final nail in the coffin of those who advocate against mental prayer: For vocal prayer to be prayer at all, the person praying must be attentive to what is being said. But to be attentive to what is being said is exactly what we mean by ‘mental prayer’. Surely her critics are not advocating for the mindless recitation of words in order to avoid mental prayer?!
“God will raise up someone to open the eyes of these half-blind people and tell them that the devil has placed a cloud in front of them to prevent their seeing the way … Little by little, souls discover again the way; God gives them courage. If they are told there is danger in prayer, one of these servants of God will strive, if not in words then in deeds, to make known how good prayer is.”
“Therefore, Sisters, give up these fears … If they tell you that the prayer should be vocal, ask, for the sake of more precision, if in vocal prayer the mind and heart must be attentive to what you say. If they answer “yes” — for they cannot answer otherwise — you will see how they admit that you are forced to practice mental prayer and even experience contemplation if God should give it to you by such a means.”
Chapter 22
- Having argued effectively at the end of the last chapter that vocal prayer necessarily entails mental prayer, St Teresa now turns to a more substantive definition of mental prayer: As long as you are praying with the awareness that you are speaking to God, who you are in relation to Him, and what you are saying to him, then you are engaged in mental prayer. So reciting a vocal prayer, like the “Our Father”, can and should be joined with mental prayer, since you should always pray with awareness.
“… the nature of mental prayer isn’t determined by whether or not the mouth is closed. If while speaking I thoroughly understand and know that I am speaking with God and I have greater awareness of this than I do of the words I’m saying, mental and vocal prayer are joined. If, however, others tell you that you are speaking with God while you are reciting the Our Father and at the same time in fact thinking of the world, then I have nothing to say. But if you are to be speaking, as is right, with so great a Lord, it is good that you consider whom you are speaking with as well as who you are, at least if you want to be polite.”
- That this seems obvious to us today is a testament to the influence St Teresa has had on the Church. But its clear from the numerous times she has to urge her nuns not to fear mental prayer that this was not the case in her days.
“Who can say that it is wrong, when we begin to recite the Hours or the rosary, to consider whom we are going to speak with, and who we are, so as to know how to speak with Him? Now I tell you, Sisters, if before you begin your vocal prayer you do the great deal that must be done in order to understand these two points well, you will be spending a good amount of time in mental prayer. Yes, indeed, for we must not approach a conversation with a prince as negligently as we do one with a farm worker, or with some poor thing like ourselves for whom any manner of address is all right.”
- St Teresa has a great appreciation of God’s loving kindness in giving us prayer, that he let’s us approach him this way, even though we hardly know how to address him properly, and yet he accepts us in humility. The last thing we want to do is to be rude to him by talking to him while our minds are elsewhere!
“… this King listens to me and lets me approach Him … even though as an uneducated person I don’t know how to speak to Him … He delights more in the unpolished manners of a humble shepherd who He realizes would say more if he knew more than He does in the talk of very wise and learned men … But just because He is good doesn’t mean that we should be rude … we should strive to be aware of His purity and of who He is …”
- St Teresa is overcome at this point with love for her Creator and breaks out into an extemporaneous prayer, almost as an example of how we might approach God in prayer. You can see all the elements of mental prayer in it: a clear awareness of her smallness as she speaks to God in his infinite being. I quote her prayer in its entirety:
“Oh, our Emperor, supreme Power, supreme Goodness, Wisdom itself, without beginning, without end, without any limit to Your works; they are infinite and incomprehensible, a fathomless sea of marvels, with a beauty containing all beauty, strength itself! Oh, God help me, who might possess here all human eloquence and wisdom together in order to know how to explain clearly — insofar as is possible here below, because in this case all knowledge is equivalent to knowing nothing — a number of the many things we can consider in order to have some knowledge of who this Lord and Good of ours is!”
- St Teresa beautifully concludes this chapter by deepening our appreciation of what mental prayer is really all about. In “understanding whom you are speaking with” as you pray, what you are doing is entering into a relationship with God, the nature of which can only be likened to the intimacy one has with one’s spouse — here St Teresa is echoing the biblical imagery of the Bride and the Bridegroom as metaphor for mankind’s union with God.
“Yes, bring yourselves to consider and understand whom you are speaking with … it is only right, daughters, that we try to delight in these grandeurs our Spouse possesses and that we understand whom we are wedded to and what kind of life we must live … here below before getting married a person will know the other party … who this man is, who His Father is, what country He is going to bring me to, what good things He promises to give me, what His status is, how I can make Him happy, and in what ways I can please Him, and from studying how I can conform my way of life to His? Now if a woman is to be happily married, she must … strive for this conformity even though her husband is a man of lowly estate.”
“This is mental prayer, my daughters: to understand these truths. If you should want to grow in understanding these things and pray vocally, well and good. You should not be thinking of other things while speaking with God, for doing so amounts to not knowing what mental prayer is.”
Chapter 23
- As if recovering from yet another digression, St Teresa begins the chapter by returning once again to the question of determination, and tries to convince us with three reasons for why it is important in order to achieve our final goal of contemplation and divine union.
“Well now, I say there are so many reasons why it is extremely important to begin with great determination that I would have to go on at much length if I mentioned them all. Sisters, I want to mention only two or three.”
- Her first reason is that, if you give your time in prayer with the right intention, God will always reward you with much more in return. So there is no reason not to give of yourself with complete abandonment and there will be no displeasure in holding back.
“One is that if we resolve to give something, that is, this little care, to someone who has given so much to us and continually gives — giving this little care is certainly to our advantage and we thereby gain so many wonderful things — there is no reason for failing to give with complete determination. There’s no reason for being like the lender who gives something with the intention of getting it back again … rather, there is always some displeasure felt by the borrower when the object is taken back …”
- She compares this to gifts between husband and wife where everything is held in common, and so the exchange is more of a symbol of their mutual love until death than any transfer of goods.
“What bride is there who in receiving many valuable jewels from her bridegroom will refuse to give him even a ring, not because of what it is worth, for everything belongs to him, but to give it as a pledge that she will be his until death? Does this Lord deserve less … But this little bit of time that we resolve to give Him … let us give to Him, since we desire to do so, with our thoughts free of other things and unoccupied by them … I should consider the time of prayer as not belonging to me and think that He can ask it of me in justice when I do not want to give it wholly to Him.”
“Let the intention be firm; my God is not at all touchy; He doesn’t bother about trifling things. Thus you will have something to be grateful for; this intention amounts to giving something.”
- While St Teresa urges to give with complete abandonment, she realizes that some just don’t have that spirit of giving. A lot of people just bring their petitions to God and pray in the hopes of getting something in return for the “time they have put in”. While they may not be the most generous, it is something and God will reward them.
“… for anyone who is not generous but so stingy that he doesn’t have the spirit of giving, it is enough for them to lend. In the end, one who lends does do something, and this Lord of ours takes everything into account … He is not at all petty … when there is a question of His repaying us, He’s so careful that you need have no fear. Just the raising of our eyes in remembrance of Him will have its reward.”
- The next reason St Teresa forwards for determination is that it keeps the devil at bay. If you are determined, it is less likely that you will be moved by temptation.
“Another reason for beginning with determination is that the devil will not then have so free a hand to tempt … And if he knows that someone is changeable and unstable in being good and not strongly determined to persevere, he will keep after him day and night;”
- The final reason is that the determined person strives with great fortitude, knowing that failure is absolute, like one in battle who has made his peace with imminent death. St Teresa calls him a “desperado”, someone without any other hope except that of the way forward, like when Peter, faced with our Lord’s “hard teaching” that caused many to turn away, said “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (John 6:66) For Peter, there was no other way forward.
“The other reason for beginning with determination is — and it is very much to the point — that the person who does so struggles more courageously. He knows that come what may he will not turn back. As in the case of one who is in a battle, he knows that if he is conquered they won’t spare him his life and that if he doesn’t die in battle he will die afterward. He struggles with greater determination and wants to fight like a desperado — as they say — and he doesn’t fear the blows so much, because he is convinced of how important victory is and that for him to conquer is to live.”
- In closing the chapter, St Teresa ends by assuring her nuns of final victory. Having impressed on them all the difficulties they will face and urged them to meet them with determination, St Teresa rightly worried that some might reason, is it worth it? Should I bother to embark on this difficult path? Or should I cut my losses short since I will only loose all my investment in the end? St Teresa consoles them not to worry, victory is theirs.
“It’s also necessary to begin with the assurance that if we don’t let ourselves be conquered we will obtain our goal … Don’t be afraid that the Lord will leave you to die of thirst … for the devil intimidates persons who don’t yet fully know the goodness of the Lord through experience, even though they know it through faith. But it is a great thing to have experienced the friendship and favor He shows toward those who journey on this road and how He takes care of almost all the expenses.”
- St Teresa shows remarkable sympathy to those who can only take it on faith that the struggle is worth it, and have not experienced the Lord’s goodness directly as she has. But she testifies to this as a witness and asks us to trust her.
“I’m not surprised that those who have not experienced this want the assurance of some gain for themselves … I say that should anyone have some doubt little would be lost in trying the journey of prayer; for this journey brings with it the following good: more is given than is asked for, beyond what we could desire. This is absolutely true; I know. And those of you who know it by experience, through the goodness of God, can be my witnesses.
Chapter 24
- Once again St Teresa begins a new chapter by returning to her discussions from chapters 19 and 21 on mental prayer as it is joined to vocal prayer. After reminding us what mental prayer entails, she expands on our understanding by noting that it is not sufficient to know what the words mean just once, but you must think about what you are saying each time you recite the prayer. After all, you are speaking to God each time you pray and so your attention must be on him.
“Now, then, let us speak again to those souls I mentioned that cannot recollect or tie their minds down in mental prayer or engage in reflection … what I now want to counsel you about … is how you must pray vocally, for it’s only right that you should understand what you’re saying … I will speak of those prayers we are obliged as Christians to recite … so that people won’t be able to say of us that we speak and don’t understand what we’re speaking about … What I would like us to do, daughters, is refuse to be satisfied with merely pronouncing the words. For when I say, ‘I believe,’ it seems to me right that I should know and understand what I believe. And when I say, ‘Our Father,’ it will be an act of love to understand who this Father of ours is and who the Master is who taught us this prayer.”
“If you reply that you already know this and that there is no reason to recall it, you are wrong … God never allows us to forget the Master who taught us this prayer, and with so much love and desire that it benefit us. He wants us to remember Him often when we say the prayer, even though because of our weakness we do not remember him always.”
- St Teresa next turns the the importance of solitude in prayer, noting that Christ himself prayed in solitude. Clearly, if you are engaged in talking to God, you don’t want to be distracted by the world and need to isolate yourself from it. So in mental prayer, you should make every effort to create a situation in which there is silence both outside you and inside.
“Now with regard to vocal prayer you already know that His Majesty teaches that it be recited in solitude … one cannot speak simultaneously to God and to the world; this would amount to nothing more than reciting the prayer while listening to what is being said elsewhere or to letting the mind wander and making no effort to control it.”
- Of course, anyone who has tried this quickly discovers that, depending on the circumstances, it is not always easy to quiet the mind. St Teresa consoles us in this regard, and asks us not to be too hard on ourselves when we can’t control our distractions. We should try, but sometimes it is just beyond our ability. God could quiet the mind for us, but he sometimes allows these distractions to happen for some greater good. We should just make the effort to be alone, and trust God will hear us and answer, even if we don’t hear him.
“There can be exceptions at times either because of bad humors … or because of faint feelings in the head … Or it can happen that God will permit days of severe temptation in his servants for their greater good. And though in their affliction they are striving to be quiet, they cannot even be attentive to what they are saying, no matter how hard they try; nor will the intellect settle down in anything, but by the disordered way it goes about, it will seem to be in a frenzy.”
“Whoever experiences the affliction these distractions cause will see that they are not his fault; he should not grow anxious, which makes things worse, or tire himself trying to put order into something that at the time doesn’t have any, that is, his mind. He should just pray as best he can; or even not pray, but like a sick person strive to bring some relief to his soul; let him occupy himself in other works of virtue.”
“What we ourselves can do is to strive to be alone; and please God it will suffice, as I say, that we understand to whom we are speaking and the answer the Lord makes to our petitions. Do you think He is silent? Even though we do not hear Him, He speaks well to the heart when we beseech Him from the heart.
- If you have followed St Teresa’s reasoning up to this point, it should be obvious that vocal and mental prayer are just two aspects of authentic prayer. If you just want to pray vocally, that is, without mental prayer, or more precisely, without knowing what we are saying and to whom we are speaking, then you really are not praying at all. It may be hard at first, but that habit of being attentive during prayer can be formed with some effort.
“You will say … that you neither can nor want to pray any other way but vocally … Since such individuals do not have the habit, it is difficult for them to recollect their minds in the beginning; and so as to avoid a little fatigue, they say they neither can nor know how to do anything else than pray vocally.”
“You are right in saying that this vocal prayer is now in fact mental prayer. But I tell you that surely I don’t know how mental prayer can be separated from vocal prayer if the vocal prayer is to be recited well with an understanding of whom we are speaking to. It is even an obligation that we strive to pray with attention.”
Closing Remarks: It might seem like a contradiction to us that not many people are very contemplative, and yet God does not exclude anyone from contemplative prayer. St Teresa clears up the confusion by explaining that, yes, God does indeed invite all of us to drink from the “fount of life” (her metaphor for contemplative prayer), but he also doesn’t force anyone.
If we are to journey to this fount, we must begin with very resolute determination. We need to overcome thoughts that would discourage us from practicing mental prayer, like that it will lead to error. To answer any doubts we might have and address the critics of her day, St Teresa shows us how traditional vocal prayers, like the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary”, if recited with attention and not mindlessly, are already mental prayers. As long as you are praying with the awareness that you are speaking to God, the awareness of who you are in relation to Him, and the awareness of what you are saying to him, then you are already engaged in mental prayer.
It is a testament to God’s loving kindness that he allows us to approach him this way, miserable as we are, so the least we can do is not be rude by talking to him while thinking about something else. It is important that we be attentive to God each time we pray, and not merely be content with having understood the words of the prayer just once so that now we can safely recite it mindlessly. Over time, we come to better understand who we are speaking with and enter into a relationship with God that can only be likened to the biblical marriage between the Bride and Bridegroom.
However, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, because distractions in prayer are often beyond our control; nonetheless, we should strive for both exterior and interior silence. If God wants, he can give us quiet or leave us to battle our distractions, whatever is most efficacious for our good. But don’t be discouraged! The watchword is “determination”! With that you will not be afraid to give of yourself completely in prayer, fight off any diabolic temptations and battle forward like a real “desperado”, one who knows that failure is not an option!
“The Way of Perfection” – Part 4 of 10
Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7
Chapter 16
- In this chapter, St Teresa is finally ready to begin her discussion on prayer! After spending over a third of the book discussing the virtues necessary as a foundations for prayer, she is now ready to discuss vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. She compares what she’s been up to like a game of chess, in which setting up the pieces is analogous to developing the necessary virtues, particularly humility which is most powerful.
“Don’t think that what I have said so far is all I have to say, for I am just setting up the game, as they say. You asked me to mention something about the foundation for prayer. Even though God did not lead me by means of this foundation, for I still don’t have these virtues,[2] I know of no other. Now realize that anyone who doesn’t know how to set up the pieces for a game of chess won’t know how to play well. And if he doesn’t know how to check his opponent’s king, he won’t know how to checkmate it either.”
“The queen is the piece that can carry on the best battle in this game, and all the other pieces help. There’s no queen like humility for making the King surrender. Humility drew the King from heaven to the womb of the Virgin … For I cannot understand how there could be humility without love or love without humility.”
- St Teresa next turns to the distinction between contemplation and meditation. It’s not clear here if St Teresa takes “meditation” to mean the same as “mental prayer” (she uses the Spanish ‘meditacion’ for the former, and ‘oracion mental’ for the latter), but she goes on to say that contemplation is something altogether different. Meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues and essential for any Christian life. It is the starting point even if we don’t possess all the virtues. While contemplation is something beyond, comparing it to checkmate in her analogy between the prayer life and chess and something God gives us only when we give ourselves entirely to Him.
“I say that had you asked about meditation I could have spoken about it and counseled all to practice it even though they do not possess the virtues, for meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues, and to undertake it is a matter of life and death for all Christians.”
“But contemplation is something else, daughters … if a person spends a little time each day thinking about his sins … they immediately say he is a very contemplative soul … but [this] is mistaken. In the beginning he didn’t know how to set up the game. He thought it was enough to know the pieces in order to checkmate the King. But that was impossible, for this King doesn’t give Himself but to those who give themselves entirely to Him.”
- Just as St Teresa has had to explain the relationship between the virtues (humility in particular) and mental prayer, she now warns that she has more to explain before progressing from mental prayer to contemplation.
“Therefore, daughters, if you desire that I tell you about the way that leads to contemplation, you will have to bear with me if I enlarge a little on some other matters … And if you don’t want to hear about them or to put them into practice, stay with your mental prayer for your whole life, for I assure you and all persons who aim after true contemplation … that you will not thereby reach it.”
- At this point, St Teresa tries to turn to the question of mental prayer, “to explain — because some of you don’t know — what mental prayer is, and please God we shall practice this as it ought to be practiced” but she is immediately gets caught up in a digression about the impediment that a lack of virtue creates for mental prayer. A careful reading reveals a circularity in her reasoning. If we take “meditation” and “mental prayer” as essentially synonymous, then in paragraph 3 she says that “meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues”, while in paragraph 6 she asserts “that mental prayer also involves much labor if the virtues are not obtained”. So, which is first? Acquisition of the virtues or mental prayer?
The circularity here doesn’t seem insurmountable. When we first begin to pray, we lack much in the way of the virtues and may find mental prayer difficult, but as we persist, the virtues will grow making our mental prayer easier until we break out of the cycle. This is my particular reading of St Teresa and it is speculative, but it does describe my own experience in my prayer life.
“But I fear that mental prayer also involves much labor if the virtues are not obtained — although it’s not necessary that they be possessed in as high a degree as is required for contemplation. I say that the King of glory will not come to our soul — I mean to be united with it — if we do not make the effort to gain the great virtues.”
- St Teresa’s digression is understandable because she’s trying to express a complex thought here. Normally, great virtue is required for ease in mental prayer and even greater virtue before God grants us contemplation. But contemplation really is a gift from God and he does sometimes grant it briefly to those in a bad state to draw them out. So, we cannot presume on God’s ways. He fights the devil for us by any means he sees fit.
“I want to say, then, that there are times when God will want to grant some great favor to persons who are in a bad state so as to draw them by this means out of the hands of the devil … O my Lord, how often do we make You fight the devil in arm to arm combat!”
“there are souls that God thinks He can win to Himself by these means … And even though they are in a bad state and lacking in virtue, He gives them spiritual delight, consolation, and tenderness that begin to stir the desires … though He does so rarely and it lasts only a short while … so as to try them to see if with that favor they will want to prepare themselves to enjoy Him often.
- But for those who actually prepare themselves in the virtues and give themselves over with determination, God gifts them with contemplation and doesn’t stop until we reach a very high degree. However, if we don’t give ourselves over to him completely, he leaves us in mental prayer.
“For myself I hold that there are many to whom our Lord God gives this test, but few who prepare themselves for the enjoyment of the favor of contemplation. When the Lord grants it and we do not fail on our part, I hold as certain that He never ceases to give until we reach a very high degree. When we do not give ourselves to His Majesty with the determination with which He gives Himself to us, He does a good deal by leaving us in mental prayer …”
- Before closing, St Teresa exhorts her sisters to remain determined and keep our eyes always fixed on Christ. Even when we do something imperfect, we should not turn our eyes to the imperfection, but persist in our path to becoming saints.
“O Lord, how true that all harm comes to us from not keeping our eyes fixed on You; if we were to look at nothing else but the way, we would soon arrive …
“God deliver us, Sisters, when we do something imperfect, from saying: “We’re not angels, we’re not saints.” Consider that even though we’re not, it is a great good to think that if we try we can become saints with God’s help.
- St Teresa closes with an apology for her digression. For those who have become accustom to St Teresa’s style, her self-awareness is comical as she points out the shortcomings of the text within the text itself — something of a dramatization of self-detachment in textual form.
“I have digressed a good deal. I want to return to what I was saying, that is, explaining the nature of mental prayer and of contemplation. It may seem impertinent for me to be doing that, but for you everything is acceptable. It may be that you will understand the matter better through my rough style than through other more elegant styles. May the Lord help me, amen.”
Chapter 17
- St Teresa continues to build up the tension for the reader expecting her to finally begin explaining mental prayer and contemplation! This chapter focuses on yet one more important aspect of humility as it pertains to prayer: not everyone is called to contemplation, which is not necessary for our salvation, and the truly humble person will accept whatever path God chooses for us, whether that of an active or a contemplative. In fact, St Teresa shocks our modern sensibility by praising the absolute lowest position in the monastery, to serve the servants of the Lord!
“How could a truly humble person think he is as good as those who are contemplative? … Prepare yourself so that God may lead you along this path if He so desires. When He doesn’t, you can practice humility, which is to consider yourself lucky to serve the servants of the Lord and praise His Majesty because He brought you among them and drew you away from the devils in hell where you deserved to be a slave of these devils.
- St Teresa’s words should not be distressing, but a consolation, to someone who isn’t very contemplative. In fact this lowly path may even be higher in the eyes of the Lord and she may receive even greater rewards in heaven!
“it is important to understand that God doesn’t lead all by one path, and perhaps the one who thinks she is walking along a very lowly path is in fact higher in the eyes of the Lord.”
“So, not because all in this house practice prayer must all be contemplatives; that’s impossible. And it would be very distressing for the one who isn’t a contemplative if she didn’t understand the truth that to be a contemplative is a gift from God; and since being one isn’t necessary for salvation, nor does God demand this, she shouldn’t think anyone will demand it of her.”
- St Teresa remarks on the diversity of intellects and temperaments that make the contemplative path difficult for some, and even includes herself since she had difficulty in meditation for many years. The important thing is humility. This is always the safest path because spiritual delights can be deceptive, but humility is always certain.
“I spent fourteen years never being able to practice meditation without reading.”
“I know an elderly person who lives a good life, is penitential and an excellent servant of God, who has spent many hours for many years in vocal prayer, but in mental prayer she’s helpless … If humility is present, I don’t believe they will be any the worse off in the end but will be very much the equals of those who receive many delights; and in a way they will be more secure, for we do not know if the delights are from God or from the devil.”
“Those who do not receive these delights walk with humility, suspecting that this lack is their own fault, always concerned about making progress … In humility, mortification, detachment, and the other virtues there is always greater security. There is nothing to fear; don’t be afraid that you will fail to reach the perfection of those who are very contemplative.”
- Finally, St Teresa clarifies that she’s not suggesting that her nuns not strive to be contemplatives, but that it is not of one’s choosing, so you should leave your path in life up to God.
“I don’t say that we shouldn’t try; on the contrary, we should try everything. What I am saying is that this is not a matter of your choosing but of the Lord’s. If after many years He should give to each a certain task, it would be a nice kind of humility for you to want to choose for yourselves … Be sure that if you do what lies in your power, preparing yourselves for contemplation with the perfection mentioned, and that if He doesn’t give it to you (and I believe He will give it if detachment and humility are truly present), He will save this gift for you so as to grant it to you all at once in heaven.”
Chapter 18
- St Teresa dedicates this chapter to expelling any illusions that those in the active life might have about contemplatives. While it may seem that the latter receive nothing but spiritual delights from the Lord, this is far from the case, and they often have to undergo trials that, without the grace of courage and determination, they would not be able to sustain. While St Teresa doesn’t expand on what these trials might be, except to say that “you would be surprised at the ways and modes in which God gives them crosses”, one can easily imagine the sort of inner trials contemplatives undergo. St Teresa describes theirs as “a rough and uneven path”, so much so that “at times they think they are lost and must return to begin again”.
“I know both paths, and I know clearly that the trials God gives to contemplatives are intolerable. These trials are of such a kind that if He didn’t give that food with its delights, these persons wouldn’t be able to endure the trials.”
“So, I see few true contemplatives who are not courageous and determined to suffer, for the first thing the Lord does, if they are weak, is to give them courage and make them unafraid of trials.”
“I believe that when those of the active life see the contemplative favored a little, they think there is nothing else to the contemplative’s life than receiving favors. Well, I say that perhaps these active persons couldn’t endure one day of the kind the contemplative endures. Thus, since the Lord knows what each one is suited for, He gives to each person a proper task …”
- There are many paths in the spiritual life, and we should trust the Lord to point out the path that plays to our strengths and be eager to serve. Even for her nuns called to contemplative life, those that can’t engage in mental prayer should turn to vocal prayer.
“Since the captain sees his soldiers present and eager to serve and has understood the capability of each one, he distributes the duties according to the strengths he sees … So it is with us, Sisters; let us give ourselves to mental prayer. And let whoever cannot practice it turn to vocal prayer, reading, and colloquy with God, as I shall say afterward.”
- She likens God’s guidance of path in the spiritual life to a captain distributing duties to his soldiers, and equates contemplatives to standard-bearers in battle. In the confusion of any battle, rallying points are needed, and these are the standard-bearers. They must hold high the cross, the “flag of humility”, in the midst of a battle in which they cannot defend themselves.
“Even though the standard-bearer doesn’t fight in the battle, he doesn’t for that reason fail to walk in great danger; and interiorly he must do more work than anyone. Since he carries the flag, he cannot defend himself; and even though they cut him to pieces he must not let it out of his hands. So it is with contemplatives: they must keep the flag of humility raised and suffer all the blows they receive without returning any. Their duty is to suffer as Christ did, to hold high the cross …”
- We really don’t have an overview of our lives and can’t understand what path is best for us, and so we should leave it up to the Lord, submitting humbly to his will, rather than demanding what we think we deserve. We really don’t know the chalice of which we are to drink, and only God can determine if we are ready to drink from it. In the next life, we will understand the value of our experiences in this, but we can’t understand that yet. Speaking of her nuns, St Teresa calls for obedience, and by extension humility, as the safest and most certain path, in contrast other devotions (more mystical in nature) in which there is the possibility of illusions from the devil.
“So, Sisters, we don’t know what we are asking for. Let us leave it to the Lord … There are some persons who demand favors from God as though these were due them in justice. That’s a nice kind of humility! Thus, He who knows all very seldom grants such persons favors, and rightly so. He sees clearly that they are not ready to drink from the chalice.”
“What each of you will understand, daughters, if you are advanced, will be that you are the most wretched of all … for we shall have to wait for the next world to see the value of such experiences.”
“I say that I don’t know why a nun under obedience by vow is in the monastery if she doesn’t make every effort to practice this obedience with greater perfection. At least I can assure her that as long as she fails in obedience she will never attain to being a contemplative.”
“I conclude by saying that these are the virtues I desire you to have [ie. obedience] … As for those other devotions … having them is an uncertain matter. It could be that in other persons they may be from God, whereas in your case His Majesty may permit them to be an illusion of the devil and that you be deceived by him …”
Chapter 19
- This chapter represents a break from St Teresa’s earlier train of thought, and she beings by admitting that “so many days have gone by since I wrote the above … I’ll have to let this work turn out in whatever way it does, without any order.” Nonetheless, she does bring her focus back to mental prayer and embarks on an extended metaphor in which she tries to explain the final goal, contemplation and divine union.
Since mental prayer is preparatory for contemplation, she laments the difficulty some people have in engaging in it due to unruly thoughts. For this, she advises determination to the very end, lest they stop just short of their final goal without even knowing it.
“There is nothing for me to say to anyone who can form the habit of following this method of prayer, or who has already formed it, for by means of so good a path the Lord will draw him to the haven of light … But what I would like to speak about and offer a remedy for … is the following. There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop.”
“I pity these souls greatly, for they seem to be like very thirsty persons who see water in the distance, but when they want to go there, they meet someone who prevents their passing from the beginning through the middle to the end … and perhaps they were no more than two steps from the fount of living water, of which the Savior said to the Samaritan woman, ‘whoever drinks of it will never thirst.'”
- St Teresa next turns to her extended metaphor in which she uses the images of fire and water to explain what contemplation and divine union are. The metaphor is complex and open to interpretation, so what follows is a reading that, I believe, is consistent with what St Teresa is trying to communicate. The difficulty comes because she uses the image of water and fire equivocally. The ambiguities, however, can be resolved if we take the images as referring to either to their earthly or heavenly variety and take “fire” as referring to some passion and “water” as that which satisfies it.
- She starts by noting three properties of water pertinent to the discussion:
- The first property of water is that it extinguishes its opposite, fire. Heavenly water extinguishes any earthly attachment (“a great fire”), but not desire for God (“fire … from pitch”). Then this heavenly water enhances it more.
“The first is that it refreshes; for, no matter how much heat we may experience, as soon as we approach the water the heat goes away. If there is a great fire, it is extinguished by water — unless the fire burns from pitch; then it is en-kindled more.”
- Then she inverts the imagery and has water refer to earthly satisfactions (“water … from the earth”), and pits it against the inextinguishable fire which is the love of God. One can even interpret this as divine union.
“So, as I say, the water that rises from the earth has no power over the love of God; the flames of this love are very high, and the source of it is not found in anything so lowly. There are other little fires of love of God that any event will extinguish. But extinguish this fire? No, not at all! Even though a whole sea of temptations comes, the fire will not be put out and thereby made to lose control over these temptations.”
- But when both the water and the fire are from heaven, they enhance one another
“Well, if it is water that rains from heaven, so much less will it extinguish this fire; the two are not contraries but from the same land. Have no fear that the one element will do harm to the other; rather, they help each other produce their effect. For the water of true tears, those that flow in true prayer, readily given by the King of heaven, helps the fire burn more and last longer; and the fire helps the water bring refreshment.”
- The second property of water is that it cleans us. The metaphor of water cleansing our sins is common — one has only to think of Baptism. But here St Teresa adds a profound insight regarding the attainment of perfection. While we can make some progress by our own efforts, we can’t fully remove all our imperfections. Since we always carry with ourselves some imperfection, and since you can’t attain to perfection using imperfect means, we can never attain perfection by our own efforts. Rather, the perfection of divine union is supernatural and not a matter of our own choosing.
- Here I quote paragraph six in its entirety as it conveys the insight so eloquently:
“Another property of water is that it cleans dirty things. What would the world be like if there were no water for washing? Do you know how clean this water is, this heavenly water, this clear water, when it isn’t cloudy, when it isn’t muddy, but falls from heaven? Once this water has been drunk, I am certain that it leaves the soul bright and cleansed of all faults. Since this divine union is something very supernatural, it is not a matter of our own choosing. As I have written, God doesn’t permit a soul to drink this water unless to cleanse it and leave it clean and free from all the mud and misery in which, through its own faults, it was struck. Other delights that come through the medium of the intellect, however much they may accomplish, come from water running on the ground; they do not come from drinking at the fount. There is never a lack of muddy things to detain one on this path, and the water is not so pure and clean. Living water is not what I call this prayer in which, as I say, there is reasoning with the intellect; I mean from the way I understand things. For something from the road that we don’t want will stick to our soul and be helped to cling there by our body and natural lowliness, however much we may want to avoid this.”
- St Teresa illustrates this point by showing us that, even in thinking about how to negate this world, our attention turns back to the world and we still affirm it! This is such an important point, and she does such a good job at conveying the idea, that I quote paragraph seven in its entirety.
“Let me explain myself further: suppose that in order to despise the world we are thinking about its nature and how all things come to an end. Almost without our realizing it we find ourselves thinking about the things we like in the world; and in desiring to flee them, we are at least hindered a little by thinking about how they were and how they will be and what we will do; in order to think of what we must do to free ourselves, we place ourselves in danger again. Not that this reasoning must be abandoned, but one must be fearful; it’s necessary to proceed with care.”
“By means of this living water the Lord Himself takes up these cares, for He doesn’t want to entrust them to us. He so esteems our soul that He doesn’t allow it to be occupied with things that can harm it during the time He wishes to favor it. Rather, He immediately places it near Himself and shows it in an instant more truths, and gives it clearer understanding of what everything is, than we could have here below in many years. For our eyes don’t see clearly; the dust blinds us as we walk. By this living water the Lord brings us to the end of the journey without our understanding how.”
- The third property of water is that it satisfies. You can die from too little, but you can also die from too much heavenly water “because the love of God and desire for Him can increase so much that the natural subject is unable to endure it, and so there have been persons who have died from love.” St Teresa herself says she knows of a woman “who would have died if God hadn’t succored her immediately with such an abundance of this living water, for she was almost carried out of herself with raptures.” But since God can never give us something that will harm us, He will increase our capacity to receive what he gives us. All desire comes from the self, and the longing to completely forsake this world to be with God is moderated by the desire to help others along the same path.
“It should be understood here that since there can be nothing imperfect in our supreme Good, everything He gives is for our good; and however great the abundance of this water He gives, there cannot be too much in anything of His. If He gives a great deal, He gives the soul, as I said, the capacity to drink much; like a glass-maker who makes the vessel a size he sees is necessary in order to hold what he intends to pour into it.”
“In desiring this water there is always some fault, since the desire comes from ourselves; if some good comes, it comes from the Lord who helps. But we are so indiscreet that since the pain is sweet and delightful, we never think we can have enough of this pain … we foster this desire as much as we can, and so sometimes it kills … But perhaps by continuing to live we can help others die of desire for this death. And I believe the devil causes this desire for death, for he understands the harm that can be done by such a person while alive; and so at this stage he tempts one to perform indiscreet penances so that one’s health will be lost …”
- St Teresa closes this chapter by explaining that, by making the goal of contemplation and divine union explicit right from the beginning, her nuns would not despair and abandon the path when they encounter trials along their way, but rather would persist with determination until the end. Thus she ends the chapter addressing the difficulty that she commented on in the beginning, and exhorts her sisters to trust that the Lord’s invitation to divine union is open to all.
“Why do you think, daughters, that I have tried to explain the goal and show you the reward before the battle, by telling you about the good that comes from drinking of this heavenly fount, of this living water? So that you will not be dismayed by the trial and contradiction there is along the way, and advance with courage and not grow weary … Behold, the Lord invites all … If this invitation were not a general one, the Lord wouldn’t have called us all … He could have said, ‘Come all of you, for in the end you won’t lose anything, and to those whom I choose I will give to drink.’ But since He spoke without this condition to all, I hold as certain that all those who do not falter on the way will drink this living water.”
Closing Remarks: In these chapters, St Teresa finally turns her attention from the virtues, which are the necessary for prayer, to prayer itself and discusses vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. Mental prayer, which on my reading she also calls meditation, is the basis of acquiring the virtues, and the acquisition of the virtues make mental prayer easy. Contemplation, on the other hand, is something altogether different. It is a pure gift from God which he gives us when we give ourselves entirely to Him. Typically, contemplation requires a very high degree of virtue, but sometimes he grants it briefly to those in a bad state to draw them out. But for those who are ready, God doesn’t stop gifting us with contemplation until we reach a very high degree. However, if we don’t give ourselves over to him completely, he leaves us in mental prayer.
St Teresa, however, does take on more digression on the importance of humility as in our prayer life: not everyone is called to contemplation. It is not necessary for our salvation and the truly humble person accepts whatever path God chooses, whether active or contemplative. In fact, the active, as a servant of the servants of God (ie of the contemplatives) may be following the higher path! Humility is always the safest path because spiritual delights might be deceptive. Nor should the active think that contemplatives receive only spiritual delights from the Lord. The latter undergo many trials and require special graces to sustain them. They are like standard-bearers in battle who cannot defend themselves, yet must still hold high the “flag of humility” despite blows. Only God knows what chalice we are to drink of, and so we should leave the decision of our calling in his hands.
St Teresa ends her digression and returns to her discussion on prayer. Mental prayer is the path to contemplation, but since it is difficulty, especially for those whose minds are restless, they give up before they reach the final goal, which is contemplation and divine union. To encourage them to persist with determination, she makes the goal explicit from the onset and assures them that it is well worth the trials. To describe contemplation, she compares it to heavenly water: 1. Heavenly water (contemplation) extinguishes any earthly fire (attachment to creatures) but increases heavenly fire (love for God). 2. Heavenly water cleanses us. We cannot use our own faculties (intellect) which are themselves dirty, to clean ourselves, and so the final step of perfection can only come from God by this heavenly water. 3. Heavenly water satisfies. In fact, too much can kill us, but since no evil can come from God, he expands our souls to accommodate it.