John of the Cross: Carmel, Desire and Transformation 1032301023, 9781032301020

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Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism

JOHN OF THE CROSS CARMEL, DESIRE AND TRANSFORMATION Edited by Edward Howells and Peter Tyler

John of the Cross

This book explores the life and teaching of John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic who remains a major source of Western thought on spirituality, theology and mysticism. Leading academics discuss the importance and legacy of John from historical, theological, philosophical, pastoral, ecumenical, psychological and literary perspectives. The book focuses on his place in Carmel, his understanding of desire and the role of transformation in his theology. Approaching John in the context of the late medieval mystical tradition, it offers a timely re-evaluation of his work and a significant reassessment of his relevance in the context of current debates. Edward Howells is Associate Tutor in Christian Spirituality at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford. Peter Tyler is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spirituality and Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Spirituality and Reconciliation (www.stmarys. ac.uk/inspire) at St Mary’s University, London.

Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism Series Editors: Patricia Z. Beckman, Oliver Davies and George Pattison

This series facilitates new points of synergy and fresh theological engagements with Christian mystical traditions. Reflecting the plurality of theological approaches to Christian mystical theology, books in the series cover historical, literary, practical, and systematic perspectives as well as philosophical, psychological, and phenomenological methods. Although the primary focus of the series is the Christian tradition, exploration of texts from other traditions also highlight the theological, psychological and philosophical questions that Christian mysticism brings to the fore. Semiotic Theory and Sacramentality in Hugh of Saint Victor Ruben Angelici On Deification and Sacred Eloquence Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich Louise Nelstrop Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism W. Ezekiel Goggin and Sean Hannan Spiritual Formation as the Hero’s Journey in John of Ruusbroec Robert Palfrey Gender and Medieval Mysticism from India to Europe edited by Alexandra Verini and Abir Bazaz John of the Cross: Carmel, Desire and Transformation edited by Edward Howells and Peter Tyler

For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Contemporary-Theological-Explorations-in-Mysticism/book-series/ACONTHEOMYS

John of the Cross Carmel, Desire and Transformation

Edited by Edward Howells and Peter Tyler

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Edward Howells and Peter Tyler; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Edward Howells and Peter Tyler to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-30102-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-31237-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-30871-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713 Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Prologue: Into the Night

viii x xi

EDWARD HOWELLS AND PETER TYLER

Introduction: St John of the Cross: A Short Biography and Overview of His Work

1

CHRISTOPHER C. H. COOK

PART I

John of the Cross: Carmel, Context and Canonization11 1 John of the Cross and Carmel: Hermit and Mendicant

13

TERENCE O’REILLY

2 How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority

25

BERNARD McGINN

3 John of the Cross: The Long Road to Sainthood

47

JODI BILINKOFF

4 John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns: Reciprocity and Communion

72

SHELAGH BANKS

PART II

John of the Cross: Love, Desire and Transformation83 5 ¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!: John of the Cross on Transformation STEVEN PAYNE

85

vi Contents 6 Perfect Love, Described: Exploring the Significance of Love for John of the Cross

97

IAIN MATTHEW

7 The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey in the Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross

117

COLIN THOMPSON

8 The Unfathomed Embrace: The Language of Abyss in John of the Cross

131

TESSA HOLLAND

9 Transformation in John of the Cross: What Deep Innate Human and Spiritual Ground Is Being Transformed in Each of the Dark Nights?

145

RONALD ROLHEISER

10 The Ascent of Mount Carmel as a Way of Transformation

157

PAVEL POLA

11 ‘Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me’ (Job 30.21): John of the Cross on Job

161

LOUISE NELSTROP

PART III

John of the Cross in Dialogue

175

12 The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross

177

SAM HOLE

13 Desire and the Transformation of Suffering in John of the Cross and Catherine of Siena 

189

EMMA MAVIN

14 Desire for God and Its Realisation: Henri de Lubac in Dialogue with John of the Cross

197

CHRISTOF BETSCHART

15 Edith Stein and John of the Cross on the Dark Night: Changing the Aspect of the Soul PETER TYLER

209

Contents vii 16 John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas: The Quest for God beyond Being

217

DAVID B. PERRIN

17 Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross: The Problem of Modern Experientialism and the Dark Night of COVID

230

MARK MURPHY

PART IV

John of the Cross for Today

247

18 The Dark Night in Psychiatry

249

CHRISTOPHER C. H. COOK

19 Directing Desire: Diagnosing Acedia and Dark Night in Spiritual Direction

263

CHLOE LYNCH

20 A Transformative View of Christian Suffering: John of the Cross’ Interpretation and Analysis of Mark 8:34–35

271

ROBERT D. FLANAGAN

21 Recontextualising St John: Constance FitzGerald’s Concept of Impasse and Its Appropriation in Contemporary Spirituality

279

IAN SHELTON

Epilogue

287

SAM HOLE

Abbreviations Bibliography Index

291 293 312

Contributors

Editors Edward Howells is Associate Tutor in Christian Spirituality at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford. Peter Tyler is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spirituality and Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Spirituality and Reconciliation (www.stmarys. ac.uk/inspire) at St Mary’s University, London. Authors Shelagh Banks is a Discalced Carmelite nun at Quidenham Carmel in Norfolk, UK. She is currently serving as President of the Association of Carmels of Great Britain. Christof Betschart is a Swiss Discalced Carmelite, currently serving as Dean of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology and Institute of Spirituality at the Teresianum, Rome. His research, teaching and publications in several languages concern Edith Stein, Carmelite spirituality and theological anthropology with a special focus on the imago Dei. Jodi Bilinkoff is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (USA). Christopher C. H. Cook is Emeritus Professor in the Institute of Medical Humanities at Durham University. He was awarded the Canterbury Cross by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2020 for his work on theology and psychiatry, and the Oskar Pfister Award by the American Psychiatric Association in 2021 for his work on religion and psychiatry. Robert D. Flanagan is an Episcopal Priest in the Diocese of New York. Currently, he is the General Theological Seminary Chaplain and also Dean’s Advisor and Teaching Fellow at Virginia Theological Seminary. Sam Hole is Associate Vicar at St Luke’s and Christ Church, Chelsea, and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College, London. Tessa Holland is an Anglican priest. Her PhD thesis is titled ‘The Apophasis of Desire in the Writings of St John of the Cross’. She lives as a contemplative

Contributors ix with her husband in Wales. Their small-holding is affiliated to the Quiet Garden movement. Chloe Lynch is Lecturer in Practical Theology at London School of Theology and also practises as a Carmelite-trained spiritual director. Her book, Ecclesial Leadership as Friendship, was published by Routledge in 2019. Iain Matthew is a Discalced Carmelite friar, currently teaching at the Pontificio Istituto di Spiritualità, Teresianum, Rome. He is the author of The Impact of God: Soundings from St John of the Cross (2010). Emma Mavin is a PhD candidate at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, and is working on the role of suffering and (dis)embodiment in the mystical theology of John of the Cross. Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus at the Divinity School of The University of Chicago, where he taught for 34 years before retiring in 2003. Mark Murphy is an Editor for the political journal and blog Taiwan Insight and a Lecturer at St Mary’s University, Scotland, Gillis Centre, convening courses on ethics, philosophy, and mystical theology/spirituality. Terence O’Reilly is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. His recent publications include Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain (Routledge, 2022). Steven Payne is a Discalced Carmelite friar and currently the Endowed Chair of Carmelite Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. David B. Perrin is Professor Emeritus, St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, Canada, where he continues to give courses, conferences and retreats on an occasional basis. Pavel Pola has been a member of the Discalced Carmelite Order since 2003. He studied at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Charles University of Prague and completed religious formation in Italy (Genova). He worked on the critical Czech edition of texts of Thérèse of Lisieux. He is a rector of Sanctuary of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Ronald Rolheiser is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He is a theologian, professor, awardwinning author, and serves as President of the Oblate School of Theology, San Antonio, Texas. Ian Shelton is an Anglican priest with an interest in contemporary recontextualisations of John of the Cross. He is currently researching the work of Constance FitzGerald through the Cambridge Theological Foundation at Westcott House. Colin Thompson is an Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford and a retired minister of the United Reformed Church.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Fr Marc Foley O.C.D. and the Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC, for their kind permission to quote from the English translations of the Collected Works of St John of the Cross. We would also like to thank the support staff and Vice-Chancellor of St Mary’s University Twickenham, who, with great patience and panache, enabled the original conference to go ahead in June 2021, despite the exigencies of the pandemic. Katherine Ong of Routledge has been committed to the book since its first inception and we are most grateful to her and her editorial assistants, Yuga Harini and Mayank Sharma, for their hard work in producing the final volume. An especially dedicated supporter in the work towards the conference that inspired this book was the late Very Rev’d Prof. Kevin Alban O.Carm (1958– 2021), Provincial of the British Carmelites. A great medievalist, Prof. Alban always sought to appreciate John as a saint who transcended the labels, ghettoes and clichés that so many have placed on him in the intervening centuries. We dedicate this book to his happy memory: Da virtutis meritum Da salutis exitum Da perenne gaudium Amen Edward Howells and Peter Tyler Easter 2023

Prologue: Into the Night Edward Howells and Peter Tyler

When the name ‘John of the Cross’ is mentioned, certain images and ideas immediately come to mind. ‘Night’ is his most famous over-arching metaphor, usually compounded into the immortal phrase ‘dark night of the soul’. Those who are familiar with a little Spanish, and Carmelite, history may also think of this gifted young man, then 35 years old, being held for nine months in a prison that belonged to his religious order for reasons that even today seem obscure. The prison was perched high over the fierce river Tajo in the sierras of central Spain flowing past the imperial city of Toledo. On a recent visit to that extraordinary city, a group of us were invited, at midnight, to visit the location of John’s prison by the indefatigable prior of the Toledan Carmelite convent – Fray Tito. ‘In secret and disguised, our house being now all stilled’, as John might have said, we piled into the friar’s small, battered car and made our way through the dark and narrow alleys of the city, late tourists scattering to every side. When we reached the site of John’s prison, el Paseo del Carmen, we were confronted by a municipal garden and car-park – we were 200 years too late – the priory in which John was imprisoned having been destroyed in the nineteenth century. Instead, we were faced with youths in baseball caps with skateboards enjoying all the sultry pleasures of a Spanish night after the torrid heat of the day. Yet, in this unpromising situation, Fray Tito took us to the edge of the battlements where we could hear the roar of the Tajo in the ravine below. He then began to recite the lines that John had composed on this very spot some 400 years ago: ‘For I know well the fountain that flows and runs, although it is the night... It is here calling to creatures, and they are filled with water, although in darkness, because it is night...’.1 Already in this incident, we hear some of the key themes that will be taken up in this volume – a major reassessment of John’s writing and influence especially concentrating on the themes of desire and transformation in his spirituality and thought. First, there is the elusiveness of the man. Unlike his compatriot and co-worker, St Teresa of Avila, so vivid and present to us in her writings such as The Book of the Life, John seems remote and mysterious

xii  Prologue: Into the Night to us. He wrote very little about himself and what we do know about his life and character comes from later reports from friends, associates – and enemies – who tried to piece together something of the nature and character of this most extraordinary man some 30 years after he had died. This was sufficient time for a number of myths to grow up about the small Castilian friar and we shall return in this volume to the process of reconstructing the memory of this most mysterious of mystics, as it unfolded. Secondly, there is the over-arching image of Night with which we started. Anyone who has visited Spain in the summer months will know that it is at night that cities and villages come alive after a day spent avoiding the unbearable heat – the fiestas of the night only ending with the ‘dawn-song’ as the revellers make their way home in the early dawn. It is said that it was one such ‘dawn-song’ that John heard in his prison that inspired the incomparable poetry of the Spiritual Canticle beginning with the haunting phrase: ‘Where have you hidden Beloved, and left me moaning? You fled like the stag after wounding me; I went out calling you and you were gone’.2 Frequently in the present volume, we shall touch on John’s Night metaphor as we examine it from various philosophical, theological, psychological, aesthetic and sociological perspectives – indeed, the nuances and implications of the metaphor are seemingly endless. Finally, there is the search for the Beloved – the panting desire to find the one who has fled – even in the stark postmodern urban streetscape, we find ourselves inhabiting in this young, and troubled, twenty-first century. As the resonant syllables of the Spaniard’s poetry played on our hearts that unforgettable night in Toledo, John’s words remain as lively and relevant to our own disturbed times as they did in his own troubled sixteenth-century Spain. So, we have the pleasure to invite you now to take this journey with us into the world of John and his remarkable poetry and writing. We begin the volume by exploring themes around John’s life and work in the religious order that was his home – the Carmelites – and how, following the work of Professor Terence O’Reilly, John himself managed to reconcile the various demands of being a friar, a hermit and a monk. Prof. O’Reilly’s perspective on John’s Carmelite origins is complemented by the view of a Carmelite sister today. Sr Shelagh Banks describes how John continues to influence the life of the sisters in their shared quest for the divine Beloved and in their practice of communal life. As we have said, following his death in 1591, John was still considered a controversial figure. While Teresa of Avila was canonised relatively quickly by the Catholic Church in 1622, it would take almost 150 years for John finally to be canonised in 1726. The ‘long road’ to this end is grippingly dealt with by Professors Jodi Bilinkoff and Bernard McGinn in two fascinating chapters that chart how, in Prof. McGinn’s words, John ‘gained and lost mystical authority’. As John’s legacy has been contested by saints, scholars and charlatans, the writings of the Spaniard himself sometimes appear distorted into caricatures of what the saint intended. Again, a theme that will recur throughout this book is how many layers of myth and prejudice must

Prologue: Into the Night xiii be removed before we come to the heart of his remarkable teaching and it is to this teaching that we turn in Part Two of the book. Here, we explore the meaning of desire for John and how this relates to the transformation of the whole person that he is advocating. The American Carmelite, Sr Constance Fitzgerald, talks of a ‘re-ordering of desire’ leading to a ‘transformation of consciousness’ and it is nothing less than this fundamental transformation of personhood we encounter in the essays of Part Two. Prof. Steven Payne begins this journey by elucidating what ‘transformation’ means for John, before Prof. Ronald Rolheiser gives a psycho-spiritual description of the transformation process of the Dark Night as seen through a twenty-firstcentury lens. However, both Professors Iain Matthew and Colin Thompson remind us of the centrality of love to this process: Fr Matthew, through the identification of the crucified Christ in the ‘perfect love’ described by John, and Prof. Thompson in his masterful analysis of the image of the lover’s gaze in John’s Spiritual Canticle. Two guiding metaphors are then taken up by the last two essays in the section written by Dr Tessa Holland and Dr Pavel Pola – the abyss and the ascent. As much as Night, so the authors argue, these two metaphors will guide the soul on the journey to the purification of desire demanded by John. The section ends with an analysis of this purification of desire as understood through a mystical interpretation based upon the Hebrew Book of Job presented by the contemporary scholar of mysticism, Dr Louise Nelstrop. It is worth pausing to note the centrality of ‘transformation’ in John’s teaching. While this word is so frequently used today that it has practically lost all meaning, John gives it a very particular emphasis, using it more than 250 times in his writings, in its various forms, as Prof. Steven Payne notes below. Prof. Payne lucidly explains that, for John, the term has resonances of divinisation, in which the human soul attains the ‘form’ of God on the model of Christ’s hypostatic union of human and divine nature. The divine ‘form’, it might also be said, from the human perspective, is sheer emptiness, which John signals with his open-ended words for the transformed soul, of ‘depth’, ‘centre’ and ‘abyss’. The soul’s transformation into this divine form is known in the darkness of an ecstasy of desire beyond the self. John speaks frequently of the ‘transformation of love’, when the ecstasy of the soul’s desire for God meets, and is shared with, God’s own desire for the soul, in the union of love, transforming it ‘into’ divine love. Then, the darkness is also filled by light and joy, as the emptiness of the soul’s ecstatic desire becomes, in the light of God’s love, the mutual surrender of bridal union, which is also mutual possession and fulness. This understanding of transformation lies at the heart of John’s picture of the possibility of a shared human and divine experience of love in union, providing a recurring theme in this book, along with desire. Part Three opens with John in dialogue as we move the emphasis of his teaching from the sixteenth century to our own times. This begins with John in conversation with two Dominican masters of medieval theology – the ‘angelic doctor’ St Thomas Aquinas and St Catherine of Siena. Dr Sam Hole unravels what we can (and cannot) know about John’s relationship with

xiv  Prologue: Into the Night Thomas’ writing and how much, if at all, it influenced his own perspectives on creation and grace, whilst Emma Mavin compares how John and Catherine relate to both desire and suffering in their writings. We then move into our contemporary period looking first, with Prof. Christof Betschart, at how John’s writing on desire interlaces with that of the reforming French theologian Henri de Lubac and, with Peter Tyler, at his impact on the great German Jewish Carmelite philosopher and martyr Edith Stein. The section concludes with two essays on how John’s teaching has influenced and been received by two French masters of late twentieth-century ‘postmodern’ thought: Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Lacan. Here, Prof. David Perrin and Dr Mark Murphy analyse the implications of a ‘God beyond being and experience’ in our own difficult and disturbing times. The essays that form the basis of this book were initially meant to be shared at a conference on John’s life and thought to be held at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London in June 2020. However, before this gathering could take place, John’s ‘Dark Night’ became an existential reality for thousands of people as the world ‘locked down’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, the final part of our book, ‘John for Today’, was inevitably coloured by this perspective which finds its place in the writings of several of our contributors. Prof. Chris Cook (who also kindly supplies the opening overview of John’s life and writing with which the volume begins) analyses how and why John’s writing can impact on present-day mental health and psychiatric issues as he draws on his life-long experience in this field. This is followed by reflections from another practitioner, this time in the field of spiritual direction, as Dr Chloe Lynch explores how John’s writings continue to remain relevant to the present-day practice of spiritual direction. Finally, Dr Robert D. Flanagan and Ian Shelton review how John’s writing can make an impact on present-day pastoral, theological and sociological perspectives, especially through a close reading of his interpretation of scripture and the importance of his message to those on the margins of our present-day society, whether economically, socially or politically. As we conclude the journey, rounded off by an afterword provided by Dr Sam Hole, we hope you will agree with us that John’s invitation to ‘step into the Night’ is a call, and challenge, to us all to enter into a transformation of personhood as he divests us of the pretence and illusion to which our times seem sadly wedded. His is a message of hope and joy – no gloomy saint but truly a master of light whose time, following the essays of this book, has surely come again. Notes 1 John’s poem Cantar del Alma que se huelga de conocer a Dios por fe (‘La Fonte’) adapted from the translation in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991: 58–59). A full key to the works of John of the Cross used in this volume is given in the Bibliography. 2 CB 1 adapted from Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991: 73).

Introduction St John of the Cross: A Short Biography and Overview of His Work Christopher C. H. Cook

John of the Cross was small in physical stature, probably as a result of childhood malnutrition, being thin and only 4 feet 11 inches tall. The corpus of written works that he left was small in number. In contrast, his towering spiritual legacy, the grandeur and beauty of his poetry, and the enormous respect and affection in which he was held by many during his lifetime provide evidence of a large heart and mind. Dying before the age of 50 years, his lifetime achievements, in terms of his part in the Teresian Carmelite reform, his ministry of spiritual direction and his writings, were towering and yet, to all accounts, he was a humble man. John did not have an easy life by any standard and yet the adversities that he had experienced seemed to make him more sensitive to the needs of others. He was experienced as good company by his brothers and sisters, but always aware of a need to spend time alone in the company of God. It is perhaps surprising that there is no recent critical biography of John’s life, and almost all his biographers have tended to lapse into hagiography. In particular, we do not have a biography of John’s life that corresponds to the kind of psychological attention that has been given to figures such as Ignatius Loyola (Meissner: 2009) or Thérėse of Lisieux (Foley: 2008). John had failings, as do all human beings, but it is easy to overlook these as they fall under the shadow of his positive achievements. If we were to resist the temptation to hagiography, what might we identify as John’s weaknesses? We might point out that, as a younger man, he was not always popular amongst his peers and was willing to admonish even his seniors. However, adversity later in life seems to have had a softening effect upon him in this regard. His asceticism was certainly excessive by today’s standards but this was usually imposed upon himself more than upon others. If his health was damaged by the cruel treatment that he received during his imprisonment in Toledo, it was also not helped by his lack of concern for his own welfare. His willingness, even desire, to suffer for Christ may appear to us as excessive, but in his own time would have been seen as a virtue. The criticism most often levelled against John is doctrinal, rather than psychological, concerning his allegedly low Christology (see Tyler 2010: 48–51). Yet, this is an undeserved criticism and fails to appreciate the language by way of DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-1

2  Christopher C. H. Cook which John commonly talks about the depth of his relationship with Christ. John is thus a complex character, and easily misunderstood. As for so many of us, his strengths were often also his weaknesses. The very brief account of John’s life and works offered here is intended to provide the backdrop for later chapters in this book. John’s achievements cannot properly be understood without reference to their context in the story of his life. This account draws on previously published biographies, listed in the Bibliography. A Very Brief Biography John was born in 1542, in Fontiveros in Castile, the third child to Gonzalo de Yepes and Catalina Alvarez. Gonzalo came from a rich merchant family but, following his marriage to Catalina, a poor weaver, he was disinherited, and the couple had to work hard to survive and care for their family. In 1545, Gonzalo died, and in 1547, John’s brother Luis died, leaving Catalina to make a living and care for her two remaining sons alone. She moved initially to Arévalo, and then Medina del Campo, where John received an initial Christian education in a school for orphans, the Colegio de le Doctrina. It was here that he learned practical skills such as carpentry, tailoring, wood carving and painting, albeit he was not thought to have done well at any of them. Nonetheless, later in life, when he was immersed in the building projects associated with various communities to which he belonged, such skills must have come in useful. Aged 17 years, he transferred to a Jesuit school and from 1559 to 1563 combined his studies there with care for the poor in a local hospital, Nuestra Señora de la Concepciόn. At the age of 21 years, John entered the Carmelite novitiate at Santa Ana in Medina and became Fray (Brother) John of St Matthias. The following year, he began studies in philosophy and theology at the Carmelite College of the University of Salamanca, one of the leading universities in Europe at that time. We know very little about exactly which courses John took but he clearly received education in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, mystical theology, probably the philosophy of Aristotle, and biblical studies, all of which we shall return to later in this book. In his final year, John wrote a dissertation on mystical theology (a document which has unfortunately not survived) and was elected the prefect of students for the Carmelite College. His reputation at this young age was, however, somewhat mixed. Even if admired, he was also feared for his austerity, and for his willingness to rebuke even senior friars for perceived misdemeanours. In 1567, a year before he graduated, John was ordained priest. The year 1567 was a significant year for John. Whilst he was exploring the possibility of transferring to the Carthusian order, in order to engage in a more contemplative way of life, he first met Madre Teresa de Jesús (Teresa of Avila, 1515–1582). Teresa was engaged in reforming the Carmelite order of nuns to a stricter form of observance, based (so she thought) upon the original Rule

Introduction 3 of St Albert, as given in 1247. Followers of Teresa’s reformed way of Carmelite life were referred to as discalced (as opposed to the ‘mitigated’ observance of the Carmelite Rule) and were expected to observe an emphasis on austerity and prayer that had been gradually relaxed since the original foundation of the order. Teresa’s spirituality emphasised a quieter, less public approach to prayer, a controversial matter at the time owing to perceived association with an illuminist movement, known as the Alumbrados, condemned by the Inquisition. Teresa hoped to extend her reforms to the friars and saw in John a man with exactly the qualities that she was looking for. John was duly recruited to her programme of reform and worked closely with Teresa to this end from 1568 to 1577. In 1568, following a period of instruction from Teresa about her spirituality and reforms, John, accompanied by another friar, established the first discalced Carmelite friary in Duruelo. It was at this time that John became known as John of the Cross. Within a couple of years, this community had moved to Mancera de Abajo, and two further friaries were established at Pastrana and Alcalá de Henares. In 1572, John became a confessor (and thus spiritual director) to the nuns at the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, where Teresa was now prioress. By this time, it would seem, he had developed a gentler approach to the faults of others, but his personal austerity continued and, to this, was added a reputation as an exorcist. From around 1575, tensions from within the Carmelite order increased. Caught up in these controversies, John was briefly arrested by his fellow ‘unreformed’ Carmelites in 1576, and then released on orders of the papal nuncio. The nuncio died in June 1577 and on 2nd December that year, John was again arrested and taken to Toledo, where he was imprisoned in the monastery for a period of nine months in appalling conditions. Bitterly cold in winter, and oppressively hot in summer, in a room 10 feet by 6 feet (previously used as a toilet), with only a small window high in the wall, John was held alone, with only a prayer book to read. Regularly flogged, with meagre rations and no opportunity to wash, John’s physical health deteriorated, and his clothes were infested with lice. He bore his ordeal with humility and patience, yet was also torn by doubts as to whether he had acted rightly. Even after his release, he did not speak harshly of his captors. Things improved only slightly when a kind jailer provided him with pen and paper, and he was allowed a short spell out of his cell each day. In August 1578, by which time he must have been close to death, John made a daring escape. Taking advantage of his brief daily spell out of his cell, he managed to loosen the screws to the lock on his cell door. He carefully calculated the height of a window outside the cell and made a rope out of torn blankets. One dark night, he was able to push open his cell door, and lower himself from a window, using his makeshift rope, to the narrow top of the city wall below. The rope being slightly too short, he had to let himself drop the last few feet. Had he fallen only a couple of feet further out, he would have plummeted down the sheer rock face to the river Tagus below. Finding

4  Christopher C. H. Cook refuge the following morning with the discalced nuns in Toledo, he was then moved quickly to the hospital of Santa Cruz, where he spent six weeks recovering from his ordeal. In October of the same year, John was appointed as the vicar of the discalced community at El Calvario, in the mountains of Andalusia, where it was hoped that he would be safer from any attempts to re-arrest him. In 1579, John moved again, to become a founder and rector of the Carmelite College at the University of Baeza, where he remained until 1582. During this time, John also further pursued his ministry of spiritual direction, often making arduous journeys to the mountain town of Beas in Andulusia, in order to meet with the sisters there. The prioress there, Ana de Jesús, seems initially to have been very unimpressed with John and was famously reprimanded for this in a letter from Teresa for complaining ‘so unreasonably’. Extolling his virtues, Teresa described John as a ‘divine, heavenly man’, ‘a great treasure’, to whom the Lord had given a ‘special grace’ for the ministry of spiritual direction (Allison Peers LL: 261). Ana and her community soon came to appreciate greatly the wisdom of her words, and the value of John’s ministry to their community. John’s commentary on his poem, the Spiritual Canticle, was later dedicated to Ana. In 1582, John was elected prior to the discalced monastery of Los Mártires in Granada, where he wrote some of his most famous prose works. He chose for himself the smallest cell, in which were to be found only the barest minimum of furnishings. Whilst he could be strict in discipline, he appeared to take no pleasure in this and would take the friars out on long walks for conversation and prayer. He showed himself always concerned for the sick. Strict with himself, he was gentle towards others. In 1585, he was elected the vicar provincial of Andalusia, whilst remaining prior of Los Mártires. During the following two to three years, he founded seven new monasteries and travelled extensively to visit the various communities for which he was responsible. In 1588, John was elected the third councillor to the vicar general for the discalced order and returned to Segovia, where he became a prior. During this, and his previous position in Andalusia, John engaged in manual building work alongside his other responsibilities of oversight of the community and spiritual direction, and somehow also found more time for prayer. In 1591, further embroiled in Carmelite politics, John found himself side-lined and without office. Far from complaining about this, he wrote to Madre Maria de la Encarnaciόn: Men do not do these things, but God, who knows what is suitable for us and arranges things for our own good. Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love. (John of the Cross 1991: 760) For the final months of his life, John was sent back to Andalusia, with a view to leading a mission of friars to Mexico, but his health deteriorated and

Introduction 5 the prior there began to make moves to have John expelled from the Carmelite order. John developed gangrene in his leg and was cared for harshly by the unsympathetic prior who even refused a change of bandages soaked in pus. Yet again, it was not in John’s nature to complain. Rather, he begged forgiveness from the prior for all the trouble he was causing, an act which appears to have had a profound effect upon the man, who in turn begged forgiveness and left John’s cell in tears. On December 13th, 1591, at midnight, John died. His final words were ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’. The following morning, crowds flocked to the monastery to see his body, and his fellow friars gathered relics of his habit, his bandages and things that he had touched. Despite this, John was to be a controversial figure after his death, as he was in life, and he was not canonised until 1726, a long journey which will be explored in the following chapters. In 1926, he was made a Doctor of the Church. John’s Works John’s earliest writings have been lost to us. Undoubtedly, he would have written various essays at school and university, and a discourse on contemplation completed in his third year at Salamanca seems to have been thought excellent by his fellow students. John also responded to a Vejamen, or spiritual challenge, set by Teresa of Avila. Her responses to this suggest that John’s contribution was detailed and systematic and that it argued for self-denial in order to reach union with God. However, we have none of these writings. The first writings that we do have (apart from a single poem written at Avila) relate to his imprisonment in Toledo. These would either have been written down in prison, thanks to the provision of pen and paper by his jailer, or else soon afterwards, at El Calvario. We also have one artistic pre-Toledo output, in the form of John’s drawing of Christ on the Cross (Figure 0.1). This probably originates sometime during the period 1574–1577, when John was chaplain at the monastery of the Incarnation and was based upon a vision that John received during a time of prayer. The drawing, a pen sketch, was given by John to Ana María de Jesús and preserved by her. It is kept today at the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. This sketch is interesting for a number of reasons. It suggests that the poor assessment of John’s skills in his early education at Colegio de le Doctrina may have been unduly pessimistic, at least in relation to his artistic ability. It also gives us a different perspective upon John’s oft-cited cautions about visions and images. These were clearly formulated by someone who had personal experience of what he was talking about. Perhaps more importantly, the drawing provides an evocative affective insight into the emotional life of John, and – in turn – of his entering in prayer into the experience of Christ crucified. The Toledo prison writings took the form of poetry. Notably, these included the Spiritual Canticle, and the poem known as the Dark Night (En una noche oscura). These then gradually gave rise to other writings. The major prose

6  Christopher C. H. Cook

Figure 0.1  Early sketch by John of the Cross of Christ Crucified. Source: Reproduced by Iain McKillop.

works were all written during the period of 1581–1588. The Ascent of Mount Carmel dates to the period 1581–1585, the first redaction of the Spiritual Canticle to 1584, the Dark Night to 1584–1585, and the first redaction of the Living Flame of Love to 1585–1586. Almost all of the original autograph manuscripts have been lost. For a listing of John’s extant works, see Table 0.1.

Introduction 7 Table 0.1  The extant works of St John of the Cross1 Date

Title

Medium

Place of composition

1572–1577 1574–1577 1578

Dying Because I do not Die Christ on the Cross Spiritual Canticle (31 stanzas) For I Know Well the Spring Romance: On the Gospel Text In Principio erat Verbum On the Psalm Super Flumina Babylonis The Dark Night Mount Carmel The Sayings of Light and Love The Precautions Counsels to a Religious The Ascent of Mount Carmel Spiritual Canticle (last 5 stanzas) Various 33 Letters Spiritual Canticle – Redaction A The Dark Night The Living Flame of Love Various Spiritual Canticle (stanza 11)2 The Living Flame of Love – Redaction A Spiritual Canticle – Redaction B The Living Flame of Love – Redaction B

Poem Drawing Poem

Avila Avila Toledo

Poem Poem

Toledo Toledo

Poem

Toledo

Poem Sketch Sayings

El Calvario El Calvario/Beas El Calvario

Instruction Instruction Commentary/ Treatise Poem

El Calvario El Calvario/Beas/Baeza El Calvario/Baeza/ Granada Baeza/Granada

Poems Letters Commentary

El Calvario/Beas/Baeza Various Granada

Commentary Poem Poems Poem

Granada Granada Granada Granada

Commentary

Granada

Commentary

Granada

Commentary

La Peñuela

1578 1578 1578 1578/1579 1578–1579 1578–1581 1578–1581 1578–1581 1579–1584 1580–1582 1580–1584 1581–1591 1584–1585 1584–1585 1585 1585 1585–1586 1585–1586 1585–1586 1591

John appears to have made many copies of a sketch of Mount Carmel, also sometimes referred to as the ‘Mount of Perfection’, which he used as a summary of his teachings in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, initially for the nuns at Beas (each of whom was given her own copy), and later for the friars at Baeza and Granada (see Figure 0.2). One of these was placed at the beginning of The Ascent of Mount Carmel as a kind of summary. Unfortunately, none of the autograph copies have survived, but an authenticated replica is preserved at the monastery of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves in Málaga. At the summit of the mount, John wrote, ‘Only the honour and glory of God dwells on this mount’. The central path up the mount is designated by a series of repetitions of ‘nada’ (nothing), and on either side a list of the goods of heaven

8  Christopher C. H. Cook

Figure 0.2  John’s map of the ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’. Source: Reproduced by kind permission of the Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC.

Introduction 9 (glory, joy, knowledge, consolation, rest) and the goods of earth (possessions, joy, knowledge, consolations, rest), respectively. The ‘more I desired to possess them’, ‘the more I desired to seek them’, John says, ‘the less I had’. John’s time at Los Mártires was perhaps the most productive period of his life in terms of writing. There, he completed The Ascent and wrote the commentaries on the Dark Night and the Spiritual Canticle, he also wrote the poem The Living Flame of Love and began work on the commentary on it. All of this, however, stemmed directly or indirectly from his experiences in Toledo. Other works of John have been lost completely, including a small book entitled Qualities of the Bird in Solitary Flight, and The Miracles of the Images of Guadalcázar. In summary, as far as written works are concerned, we have 12 poems written by John, some sayings and counsels, 33 letters and four major prose works (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love). The prose works all relate to the poetry and articulate John’s understanding of the Christian life of faith, hope and love. Whilst the Ascent and the Dark Night dwell on the darkness of faith, there is also much light and love to be found in John’s writings. They have a depth and quality that is informed by both theological learning and reflection on searingly painful personal experiences, but John is rarely explicit about either. We are left to piece together the puzzle of exactly how his theology and biography underpin his writings. Where he is explicit, it is usually in his pains to emphasise the biblical underpinnings of his work. In basing his prose upon his poetry, John relies extensively upon metaphor, imagery and allegory and his vocabulary is determined accordingly. Thus, the allegations of a low Christology fail to take into account the way in which John usually speaks of Jesus in terms of images reminiscent of the Song of Songs, notably as ‘Bridegroom’ and ‘Beloved’. Thus, we see how ‘desire’, ‘Carmel’ and ‘transformation’ lie at the centre of John’s spiritual and intellectual itinerary. John of the Cross: A Brief Chronology 1542 1545 1547 1548 1551 1551–1558 1559–1563 1563 1564–1568 1567 1568 1570

Birth of Juan de Yepes at Fontiveros Death of Gonzalo (father) Death of Luis (brother) Family moves to Arévalo Family moves to Medina del Campo Boards at an orphanage school, Colegio de le Doctrina Attends the Jesuit School in Medina del Campo Enters Carmelite Novitiate at Santa Ana University of Salamanca Ordained Priest; Meets Teresa of Avila Accompanies Teresa to Valladolid; moves to Duruelo to establish first discalced friars’ community Moves to Mancera de Abajo

10  Christopher C. H. Cook 1571 1572–1577 1576 1577–1578 1578 1579 1580 1582 1585 1588 1591 1675 1726 1926

Appointed Rector of the University College of Alcalá de Henares Vicar and confessor at the monastery of the Incarnation, Avila Arrested by Carmelites of the Observance; released on orders of the nuncio Nine months imprisonment in Toledo Elected vicar of the priory-hermitage of El Calvario Becomes Rector of University College in Baeza Catalina (mother) dies Elected Prior of Los Mártires in Granada; Death of Teresa Appointed Vicar Provincial of Andalusia Becomes Prior in Segovia Left without office; moves to Peñuela, then to Ubeda; dies on 13th December Beatified by Pope Clement X Canonised by Pope Benedict XIII Made a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI

Notes 1 This table is a composite, drawing on various sources listed in the bibliography. There is uncertainty surrounding dates and places of some compositions and different accounts in the secondary literature disagree at various points. The critical reader would do well to explore these controversies in the primary sources but this would not be an easy task. Most of the sources are in Spanish and it is very difficult to piece them all together. It is said by some experts that we still do not have an adequate critical edition of John’s works. 2 The final version of the Spiritual Canticle, including stanza 11, comprised 40 stanzas. The first 31 are generally thought to have been written whilst he was in prison, with eight further stanzas being added somewhere between 1579 and 1584. Redaction A of the commentary was based on this 39-stanza poem. Redaction B of the commentary included the additional stanza 11 (thus a total of 40 stanzas), and also a rearrangement of some of the other stanzas.

Part I

John of the Cross: Carmel, Context and Canonization

1

John of the Cross and Carmel Hermit and Mendicant Terence O’Reilly

Introduction The aspects of St John’s life that we understand imperfectly include his reasons for becoming a Carmelite and his experience of the Carmelite calling. In these matters, our information is limited because John was – and remains – a hidden personality. The accounts of his life that have come down to us from his friends and contemporaries present him as reticent and withdrawn: a man of few words, who rarely spoke about himself. His writings, too, reveal little: they are often lyrical, sometimes intensely so, but they are never autobiographical. Only in his correspondence do we catch glimpses of his life, and then in passing: usually, his letters contain spiritual direction and are focused on the recipient’s needs. In this respect, he was different from Teresa of Avila, whose writings tell us much about the events of her life, both inner and outer. But although our information is limited, it allows us, I think, to say something about his Carmelite vocation: its beginnings in his youth, its development over time and its influence on his understanding of the Christian life, especially prayer. Beginnings St John became a Carmelite in Castile, in the town of Medina del Campo, after completing his studies in the Jesuit school there in the summer of 1563. His motives for choosing the order in preference to others are not recorded but they may be inferred from how he lived the Carmelite life once he had joined. The ‘mitigated rule’ that the community in Medina observed had two components, not easy to reconcile in practice.1 The first was eremitical: an emphasis on solitude, silence and seclusion, the three conditions of continuous prayer, combined with manual work and the practice of mortification. This component derived from the order’s founding fathers, the hermits of Mount Carmel in Palestine, whose way of life was codified in the early thirteenth century by Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. The second was mendicant: a readiness to be involved in pastoral work among lay people in the towns. This element the Carmelites shared DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-3

14  Terence O’Reilly with the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the other orders of friars, among whom they were included when they moved westwards, to Europe, in the mid-thirteenth century. From the start, it seems, it was to the eremitical component that John felt drawn. A friend of his, Tomás Pérez, recorded that he became a Carmelite because ‘deseaba apartarse más y apretarse más’ [He wished to withdraw into greater solitude, and put himself under greater pressure]2; and a fellow friar, Alonso de Villalba, recalled that immediately after his profession in 1564, John obtained permission to live according to the ‘primitive rule’ of St Albert: the one closer, that is, to the practice of the hermits of Mount Carmel (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 47). This was the rule he followed as a student in Salamanca during the four years that followed. It involved the observance, whenever possible, of literal silence, solitude and seclusion, as well as great austerity.3 A contemporary who knew him, Juan López Osorio, declared later: ‘Vivía tan recogido en su celda estrecha y obscura con continuo silencio, que no salía ni se divertía fuera de ella más que a los actos y cosas de la comunidad’ [He lived in such recollection and continuous silence within his confined and dark cell, that he never left it or relaxed outside it, apart from community events and business] (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 64). The cell had a window that looked onto the reserved sacrament, and there he studied, practised penance and gave himself to prayer (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 64; Rodríguez, José Vicente 2012: 153). It cannot have been easy for John to live a hermit life in the midst of a community whose mitigated rule was more cenobitic and mendicant than his.4 This no doubt explains his decision to become a Carthusian, which he confided to Teresa of Avila when they met for the first time in September or October 1567. The rule of the Carthusians requires them to devote themselves to continuous prayer, and to live in solitude, secluded in separate cells; it prescribes a minimum of communal life and no pastoral ministry at all. It is easy to see why John found it attractive. Teresa, however, put it to him that he could fulfil his aspiration in another way: by helping her found communities of Carmelite friars based on the ‘primitive rule’ of St Albert. And this he agreed to do (see Teresa of Avila F: 3.16–17). Duruelo What this meant in practice became clear one year later, in the autumn of 1568, when John began the first discalced convent in Duruelo, a remote spot in the countryside of Northern Castile. For a number of months, he lived the Carmelite life there alone, helped by two laymen, his elder brother, Francisco, and a mason with whom he adapted the humble accommodation. Later, he was joined by a deacon, José, and by another, and senior friar, Antonio de Heredia, who before committing to the reform had planned, like him, to become a Carthusian.5

John of the Cross and Carmel 15 In the design of the friary, Antonio and John gave place of honour to their cells, which they called ‘hermitages’. When Teresa of Avila visited them after six months, in March 1569, she observed their life of prayer: The choir was in the loft, one half of which was high, so that they could say the Hours; but they had to stoop very low in order to enter and to hear Mass. They had in the two corners, towards the church, two little hermitages, where they had to lie down or sit; these were filled with hay (for the place was very cold and the roof almost came down on their heads), with two little windows overlooking the altar. (Teresa of Avila F: 14.7)6 The position of their cells, at the corners of the choir, enabled them to pass directly from the liturgy of the Hours and of the Mass to private prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. In this way, they observed the precept of the rule which decreed that ‘unless occupied for other lawful reasons’, they should ‘remain, one to each in their cells, or next to them, meditating on the law of the Lord by day and by night, and keeping watch in prayers’ (Mullins 2012: 350). They observed silence at all times as far as possible, again in accordance with the rule, especially during the hours after Compline, when they rose at midnight to say Matins and then retired to their cells until the morning Office. Teresa wrote: I learned that after they had finished Matins they would not leave [their cells] again until Prime; instead they stayed there in prayer so intense that sometimes when they went to say Prime their habits were covered in snow without their having noticed it. (Teresa of Avila F: 14.7)7 Occasionally, they left the friary to preach in parishes nearby, but their pastoral activity was subordinated firmly to their primary goal, the vita contemplativa (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 81–82; Rodríguez 2012: 183–84). Their dedication to prayer explains another feature of their life: the practice of extreme mortification. Teresa feared that their penance was excessive, and she urged them to moderate their zeal. They declined. But though she could not wholly approve of their austerity, she provided, in the account of her visit, an indication of their reasons for such self-denial: There were so many crosses about and so many skulls! I have never forgotten one little wooden cross, placed with the holy water, on which was stuck a bit of paper with a picture of Christ; it seemed to inspire greater devotion than if it had been of the finest workmanship. (Teresa of Avila F: 14.6)8 Union with Jesus in his sufferings had long been considered integral to the hermit vocation, and faithful to this tradition, the Rule of St Albert indicates

16  Terence O’Reilly that the penitential life it prescribes is part of the following of Christ to which the Carmelite is called (Mullins 2012: 151–56). In Duruelo, Christ’s Passion was remembered not only by numerous crucifixes, the liturgy and prolonged prayer before the Tabernacle, but also by the new names that the community took when the friary was inaugurated officially in November 1568. Antonio de Heredia assumed the name of Jesus: Antonio de Jesús. José, the deacon, became José de Cristo. And John called himself for the first time Juan de la Cruz. Together, their titles spelt out ‘Jesus Christ Crucified’, a clear statement that they saw their calling as a participation in suffering love (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 82). After Duruelo Duruelo has been described by a modern scholar, Otger Steggink, as a Carmelite charterhouse, in which John and his companions lived the Carthusian life in a Carmelite context.9 The foundation, however, did not last. In the spring of 1569, it was raised to the status of a priory with permission to accept novices, and in the autumn, the first two arrived. Soon, it was decided that a larger house was needed, and at Easter 1570, the community moved to a new home in Mancera de Abajo. The following year, John travelled to Alcalá de Henares to become the Rector of a Carmelite college in the university town, where there were plenty of potential recruits (Rodríguez 2012: 229–31). From this moment onwards, John’s role changed. In the decades that followed, he became busily involved in the task of directing the many men and women who joined the Reform in Castile and Andalusia. It was a welcome but onerous task: in the Convent of the Incarnation in Avila, for instance, where he spent five years, he was responsible, with a companion, for the spiritual welfare of over 150 nuns (Rodríguez 2012: 252). He took part in the foundation of new houses of nuns and friars, often helping to construct buildings with his own hands, and in the various communities in which he lived, he regularly acted as prior. In the last years of his life, he became involved too in the government of the reform, initially with responsibility for the Carmelite province of Andalusia (1585–87), and later as a senior definitor in the order’s general Council, the Consulta (1588–91). In these circumstances, inevitably, the hermit life became a thing of the past. He was faithful to solitary prayer as much as he could, but the demands made on his ministry changed his use of time: no longer fixed in one place, he became itinerant, often traversing long distances on foot; his silence was punctuated by homilies, spiritual direction, the dictation of his writings and the demands of office; and far from being hidden, he had a public role. This phase came to a head during his time in the south of Spain, a period of which Federico Ruiz has written: The ten years he spent in Andalusia (1578-1588) are the most fruitful and active, almost frenetic, of his entire life: the responsibilities of being

John of the Cross and Carmel 17 a superior and of building, pastoral service and spiritual direction, journeys and the preparation of his writings […]. So active, inspired and communicative do we find him in Andalusia that it seems to us he has forgotten his initial solitude. (Ruiz 1986: 22–24)10 It was in Andalusia, as we have seen, that he composed most of his mystical works: the Ascent of Mount Carmel, the Dark Night of the Soul and the Spiritual Canticle. In these, the hermit life of solitude, silence and seclusion is a constant theme. How is one to explain the apparent discrepancy, at this late stage, between his writings and his life? The answer lies, I think, in how the hermit vocation is defined in his works. The Cell We know from the testimonies of his friends that John observed, whenever he could, the rule’s instruction to remain in his cell, and that he taught others, by precept and example, to do the same. But he rarely mentions the cell in his writings. Instead, he draws attention to the interior state that the cell symbolises. For him, the soul is like a cell that one must enter to find the Word of God. It is a secret room, a hidden nook, a temple, within which Christ, the Bridegroom, dwells: Oh soul, most beautiful of all created beings, who long so much to discover the place where your beloved dwells, in order to seek him and be united with him: know that you yourself are the room in which he resides, the secret place, the nook, in which he is hidden; for it gives you great contentment and joy to see that your entire well-being and hope is so near to you that it is within you, or, rather, that apart from it you cannot be. ‘Look’, says the Bridegroom, ‘the kingdom of God is within you’; and his servant St Paul says, ‘You are the temple of God’. (John of the Cross CB: 1.7)11 But to enter the inner self and find the Bridegroom there is not easy. To do so, one must renounce one’s disordered attachments to all that is not God: one must give up all one’s attachments, consign them to oblivion and enter one’s inner room, firmly shutting the door: Since, then, your beloved bridegroom is the ‘treasure hidden in the field’ of your soul, for which ‘the wise merchant gave everything he had’, it makes sense that in order to find him you should forget everything of your own, and, withdrawing from all created beings, hide in the secret room within your spirit, and ‘closing the door behind you’ (that is, closing your will to all things) ‘pray to your Father in secret’. (John of the Cross CB: 1.9)12

18  Terence O’Reilly The radical poverty that such detachment involves is urged by John repeatedly. One of his Sayings begins by echoing Christ’s advice to the rich young man, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven’ (Matt 19:21). It then applies the advice to the contemplative life: to find ‘the one thing necessary’ that Mary of Bethany chose (Lk 10:42), one must become solitary, leaving everything else behind: If you wish to find peace and joy for your soul and to serve God truly, do not be satisfied with what you have already left behind, for it may be that in your present concerns you are impeded as much, or more, than you were before. But leave all the other things you have yet to relinquish, and draw apart to the one thing alone that brings all with it, namely holy solitude, accompanied by prayer and by reading that is holy and divine. (John of the Cross D: 78)13 Contemplation The writings of St John often focus on what the soul can and should do to seek God: she must actively choose the solitude in which the Bridegroom is to be found. But he makes clear that the striving this involves is not an end in itself. More valuable than the solitude the soul chooses is the solitude she receives, notably in contemplation, which she accepts passively. This form of prayer is described by him as something hidden even from the recipient, a gift, deeper than any feeling or thought, that draws the soul into a solitude that is tranquil: This contemplation, which is obscured and hidden for the person who has it, along with the dryness and emptiness that it instils in the senses, usually gives the soul an inclination and appetite to be alone and still, unable to think about anything specific, or to desire to do so. (John of the Cross DN: 1.9.6)14 Contemplation summons the soul also to silence, and so forcefully that she feels impelled to respond by cultivating reticence and shunning talk with others: [When the soul is attentive in God], then it is drawn powerfully from within to be silent and to flee from all conversation; for God prefers the soul to delight in Him rather than in any other creature. (John of the Cross E: 8)15 With silence comes the experience of being ‘hidden’: the more prolonged and profound the contemplation, the more the soul feels removed from all that is not divine, and at times the seclusion she experiences is acute: This mystical wisdom has the characteristic of hiding the soul within itself; for in addition to what is usual it sometimes so absorbs the soul

John of the Cross and Carmel 19 that it is made radically distant and remote from every creature, with the result that it seems placed in a solitude that is extremely deep and extensive, which no human creature can reach. (John of the Cross D: 27)16 In this state of solitude, the soul becomes intimate with God. ‘He is known’, John writes, ‘in divine silence’, and it is in silence that the pure soul communicates with Him, ‘alone, in solitude from all [outward] forms [and] inwardly’.17 There too, the soul is made one with God, when she and the Bridegroom are united in the Spiritual Marriage: Now God is its guide and its light, for in her is fulfilled what was promised by Hosea when he said: ‘I will guide her into solitude and there I will speak to her heart’ (2:14); in these words He indicates that in solitude He communicates and unites with and in the soul, for to speak to her heart is to satisfy her heart, which is not satisfied with less than God. (CB: 35:1)18 The Bridegroom The imagery of the hermit life is applied by St John not only to the contemplative soul but to the divine mystery itself. The Word dwells in silence, solitude and seclusion, and that is why these are the conditions of true prayer. In one of his Sayings, the saint evokes the silence in which the Father utters the Word: ‘Una Palabra habló el Padre, que fue su Hijo, y ésta habla siempre en eterno silencio, y en silencio ha de ser oída del alma’ (‘The Father spoke one Word, namely His Son, and this He speaks everlastingly in eternal silence, and in silence must the soul hear it’) (D: 99). In the Cántico, he underlines the seclusion of the Word, hidden in the divine essence beyond the ken of mortal beings: The place where the Son of God is hidden is, in the words of St John, ‘the bosom of the Father’ (John 1:18), which is removed from every mortal eye and hidden from all human understanding; for that reason, Isaiah, speaking of God, said: ‘Truly you are a hidden God’ (45:15). (CB: 1.3)19 And when describing the inner life of the Godhead, which the soul enters in union with the Word, he underlines that it is silent and concealed: ‘Mire aquel infinito saber y aquel secreto escondido, ¡qué paz, qué amor, qué silencio está en aquel pecho divino!’ (‘Behold that infinite wisdom and that hidden secret, such peace, such love, such silence dwells in that divine breast!’) (D: 138). It is in Christ, John insists, that the soul attains the intimacy with God that she desires. As Edith Stein observed, John’s teaching on the spiritual life is an articulation of the Paschal mystery (Stein 1960: 11–12, 42–44), a mystery

20  Terence O’Reilly summed up in the prayer of the Roman Mass: ‘May we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity’ (Jungmann 1959: 333–35). As she grows in love, the soul becomes more like God, who is love, and the more she participates in God’s life, the more she becomes, like Him, solitary, silent and secluded. Her gradual transformation accords in this respect with a key principle: ‘el amor hace semejanza entre lo que ama y es amado’ (‘Love makes lover and beloved alike’) (A: 1.4.3). The process of divinisation involves a further feature of the hermit life: the willing acceptance of suffering in union with Christ. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, John teaches that to find God within herself, the soul must practise a self-abnegation that is total: To seek oneself in God is to seek the gifts and refreshments of God; but to seek God in oneself is not just to desire to go without this or that for God, but to incline to accept for Christ everything that is most unpleasant, either from God or from the world; and that is to love God. (A: 2.7.5)20 In the Dark Night of the Soul, he goes further and explains that when the soul encounters God, her suffering increases. Contemplation brings to light the soul’s abjection: her failures in love, the wounds inflicted by her sins, her inner disorder, her mortality and consequently her need for the pardon and healing that only God can supply. In such ways, John made his own the theme of St Paul: to share in Christ’s glory, we must share in His sufferings too (cf. Rom 8:17). One of his Sayings declares that Christ cannot be found apart from the Cross: ‘El que no busca la cruz de Cristo no busca la gloria de Cristo’ (‘The person who does not seek the cross of Christ does not seek the glory of Christ’) (D: 101); and an ecstatic passage in the Spiritual Canticle affirms that only in affliction can the riches in Christ be attained: ‘para entrar en estas riquezas de su sabiduría, la puerta es la cruz, que es angosta. Y desear entrar por ella es de pocos’ (‘to enter these riches of His wisdom, the doorway is the Cross, which is narrow. And those who wish to enter by it are few’) (CB: 36:13). Conclusion The writings of St John indicate that although he was not able to live as a hermit, he valued the hermit life as the outward sign of an interior state: the intimate union with God to which all are called. As a young man, the desire to reach this interior state drew him towards Carmel. There, he found solitude, silence and seclusion by following the ‘primitive’ Carmelite Rule, initially as a student in Salamanca, and then in the discalced foundation in Duruelo. But after Duruelo, his life changed: the demands of ministry became pressing, and he was obliged to combine contemplation with activity. This he did willingly, but at a cost that appears to have

John of the Cross and Carmel 21 increased as he grew older. In a moving passage of the Spiritual Canticle, composed in the mid-1580s, he affirmed that when the soul reaches the state of union, she should relinquish the activities that impede her solitary attention to God: Until the soul reaches this state of the union of love, it is appropriate for her to practise love in the active life as well as in the contemplative. But when she reaches it, it is not appropriate for her to be occupied in further external works and exercises that might keep her in the least way from that attentiveness of love in God. (CB: 29.2)21 He then railed, with barely concealed anger, against those who would oblige such a soul to be active in good works: Therefore, when a particular soul has something of this degree of solitary love, a great wrong would be done to her and to the Church if, for however short a time, they wished to occupy her in exterior or active things, even if they were of great value. (CB: 29.3)22 These words help us to understand his state of mind at the end of his life, when he yearned to relinquish his burdens of office and withdraw into solitude. He remained faithful, nonetheless, to his duties until a few months before his death. The suffering his obedience caused him must have been intense, but we may assume that he saw it in a positive light: as a sharing in the Cross, and therefore as a means of deepening union with Christ. John’s understanding of the Carmelite life in his later years may be observed in an episode that occurred in the early 1580s.23 During his time in Granada, he gave the Carmelite habit to a young man, Alonso de la Madre de Dios, who before meeting the saint had decided to become a Carthusian. He had obtained permission to enter the Charterhouse in the city, but on speaking with John in the Carmelite convent of Los Mártires, he had changed his mind. John said to him: The other fathers will already have told you – assuming you wish to receive our habit – of the great austerity of this order, its poverty, nakedness, much mortification, resignation, and renunciation of all created things.24 To this, Alonso replied: ‘Padre nuestro, esto vengo yo a buscar’ (Father, that is what I have come to find) (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 254; Rodríguez 2012: 460). When the prior of the Charterhouse learned, with surprise, that Alonso had become a Carmelite, he sent two monks to Los Mártires to speak with the young man. But John would not allow them to see him.

22  Terence O’Reilly Later, during his novitiate, Alonso was often tormented by doubts about the decision he had made, but John was able to reassure him that he had acted wisely. Alonso recalled: Because I was so keen on the Charterhouse, I had many temptations to return there throughout my year as a novice, and from these […] our Father released me, even without my mentioning them to his reverence. (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 255; Rodríguez 2012: 462)25 The story tells us much about how the outlook of John had changed. In Alonso, he faced the same desire for the Carthusian life that he had once felt himself. But now, he had no hesitation in recommending the Carmelite Rule instead. He knew, from his own experience, that what Alonso sought in the Carthusians could be found in Carmel too.26 Notes 1 On the ‘mitigated rule’ of the Carmelites, approved in 1432 by Pope Eugenius IV, see Andrews (2006: 64–65). 2 Quoted in Otger Steggink, ‘Juan de la Cruz, carmelita contemplativo: vida y magisterio’, in García Simón 1993, vol. 2, p. 251. 3 On the ‘primitive’ Carmelite Rule of 1247 that John followed, and its origins in the Formula of Life composed by Albert of Jerusalem (1206–14), see Mullins (2012); and on St Teresa’s understanding of the ‘primitive’ rule, see the same author’s essay, ‘St Teresa of Ávila and earlier Carmelite traditions’, in O’Reilly, Thompson and Twomey (2018: 14–31). 4 The Carmelite community of Salamanca in the Colegio de San Andrés followed the ‘mitigated rule’ of 1432 as interpreted by the priors general John Soreth (1451–71) and Nicholas Audet (1524–62); see Pacho (2009: 645). 5 Present also for a while was a further friar, Lucas de Celis, who was eventually obliged to leave because of poor health (Crisógono de Jesús 1982: 84). 6 ‘El coro era el desván, que por mitad estava alto, que podían decir las Horas; mas havíanse de abajar mucho para entrar y para oir misa. Tenían a las dos rincones, hacia la iglesia, dos ermitillas, adonde no podían estar sino echados u sentados, llenas de heno (porque el lugar era muy frío y el tejado casi les dava sobre las cabezas) con dos ventanillas hacia el altar’. Quotations from the writings of John of the Cross are from San Juan de la Cruz, Obras completas, ed, Eulogio Pacho (1997). The translations are mine. 7 ‘Supe que después que acababan maitines hasta prima no se tornaban a ir, sino allí se quedaban en oración, que la tenían tan grande que les acaecía ir con harta nieve los hábitos cuando iban a prima y no lo haber sentido’. 8 ‘¡Tenía tantas cruces, tantas calaveras! Nunca se me olvidó una cruz pequeña de palo que tenía para el agua bendita, que tenía en ella pegada una imagen de papel con un Cristo, que parecía ponía más devoción que si fuera de cosa muy bien labrada’. 9 Otger Steggink, ‘Arraigo de fray Juan de la Cruz en la Orden del Carmen’, in Steggink (1991: 129–55) (p. 151). 10 ‘Los diez años que transcurre en Andalucía (1578–1588) son los más fecundos y activos, casi agitados, de toda su vida: gobierno y construcción, servicio pastoral y dirección espiritual, viajes y redacción de sus escritos. […]. Tan activo, inspirado

John of the Cross and Carmel 23 y comunicativo le encontramos en Andalucía, que pensamos ha olvidado su primera soledad’. 11 ‘¡Oh, pues, alma hermosísima entre todas las criaturas, que tanto deseas saber el lugar donde está tu Amado para buscarle y unirte con él!, ya se te dice que tú misma eres el aposento donde él mora y el retrete y escondrijo donde está escondido; que es cosa de grande contentamiento y alegría para ti ver que todo tu bien y esperanza está tan cerca de ti que esté en ti, o, por mejor decir, tú no puedas estar sin él. Cata- dice el Esposo – que el reino de Dios está dentro de vosotros (Luke 17:21), y su siervo el apóstol san Pablo: Vosotros – dice – sois templo de Dios (2 Corinthians 6:16)’. 12 ‘Como quiera, pues, que tu Esposo amado es el tesoro escondido en el campo de tu alma, por el cual el sabio mercader dio todas sus cosas (Matthew 13:44), convendrá que para que tú le halles, olvidadas todas las tuyas y alejándote de todas las criaturas, te escondas en tu retrete interior del espíritu, y, cerrando la puerta sobre ti, es a saber, tu voluntad a todas las cosas, ores a tu Padre en escondido (Matthew 6:6’). 13 ‘Si deseas hallar la paz y consuelo de tu alma y servir a Dios de veras, no te contentes con eso que has dejado, porque por ventura te estás en lo que de nuevo andas tan impedido o más que antes. Mas deja todas esotras cosas que te quedan, y apártate a una sola que lo trae todo consigo, que es la soledad santa acompañada con oración y santa y divina lección, y allí persevera en olvido de todas las cosas’. 14 ‘La cual contemplación, que es oculta y secreta para el mismo que la tiene, ordinariamente, junto con la sequedad y vacío que hace al sentido, da al alma inclinación y gana de estarse a solas y en quietud, sin poder pensar en cosa particular ni tener gana de pensarla’. 15 ‘[Cuando el alma está advertido en Dios], luego con fuerza la tiran de dentro a callar y huir de cualquiera conversación; porque más quiere Dios que el alma se goce con El que con otra alguna criatura’. 16 ‘Esta sabiduría mística tiene propiedad de esconder al alma en sí; porque, demás de lo ordinario, algunas veces de tal manera absorbe al alma que está puesta alejadísima y remotísima de toda criatura, de suerte que le parece que le colocan en una profundísima y anchísima soledad donde no puede llegar alguna humana criatura’. 17 ‘El espíritu bien puro no se mezcla con extrañas advertencias ni humanos respetos, sino sólo, en soledad de todas las formas, interiormente, con sosiego sabroso, se comunica con Dios, porque su conocimiento es en silencio divino’ (D: 27). 18 ‘Es ya Dios su guía y su luz, porque cumple en ella lo que prometió por Oseas, diciendo: Yo la guiaré a la soledad y allí hablaré a su corazón (2:14); en lo cual da a entender que en la soledad se comunica y une El en el alma, porque hablarle al corazón es satisfacerle el corazón, el cual no se satisface con menos que Dios’. 19 ‘El lugar donde está escondido el Hijo de Dios es, como dice san Juan, el seno del padre (John 1:18), que es la esencia divina, la cual es ajena de todo ojo mortal y escondida de todo humano entendimiento; que por eso Isaías, hablando con Dios, dijo: Verdaderamente, tú eres Dios escondido (45:15)’. 20 ‘buscarse a sí en Dios es buscar los regalos y recreaciones de Dios; mas buscar a Dios en sí es no sólo querer carecer de eso y de esotro por Dios, sino inclinarse a escoger por Cristo todo lo más desabrido, ahora de Dios, ahora del mundo; y esto es amor de Dios’. 21 ‘en tanto que el alma no llega a este estado de unión de amor, le conviene ejercitar el amor así en la vida activa como en la contemplativa. Pero, cuando ya llegase

24  Terence O’Reilly a él, no le es conveniente ocuparse en otras obras y ejercicios exteriores que le puedan impedir un punto de aquella asistencia de amor en Dios’. 22 ‘De donde, cuando alguna alma tuviese algo de este grado de solitario amor, grande agravio se le hacía a ella y a la Iglesia si, aunque fuese por poco espacio, la quisiesen ocupar en cosas exteriores o activas, aunque fuesen de mucho caudal’. 23 The episode is recounted in Crisógono de Jesús (1982: 253–56), and in Rodríguez (2012: 459–62). It is discussed in a fine article by Ronald Cueto, ‘A quest for order in a Poet-Saint’s choice of Order’, in Fryde 1994: 329–50. 24 ‘Ya le habrán dicho los padres a vuestra merced, supuesto que pretende nuestro hábito, la grande aspereza de esta religion, su pobreza, desnudez, mucha mortificación, resignación y negación de todo lo criado’. 25 ‘Y como yo estaba tan embarcado en la Cartuja, en todo el aňo de noviciado tuve muchas tentaciones de volver allí, y éstas […] nuestro Padre me quitaba, aun sin comunicarlas con su reverencia’. 26 An earlier version of this chapter, dedicated to Nicholas Madden, O.C.D., was published in O’Reilly 2021.

2

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority Bernard McGinn

Introduction From the time of the first publication of her collected writings by Luis de León in 1588, Teresa of Avila has been read, translated, and cited as a mystical authority, a position cemented by her early canonization in 1622. But what about John of the Cross? Today, every student of mysticism is familiar with John and his position as a teacher in materia mystica. But such was not always the case. Teresa was controversial in her lifetime; John was controversial both in life and after. His path to sanctity was slower and more convoluted than that of Teresa since he was not beatified until 1675, and only canonized in 1726.1 In his article on John in Volume 8 of the Dictionnaire de la spiritualité, the Carmelite Lucien-Marie de Saint-Joseph pays tribute to John’s influence on the renewal of mysticism in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but I cannot agree with him when he goes on to say: ‘Nevertheless, during three centuries [i.e., 1600–1900], the influence of John of the Cross was as it were veiled, reserved to certain circles of initiates, and not always favored by his order’ (DS 8: 408–47, quote at 442). This is only partly true because there is considerable evidence that John of the Cross was widely read in Europe during the course of the seventeenth century. It was only as a result of the condemnations of Quietism at the end of the 1600s that John’s reputation did, indeed, suffer a decline, from which it was only gradually to recover in the second half of the nineteenth century, until he gained official approval with the declaration of his status as a Doctor of the Church on August 24, 1926. In what follows, I want to examine the role of John as an authority, though at times a controversial one, in seventeenth-century mysticism in four acts. Given the large territory to be covered, I will mostly restrict myself to remarks on the discernible influence of John on various mystics, not the more complex but rewarding hermeneutical exercise of analyzing how these mystics appropriated John into their own systems of mystical discourse.2 At the end of 1591, John of the Cross died under a cloud, rejected by the imperious Nicolás Doria (1539–94), who had hounded him into exile, and ill-treated by his Discalced Carmelite confrère. After his death, there was a struggle in the Spanish Discalced over his legacy, pitting his supporters DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-4

26  Bernard McGinn against determined opposition. As James Arraj put it: ‘St. John’s spiritual authority and influence grew only slowly within the Carmelite Order itself. If his works circulated in manuscript widely, as is likely, they were not necessarily appreciated as the work of genius we know them for today’ (Arraj 1999: 100).3 The long delay (almost 30 years) before the publication of his works is a sign of the struggles within the Order that still await a full history.4 As early as 1601, Tomás de Jesús (Dávila) (1564–1627), a close follower of John, was commissioned to prepare an edition, but this was not completed by 1607, when Tomás incurred the displeasure of the leaders of the Spanish Discalced by leaving for Rome to undertake missionary work. Alonso de Jesús María (1565–1638), a follower of Doria, who was the Minister General between 1607 and 1613, seems to have blocked further work on an edition. A faulty and incomplete edition was finally published at Alcalá in 1618 by Diego de Jesús (Salablanca) (1590–1621).5 This was prefaced by an anonymous life of John composed by another supporter, José de Jesús María (Quiroga) (1562–1628), who also wrote an Apología mística of John about 1625 (not published until 1991).6 Diego de Jesús was responsible for the important appendix to this first edition entitled Notes and Remarks in Three Discourses for the Very Easy Understanding of the Mystical Expressions and Doctrine of the Spiritual Works of Our Father (Apuntamientos y advertencias …), one of the earliest examples of a genre that was to grow throughout the seventeenth century, defenses of the special language of the mystics and their new ‘science’. The first complete, though far from critical, edition of John’s works appeared in 1630 at Madrid.7 Possibly in preparation for the 1630 edition, Nicolás de Jesús María (Centurioni) (ca. 1595–1655) wrote a Latin Elucidation of the Phrases of the Mystical Theology of the Venerable Father John of the Cross (Phrasium mysticorum … elucidatio), a substantial work often reprinted in later Latin and Spanish versions of John and translated into French in 1641. In the meantime, interest in John’s writings had arisen in France, especially in the circle surrounding the lay mystic Barbe Acarie (1566–1618), possibly because of his association with Teresa, whose fame had spread in France after the first partial translation of her works in 1601.8 A lay adherent of the Acarie circle, René Gaultier (ca. 1550–1628),9 issued translations of John in 1621 and 1622, which were widely read, although they were eventually superseded by the later versions of the Carmelite Cyprian of the Nativity of the Virgin (1605–80), in 1641.10 Knowledge of John’s works also grew in other areas. As early as 1627, the Carmelite Alexander of St. Francis (1588–1630) published an Italian version at Rome,11 which went through at least eight editions before 1683. In 1639, a Latin translation appeared at Cologne by the Polish Carmelite Andrew of Jesus (1584–1640),12 something crucial to the European diffusion of John’s work. A Dutch version of the Dark Night came out in 1637, but the full works had to wait until an edition of 1693–1703. It was not until 1693 that John was translated into German,13 and, rather

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 27 astoundingly, it was only in 1863–64 that John found a comprehensive English translation.14 This brief look of the publication history of John’s works helps frame the context of his considerable influence not only in Spain, but also in France and Italy in the seventeenth century. I will present this story in four acts. Act One: The Controversy over John’s Orthodoxy The first act is the struggle over the orthodoxy of John’s writings conducted mostly in Spain between 1600 and 1640. This controversy took place not only within the Carmelite Order, but also was fostered by suspicions about John’s orthodoxy raised by others, notably by Dominicans, some of whom, we will remember, also opposed Teresa. An unfortunate incident that gave ammunition to the opposition was the discovery of copies of John’s Dark Night (probably both the Ascent and the Dark Night) among the Alumbrados of Seville in the period 1620–23. On May 29, 1623, the Inquisitor of Seville, Alonso de Hoces, sent a copy of the Dark Night he found among the Alumbrados to the Inquisitor General at Madrid, denouncing it as the source of their errors. The Grand Inquisitor asked for the opinion of the Augustinian Agustín Antolínez (1554–1626), who consulted his confrère, Basilio Ponce de León (1570–1629).15 In 1622, Basilio had already written a defense of John’s book, the ‘Reply to the Notes and Objections …’ (Respuesta a las notas y objecciones que se hicieron a algunas proposiciones del libro de fray Juan de la Cruz), which he sent to the Inquisitor to forestall any condemnation. But John’s opponents were far from done. In May of 1626, the Dominican Domingo Farfán again wrote to the Grand Inquisitor, asserting that the Alumbrados had drawn their teaching from John’s Dark Night, but once again no condemnation was forthcoming.16 These three important early defenses of John by Diego de Jesús, Basilio Ponce de León, and Nicolás de Jesús María allow us considerable insight into the issues at stake.17 In the first volume of his The Mystic Fable, Michel de Certeau provided an insightful interpretation of the importance of Diego’s Apuntamientos y advertencias in the creation of a new sense of mystical discourse in seventeenthcentury mysticism.18 The essence of Diego’s argument is to show that John of the Cross, contrary to being an innovator, is only formalizing the unusual modes of discourse that mystics beginning with Dionysius had always employed.19 But, Certeau argues, there is something more profound at work, namely, the introduction of ‘a new principle of scientificity’ (p. 126). To this end, Diego’s work cites a large number of mystical authorities in defense of John, although none from late medieval Northern Europe. After setting out three reasons why John’s writings require explanation, his treatise proceeds in three parts: (1) an explanation of how the ‘terms and phrases’ [modes of speaking] of John and other mystics should be understood (ed., 468–83); (2) an analysis of how the heights of union with God can be attained in this life (ed., 483–94); and (3) a defense of John’s writing in the vernacular (ed.,

28  Bernard McGinn 495–502). In the important first part, Diego, depending especially on the authority of Dionysius, insists that mystics cannot be held to the ordinary rules of rhetoric or argument, but have their own language in which terms like ‘excess’ (demasía), ‘pride and fury’ (soberbia y furor), ‘stain’ (macula), and ‘annihilation’ (aniquilación) have meanings different from those found in ordinary discourse. This special privilege of la teología mística comes from the fact that it is based on experiencing God and not on ordinary observation or teaching. According to Diego, ‘In a matter … so high and so spiritual … experience conquers doctrine’ (ed., 470). Diego presents four kinds of ‘mystical ways of speaking’, illustrating them with examples drawn from both mystics and doctrinal authors, like Thomas Aquinas, as well as excerpts from John’s writings. According to Certeau, Diego ‘strengthens and “steadies” the position of mystic language in supplying it with a tradition of its own’ by applying the Dionysian principle of manifestation through ‘dissimilar similarities’ that highlights the relation of contrary terms in each single mystic ‘word’.20 Basilio Ponce de León, the nephew of the Augustinian mystic, Luis de León, was a noted theologian whose defense of John of the Cross had much to do with preserving him from the strictures of the Inquisition. His 1622 ‘Reply’ defends 40 propositions of John that had been objected to by the Inquisitors. These are taken from the Ascent of Mount Carmel (19 propositions), the Dark Night (seven propositions), and the Living Flame of Love (ten propositions).21 Basilio cites many authorities, not only older writers (e.g., Augustine, Dionysius, Gregory, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, Ps.-Albert the Great, Gerson), but also recent mystics, especially Teresa, but also Bernardino da Laredo, Luis de León, Thomas of Villanova, Francisco Suarez, Bartolomé de los Martires, and Gregory of Orozco. A key principle of the Augustinian’s defense of John is his insistence that even passages from scripture taken out of context can seem to be heretical (trans., 359), and that a careful examination of the words and context of the Carmelite shows that his doctrine conforms to that of the best mystics. Considerable space is given to John’s teaching on the three signs for abandoning meditation to pass over to contemplation in Ascent 2.13.2, etc. (see Propositions 3, 9, 19–23, 25, 31, 38–39). Basilio is especially impressed with John’s teaching on interior abnegation, saying that ‘Other authors, it is true, have treated of exterior abnegation, but none has described abnegation of an interior kind like this blessed Father … To this day no book has been written comparable with this …’ (trans., 402). John’s understanding of mystical union is also defended (Propositions 27, 29, and 40). Basilio is certain that there can be no errors in the books of ‘this great man, Fray John of the Cross, [who] was of blameless life and was the first founder of the Discalced Carmelite Fathers, together with the holy Mother Teresa of Jesus’ (Prol, n. 2; trans., 356). At the end of the work, Basilio allows that the writings of mystics like John are often difficult to understand, as are the writings of the Scholastics. He also does not deny that John’s works have been used by the Alumbrados, but says, ‘In these things we must not consider the evil use made of them by a few, but

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 29 the advantage of all. And the advantage of these writings, if prayer does not make it clear, can be demonstrated by experience, which is a faithful witness to them’ (trans., 404). The longer Latin explanation and defense of John by Nicolás de Jesús María deserves a fuller theological analysis than it has thus far received.22 Nicolás describes John as Mysticus noster doctor and Sublimis doctor mysticus. He uses many of the same authorities that Diego and Basilio had employed, but he adds to them a selection of Northern European mystics, especially Ruusbroec, Tauler, and Blosius. Teresa also frequently features. The Elucidatio comprises two books: Book I of nine chapters defends John against general objections to his teaching, while Book II of 21 chapters is addressed to specific passages drawn from the Carmelite’s volumes. The influence of Diego de Jesús is evident, but Michel de Certeau has argued that Nicolás represents a different interpretive model from that of Diego because he reduces the specificity of mystical terms to classic Scholastic theology, thus making ‘mystics’ (la mystique) into a kind of practical appendix to ‘speculation’.23 Among the general objections against John is that much of what he says sounds like the heretics ‘who are called Alumbrados (Illuminati)’ (Book I, chap. 3), that his books are difficult (chap. 4), and that his writing in the vernacular might mislead simple people (chap. 5). Nicolás defends John’s writing in the vernacular, and also mounts an argument for the ‘proper and recondite’ nature of ‘mystical discourse’ (chap. 6). In his ‘Proemium’, he had already highlighted this: ‘Since in every science or art there are phrases and ways of speaking that are proper, and which are only known to those professed in this science or art, and the understanding of which therefore is found to need a proper explanation, by a much greater right [is this true] in the science of Mystical Theology, so sublime, hidden, difficult, and unknown …’.24 Like many others, Nicolás also insists that experience is necessary for understanding mystical theology (chap. 7). The long Book II dealing with particular propositions casts further light on the modes of defense of John’s writings, but cannot be taken up here. These Spanish examples of the new genre of defense of mystical ways of speaking and the creation of vocabularies of mystical terms had an influence beyond the Spanish peninsula. Perhaps the most noted example was Theologia mystica Clavis of the Dutch Jesuit Maximilian Sandaeus (1578–1656) published in Cologne in 1640.25 Sandaeus’ extensive mystical dictionary contains a ‘Praeambula’ that mounts a defense of the special character of mystical speech in a way similar to the writings of Diego and Nicolás, whose works he knew.26 Sandaeus’ book has attracted some attention in recent decades as a window into the understanding of mysticism in the first half of the seventeenth century.27 His learning was impressive, utilizing scores of authorities old and new (120 in all). Many of Sandaeus’ sources are standard (e.g., Dionysius, Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas), but he depends particularly on late medieval Northern mystics, especially Ruusbroec, Tauler, and Harphius. He also cites a large number of fifteenthand sixteenth-century mystics, of whom Ludovicus Blosius has pride of place.

30  Bernard McGinn Teresa and John of the Cross are singled out in the Praeambula: ‘It cannot be denied that there are truly Contemplatives and Mystics who have written things that are very useful for the salvation of souls in whom posterity rejoices and is instructed. There are the works of the Seraphic Father Bonaventure, Ruusbroec, Tauler, Harphius, and Ludovicus Blosius, to whom have succeeded the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus and most recently John of the Cross, the first Discalced Carmelite …’.28 Teresa is cited ten times, and John nine in the course of the Clavis.29 John appears as an authority in explaining the following mystical terms: amor proprius (p. 86); cognitio essentialis (p. 150)30; excaecatio mystica (p. 200, in reference to the Dark Night of faith in Ascent 2.2); locutio Dei substantialis et formalis (p. 268); nox (pp. 288–89); otium mysticum (p. 296); privatio (p. 306); and totum mysticum (p. 352).31 Sandaeus recognizes the importance of John’s teaching on the ‘Dark Night’ (nox obscura), beginning his discussion with more praise of the Carmelite: ‘Many things can be indicated by the Mystics by the metaphor “night”, which is very frequently used by John of the Cross, the excellent Mystic of our time, who wrote the books on the Ascent of Mount Carmel’.32 Act Two: The Use of John in Seventeenth-Century Spain The second act is the use of John of the Cross’ writings among the Spanish mystics, especially the second and third generations of the Discalced Carmelites.33 Two developments are immediately obvious in the writings of this period. The first is the conflation of the mysticism of the two Founders— Teresa and John were seen as conveying the same mystical teaching. Today, we are more aware of some real differences between the two figures, but in the seventeenth century, the conjoined authority of both Teresa and John was important for the Carmelite School. A second major, and controversial, issue was the emergence and growing importance of the distinction between acquired and infused contemplation, a Carmelite development that affected much of the mysticism of the era and the centuries since.34 Neither Teresa nor John ever used the term ‘acquired contemplation’, although they did have things to say about forms of prayer where the human subject cooperated with divine grace as preparing the way for the higher forms of contemplation that were infused by God’s action alone. The debate over whether or not there really was such a thing as an ‘acquired contemplation’ began in the seventeenth century and continued well into the twentieth. Two questions about these debates need to be distinguished at the outset: (1) Is acquired contemplation a legitimate category?; and (2) Was acquired contemplation taught by Teresa and John? Most but not all of their Carmelite followers answered yes to both questions. My own view is that an affirmative answer to Question 1 is correct,35 while the answer to Question 2 is in the range of ‘possibly’, but not certainly. The most important male Carmelite mystic of the second generation was Tomás de Jesús whom we met above as the first (if unsuccessful) editor of

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 31 John’s writings.36 From about 1600 to 1607, while resident in the Carmelite ‘deserts’, i.e., contemplative hermitages that he did much to initiate, he wrote extensively on mysticism, especially a large work called the Primera Parte del camino espiritualde oración y contemplación. This was never published, but Tomás used and reworked parts of it in his later publications. He was a great student of Teresa; one of his early works being a 1610 introduction to her mysticism. Another early work (before 1607) was the Tratado Breve, formerly ascribed to John himself, which already uses the term ‘acquired contemplation’. Tomás also wrote a later Latin treatise De contemplatione acquisita, not published until 1922, in which he defines acquired contemplation as ‘a Christian contemplation [that] is an affective and sincere knowledge of the Highest Divinity and His effects gained by our own effort’ (nostra industria comparata). Tomás major works, published in Latin during his years in the Spanish Netherlands (1610–23), covered the whole range of mystical prayer, both acquired and infused. These were the six books De contemplatione divina of 1620 and the four books Divinae orationis sive a Deo infusae methodus, natura et gradus of 1623. Thomas was deeply influenced by John of the Cross throughout, but while he often mentions John’s name in his manuscripts, he never does in his published works, probably because of the debates about John within the Carmelite Order (Simeon de la Sagrada Familia: 1951). Tomás works, however, are not just commentaries on the thought of Teresa and John; rather, he makes use of a wide range of mystical sources, such as the Victorines and Bonaventure, in constructing his own system. The cornerstone of Tomás mysticism was the traditional division of the mystical path into the three stages of beginners, proficient, and perfect (purgation, illumination, and union) but he develops this pattern in great detail and with his own additions and refinements, as well as significant Sanjuanist accents, especially regarding dark contemplation. Tomás de Jesús was for a time the spiritual director of the other great mystic of the second generation of Spanish Carmelites, Cecilia del Nacimiento (Sobrino) (1570–1646), a nun of the convent at Valladolid.37 Like John of the Cross, her mystical contributions are in the form of both poems and treatises. It was Tomás who convinced Cecilia to write her first treatises, Tratado de la union del alma en Dios (1602) and the Tratado de la transformación del alma en Dios (1603). The treatise on transformation is her masterwork. Much like John of the Cross, it takes the form of a commentary on her own 16-stanza lyric of the same title. Not only does she follow John’s example, but the work is filled with Sanjuanist themes. In the Treatise on Union, Cecilia discusses the ‘substantial touch’ between God and the soul, a major theme found in Teresa and John (see Chapters 9–12). Cecilia’s lyric on ‘The Soul’s Transformation in God’ echoes material and images taken from John’s Noche Oscura and Cántico Espiritual. The accompanying treatise takes up key mystical issues, such as transformation, union, deification, pure contemplation, the center of the soul, and the Sanjuanist overflow of divine union into the senses. Cecilia, again in dependence on John, is much taken with the

32  Bernard McGinn relation of light and darkness in the mystical path. In her ‘Tenth Song’ of the lyric, she says: ‘We say it is night … because of that divine darkness in which she [the soul] enjoys God in the union she has with him. In addition, while in this darkness, the more she enters, the more things darken over with the greater light received from the soul’s transformation in God. This is the point where description is impossible …. Here the soul is blinded by divine light, and we call this night’.38 Cecilia had a second writing period between 1629 and 1637, again at the behest of her confessors. The works from this period include two autobiographical Accounts of God’s Favors (1629, 1633) and two short Gloses on passages from the Song of Songs (1634, 1637). The creative era of the mysticism of the Discalced was pretty much over by 1640. There were, of course, a number of long scholastically influenced treatises on mysticism produced during the next 60 years based on the twin authorities of Teresa and John and given over to ever-increasing distinctions of the different modes of prayer, especially acquired and infused contemplation.39 Little of this is read or readable today. During the first half of the seventeenth century in Spain, it was not only Carmelites who read and used John of the Cross. Two important mystics, later unfairly seen as ancestors of Quietism, were also influenced by the Carmelite. Antonio Rojas, a secular priest, published his Vida del espiritu in Madrid in 1628 (further editions followed in 1629 and 1630), and a treatise Luz de noche oscura also in 1630.40 Although popular in his time, Rojas works are scarcely accessible today. Deeply influenced by John of the Cross, he even copied some of his poems and maxims in his own works. He is particularly concerned with the nature of acquired contemplation and the role of obscure faith. Rojas works were denounced to the Inquisition in 1629 and the Supreme Council of Madrid ordered them withdrawn ‘until purged of error’ (donec expurgetur). In March 1630, the Carmelite Agustín de San José began another process against Rojas whom he accused of misreading John. On October 11, 1631, Rojas issued a Defensorio of his writings in which he claimed that his Vida del espíritu is ‘a compendium and quintessence of what the venerable P. Fr. Juan de la Cruz wrote in the Dark Night’.41 Rojas writings were also attacked by the theologians Martín de Albiz and the well-known Dominican John of St. Thomas (Juan Poinset, 1589–1644), the famous Thomist commentator, who argued that Rojas misread the many authorities he cited (Pacho 1971: 349–90). Rojas continued to be read, but was eventually put on the ‘Index of Forbidden Books’ in 1689 during the height of what has been called the ‘Hecatomb of Spiritual Literature’.42 Another significant figure was the Mercedarian, Juan Falconi de Bustamante (1596–1638).43 Falconi has gone down in history as one of the forefathers of Quietism due to his insistence on what became known as the ‘one act’ theory of contemplation, that is, a single intention to persevere in a state of advanced prayer would last until deliberately withdrawn or canceled by sin. Taught by some later Quietists (e.g., Molinos and Madame Guyon), but rejected by others (e.g., Fénelon), the ‘one act’ was a fitting way to express Falconi’s insistence

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 33 on a simplified form of acquired contemplation that he insisted was the safest path to salvation. The Mercedarian’s two Spiritual Alphabets (Cartillas) written about 1625 were translated into Italian, as were two of his spiritual letters (see Falconi 1995). Falconi cites many mystical authorities, including Teresa (four times). He does not mention John of the Cross in the Alphabets, but he certainly read him and he knew Quiroga’s Life. It has been argued that Falconi’s emphasis on ‘resignation’ as a central mystical theme originates in John of the Cross, although resignation is, to be sure, an ancient theme with many adherents.44 Falconi’s discussion of the signs for the transition from meditation to contemplation in his Letter to a Religious explicitly mentions John twice.45 The 1680 Italian translation of Falconi’s works was put on the Index in 1688 in the midst of the Quietist crisis. Act Three: John and Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism46 In the period ca. 1590–1640, France saw a remarkable flowering of mystical piety and literature, unprecedented in the Kingdom’s earlier history.47 Sixteenth-century Spanish mysticism in translation played a role in this, but the major impetus was internal (see McGinn 2020a, Part One). Even before 1600, Teresa of Avila was seen as a great contemporary mystic, but what of John of the Cross? John’s name was known to the Barbe Acarie circle mentioned above, but there is little evidence of a substantial influence before the 1620s translations of René Gaultier. I do not find evidence of acquaintance with John’s writings in Benet of Canfield (1562–1610), the English Capuchin writing in French. Some have argued for a role in Francis de Sales (1567–1622), whose classic Treatise on the Love of God appeared in 1616. Francis knew and used Teresa and a number of other Spanish mystics, but does not seem to have used John.48 John’s mysticism may have been known to Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), but Bérulle does not seem to cite him and any direct influence is questionable.49 The psychological analysis of the inner states of the soul, so prominent in Teresa and John, is absent from the objective Christological mysticism of Bérulle’s masterpiece of 1623–25, the Discourses on the States and Grandeurs of Jesus.50 Hence, claims for a major role of John of the Cross in the first decades of seventeenth-century French mysticism seem overblown. John of the Cross was known among some of the followers of Bérulle, especially Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–57), the founder of the Sulpicians, whose important mystical works have only recently been published due to their suppression during the Quietist controversy.51 Olier rarely cites sources and his subtle mystical language makes it difficult to ferret out possible sources of his distinctive mysticism.52 In his still unpublished Memoires Olier tells us that in March 1642, on the advice of his spiritual director, he began to read John’s Ascent of Mount Carmel in the new translation of Cyprien of the Nativity, but an inner constraint prevented him from progressing in reading the first book, so he had to take up Book 2. Olier apparently put this down to divine control over reading what would be most helpful for him. Olier’s suspicion

34  Bernard McGinn of special spiritual gifts is much like that of John of the Cross, and his notion of the need for the inner stripping of all images from the soul hints at a possible Carmelite underpinning (e.g., Ascent 2.13). Olier also uses the image of the log on fire to describe mystical union,53 something found in John (e.g., Ascent 1.11.6; Night 2.10.1-9; Flame Prol. 3-4 et passim), but also in other mystics.54 Although influenced by Teresa of Avila, the Jesuit mystic Louis Lallemant (1587–1635) mentions John only once. His disciple, Jean-Joseph Surin (1600–65), however, can be described as the first major Sanjaunist among the French mystics, as Michel de Certeau has shown.55 According to Certeau, ‘Surin read John of the Cross … early, and this is important because this great reader and hunter of “mystics” remained, almost to the end of his life, in the language and studies formed by his studies and youthful discoveries’ (de Certeau 2013: 102). Surin knew John well and cites him often by name. Especially in his many letters, Surin shows how deeply engaged he was with John for many years. To take just one work, in the Catéchisme spirituelle (1654) Surin refers to John on rejecting extraordinary graces (Ascent 2.11), on the role of the night (Night 2.6), and on the meaning of spiritual marriage (Living Flame).56 What is more important than individual uses, as Certeau has shown, is how Surin engaged with John on a deep hermeneutical level in the construction of his own mystical thought. This is also evident in the fact that the Jesuit, like John, expressed his mysticism both in verse and in prose. The dialogue between poetry and prose, introduced by John and reprised by Surin, maintains an openness in mystical discourse that prevents it from being reduced to aesthetics or hardened into moralism. To cite Certeau, ‘… two different discourses, but parallel, express by their very écart [which is “proportion”] what neither says by itself’ (de Certeau 2013: 110–11). Sanjuanist elements are also evident in some other French mystics of the seventeenth century. The blind Carmelite laybrother Jean de St. Samson (1571–1636) belonged to the Touraine Reform of the Ancient Observance Carmelites. He appears to have become acquainted with John’s writings only late in life, so there is little direct impact. Like John and Surin, however, his mystical teaching was expressed in both prose and poetry. Jean’s prose poem the Epithalamium is comparable to John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle as a reworking of the biblical Song of Songs in a new key, but there are no historical links between the two. Lawrence of the Resurrection (1614–91), a former soldier, was not an educated person, but his entry into the Discalced convent in Paris in 1640 meant that he was exposed to the mysticism of Teresa and John.57 His brief writings, collected by other hands, have proven to be ecumenically popular over more than three centuries due to his teaching on the practice of the presence of God. Lawrence makes use of a number of Sanjaunist themes, such as his teaching on the ‘depth and center of the soul’, his emphasis on the role of naked faith in the path to God, and his apophaticism but Brother Lawrence’s simple and practical mysticism resists identification of precise sources. The Ursuline Marie de l’Incarnation (1599–1672), a

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 35 remarkable visionary and mystic who spent the last decades of her life as a missionary in Canada, had read Teresa, but there is no evidence that she was acquainted with John of the Cross. Finally, we may ask about the role of John of the Cross in other parts of Catholic Europe in the seventeenth century. Italy will be taken up below, but England and Germany require brief attention. John, as we have seen, was not translated into English, and the major English mystic of the seventeenth century, Augustine Baker (1575–1641), appears not to have known him directly, although he did use Antonio Rojas. In Catholic Germany, Johannes Schefler (Angelus Silesius, 1624–77), the great mystical poet, had a Latin copy of John’s works in his library and also knew Sandaeus’ Clavis well, but his form of apophatic mysticism is closer to that of Meister Eckhart and the masters of late medieval Northern mysticism than to John of the Cross.58 Act Four: John of the Cross in the Quietist Debates The most significant aspect of the history of mysticism in the second half of the seventeenth century was the ongoing debate about and eventual condemnation of Quietism, understood as a movement of internal prayer that neglected meditation, external religious practice, and obedience to the church to so concentrate on interior quiet that it cut itself free from ecclesiastical and moral laws.59 There can be no question that some seventeenth-century teachings about interior quiet and its relation to meditation and external practice veered in these directions, but the blanket condemnations of ‘Quietism’ were questionable and had the unfortunate result of killing, or at least severely curtailing, serious mysticism in Roman Catholicism for almost two centuries after 1700. What has not been sufficiently realized is the role that the interpretation of John of the Cross played in the two chapters of the Quietist controversy. The Quietist condemnations also resulted in John’s marginalization for about a century-and-a-half—through a kind of subterranean guilt by association. The first chapter in the Quietist tragedy unfolded during the period 1675– 90, largely in Italy.60 The two main Quietists, Miguel de Molinos (1628–96), a Spanish secular priest,61 and Pier Matteo Petrucci (1636–1701), an Oratorian who became a bishop and cardinal, were both deep students of John of the Cross. Fears of mystical heresy, especially of the Alumbrados, had grown through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were also increasing attacks on some forms of interior prayer.62 These came to a head with the publication of Molinos best-selling Spiritual Guide (Guía espiritual), first put out in Spanish in 1675 and rapidly translated into many languages.63 Molinos was a popular preacher and spiritual director in Rome. His work was not an original mystical masterpiece, but was a handbook that summarized a wide range of mystical thought in an attractive way in three books. Book 1 bears the title, ‘The Darknesses, Drynesses, and Temptations with which God Purges Souls, of Interior Recollection and Acquired Contemplation’. Book II is a guide for confessors, and Book III deals with spiritual martyrdoms, infused and passive

36  Bernard McGinn contemplation, resignation, humility, wisdom, true annihilation, and interior peace. The Spanish priest founded his teaching on the distinction between acquired and infused contemplation, as can be seen in the third of ‘Notices’ that preface the work. Molinos uses a wide range of sources, traditional and contemporary, including Teresa of Avila (cited nine times).64 John of the Cross is not mentioned by name, but there are several places in the work which display an unmistakable Sanjuanist flavor, as, for example, the frequent references to ‘simple and obscure knowledge of faith’ (e.g., Proem 2), and the statement in Book I.2.14 that when the soul quiets itself, ‘Even though it may appear to you that you are doing nothing, that you are lazy in being resigned and transformed in this way, the fruit is nevertheless infinite’.65 Molinos, like a number of seventeenth-century spiritual writers, saw meditation as a necessary beginning form of prayer, but thought that it was soon to be left behind by spiritual souls who needed to move on to a state of acquired contemplation. The Jesuits, as the masters of meditation, attacked Molinos’s book beginning in 1678, and a wave of critiques and defenses of the Spiritual Guide flew back and forth in the succeeding years.66 Molinos friend Petrucci entered the fray with a book on acquired mystical contemplation (1681), and Molinos wrote two works to defend himself. The first was the Spanish Defense of Contemplation (Defensa de la contemplación) of 1682, and the second was the brief Italian Solution to Some Objections Made against the ‘Spiritual Guide’ (Scioglimento …). Strangely enough, neither of these was published at the time, although they must have had readers in manuscript form.67 What is evident from both these works is that John of the Cross now emerges as a major resource for Molinos mysticism, even more than Teresa. The 32 chapters of the Defense do not add much to the material set out in the Spiritual Guide, but the book is filled with quotations from many mystical masters in defense of Molinos views. John of the Cross, described as ‘the blessed and illuminated’ (el beato e illuminando), is cited 17 times to Teresa’s 12, and what is more unusual, two chapters in the Defense (Chapters V and VI) are nothing more than long quotations from John.68 The Italian Solution is even more dependent on John, whom he calls ‘a great mystic’ (gran mistico). Here, Molinos addresses four objections made against the Guide: (1) that he has applied John’s three signs for leaving meditation (Ascent 2.13) to acquired contemplation rather than infused contemplation; (2) that having said his book is about acquired contemplation, he actually writes about both acquired and infused contemplation; (3) that he taught that acquired contemplation, like infused, abandons all discursive operations; and (4) that to arrive at contemplation, one must cease all meditation. Molinos quotes and analyzes many of John’s texts in detail to support his own case for acquired contemplation, which he identifies with John’s ‘universal, confused, and loving knowledge of God’ (notitia universale confusa ed amorosa di Dio). A careful study of these texts shows that Molinos was often inexact, perhaps even in error in his interpretation of John, but he was an assiduous student of the Carmelite.

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 37 The works of Molinos Jesuit opponents were placed on the Index in 1682, but his apparent victory turned to defeat when he was arrested by the Holy Office in 1685. After two years in prison, Molinos was formally condemned as a heretic on November 3, 1687, and sent to life imprisonment. On November 28, 68 of his errors were anathematized in the Apostolic Constitution Caelestis Pater of Pope Innocent XI. None of these, however, was taken from the Spiritual Guide. Pier Matteo Petrucci was in many ways a more profound mystic than his Spanish friend, but his extensive writings were little studied until recently.69 The Oratorian cardinal, also condemned for mystical errors in late 1687, provides a window into the use of John of the Cross in seventeenth-century Italy, where the Carmelite was cited not only by suspect folk like Petrucci, but also impeccably orthodox mystical authors, like the Cistercian Giovanni Cardinal Bona (1609–74).70 Petrucci, like Surin, would profit from a detailed analysis of how his mystical thought represents a real appropriation of John of the Cross, largely through the filter of the Dionysian corpus and its tradition. As Sabrina Stroppa puts it, ‘With the name of John of the Cross … one touches the very foundation of the spirituality of Petrucci’ (Stroppa and Cavicchioli 2009: xix). The Oratorian wrote extensively, both in prose and in verse. His early The Virgin Assumed (La Vergine Assunta, 1673) already uses John, and the Carmelite appears throughout his long Spiritual and Mystical Letters and Treatises (Lettere e Trattati spiritual e mistici) printed several times between 1676 and 1684.71 Here, I will restrict my comments to the recently edited Mystical Enigmas Unveiled (I Mistici Enigmi disvelati) of 1680 (Petrucci 2009). Like John’s works, this takes the form of an extended commentary on one of Petrucci’s mystical sonnets, ‘A Contemplative Soul Speaks’ (Parla un Anima Contemplativa). Not only is the form Sanjuanist, but the apophatic and paradoxical character of the work can be described as a real appropriation of fundamental themes of the Carmelite’s mysticism, such as the center of the soul, the dark night, nothingness and annihilation, as well as the Sanjuanist dialectic of ‘all and nothing’ (todo y nada: see Ascent 1.13.6-12). Indeed, the last line of the sonnet is ‘In the All I have nothing, and in the great Nothing I have God’ (Nel tutto ho nulla, e in gran nulla ho Dio).72 In the course of Mystical Enigmas Unveiled, Petrucci cites many sources, none more than Thomas Aquinas (66x). John of the Cross appears, explicitly and implicitly, about a dozen times,73 as does Teresa of Avila. Other frequently cited mystics include Bonaventure (22x), Dionysius (17x), Richard of St. Victor (12x), Ruusbroec (12x), Gerson (10x), and Jean de Saint Samson (9x). I would argue, nonetheless, that John, whom Petrucci calls ‘the great light of Carmel’ (gran lume del Carmelo, ed., 86), and ‘a truly heavenly man’ (uomo veramente celeste, ed., 178), really sets the underlying agenda for the work. For example, in speaking of the sufferings of contemplatives (commenting on line two of the first Tercet), Petrucci does not explicitly refer to John, but provides a kind of summary of Sanjuanist teaching: ‘As long as the soul walks in bright contemplation and in understanding, it can be described

38  Bernard McGinn at least in part, but when it is despoiled of all things and guided by mystical darkness, which is an ignorance more wise than human wisdom, and an emptiness more full than every fullness, who can say anything about it?’74 The second chapter of the Quietist controversy played out in France between 1681 when Madame Jeanne Guyon began her public career as a mystical apostle and 1699 when her friend Archbishop François Fénelon’s Maxims of the Saints was condemned by the Apostolic Brief of Innocent XII, Cum alias ad Apostolatus.75 Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717) is one of the most remarkable, but also controversial, mystics in Christian history. Guyon had contact with a number of circles of French mystics beginning about 1675, and she knew the writings of Teresa and Francis de Sales, but her acquaintance with John of the Cross seems late. In the three-volume Life that she began to write in 1682, she mentions John only twice.76 Nevertheless, the annihilative union with God in the soul’s three highest powers of intellect, memory, and will through the action of faith, hope, and charity that she describes (Life 1.10.8-12) sounds much like what we find in John’s AscentDark Night treatise. Similarly, Guyon’s two early treatises from 1682, The Torrents and the Short and Easy Method of Prayer (published in 1685 and put on the Index in 1688), do not show obvious influence from John.77 The same seems true of her important Commentary on the Song of Songs (written in 1684 and published in 1688).78 It was in 1688 that Guyon was imprisoned for the first time as a suspected sympathizer of Molinos. When she was released later that year, she met the Abbé François Fénelon (1651–1713), a rising star in the French church. The two became close in the period 1688–92 through frequent letters and meetings. Their relationship and interdependence still provoke study, but Guyon gained the ideal ‘spiritual child’ she always longed for, as well as a theological adviser, while Fénelon found in Guyon a true mystic, who, despite her excesses, had enjoyed the kind of direct experience of God that he was convinced was the goal of the devout life. When Guyon and her writings began to be attacked, especially by Fénelon’s former patron, the most powerful cleric in France, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux (1627–1704), the stage was set for the famous encounter which the French (with their admirable understatement) refer to as the ‘Battle of the Olympians’. Under the influence of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s secret wife, Bossuet had turned against Guyon about 1693 and become involved with a commission established to investigate the orthodoxy of her writings.79 He read her extensive writings, interviewed her several times, and soon began to publish treatises against her, such as The Tradition of the New Mystics (1694). Guyon decided to defend herself against Bossuet’s criticism not only of her treatises, but also of her Explications. In mid-1694, she rapidly wrote a long defense of her views, the three-volume Justifications, a text of more than a thousand pages.80 As Pope Innocent XII later complained, ‘These French turn out infinite books. How do they do it?’81 As in the case of Molinos, this mystic, when taken to task for errors

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 39 about interior prayer, contemplation, annihilation, and the like, turned to John of the Cross, who in the Justifications emerges as the major mystical authority, cited no less than 293 times.82 Divided into 69 ‘keys’ or mystical topics, Guyon cites passages from her own works dealing with each of these issues and then quotes mystical authorities that she says support her views. John of the Cross, for example, is cited in Key 23 (‘Naked Faith’), Key 42 (‘Ownness, i.e., Proprieté’), Key 50 (‘Purification’), and Key 66 (‘Union’), to name but a few. Where did Madame Guyon acquire her knowledge of John of the Cross? We really do not know. She did not get it from her former confessor and friend, the Barnabite François La Combe (1640–1715) because his Analysis of Mental Prayer, published in 1686 and put on the Index in 1688, shows no knowledge of John. She may have got it from Fénelon, but he appears not to have known much about John of the Cross before he became involved in the controversy.83 Maybe the two friends encouraged each other in assiduous reading of the Carmelite. Meanwhile, Fénelon also entered the controversy, writing works to defend Guyon and the other ‘New Mystics’ as Bossuet called them. The most important of these was his The Gnostic of Saint Clement (1694), in which he strove to show that the recent mystics, including Guyon, were part of ancient tradition of higher (‘gnostic’) mystical wisdom stretching back to John and Paul in the New Testament, clearly formulated by Clement of Alexandria, then advanced by figures like Cassian and Dionysius, and continuing down to the present.84 The 16 chapters of this book show how important John of the Cross had become for the defense of the continuity of the mystical tradition. In constructing his genealogy of mystical ‘Gnosticism’, John was the key modern figure. Fénelon naturally cites the early mystics, like Clement, Cassian, and Dionysius often (oddly almost no medievals). Among the moderns, John of the Cross has decisive authority, being cited 15 times, far more than Francis de Sales (6x), Teresa (2x), and Catherine of Genoa (2x).85 As Fénelon says in Chapter XIII: ‘Note that he [Clement] assumes that the gnostic soul is the bride of pure love; the Bridegroom can refuse her nothing, nor hide from her his most incomprehensible mysteries, as Saint [!] John of the Cross assures us’ (Canticle 27). In the ongoing struggle between Fénelon and Bossuet over Guyon’s mysticism that lasted from 1694 to 1698, John of the Cross was a key authority for both sides. We cannot review all the details of the controversy here but fortunately the clash of interpretations has been well studied by the French Sanjuanist scholar, Henri Sanson, in his 1953 monograph, Saint Jean de la Croix entre Bossuet et Fénelon.86 Sanson’s penetrating analysis of all the references to John in the polemical literature between Bossuet and Fénelon touches on many issues, but concentrates on the nodal point, that is, Fénelon’s claims regarding pure love of God, the love that gives up all self-interest to such a degree that the soul would willingly accept its own damnation should God so decide. To review the detail with which Sanson builds his case is not possible here,87 but the conclusion of the study is

40  Bernard McGinn worth considering. Sanson argues that both Bossuet and Fénelon misread John (op. cit., 18, 20, 102–04), which may be the fate of all great thinkers when used within polemical contexts. Part of the problem was that both men used defective editions of John in which there were many interpolations.88 Sanson finds Bossuet the greater offender against the Sanjuanist texts because the bishop of Meaux reads the Carmelite only to the extent that he can be twisted to support Bossuet’s case against any form of prayer that favors interiority and that tries to see mystical grace as an habitual gift open to many and not just a special charism (gratia gratis data) granted to the few. The fewer mystics, the better was Bossuet’s view—and it was to triumph for over two centuries. Sanson also shows how Fénelon misunderstood John of the Cross, although he finds the Archbishop’s stress on quietude, inner surrender, annihilation, and pure love closer to John’s own views.89 In the 1697 Maxims of the Saints, Fénelon’s perhaps unfortunate attempt to defend mystical interiority and create a ‘quasi-science’ of mysticism on the basis of the citation of many authorities and an all-to-rigorous logic, John of the Cross is also cited.90 Nonetheless, in this treatise, Francis de Sales emerges as the dominant authority (24 citations as against eight for John), closely followed by Catherine of Genoa, whose teaching on pure love greatly appealed to Fénelon. It is not possible to review Bossuet’s many rebuttals to Fénelon, or Fénelon’s to his. John of the Cross is a constant presence in this polemical literature. For example, Bossuet’s most substantial contribution to the debate is found in his Instructions on the States of Prayer (Instructions sur les états d’oraison) of 1697, in which John of the Cross is cited no less than 28 times.91 In this work, Bossuet mounts an attack on the late medieval mystics like Ruusbroec, Tauler, and Harphius, whom he blames for the ‘excesses’ of the New Mystics. He cites a wide range of sources, although he adjusts them for his own purposes and adopts what might be called a ‘hermeneutics of apology’ for what he deems the misstatements of canonized mystics, like Teresa and Francis de Sales. We can conclude by surmising that while Guyon and Fénelon seem to have developed their mystical thinking with only moderate influence from John of the Cross, when taken to task they responded in large part by citing the authority of the Carmelite. Even Bossuet, no friend of mysticism, felt compelled to take up the study of John to show how these New Mystics had misread the ‘Blessed John’. Both sides in this chapter of the Quietist debates testify to John’s importance as a mystical authority in the late seventeenth century. Conclusion The moderate condemnation of Fénelon engineered by Bossuet and King Louis XIV, as well as the placing of scores of books on interior prayer on the Index between 1680 and 1720 (‘the Hecatomb of Spiritual Literature’),

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 41 could not but involve the reputation of John of the Cross.92 John had been beatified in 1675 and was to be canonized in 1726, so he could not be rejected, but he could be put under suspicion and neglected, which turned out to be the case. Even Bossuet had to advance his agenda about mysticism in part under the banner of John’s authority, but this soon seems to have become a compromised authority. The anti-Quietist turn against forms of simple interior prayer, the role of dark faith, an apophatic view of God, and any claims for ‘pure love’, however understood, continued to exercise a deadening hand on reading and studying John of the Cross for over a century-and-a-half. This is evident in the fact that in the 84 years between 1619 and 1703, there were no less than 12 Spanish editions of John’s collected works, while only four were published during the next 170 years (1724, 1774, 1827, and 1872). In the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the learned Carmelite Andrew of the Incarnation (1716–95) undertook the work of gathering materials for a critical edition of John’s works in the 1750s and after, it was never published.93 The reasons for this later loss of John’s mystical authority seem clear. The events and struggles to restore that authority from the last quarter of the nineteenth century down to today is another fascinating story to which we shall return later in this volume. Notes 1 We shall return to some of these issues in Jodi Bilinkoff’s chapter on John’s road to canonization. 2 On the distinction between influence and appropriation, see de Certeau (2015: 98–100). 3 Arraj’s book is a mine of information about the reception of John of the Cross, although I cannot follow him in his basic argument that ascribing teaching on socalled acquired contemplation to John has been a total misunderstanding. 4 For accounts of the struggle over the publication of John’s works, see de Certeau (1993: 129–44) and Arraj (1999: 41–48 and 111–23). For a general account of the editions and translations of John, see DS 8: 444–45. 5 ‘Diego de Jesús’ in DS 3: 873–74. 6 See Antolín (1991). On Quiroga’s defense of John, Max Huot de Longchamp, ‘Le Pseudo-Denys en defense de l’orthodoxie contemplative de Saint Jean de la Croix, selon José de Jésus María Quiroga dans son Apologie mystique’ in de Andia (1996: 617–26). Quiroga’s own mystical works, such as the Subida del alma and the Don que tuvo, show deep Sanjuanist traits; see Arraj (1999: 101–08). 7 The 1618 edition lacked the Cántico espiritual, possibly omitted as too dangerous. The Cántico first appeared in French (1622) and then in Spanish editions in Brussels and Rome in 1627, before being included in the 1630 Madrid edition. All the early editions of John down to the first critical text prepared by Gerardo de San Juan de la Cruz in 1912–14 contained pseudonymous works (e.g., the Sententiae spirituales), omissions, misreadings, and interpolations that did much to hinder true understanding of John’s teaching. 8 Even before 1616, there was interest in John’s writings and partial (unpublished) translations made in the area of Bordeaux; see Orcibal (1964, 1969). 9 André Rayez, ‘Gualtier (René)’ in DS 6: 144–47.

42  Bernard McGinn 0 Michel-Jean Picard, ‘Cyprien de la Nativité de la Vierge’ in DS 2: 2669–72. 1 11 Elisée de la Nativité, ‘Alexandre de Saint-François’ in DS 1: 301–02. 12 Elisée de la Nativité, ‘André de Jésus’ in DS 1: 555–56. 13 On John’s role in Germany, see Guillaume van Gemert, ‘Zur deutschen Auseinandersetzung mit Juan de la Cruz’ in Steggink (1991: 907–45). 14 On John’s role in America, see Payne (1992a). 15 Teófilo Aparicio López, ‘Ponce de León (Basile)’ in DS 12: 1914–15. 16 For a brief account, see Arraj (1999: 115–17). 17 I have given accounts of these three works in McGinn, Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain (2017: 238, and 369–71). See Prof. Bilinkoff’s following chapter for more on the special relationship between John and Basilio Ponce de León. 18 de Certeau (1992: 129–44), with some translations of sections of Diego’s work. 19 Diego’s Spanish text can be found in the Obras del Místico Doctor San Juan de la Cruz, edited by Gerardo de San Juan de la Cruz, Vol. 3: 465–302. 20 de Certeau 2015: 113–15. 21 There is an English version of ‘A Reply of R.P.M Fray Basilio Ponce de León … to the Notes and Objections which were Made concerning Certain Propositions from the Book of Our Father Fray John of the Cross’ in E. Allison Peers, The Complete Works of John of the Cross, Vol. 3: 355–404. 22 I use the edition of the Phrasium mysticae theologiae … elucidatio to be found in Opera mystica V. P. Iohannis a Cruce (Cologne: Gualtieri, 1639). In this edition, the works of John in Latin take up 469 pp., while the Elucidatio (separately paginated) takes up 200 pages. On Nicholas, see Ildefonso Moriones, ‘Nicolás de Jésus-Marie’ in DS 11: 286–87. 23 de Certeau 2015: 113–14. 24 Phrasium, Proemium (ed., 7). 25 On Sandaeus, see Bernard McGinn (2020: 474–79). I use the modern reprint of the 1640 edition: R. P. Maximiliani Sandaei … Pro Theologia mystica Clavis … (Coloniae Agrippinae: Ex Officina Gualteriani, 1640). 26 Nicolás’s Elucidatio is cited in Clavison 86, 131, 240, 242, 268, 296, 306. 27 For example, de Certeau (1992: 75–76, 102, 108, 146, 170). 28 Sandaeus, Theologia mystica Clavis, Praeambula, 18. 29 Teresa is cited on 18, 28, 86, 131 (on not removing the image of Christ in contemplation), 150, 180, 207, 214, 296, and 326. The only other woman mystic much cited by Sandaeus was Gertrude the Great (35, 36, 87, 312, and 343). John appears on 18, 86, 150, 200, 268, 288–89, 296, 306, and 352. Ignatius of Loyola appears on 140–41, 246, 301, and 355. Sandaeus also knows Tomás de Jesús, who is referred to on 20, 21, 85, and 110. Among other contemporaries, Constantine de Barbanson is cited many times. 30 This passage is interesting because it refers to John’s Ascent, as known through the Basilio de León, Diego de Jesús, and Nicolás a Jesús María, as well as Tomás de Jesús. Sandaeus appears to know contemporary Carmelite mystical theology quite well. 31 In this passage, Sandaeus provides a Latin translation of John’s famous text on how to attain the totum that is God by recognizing that we are nihil (nada) (Ascent of Mount Carmel 1.12.6-13). 32 The section on Nox (Clavis, 288–89) provides a good summary of John’s teaching on the Dark Night. 33 On John’s influence on the Spanish Carmelites, see Pablo María Garrido, ‘A propósito del magisterio espiritual de San Juan de la Cruz acogida de sus escritos místicos entre los carmelitas españoles’ in Steggink (1991: 799–810). 34 There are many overviews. Opposed to a really distinct acquired contemplation is Roland Dalbiez (1949: 81–145), as well as Arraj (1999). Arguments pro and con are advanced in the multi-author article ‘Contemplation. Deuxième Partie:

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 43 Enquéte Doctrinale’ in DS 2: 2058–193. See also the detailed study of Gabriel de Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, ‘Carmes (Spiritualité de l’ordre des). II. École mystique Thérésiennes (Carmes Déchausses)’ in DS 2: 171–209; and Garrutxaga (1984: 1.169-90). 35 If the progress of prayer is understood as a continuum in which divine grace gradually draws a person to higher and higher stages, a strong distinction between meditation and contemplation seems artificial. Grace is always at work as prayer becomes more and more simplified. Mixed, or acquired, contemplation is that stage where human activity is still cooperating with grace in the simplification process, whereas in infused contemplation, God alone is at work and the human subject is passive and totally receptive. This idea of a mediating state between meditation and infused contemplation can be said to be rooted in Teresa, Interior Castle 4.3 (especially 13), and John of the Cross, Ascent 2.14.2. 36 For a brief account of Tomás, see McGinn (2020: 371–76). Longer treatments include E. Allison Peers, ‘Post-Teresan Mysticism: Tomás de Jesús’ in Allison Peers (1951), Vol. 2, Chap. 10 (279–306); Hoornaert (1980: 339–76); Arraj (1999), Chaps. 3–4 (33–81); Miguel Angel Diez, ‘Thomas de Jésus’ in DS 15: 833–44 and Zumbruno (2009). 37 Cecilia’s works are found in Obras completas de Cecilia del Nacimiento, edited by José Diaz Cerón (1970). There is a translation by Kevin Donnelly and Sandra Sider: Cecilia del Nacimiento: Journeys of a Mystical Soul in Poetry and Prose (2012). For studies, see McGinn (2020: 360–69); Arenal and Schlau (1989: Chap. 2 (131–89)); Emily Toft, ‘Cecilia Nacimiento: Mystic in the Tradition of John of the Cross’ in Boenig (2000: 169–84); and Toft, ‘Cecilia del Nacimiento: SecondGeneration Mystic in the Carmelite Reform’ in Kallendorf (2010: 231–52). 38 Tenth Song 1, using the translation of Donnelley and Sider 2012: 84. 39 Among these were the French Philip of the Trinity (1603–71), the author of the Summa Theologiae Mysticae (1656); the Portuguese Joseph of the Holy Spirit (1609–74), who wrote a Cadena mystica carmelitana de los autores carmelitas descalzos (1678); and Joseph of the Holy Spirit (the Andalusian) (1667–1736), who wrote a many-volume Cursus theologiae mystico-scholasticae (1720–40). 40 On Rojas, see Saturnino López Santidrían, ‘Rojas (Roxas; Antonio de), prêtre, 17e siècle’, in DS 13: 879–85; and Arraj (1999: 124–28). Both of Rojas’s works were translated into French by Cyprian of the Nativity of the Virgin (1646, 1649) and went through several editions. 41 Cited from Arraj (1999: 126). 42 The phrase originates with Eulogio Pacho, ‘Le Quiétisme: I: En Italie’ in DS: 12.2778. 43 On Falconi, see E. Allison Peers, ‘Post-Teresan Mysticism: Juan Falconi’ in 1951: 2.347-92; André Derville, ‘Falconi de Bustamante (Jean)’ in DS 5: 35–45; and McGinn (2021: 23–30). The fullest account is Gómez (1956). 44 See Richard (1976: 303–9). On resignation in John, see, e.g., Ascent 2.5.8, and 2.11.7. 45 See Arraj (1999: 129–36). 46 On the reception of John of the Cross in seventeenth-century French mysticism, see Bord (1993). 47 McGinn (2020a), Part One. 48 I am unconvinced by the argument for connections between John and Francis made by André Bord in ‘L’influence de Jean de la Croix sur François de Sales et Jeanne de Chantal’, in Bordes and Hennequin (1994: 51–56). Bord shows some broad parallels between the two mystics, but no proof of real contact. See also Rivet: 1941 and Liuima: 1959–60 which show no use of John in Francis. 49 Bérulle names Teresa in several places, but not John, as far as I can see. Krumenacker (1999: 190) argues that Bérulle’s view of deification is close to that of John of

44  Bernard McGinn the Cross and might have been mediated to him ca. 1606–07 through conversations with Mother Ana de Jesús (1549–1621), who was the leader of the first French Carmelite house and a great friend of John of the Cross. This supposition has also been made by several previous scholars but it remains highly problematic. 50 As shown in Ferrari (1997: 49–51). 51 For a survey of recent work on Olier, see McGinn (2020: 245–53). There is a study of Olier’s sources in Mazzocco (2008: 103–16), especially 107–10 on John. 52 See Mazzocco (2008: 114 and 2012: 182-84), with regard to the language of naked faith. 53 See Jean-Jacques Olier (2008: 58 and 232). 54 For a study, see Clément Sclafert (1957: 242–63, and 361–86). 55 Michel de Certeau, ‘The Uses of Tradition’ in The Mystic Fable. Volume Two, 1970: 98–119 (French original). See also Olphe-Galliard (1948: 425–37), who argues for a Sanjuanist aspect of the Jesuit mystics of the ‘School of Lallement’. 56 Jean-Joseph Surin 1963: 267, 309, 312 (for more uses of John in the work, see 150, 180–81, 246, and 303). 57 For an introduction, see McGinn (2020: 304–08). 58 There is one intriguing parallel. In his Cherubinischer Wandersman 2.153, Silesius describes Eternity as an ‘I know not what’ (sie ist, ich weiss nicht was), using a phrase that is typical of John. Is this an accident or a reminiscence? 59 See Bernard McGinn (2021). Still essential are the articles on Quietism in DS Vol. 12: Eulogio Pacho, ‘Quiétisme: I. En Italie et Espagne’, DS 12: 2756–805; and Jacques Le Brun, ‘Quiétisme: II. France’, DS 12: 2805–42. 60 On John of the Cross in seventeenth-century Italy, see Albisani (1990) and Sabrina Stroppa and Curzio Cavicchioli, ‘Introduzione’ in Pier Matteo Petrucci. I Mistici Enigmi disvelati (1680) (2009: xli–lii). 61 On the relation of John and Molinos, see Arraj (1999: 157–68); and Eulogio de la Virgen del Carmen (1962: 352–426). 62 See McGinn (2021: 1–40). 63 For an edition, see José Ignacio Tellechea, Miguel Molinos. Guía Espiritual, 1970. There is a translation by Robert P. Baird, Miguel de Molinos. The Spiritual Guide (2010). On Molinos, see McGinn (2021: 41–68). 64 For explicit references to Teresa, see Guide, Proem (trans., 61, twice); Proem. (trans., 62); Bk. I.3.17 (trans., 68); Bk. I.11.72 (trans., 83); Bk. I.16.126 (trans., 97); Bk. II.2.12 (trans., 106); Bk.II.10.78 (trans., 120–21); and Bk. III.5.56 (trans., 149). 65 This seems to be a quotation from John’s Dark Night 1.10.4 (trans., Kavanagh, 382). 66 The main Jesuit treatises against Molinos were those of Gotthardo Bell’Huomo (1612–90), Il pregio e l’ordine dell’orazione ordinarie e mistiche (1678), and Paolo Segneri (1624–94), Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell’orazione (1680). 67 There is a modern edition by Eulogio Pacho, Miguel de Molinos. Defensa de la Contemplación (1988), which also includes the Scioglimento (281–98). There is an analysis of the Defensa in Dudon (1921: 67–79). 68 Defensa, Cap. V (ed., 112-16) quotes Living Flame, Stz. 3.4, 14, 16, and 6; and Ascent 2.12. Defensa, Cap. VI (ed., 117–22) quotes Flame Stz. 3.8, 12, as well as the Decree of the Congregation of Rites of November 29, 1655, approving John’s writings. 69 On Petrucci, see McGinn (2021: 68–97), and the literature cited there. A major resource is Sabrina Stroppa and Curzio Cavicchioli 2006. 70 On Bona, see McGinn (2020: 454–58). Bona cites John four times in his Short Cut to God (Via compendii ad Deum …) published in 1657 (see Caps. IV (p. 19), VII (pp. 52–53), IX (pp. 76–77), and X (pp. 95–96). It is interesting to note that he also cites Teresa four times, and Tomás de Jesús no less than eight, which tells us something about the reception of Carmelite mysticism in the later seventeenth century.

How John of the Cross Gained and Lost Mystical Authority 45 71 There is a partial English translation of this: Christian Perfection, consisting in the love of God: explained in several letters to a lady, etc. Pietro Mateo Petrucci (Gale: ECCO, n.d.). Reprint of London, 1704 ed. 72 For a study of Petrucci’s apophatic mysticism, see Curzio Cavicchioli, ‘La “strada del niente”: Teologia “divina” e mistica negativa in Pier Matteo Petrucci in Stroppa and Cavicchioli (2006: 105–62). 73 Here is a list of 11 uses, explicit and implicit: ed., 39 (Night 2.19.2); 44 (Flame Stz. 3.1 and 17); 86 (Sentences 29); 93 (Ascent 2.4); 94 (Ascent 3.14); 95 (Flame Stz. 3.14-16); 111 (Escercizio d’Amore Stz. 1); 112 (Night general); 119 (Letter 8, a long quotation); 152 (general); and 178 (Flame Stz. 3.4). There may be some other general references. 74 I Mistici Enigmi, Secondo Verso del Primo Terzetto (La pena profonda è gaudio mio) 6.23 (ed., 112). This passage is reminiscent of Petrucci’s earlier description of ‘the state of mystical union’ as ‘the most wise ignorance, the most adventurous blindness, the most brilliant darkness, and mystical emptiness’ (ed., 22). 75 See McGinn (2021, Chapters 3 and 4 (139–300)). The other major French Quietist of the era, François Malaval (1627–1719), was a friend of Molinos and Petrucci. In his important work, the Easy Practice to Elevate the Soul to Contemplation (Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation, 1664 and 1670), he cites Teresa and even Tomás de Jesús, but does not use John of the Cross. 76 The new edition is Jeanne-Marie Guyon, La Vie par elle-même, ed. Dominique Tronc, 2 vols. (2014). The reference to the ‘paroles du Bienheureux Jean de la Croix’ in Vie 2.4.8 (ed. 1:448) cites one of the inscriptions on the design of Mount Carmel that John drew and which appears in all the early editions (see Figure 2). There is a second reference in Vie 3.14.6 (ed. 2:805), this time to John’s Canticle 7. 77 The edition of Dominique Tronc, Madame Guyon. Oeuvres mystiques (2008), notes a few possible reminiscences of John, but these are not very convincing (see 93, 136–37 [the log in fire], 158, 169, 191-92, 214, 216, 223, 246, 253, and 259. 78 This was part of Guyon’s astonishing Explications commenting on the whole Bible in some 8,000 pages. There is a modern edition by Claude Morali, Madame Guyon. Les Torrents et Commentaire au Cantique des cantiques de Salomon (1684-1684) (1992). 79 For more on this part of the story, McGinn, ‘The Path to Issy (August 1693 to December 1695)’ in 2021: 228–56. 80 The Justifications were not published until 1720. There are some excerpts in Tronc 2008, Oeuvres mystiques, 383–418, and some translations of texts defending Guyon’s Commentary on the Song of Songs in James W. Metcalf, trans., The Song of Songs of Solomon with Explanations and Reflections Having References to the Interior Life by Madame Guyon (1879). 81 See McGinn (2021: 257). 82 Other frequently cited mystics include Jean de Saint-Samson (241x), Clement of Alexandria (94x), Dionysius (100x), Catherine of Genoa (156x), Teresa (117x), and Francis de Sales (82x). 83 In a letter, Fénelon says that he did know much mystical literature before ca. 1690. He does, however, cite John a few times in his Instructions, many of which date to ca. 1690–93. See Lettres et opuscules spirituels, in Jacques Le Brun, ed., Fénelon. Oeuvres, 2 vols. (1983–87), No. XII (ed., 1:612, on the Dark Night of faith), and No. XXV, which cites both Teresa and John (ed., 1: 674–75): ‘O qu’il est bon de suivre la voie marquée par le bienheureux Jean de la Croix, qui veut qu’on croie dans le nonvoir, et qu’on aime sans chercher à sentir’ (see Ascent 2.26). 84 For an edition and full discussion, Paul Dudon, Le Gnostique de Saint Clément d’Alexandrie (1930). 85 On the uses of John of the Cross in the work, see ed. Dudon, 165, 185–86 (2x), 194–95, 201, 210 (2x), 225, 235, 242, and 247 (Dudon’s Index misses many of these references).

46  Bernard McGinn 86 Henri Sanson, Saint Jean de la Croix entre Bossuet et Fénelon. Contribution à l’étude de la querelle du Pur Amour (1953). Sanson shows how neither Fénelon nor Bossuet had much knowledge of John before their quarrel (see 11, 26–31, and 33–38). 87 In an appendix (113–19), Sanson lists all the uses of John of the Cross in the works of Bossuet (99x) and Fénelon (116x). 88 Bossuet cited interpolated texts 13 times, while Fénelon did only once. 89 See Sanson (1953: 61): ‘Fénelon mesure sa doctrine sur celle de saint Jean de la Croix et la soumet à celle que lui present les textes. Bossuet, au contraire, mesure la doctrine de saint Jean de la Croix sur la sienne, et il n’en reticent que ce la renforce’. 90 For an edition of the Maximes des Saints, see Le Brun 1983–87: 1001–95. There is a translation by Chad Helms in Fénelon. Selected Writings (2006), 209–97. John of the Cross is cited in the Preface (trans., 211), Article III (trans., 227, using Night 1.3), Article VII (trans., 234), Article XVI (trans., 254, also using Night 1.3), Article XXII (trans., 265, using Ascent 2.13), Article XXIII (trans., 266, using Flame Stz. 3), Article XXVI (trans., 270, citing something John never said!), and Article XXIX (trans., 276). 91 There is an edition in J.-P. Migne, Oeuvres completes de Bossuet, 11 vols. (PL, Vol. 4:13-263). 92 See the remarks in Sanson (1953: 108–11). 93 For the figures on the editions and a brief account of Andrew’s work, see Arraj (1999: 178–79, and 181–83).

3

John of the Cross The Long Road to Sainthood Jodi Bilinkoff

Introduction On 12th March 1622, the news that Pope Gregory XV had declared Teresa of Avila a saint spread joy among Catholics throughout Europe, but perhaps none more so than members of the Discalced Carmelite Order she had founded.1 This momentous event also brought heightened expectations for the spiritual sons and daughters of John of the Cross. Teresa had died in 1582, was beatified in 1614, and now canonized, all within a mere 40 years. John’s cause for sainthood had already concluded its first phase; surely, his devotees reasoned, Teresa’s steadfast collaborator and founder of the male branch of the Order would receive rapid approval as well. Nevertheless, as we have heard, the road to beatification, in 1675, and canonization, in 1726, would be a long and difficult one. In this chapter, I try to make some sense out of the 135 years between the death of John of the Cross in 1591 and his canonization and explain why the quest for sainthood took so long. I consider, as well, the manifold ways in which constituencies remembered this fascinating and complex figure. John’s Holy Body and Its Resting Places, or John as a Thaumaturgic Healer As many scholars have noted, John was a controversial figure during his lifetime, a lightning rod for conflicts and rivalries.2 After his death, however, he became much more popular. Or to be more precise, his body, which had suffered so much from human violence, sickness, and his own penitential practices, was now regarded as a holy relic. Even during his final illness in the last months of 1591, people in Ubeda began to talk about, and collect, his blood and flesh. Doña Clara de Benavides, for example, supplied the friary with cloths so that a doctor could clean and bandage the terrible sores on John’s legs. She still had those soiled cloths, she testified, because ‘she held them in great esteem for having been on the wounds of the holy father Friar John of the Cross’. As the end neared, Doña Clara and members of her family began to pray to John, not just for him.3 DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-5

48  Jodi Bilinkoff After his death, stories about the friar’s patient suffering and exemplary demise spread rapidly. John quickly developed a reputation for holiness, a figure to whom believers could pray for intercession in times of need. Perhaps because of the slow and gruesome nature of his death from erysipelas (an acute skin infection) they primarily called upon him as a healer. Sick and injured persons greatly desired to touch, or be touched by, a piece of John’s body in hopes of a cure. If direct contact were not possible, they would try for a piece of his clothing or one of his meager possessions. Most people would have to make do with one of the woodcut portraits that were reproduced in large numbers and distributed widely in the first decades of the seventeenth century.4 Two distinguished Spanish historians, Teófanes Egido, a Discalced Carmelite, and José Luis Sánchez Lora, a secular scholar, have studied the testimonies of witnesses at the beatification hearings for John of the Cross, which took place in two stages, from 1614 to 1618 and 1627 to 1628. They found that most deponents either described supernatural gifts the friar possessed while alive, such as his skill at exorcizing demons, or recounted miraculous cures accomplished after his death.5 Sánchez Lora counted 231 post-mortem miracles in approximately 540 testimonies.6 Egido noted something rather specific and surprising, cases in which pregnant women petitioned John for a safe childbirth (buen parto). He wondered why women would call upon this celibate male figure to aid them in their labors. Following people and events in Ubeda in the final days of John’s life helps to provide an answer. At this time, Doña Clara de Benavides, who kept the friar’s bloody bandages as relics, was nearing her time. An earlier childbirth had nearly ended her life. Hearing of John’s sufferings, she sent word asking him to beg the Lord to send her an easy delivery this time. John assured her and said that the child would enjoy God. ‘And indeed, things happened this way’, she recalled, ‘and I had a good delivery and had a girl … who died within five months and went to enjoy the presence of God’. This sad outcome in no way detracted from Doña Clara’s opinion of John as an efficacious healer. After all, she had petitioned his aid in having a safe delivery (and ensuring her survival), not for the long life of the child.7 This anecdote spread quickly, due to its poignancy perhaps, but also the status of its teller. Doña Clara was the wife of Don Bartolomé Ortega Cabrio, a member of one of the city’s wealthiest and most influential families and strong supporters of the Discalced Carmelites. One of his brothers had even entered the Order, taking the religious name Fernando de la Madre de Dios. At the time of John’s final illness, Friar Fernando served as a sub-prior of the Ubeda house and thus provided information about the patient. John’s reputation for holiness and the implied endorsement of Ubeda’s elite combined to set a potent precedent. Cases of pregnant women appealing to him for a safe delivery would recur throughout the seventeenth century, with one taking place as late as 1713.8 Despite this reverence for John, Discalced Carmelite officials did not initiate a beatification process until 1614, more than twenty years after his death. Why the delay? One reason may relate to the change in leadership that occurred

John of the Cross 49 after the sudden death of the divisive Vicar-General Nicolás Doria in 1594. Lingering bad feelings among members of Doria’s faction warranted proceeding with caution, some may have counseled.9 A more important factor, I suggest, was the 14-year legal dispute between the Ubeda and Segovia friaries over possession of John’s body that began with the ‘holy theft’ of 1593. Having one of its members canonized as a saint requires a united front on the part of a religious order. It is probably not a coincidence that beatification hearings did not begin until well after 1607, when Alonso de la Madre de Dios (Martínez) divided the relics between the two monastic communities.10 This Solomonic resolution did not, however, end the saga of John’s bodily remains. Elite devotees, such as Segovia’s Doña Ana de Peñalosa, requested their own personal relics of John of the Cross. Alonso de la Madre de Dios, for one, granted a number of these requests, giving away the friar’s fingers and toes in an enterprise Egido has termed ‘digital dispersion’ (Egido 1991: 114). Meanwhile, as John’s body got smaller, the tombs containing his remains got bigger and more elaborate. The Segovia friars were particularly active in this regard and undertook several campaigns during the seventeenth century to erect new sepulchers or add material objects of devotion to already-existing ones. In 1618, 25 years after they had acquired his body using somewhat dubious means, they were able to transfer it to a much grander tomb, thanks to gifts in money and in kind from the faithful, including King Philip III, who donated 500 ducats. The house’s prior proudly noted the many offerings of candles, as well as ‘images, hangings, altar cloths, carpets, and other such items with which to adorn the cult of the Saint’. Further embellishments would follow in 1621, 1675, and 1692, culminating in the construction of an even larger sepulcher in 1758.11 In Ubeda, a relatively small chapel for John’s remains completed in 1637 was replaced by a major oratory in 1726.12 In modern times, many observers, including Discalced Carmelites such as Egido, have posited a disjuncture between the historical John of the Cross, a deeply ascetic, even other-worldly mystic, and the ornate and costly structures in which his bones came to rest. Sánchez Lora goes so far as to allege the distortion or disfigurement (desfiguración) of an important religious reformer, an act of cultural betrayal, if you will.13 Whatever one’s own spiritual or aesthetic commitments, it is important to acknowledge an entirely different sensibility in the seventeenth century, the age of the Baroque, after all. There was a consensus among even John’s closest disciples in the contemplative and eremitic life that his relics should be treated with conspicuous grandeur. Anything less would deprive them of the ‘decency’ due a future saint. John, His Inquisitor, and His Defenders, or John as a Master of Mystical Theology During beatification, hearings witnesses testified at length about John’s ability to expel demons, the power of his relics in thaumaturgic healing, and other miraculous attributes. His modern admirers may be surprised to learn

50  Jodi Bilinkoff how little they spoke about his gifts as a writer. Indeed, of the 36 questions put to deponents during the Ordinary Process (1614–1618), only one asked if the witness knew that John had written books of mystical theology ‘full of heavenly wisdom’.14 Likewise, in the Apostolic Process of 1627, a single question out of 30 referenced his volumes ‘full of celestial erudition and such admirable and lofty style’, that prove so useful in ‘distinguishing true revelations from false ones’.15 There were no questions, and thus no testimony, about his composition of religious poetry. Discalced Carmelite leaders knew, however, that some people would be very interested in John’s ideas and would read his writings with care. They were, as well, keenly aware of the risks involved in publishing his works. As early as 1601, the Order’s Vicar-General tasked one of its most learned members, Tomás de Jesús (Sánchez Dávila), with examining John’s major writings, four poems followed by extensive prose commentaries. Friar Tomás would check them for any theological errors, a customary prelude to publication. However, various personal and administrative commitments kept him from completing this assignment. For reasons that remain unclear, no one was immediately appointed to take his place; the previously mentioned legal and factional conflicts probably complicated the process.16 Finally, after a 17-year delay, the Discalced Carmelites brought out the first edition of the Works (Obras) of John of the Cross in 1618.17 In addition to prefacing the volume with all the requisite approvals from ecclesiastical authorities, they took the precaution of leaving out his Spiritual Canticle. They no doubt worried that this poem, based on the Song of Songs, would cause scandal due to the erotic nature of both the biblical text and John’s verses. Moreover, the editor, Diego de Jesús (Salablanca), included some preliminary ‘Notes and Warnings’ (Apuntaciones y Advertencias) to prepare readers for the deeply personal, often startling encounters with the divine that characterize mystical writings (see the previous chapter). The book proved popular, and a second printing followed soon afterward in 1619.18 Thus, all seemed well until three years later, when the Dominican friar, Diego de Farfán, took a position as censor (calificador) at the Seville tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition. The Holy Office was at that time investigating individuals or loosely organized groups of men and women accused as Alumbrados, or Enlightened Ones, as it had done periodically for nearly a century. According to a list of propositions condemned as heretical in 1525, the Alumbrados believed that they could reach a state of divinely inspired enlightenment and even salvation without the benefit of the Church’s clergy or sacraments. Some were accused as well of engaging in immoral sexual behavior, convinced that their enlightened status rendered them incapable of committing mortal sins. Over the sixteenth century, as Protestantism took hold in many parts of Europe, the guardians of Catholic orthodoxy in Spain came to see the antinomian beliefs espoused by the Alumbrados as more dangerous than ever. They redoubled their efforts to eradicate these homegrown heretics.19

John of the Cross 51 In 1622, as the prisons of the Seville tribunal filled with alleged Alumbrados, Farfán confiscated their keys and searched their homes for incriminating evidence. He was shocked to find that nearly all of them possessed copies of the Works of John of the Cross. They apparently referred to the book as ‘Dark Night’ (Noche Oscura or Escura), the title of one of the three poems contained within. This dramatic discovery was enough to convince the inquisitor that the volume held perilously heterodox ideas. ‘It certainly has the flavor of the Alumbrados’ doctrine’, he would later comment. He recommended banning it from further publication and distribution.20 Farfán’s opinions could have caused major problems for the Discalced Carmelite order and considerably slowed the progress of John’s cause for canonization or even ended it (see the previous chapter). For one thing, while Farfán’s superiors at the main tribunal in Madrid (the Suprema) shared his concern about Alumbrados in the region of Seville, they were not necessarily convinced about linkages with the writings of John of the Cross. Enrique Llamas claims that the Dominican had a rather shaky reputation, having been implicated in cases in which ‘his personal enmities played a more decisive role than justice and the objectivity of his [professional] conduct’. Perhaps these incidents had reduced Farfan’s credibility with at least some of his fellow inquisitors.21 Moreover, 1622 saw the appointment of a new Inquisitor General, Andrés Pacheco. He moved quickly to resolve an awkward situation in which a miracle-working healer whose cause had already passed the first phase of beatification hearings was being accused of heresy. Regarded as a friend to espirituales, people inclined toward interior piety and silent prayer, as opposed to outward rituals, he may have been sympathetic to John’s cause, if not a devotee. Given the choice of learned men from throughout Spain, Pacheco selected Agustín Antolínez, a scholar already familiar with John’s writings; he would, in fact, later compose commentaries on two of his poems. Antolínez, who had just been named a bishop, begged off for lack of time, but he recommended, and Pacheco accepted, a fellow Augustinian friar and theology professor at the University of Salamanca.22 This was Basilio Ponce de León, who had reason to be even more strongly disposed toward John and opposed to over-reaching inquisitors like Farfán. Ponce de León presented a report to the Suprema in 1623 or 1624 in which he defended John’s personal saintliness and insisted on the orthodoxy of his doctrine. He systematically dismantled each of the 40 propositions that Farfán had raised against John’s writings on methods of meditation, the role of images, good works, and the senses in reaching Christian perfection, and the ability of the human soul to achieve union with the Divine. He marshaled an army of texts from scripture and early and medieval Christian authorities such as Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, and especially, Dionysius the Areopagite, believed to have been one of Paul’s disciples, to establish a genealogy of orthodox mystical theologians to which John of the Cross now belonged. The Augustinian also cited the work of recent writers

52  Jodi Bilinkoff as authorizing precedents, notably Teresa of Avila, just canonized in 1622, and Luis de León.23 The few scholars who have written about this episode have simply noted in passing that Basilio was a nephew of Luis de León, a towering figure of Spain’s Golden Age. More than just an interesting coincidence, I suggest that the lives and works of these two family members intersected with those of both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, helping to propagate their cults and ensure the success of the Discalced Carmelite reform. Luis de León (1527–1591) was an Augustinian friar, theologian, and author of popular devotional texts, poetry, and one of early modern Spain’s best-sellers, writing The Perfect Wife (La perfecta casada), a manual for newly married women published in 1583. He was also a converso, a descendant of converted Jews, on both sides of his family, and a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. In 1571, two of his colleagues at Salamanca accused Friar Luis of holding heretical propositions. He would spend nearly four years in an inquisition prison, in conditions that greatly diminished his health, before receiving complete exoneration in 1576 and returning to the university in triumph. Basilio was between two and six years old during his uncle’s unjust trial and imprisonment.24 About ten years later, at the age of 15 or 16, Basilio came to study at Salamanca, where Luis had returned to his professorship. Over the next five, formative years, uncle and nephew became very close. Basilio lived in the same Augustinian friary, aided the older man, and probably heard him lecture. He pursued his studies as Luis prepared the first edition of the Obras of Teresa of Avila, published with an admiring preface in 1588. This volume would prove instrumental to preserving the nun’s writings and memory. When Luis de León died on 23rd August 1591, his nephew was by his side. Soon afterward, Basilio stated his own intention of becoming an Augustinian friar, entering the order in 1592. As a mature scholar, he wrote many theological treatises. He also collected and edited his uncle’s Latin works, much as Luis had done for Teresa’s writings. At his death in Salamanca on 28th August 1629, his Augustinian brothers buried Basilio Ponce de Leon in their chapel, close to his uncle.25 This brings us back to his report to the Inquisition on the writings of John of the Cross. His tone suggests that this was not just an academic exercise for this learned academic. He begins by insisting that John’s works ‘should not and must not be prohibited by the Holy Office’. Noting that several of the theologians who had earlier approved the book were officials of the Inquisition, he snidely remarks that ‘the authority of any others who examine it must needs be very great if their findings are to be opposed to the opinions of such distinguished judges’. Basilio recalls John as ‘a great man … of blameless life and … first founder of the … Discalced Carmelite Fathers’, and asks why God would choose for this monumental task ‘a man whose teaching is so evil … or a man so full of error and so prejudicial to the Church’. The nephew of a beloved uncle subjected to the abuse

John of the Cross 53 of inquisitorial power concludes his judgment with a thinly veiled threat: ‘… [I]t would be a very serious matter to prohibit this book … [the Discalced Carmelites] might well appeal to … the Holy Apostolic See, and if this book were approved there … it would be a great blow to the reputation of the Holy Inquisition in Spain that what it had done should be undone in Rome, and it would even prepare the way for further appeals to Rome in such matters’.26 Due in part to the vigorous defense by Basilio Ponce de León, the Inquisition closed its case against John’s Works in 1625. Farfán, hound-like Dominican that he was, wrote another accusatory report to the Suprema in 1626, but his effort fell flat.27 However, just to be on the safe side, Discalced Carmelite authorities commissioned the Italian-born friar Nicolás de Jesús María (Centurioni) to explain challenging concepts and, once again, confirm John’s orthodox credentials. The result was a 360-page Latin tome, the Elucidatio (Clarification), published in 1631.28 There would be no more challenges to John of the Cross on theological grounds before his beatification in 1675. In fact, the encounter with essentially one zealous inquisitor had the opposite effect of what Farfán intended, that is, publicizing, explicating, and endorsing John’s writings among members of Europe’s intellectual elite. Most would come to acknowledge him as a master of mystical theology. The Discalced Carmelites’ Golden Age, or John Rides Some Impressive Coattails Farfán’s efforts to ban the writings of John of the Cross (and, in effect, sabotage his chances for sainthood) were probably doomed to fail in any case. By 1623 a powerful juggernaut bringing prestige and patronage to the Discalced Carmelites had already been launched. In the years between 1614 and 1627, the Order would experience its own Golden Age within the broader Golden Age of Spanish culture. John’s cause for canonization received both greater recognition and legitimization due to his association with two charismatic figures, one familiar, the other totally unexpected. The first was Teresa of Avila, who had recruited the friar to her new order in the first place. It would be hard to exaggerate how closely John was identified with the Founding Mother. Even his most ardent admirers linked him to Teresa, and in the subordinate role of assistant (coadutor) and faithful companion. This relationship is reflected in the titles of numerous biographies of John of the Cross written before the nineteenth century, such as the one published by Jerónimo de San José (Ezquerra) in 1641: History of the Venerable Father Friar Juan of the Cross, First Discalced Carmelite Friar, Companion and Assistant to Saint Teresa of Jesus in the Foundation of her Reform.29 Whenever Teresa was lionized, some of the spotlight shone upon John. By her death in 1582, Teresa had gained the backing of Spain’s political elite, most notably, King Philip II (r.1556–1598).30 His Spanish Habsburg successors continued to support her cult and the order she had founded.

54  Jodi Bilinkoff Philip III (r.1598–1621) and his prime minister, the Duke of Lerma, promoted the final phases of Teresa’s beatification proceedings, a milestone achieved on 24th April 1614. Under the regime of Philip IV (r.1621–1665) and his prime minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, efforts to raise Teresa to the altars intensified. After her canonization on 12th March 1622, Philip IV took one step further. In 1627, the king and parliament (cortes) declared Teresa of Avila co-patron saint of Spain.31 These heady years for the Discalced Carmelites coincided with the early stages of John’s cause. The first phase of beatification hearings began in 1614, just as Teresa’s was reaching its successful conclusion. In February 1627, Pope Urban VIII approved the collected testimonies and issued letters that authorized canonization proceedings to the bishops of Segovia, Granada, Málaga, and Valladolid.32 John seemed well on the way to sainthood. No one could have predicted, however, that the exploits of one of his spiritual sons in a land far from Spain would cast his order in a heroic light and boost efforts to canonize its founders. His name was Domingo Ruzola López. Born in Aragon in 1559, he professed as a Discalced Carmelite in 1590, taking the religious name Domingo de Jesús María. During his novitiate, he briefly met John of the Cross. He would later recall, ‘a man very distinguished in virtue’ who spoke of matters ‘so spiritual, so noteworthy, and so divine that in truth he seemed to me more like an angel than a human being’.33 In 1604, Friar Domingo was sent to Rome, joining the first group of Spanish friars charged with founding houses outside the Iberian Peninsula. Interestingly, while like John, he embraced the ascetic and contemplative life, unlike John, he also excelled in administrative work. Over the next ten years, Friar Domingo rose quickly within the ranks of the Discalced Carmelites’ Italian Congregation. He also gained the trust of Pope Paul V, who appointed him to several diplomatic posts and often confided in him as an advisor and confessor.34 In the summer of 1620, the pontiff sent Friar Domingo as his emissary to the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in Munich, at the court of Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria. At this time tensions in Central Europe ran high. Two years earlier, Bohemian Protestant nobles had started a rebellion when they defenestrated Catholic politicians from the windows of Prague’s castle, sparking the horrendous conflict that would come to be known as the Thirty Years’ War. Maximilian persuaded Friar Domingo to accompany his troops that autumn as they marched to rendezvous with those of the emperor Ferdinand II and put down the revolt.35 In a Bohemian village near Prague, the friar discovered a chapel that had been desecrated by Protestants. These ‘heretics’ had taken a small painting of the Nativity and poked out the eyes of Joseph and Mary, although not those of Jesus. Horrified by this sacrilege, Friar Domingo took the painting with him to a meeting of military leaders. In a passionate speech, he persuaded them to attack the rebels then amassing on White Mountain. On 8th November 1620, he exhorted the troops to avenge the Virgin. According to several accounts (by Catholic witnesses to be sure) Domingo de Jesús

John of the Cross 55 y María hung the damaged painting around his neck, mounted a horse and, flourishing a cross like a sword, led them into battle. The imperial forces won the battle and Catholics immediately declared a miracle due to the intercession of the Virgin Mary and hailed the actions of this charismatic Spanish friar.36 The victory at White Mountain brought enormous prestige and powerful patrons for the Discalced Carmelites. After a short stay in Prague, Friar Domingo carried the desecrated painting to Rome. On 8th May 1622, Gregory XV oversaw a ceremony in which the relic was placed upon the high altar of the order’s church so that all would remember ‘the happy day of a Victory delivered through the intercession of this Venerable Image’.37 He also approved changing the church’s name to Santa Maria della Vittoria (Our Lady of Victory).38 In gratitude for Friar Domingo’s vigorous and, many believed, prophetic intervention, Ferdinand II and his allies actively supported his order in the years following the battle. The emperor founded friaries quickly and strategically, in locations key to the consolidation of his political power: Vienna (1622), Prague (1624) and Graz (1628). After his forces had subdued Prague, the center of Bohemian culture and political and religious resistance to imperial rule, he oversaw the transfer of Protestant churches to Catholic jurisdiction. Although several religious orders vied for the previously Calvinist Trinity Church, Ferdinand gave it to the Discalced Carmelites in recognition of their friar’s role in suppressing the rebellion. It was subsequently re-named Kostel Panny Marie Vítězné, Our Lady of Victory in the Czech language. The friars placed a replica of the miraculous image on its main altar, a reminder to Catholics and Protestants alike.39 Maximilian I of Bavaria had made a vow to build a grand friary for the Discalced Carmelites in Munich if the imperial army prevailed at White Mountain; he made good on his pledge in 1629.40 The unexpected involvement of the Spanish friar Domingo de Jesús María in a conflict in far-off Bohemia also lent support to the efforts to canonize the founders of his order. Olivier Chaline observes that the installation of the Marian image in Rome occurred on 8th March 1622, exactly four days later Pope Gregory XV proclaimed Teresa of Avila a saint. The French historian, noting that there had been some delays since her beatification in 1614, cites ‘enthusiasm over the victory at Prague’ as a key factor in achieving this successful outcome.41 The relationship forged between the Austrian Habsburgs and the Discalced Carmelites at White Mountain would come to play a significant role in constructing the sainthood and memory of John of the Cross as well. Moving Violations On 30th October 1647, the residents of Segovia awoke to some shocking news. That morning, the city’s Discalced Carmelite friars and cathedral clergy had found notices affixed to their doors. Sent directly from the curia in Rome, they notified the two groups that they were in violation of papal

56  Jodi Bilinkoff policy and subject to dire sanctions if they did not quickly rectify the situation.42 What infraction had these Castilian clerics committed? They had, the announcement explained, maintained a cult to John of the Cross, treating him as a saint when, in fact, he had not yet been canonized. This was perfectly true. The papal authorities singled out for special censure the elevation of John’s remains in a sepulcher when his monastic brothers should have buried him in the ground like any other friar. Since 1593, when John’s body was stealthily conveyed from Ubeda, Segovia’s friars had fought to keep his relics. On several occasions they had solicited donations from devotees ranging from Spain’s monarchs to commoners to bestow the relics in larger and more ornate tombs. In 1627, when word arrived that the pope had approved the beatification hearings, segovianos celebrated with festivities organized by both the friars and the bishop. After all, John’s canonization seemed imminent.43 Meanwhile, two years earlier, Pope Urban VIII had initiated a sweeping reform of the saint-making system. First in 1625, then in 1634, the pontiff implemented new sets of rules requiring, for example, that fifty years pass between the death of a holy individual and the beginning of canonization proceedings. The curia also demanded much stricter enforcement of already-existing regulations, such as the prohibition on praying to a figure who had not yet been canonized, or even referring to him or her as a ‘saint’.44 The glorification of Servants of God was now to be an extremely slow, highly bureaucratic and a deliberately demanding process. Clare Copeland describes the seventeenth century as ‘a period in which the goalposts for acquiring approval were narrowing’, adding that with ‘a climate of suspicion regarding new devotions … delay became an intentional part of the official canonization system’ (Copeland 2016: 10). Thus, one result of Urban’s reforms was a serious backlog in the queue for canonizations, with relatively few successful candidates in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Could Segovia’s highest ecclesiastical authorities have been unaware of these changes? More likely, their eager anticipation made them overly complacent, even reckless about enforcement.45 In any case, the papal reprimand of 30th October 1647 compelled the friars into action. They once again moved the remains of John of the Cross, taking them from the elevated sepulcher, placing them in a simple casket, and burying them in the floor of the friary chapel. They also had to remove all visual markers of sainthood, for example, paintings depicting John with a halo.46 After these steps had been taken, the papacy ordered the bishop hold a series of hearings affirming that Segovia did not support a cult to the person in question (in Latin: processus non-cultu). This involved oral testimonies, an official inspection of the (now, subterranean) burial site, checking the art and religious objects used by the friary and cathedral, and a mountain of paperwork. Somewhat complicated in the best of times, the situation proved worse because the bishop of Segovia had recently died and a new prelate had

John of the Cross 57 not yet been appointed. This left the second highest churchman, the diocesan vicar, in charge of the proceedings. Dr. Francisco Ramos, perhaps due to lack of experience or the sheer suddenness of events, proved unequal to the task. The hastily arranged hearings he sponsored in early 1648 were ultimately rejected by the curia. A second processus had to wait until the installation of the new bishop in August 1649. Francisco de Araujo organized a committee of theologians who worked between February and November 1650, finally sending the documentation to Rome on 9th February 1651.47 That is, it took more than four years for church officials in Segovia to satisfactorily correct the violations nailed to their doors that October morning. Their impatient enthusiasm for celebrating a local saint had the even more serious effect of pushing back John’s cause for several decades. It would require persistent lobbying on the part of ecclesiastical and secular elites from across Europe to get him back on the road to sainthood. John’s Beatification as International Cause In the mid-seventeenth century, the figure of John of the Cross underwent a significant transformation. Before then known almost exclusively to Spaniards, he gradually acquired an international base of devotees. They belonged to one of three main constituencies: members of the Discalced Carmelite Order, now in a period of expansion; clergymen based in Rome, mostly Italian cardinals whose administrative duties included the canonization of saints; and the rulers of various Catholic states. Even with supporters from the highest ranks of society, however, John’s cause proceeded at a frustratingly slow pace. By May 1648, Discalced Carmelite leaders recognized that they needed to move their base of operations from Segovia and the authority of Spanish bishops to Rome. They thus transferred responsibility to the order’s Italian Congregation, a group of Spanish and Italian friars based in the Eternal City. They would lobby influential churchmen on behalf of John’s cause. They seem to have chosen carefully and well, targeting potentially supportive cardinals, all of whom came from aristocratic Italian families (Alvarez 1951: 40). One was Cardinal Marzio Ginetti (1585–1671), named John’s propagator or advocate by Pope Innocent X in 1649. By August 1655, he had become a member of the all-important Congregation of Sacred Rites. Founded in 1588, this committee of cardinals reviewed candidates for canonization and gave their recommendations to the pope. As a consultant on doctrinal matters (consultor), he appointed theologians to authorize candidates’ writings one last time. Ginetti assigned this task to the Spaniard Juan Bautista Lezana, who, as a friar of the traditional Carmelites, might have been expected to harbor an antipathy toward John. Instead, Lezana confirmed his orthodoxy and praised his writings. In a memorandum of 21st November 1655, he proclaimed that, ‘[John’s] works will bring great fruit to the souls of those who read them’. Like Basilio Ponce de León and Nicolás de Jesús María before him, he placed John in a distinguished genealogy of Christian

58  Jodi Bilinkoff mystics that included ‘Dionysius the Areopagite, the most sweet Bernard, the angelic Aquinas, the seraphic Bonaventure, Ruysbroek, Suso, Tauler and Saint Teresa’.48 Did Ginetti suspect this outcome when he selected this theologian? Tomás Alvarez makes the intriguing (but unexplained) comment that this cardinal, ‘not surprisingly, had a lively interest in John of the Cross’.49 Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi (1600–1669), the future Pope Clement IX, had both interest in and a profound knowledge of Spanish society. Appointed papal nuncio to the court at Madrid by Urban VIII, Rospigliosi spent nearly a decade there, from 1644 to 1653. In his classic History of the Popes, Ludwig von Pastor describes the cardinal’s accomplishments as a poet and dramatist and his admiration for sacred comedias and other literature of Spain’s Golden Age. In 1647, the churchman’s 19-year-old nephew, Giacomo Rospigliosi (himself a future cardinal), joined his uncle in Spain to study at the University of Salamanca. It is likely that both Italians were living in Castile when news broke of the violation of the non-cultu rule in Segovia and John’s hurried reburial. If Rospigliosi had not heard of the friar before then, he certainly would have at that time. During his brief term as pope, Clement IX beatified one Spaniard, Rose of Lima (1668) and canonized another, Pedro de Alcántara (1669). According to at least one account, he was inclined to beatify John, this intention cut short by his death on 9th December 1669.50 The author of the first biography of John in Italian, Filippo Maria di San Paolo, left clues about another possible ally among these high-ranking churchmen. He dedicated his Vita del Gran Servo di Dio Giovanni della Croce of 1673 to ‘the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord, the Lord Cardinal Altieri, Nephew of Our Lord Clement X, Treasurer of the Holy Church, and Protector [or Patron] of the Discalced Carmelites’ (di San Paolo 1673). This was Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri (1623–1698), who, as the title page indicates, held many positions in the papal curia, including treasurer or chamberlain (camerlengo), prefect of the committee on the Propagation of the Faith, and most importantly, the pope’s nephew. Beyond a way of giving employment to one’s close relatives, the institution of the cardinal-nephew signaled an advisory position of significant power and intimate trust, similar in its personal dynamics to the king’s favorite minister then current in seventeenth-century politics. Friar Filippo Maria explains that he has two motives for dedicating this work to Altieri. The first is ‘the universal desire of [his] religious order’ to see John raised to the altars. The other derives from the ‘special debt of gratitude’ he owes the cardinal for naming him a consultor to the Congregation of Sacred Rites. This appointment gave the friar inside knowledge of the beatification process. His certitude of John’s (relatively) imminent beatification, helped along by a powerful protettore, may have convinced him to publish a full-length biography in 1673, rather than waiting another year or so for the official announcement, on 25th January 1675. Attentive to the regulations regarding proof of non-cultu, however, the biographer was careful to refer to John as a ‘servant of God’ rather than ‘blessed’ or a ‘saint’.51

John of the Cross 59 Having promoters from within the papal establishment, such as these three cardinals, was crucial to bringing a cause for canonization to a successful conclusion. It was also customary for monarchs and other heads of state to write letters to the pope describing the virtues of the holy person from their jurisdiction and requesting that he declare them saints. Not surprisingly, the king and queen of Spain involved themselves in the cause of John of the Cross in precisely this way. Because the case dragged on so long, they petitioned several different popes. Philip IV (r.1621–1665), who had donated funds for John’s canonization as early as 1628, wrote on at least two occasions. On 16th February 1648, the king directed the Count of Oñate, his ambassador to the papal curia, to deliver a letter to Innocent X. Referring to himself as the pontiff’s ‘very humble and devoted son’ Philip nevertheless urged him to move forward with this enterprise that had ‘commenced so many years before’. For reasons that eluded even the meticulous Tomás Alvarez, this letter was not even presented to the pope until 17th July 1649, more than a year later.52 Foreign rulers also urged popes to canonize this most Spanish of friars. For example, in a letter of 22nd March 1646 to Innocent X, Eleonora Gonzaga (1598–1655), widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Princess of Mantua, praised John’s holy life and many miracles. Her support for his order dated back to the years following the victory at White Mountain in 1620, when she and her husband actively endowed Discalced Carmelite houses. In fact, after the emperor’s death in 1637, Eleonora lived for a time at the convent she had founded in Vienna. She would have had many opportunities to hear about and read the works of John of the Cross (Silverio 1935: V.775). Austrian Habsburg emperors and empresses continued to petition popes right up to the eve of John’s beatification. King Louis XIV of France (r.1643–1715) and his Spanish-born queen, Marie Thérèse, sent letters of support from Versailles as well.53 Two successive kings of Poland joined the effort to have John of the Cross raised to the altars. In the spring of 1646, Ladislaus IV (r.1632–1648) wrote a pious, if somewhat generic letter to Innocent X, citing his duty as a Catholic sovereign to see God’s servants canonized as saints. In an accompanying letter, the queen, Marie-Louise de Gonzaga noted the benefits that would come to the entire kingdom, signing herself the pontiff’s ‘obsequentissima filia’.54 In a history of the Discalced Carmelite Order he published in 1680, the Flemish friar Daniel à Virgine Maria (Van Audenaerde) transcribed another letter from a Polish monarch supplicating the pope to beatify John of the Cross. While the chronicler did not provide a name or dates, the evidence strongly points to Ladislaus’ successor, his brother, John II Casimir (r.1648– 1668). Most likely, he wrote this letter to Alexander VII in the mid-1660s. Here the king reveals a personal bond: ‘Indeed, because my special devotion for John of the Cross, friar of the order founded by the Holy Mother Teresa, Father of the Discalced Carmelite Friars, provided many helpful gifts from God for me and (I confess) will do so in the future, I think it would be a sin if I did not see to it that I show due veneration to him in this matter above

60  Jodi Bilinkoff all’.55 John had married his brother’s widow; together they proved themselves deeply pious supporters of the order in Poland. They founded or patronized several religious houses, with the king sometimes residing at the friary at Czerna and the queen, the convent in nearby Krakow during spiritual retreats. When their son and daughter were born, in 1648 and 1650 respectively, the royal couple vowed that the children would spend at least some time among the Discalced Carmelites. John Sigismund Vasa died only a few days after birth, but Maria Anna Teresa lived to the age of 13 months, long enough to pose for a somber portrait wearing the toddler-sized habit of a nun.56 The participation of monarchs from such far-flung parts of Europe in this canonization campaign may at first seem surprising. Their involvement makes sense, however, with the recognition that they were all related, by either blood or marriage. At the center of this web of relationships was Mariana of Austria (1634–1696). A granddaughter of the emperor Ferdinand II born and raised in Vienna, Mariana would have heard about Domingo de Jesús María and the ‘miraculous’ victory at White Mountain and probably visited the city’s new Discalced Carmelite houses. By the time she moved to Madrid to become the second wife of her uncle, Philip IV in 1649, she already held deep respect for the order’s Spanish founders. In 1664, she sent a letter to a noble kinsman, charging him with urgently, yet diplomatically petitioning Pope Alexander VII to advance John’s cause. She explained to Don Pedro de Aragón that because ‘the Discalced Carmelite friars have brought a matter before this Court of such importance as is the beatification of the venerable and saintly … John of the Cross, the first Discalced Carmelite friar, companion and assistant to Saint Teresa of Avila … and because I am very devoted to the blessed Mother and her holy religious order, I desire that by my intercession it have a good and quick resolution’.57 Clearly impatient with the slow pace of the curia’s deliberations, Mariana could call upon family members as reinforcements in the lobbying effort, such as her first cousin, John II Casimir Vasa, King of Poland, an Austrian Habsburg on his mother’s side. When Philip IV died in 1665, she became regent for their three-year old severely disabled son, Charles II. Now arguably the most powerful woman in Europe, she continued to promote the causes of various Spanish saints. Mariana of Austria would be the only member of this international group of royal supporters to live long enough to see John of the Cross beatified. Saint John of the Cross, Protector of Cities The much-awaited event occurred on 25th January 1675. Or did it? This is the date listed in virtually all published sources, and on this day Pope Clement X issued the Bull of Beatification, ‘Spiritus Domini’. However, like nearly everything else having to do with saint-making in the seventeenth century, the cause of John of the Cross in particular, the story is somewhat more complicated. José de Santa Teresa, the official chronicler of the Discalced Carmelites, in the first biography to appear after the beatification, related many

John of the Cross 61 details of a process that unfolded gradually, over a period of nearly two years. His twentieth-century successors Silverio de Santa Teresa and Tomás Alvarez supplied more information.58 For example, four months before the papal declaration, on 25th September 1674, the Congregation of Sacred Rites approved the miracles attributed to John’s intervention, a determination confirmed in a papal decree of 21st November. The order’s leadership thus knew well ahead of time that the pope’s announcement was imminent.59 However, Clement X did not hold a solemnization ceremony or official mass in John’s honor at St. Peter’s Basilica, the event that usually marks a formal beatification, until 21st April 1676, more than a year after issuing his bull. In this case, custom has prevailed over strict accuracy, as eventually the Discalced Carmelites and then others settled on the 1675 date.60 Questions about chronology and meaning hover over John’s canonization as well. The problem of accounting for the 50-year gap between his beatification and canonization has barely been raised, much less sufficiently explained by scholars.61 A key issue for his cause, as for that of any other candidate for sainthood, was the identification of at least three miracles attributed to his intervention since his beatification. This endeavor seems to have got off to a good start, with Pope Innocent XI authorizing the collection of miracles in 1678. In 1680, word arrived from a Discalced Carmelite convent in the Italian city of Bari. A nun named Anna Teresa di San Benedetto had long been stricken with paralysis. Upon hearing the news that John of the Cross had been beatified, she commended herself to him in prayer and asked her monastic sisters to place one of his relics upon her body. She then experienced a complete cure, joyously arose from her bed, and joined the others in singing the Te Deum laudamus. The Archbishop of Bari and prior of its Discalced Carmelite friary soon began preparing the official documents and gathering the testimonies of witnesses necessary to confirm this episode of spontaneous healing as an authentic miracle due to the intercession of Blessed John of the Cross.62 After this dramatic event in Bari, however, more than twenty years passed without a sign of a miracle or evidence of lobbying efforts at the Roman curia. The next report came from John’s homeland of Castile and involved his thaumaturgical specialty, protecting women in the throes of childbirth. Sometime in 1703, Alberta de Alfaro, a villager of Noblejas (Toledo), safely delivered a child, but only after having one of John’s relics placed upon her abdomen. For reasons that remain unclear, hearings to authenticate this as a miraculous intervention did not begin until ten years later. By then, neighbors’ memories were beginning to fade, and various witnesses deposed various details. A significant piece of information eventually emerged from the testimony of María Gómez de Elvira on 9th July 1714. She explained that Noblejas was located near the larger town of Ocaña, home to a Discalced Carmelite friary. The community owned a relic of John of the Cross that they proudly displayed to the faithful. When Alberta went into distress, her

62  Jodi Bilinkoff husband was quickly able to fetch the friars, who carried the reliquary on a board to the suffering woman.63 News of the final required miracle came from the French town of Neufchâteau in the diocese of Toul in 1705, although its hearings were delayed until 1723. This incident also involved a nun, Anne Françoise Jaugeon, who was paralyzed and confined to her bed. She was not a Discalced Carmelite, but rather, a Sister of the Annunciation. However, this community of nuns relied on friars of a nearby Discalced Carmelite house as their confessors. The friars possessed no relics of John of the Cross but had plenty of printed images to distribute to their spiritual daughters. On Palm Sunday, Sister Anne Françoise gazed upon a picture of John and prayed for his intercession. She was instantly restored to full health, left her bed, and began to sing the Te Deum in thanksgiving for her deliverance. While there is no mention in the written documents of the events in Bari 25 years earlier, given the striking similarities in narrative structure, one must wonder whether networks of oral transmission linked these cases over time and space.64 On 5th February 1725, the Congregation of Sacred Rites formally approved the miraculous cures of the women from Bari, Noblejas, and Neufchâteau, setting the stage for John’s canonization.65 Pope Benedict XIII made the declaration at a ceremony held at St. Peter’s on 27th December 1726. Curiously, he did not issue the Bull of Canonization, ‘Pia Mater Ecclesiae’ until one year later, on the same date in 1727. Finally, in 1738, Clement XII extended the liturgical feast of Saint John of the Cross beyond Discalced Carmelite communities and certain dioceses to all Catholics. Discrete dates simply do not capture the slow, gradual, and multi-layered process by which John assumed the status of saint of the Roman Catholic Church (see Ruiz 1991: 374–378). On the local level, however, John’s glorification was greeted with joy, first and most ardently by Discalced Carmelites. Upon receiving news of his beatification, the Segovia friars could hardly wait to dig up his remains and place them, once again, in a magnificent sepulcher. Urban governments sponsored public celebrations, and the clergy, special masses. In the months and years following John’s beatification and canonization, civic and liturgical ceremonies took place in locations one would expect, such as John’s birthplace of Fontiveros, Segovia, Ubeda, and Rome, but also less obvious venues. The town of Lucena, near Córdoba, home to a Discalced Carmelite friary and many noble families, staged celebrations in 1675 that lasted ten days and included the performance of an allegorical play in its central plaza (Molina 2001). An anonymous pamphlet printed in Senlis, France in 1727 includes a brief narrative of John’s life and, also, the new set of litanies approved for use in this small diocese, the prayers, interestingly, in French, not Latin.66 Public events such as sermons, poetry competitions, and processions frequently inspired printed accounts, in both Latin and vernacular languages, preserving their memory by way of the written word. A comprehensive survey of the new biographies, editions and translations of John’s writings, and visual

John of the Cross 63 images such as paintings, engravings, and sculptures produced in the wake of his beatification and canonization would require an essay of its own.67 A more surprising development relates to the cities and polities that proclaimed John of the Cross a patron saint during these years. Predictably, the friars and urban elites of Ubeda, the site of his death and a ferocious rivalry with Segovia for his relics were the first to take this step. On 14th November 1674, the prior of the Ubeda friary informed the mayor and assembled councilors that John’s miracles having been approved, they could soon expect the announcement of his beatification. The elated civic leaders immediately declared John co-patron of the city and took a collective vow to stage a procession every year on his feast day, 14th December, the anniversary of his death.68 That ubetenses would take this course of action makes perfect sense. The motivations of secular and religious leaders in the Holy Roman Empire; Mantua, Italy and Puebla, Mexico, require closer inspection. In 1728, Charles VI named John co-patron saint of the Austrian ruling family and protector of all its imperial domains, a decision confirmed by the pope. In so doing, the emperor was participating in long-standing family tradition, as Habsburg support for the Discalced Carmelite order and its founding saints dated back almost exactly a century. The exploits of Domingo de Jesús María at White Mountain had been widely preserved in texts and images within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1673, under imperial sponsorship, beatification hearings had begun for the charismatic friar who led the troops to victory.69 Charles may have also been modeling his great-grandfather, Ferdinand II, now regarded by many Austrian Catholics as an exemplary emperor. In a biography composed by his Jesuit confessor in 1638, Wilhelm Lamormaini singled out Ferdinand’s devotion to the cult of saints, especially those who had founded new orders or reformed older ones. By honoring John of the Cross then, Charles continued to express the Habsburg style of Pietas Austriaca.70 During the previous 30 years, the Empire’s domains had expanded. The important Italian duchy of Mantua, ruled for generations by the Gonzaga family, had come under direct imperial control in 1708, when the last duke died without an heir. The two dynasties maintained close alliances during the seventeenth century, with two Gonzaga women marrying Habsburg emperors, and vigorously patronizing their preferred religious institutions.71 Charles’ proclamation of John as patron saint therefore applied to Mantua as well. On 12th December 1728, the city held elaborate festivities, and a statue of John was carried in procession from the cathedral to a chapel dedicated to him at the Discalced Carmelite friary. The friars commissioned a noted artist, Girolamo Brusaffero, to paint a fresco for the chapel’s ceiling. The result is a remarkable work, ‘Saint John of the Cross Intercedes for Mantua before the Redeemer’. The painting shows John as a large figure perched on a cloud above the city. He gestures there while looking up at the resurrected Christ in heaven, surrounded by angels.72 The humble Spanish friar whom contemporaries had gently mocked for his small stature is now, as the title of a book

64  Jodi Bilinkoff published at the same time proclaims, comprotettore, at once compassionate patron and mighty protector.73 This heroic view had earlier found its way across the Atlantic, to the city of Puebla in New Spain (Mexico). If the idea of adopting him as a patron came from above in the cases of Mantua and the Holy Roman Empire, the decision made in Puebla some years after John’s beatification had roots that were both local and supernatural. An unusual altarpiece in the convent church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen depicts in three panels the mystical experiences of the seventeenth-century nun, Isabel de la Encarnación. At bottom left, the Discalced Carmelite sister has a vision of John of the Cross flying above Puebla, his friar’s robe stretched out like wings, his cross held aloft as he expels demons. Bottom right, the members of the city council, having taken this vision quite seriously, vote on 4th October 1681 to add John to their growing list of celestial protectors. In the top panel, John holds the city’s official seal as he sits among the heavenly host, mediating for the people of Puebla.74 More than a century elapsed between the death of John of the Cross as a demoted friar in 1591 and his glorification as a saint in 1726. At the time of his canonization, biographers continued to emphasize his many sufferings and portray him as the passive victim of numerous persecutions. Individuals still reported miraculous cures due to contact with his relics or printed portrait. In certain ways, little had changed. However, in some parts of Catholic Europe and its colonies, John had emerged as the subject of collective veneration by cities and states. As such, writers and artists began to present him as a more active, muscular figure, endowed with impressive intercessory powers. That was a change, to be sure. Still missing, though, was virtually any mention of John as a poet, even in communities that sponsored poetry competitions during their beatification or canonization celebrations. For that recognition, the road would be even longer. Notes 1 Research on this project was significantly aided by my appointment as Audrey Lumsden-Kouvel and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Newberry Library of Chicago in 2018, for which I express my appreciation. My sincere thanks as well for suggestions help with translations and transcriptions, and moral support to Maria Arcidiacono, Simon Ditchfield, Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, Jamie Forde, Howard Louthan, Jan Machielsen, Bernard McGinn, Stuart McManus, Marta Pilat-Zuzankiewicz, Vicente Miguel Ruiz Fuentes, and Alison Weber. 2 See, for example, Tyler (2010: 5, 37); Ahlgren (2016: chap. 4), and José Vicente Rodríguez (1990: 7–24). 3 Silverio Obras V: 73, ‘…que los dichos paños y vendas las tenía en mucha estima por haber estado en las llagas del dicho santo padre fray Juan de la Cruz…’ Unless indicated, all translations are my own. On the veneration of saints’ relics, see Bynum (2011: 19–31, 131–139, 177–186). 4 Most of these woodcuts portrayed the mystical dialogue between John and Christ depicted in a painting in Segovia’s Discalced Carmelite friary. See Florisoone (1975: 97–187) and Ruiz (1991: 338–339) for color reproductions.

John of the Cross 65 5 See Teófanes Egido, ‘Presentación’ in Alonso de la Madre de Dios (1989: 7–17), José Luis Sánchez Lora, ‘El material informativo de los procesos para la beatificación de San Juan de la Cruz’ in García (1997: 341–358) and Sánchez Lora (2004). 6 Sánchez Lora (2004: 163–171); “El material,” 345–348, for statistics, a graph, and the author’s comment: ‘Evidentemente, la búsqueda de portentos maravillosos es…la idea central de los procesos, mucho más que los fundamentos teologales, y mucho más aún que la búsqueda de datos biográficos que, como puede verse, interesan muy poco’. 7 Silverio Obras V:73, ‘…no tuviese pena que tendría buen parto y que lo que pariese había de gozar de Dios; y sucedió ansí que esta testigo tuvo buen parto, que parió una niña y la bautizaron y pusieron nombre Elena, la cual murió dentro de cinco meses y fue a gozar de Dios’. 8 Another family member, Don Diego Ortega Cabrio, was one of the city councilors chosen to negotiate with officials in Segovia for the return of John’s body; see Guerrero (1984: 250–252). The safe childbirth experienced by Alberta de Alfaro from the village of Noblejas in the diocese of Toledo in 1713 is mentioned by Tomás Alvarez in Alvarez (1951: 14–15 and note #1). For more details, ASV CR proc. 2847. I discuss this case below. 9 For Doria and the internecine conflict among Discalced Carmelite friars, see Rodríguez (2012, chaps. 33 and 34) and Thompson (2003, chap. 3). 10 On 29th November 1613, the General of the Spanish Congregation of Discalced Carmelites authorized beatification hearings to begin and urged speed, given the previous delays; see Antolín (1991a: 170–174). For the dispute over John’s bodily remains, see Bilinkoff (2021). 11 Alonso de la Madre de Dios (1989: 626–631): ‘…diversos votos y presentallas de cera que los fieles por mercedes que han recibido del Santo le han ofrecido… imágenes, frontales, manteles, alfombras y otras cosas tales para adorno del culto del Santo’. See also Antolín (1984: 37–43) and María Luisa Herrera García (1991). The sepulcher from 1758 was destroyed during the Napoleonic invasion of 1808; the ornate tomb one sees in Segovia today dates from 1927. 12 See Ruiz (1991: 376–378) and Antolín (1991a: 174–176, 181–182). The current reliquary dates from 1950. 13 Egido in Alonso de la Madre de Dios (1989: 15–16). Note the subtitle of Sánchez Lora’s (2004) work: La desfiguración de San Juan de la Cruz. 14 Silverio Obras V: 10: ‘Si saben que los libros que dejó escritos de Teología mística están llenos de sabiduría del cielo…’ 15 Silverio Obras V: 312–313: ‘…que escribió libros de mística Teología…llenos de celestial erudición, y tan admirable y alto estilo…la lección de los cuales se manifiesta y comprueba ser muy provechosa para discernir las verdaderas iluminaciones de las falsas…’ 16 Silverio Obras I:lx-lxiv; Antolín (1991a: 166–167, 173–175). See also Bernard McGinn in the previous chapter. 17 Obras Espirituales que en caminan a una alma a la perfección de Dios. Por el Venerable P.F. Juan de la Cruz. Alcalá de Henares, 1618. 18 See Llamas (1993: 193–194). Allison Peers in his edition of The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross (1943: lxii-lxiii) comments: ‘No doubt for reasons of safety, the Spiritual Canticle was not included in that [first] edition; it was too much like a commentary on the Song of Songs for such a proceeding to be just then advisable’. The first French edition of John’s Works, Paris, 1622, included the Spiritual Canticle as did the second Spanish edition, Brussels, 1627, and the first Italian edition, Rome, 1627 (see the previous chapter). 19 See Huerga (1988, IV: 238–264). For a general history in English, see Hamilton (1992).

66  Jodi Bilinkoff 20 Huerga (1988 IV: 241), ‘el dicho libro se halló en poder de los Alumbrados presos en la Inquisición de Sevilla, y entre los papeles que yo [Farfán] recogía en los aposentos de sus casas, cuando tuve las llaves de los dichos aposentos por el orden del tribunal de la dicha Inquisición, siempre hallaba el dicho libro…’; and p. 496: ‘…la doctrina del dicho libro tiene mucho sabor de doctrina de Alumbrados’. 21 Llamas (1993: 195, note #38): ‘Las enemistades personales jugaron en este caso un papel más decisivo que la justicia y la objectividad de la conducta’. 22 See Merino (2003). Enrique Llamas (1993: 200–201, note #51) implies that another reason Antolínez turned down the assignment was because it concerned such a ‘delicate matter’ (delicado asunto). 23 For the Spanish text, see Merino (2003: 681–736); for the English translation by E. Allison Peers, see The Complete Works, III: 382–434. Silverio and Manrique both consulted the unique, undated manuscript in Spain’s National Library, both discuss problems of dating. I agree with Manrique that 1622 seems too early for the text’s completion. 24 To clarify, Luis de León and Basilio’s mother, Mencía Varela, were first cousins. In Hispanic cultures, however, people commonly refer to the children of their cousins as ‘nieces’ and ‘nephews’ and they in turn refer to their parents’ cousins as ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’. For this reason, the sources sometimes refer to these two figures as ‘primos’, other times, as ‘tío’ and ‘sobrino’. For this, see Thompson (1988) and McGinn (2017: 337–357). 25 Teófilo Viñas Román, OSA, “Basilio Ponce de León y Varela,” Diccionario de Biografía Española. Accessed online: http://dbe.rah.es./biografias/9937/ basilio-ponce-de-leon-y-varela 26 English translation by E. Allison Peers, Complete Works III: 382, 383, 433–434. Merino (2003: 681): ‘ni debe ni conviene prohibirse por el Santo Oficio’; 682: ‘pues también algunos de los que le calificaron entonces eran ministros del Santo Oficio, y ha menester ser muy grande la autoridad de los que le calificaron para hacer balanza con calificación tan insigne’; 682: ‘porque este gran varón Fr. Juan de la Cruz fue de vida inculpable y primer fundador de la insigne reformación de los Padres Carmelitas Descalzos…y así no es de presumir que por piedra de tan grande edificio pusiese Dios hombre de tan mala doctrina como les parece a algunos es la de este libro, tan llena de errores y tan perjudicial a la Iglesia’; 736–737: ‘Concluyo esta censura con decir que el recoger este libro es material muy grave…si el Santo Oficio de España mandase recoger este libro, es verosímil acudir la Religión a Roma a la Santa Sede Apostólica. Y si allí aprobasen este libro…sería falta de reputación de la Santa Inquisición de España, que lo que hacen, se lo deshiciesen en Roma en semejantes materias’. 27 Farfan’s 1626 Memorial is transcribed in Huerga (1988: III: 495–498). 28 Phrasium mysticae Theologiae V. P. F. Joannis a Cruce…Elucidatio…Alcalá de Henares, 1631. I consulted the French translation that accompanies the Paris, 1641 edition of John’s Works at the Newberry Library of Chicago. See also the previous chapter. 29 This book is available in a modern edition: Jerónimo de San José (Ezquerra), Historia del Venerable Padre Fr. Iuan de la Cruz, Primero Descalzo Carmelita, Compañero, y Coadutor de Santa Teresa de Iesus en la Fundación de su Reforma, ed. José Vicente Rodríguez. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1993. 30 On Philip II and his support for Teresa and her reform, see Eire (1995, books 2, 3) and Slade (2003). 31 Both Philip IV and Olivares were devotees. See Rowe (2011: 77–78, 82, note #23). Urban VIII revoked Teresa’s status as co-patron saint in 1629, but this initiative, even if short-lived, gave the Discalced Carmelites a great deal of publicity and prestige. 32 See Antolín (1991a: 176–180). Was this pope himself a devotee of John of the Cross? Justa de Paz testified on 26th October 1627 that she possessed two of John’s relics, a finger from his right hand and a toe. The year before, the Discalced

John of the Cross 67 Carmelite Vicar-General, Juan del Espíritu Santo, had asked her for the toe, which he planned to present to the pope because ‘he knew that His Holiness desired to have a relic of the said Servant of God. (‘…otro dedo del pie que ansimismo tenía esta testigo se lo pidió con grande afecto el P. General de la mesma Orden el año pasado…y que le avía de poner en manos de su Santidad el Summo Pontífice, porque sabía el P. General que Su Santidad deseaba tener alguna reliquia del dicho Siervo de Dios’.) When asked how she had acquired these relics, Doña Justa replied that she received the finger from her son, a friar at the Ubeda friary, and the toe from his monastic superior. ASV CR proc. 2867 102r–104r. 33 Quoted in Giordano (1991: 68, note #35): ‘Le tubo por un hombre muy señalada en virtud y por tan dado al contemplación y oración de las cosas divinas que no se si en nuestros tiempos avido quien en esto le llevase ventaja y ansi de la abundancia de su coraçon hablaba su boca cosas tan espirituales tan señaladas y tan divinas que verdaderamente más parecia ángel que no hombre’. 34 Giordano 1991: 31, 264. For John’s ambivalence about leadership and officeholding, see Bilinkoff (2012, 114–118). 35 For an overview of recent scholarship on the conflict, see Asbach and Schröder (2014). 36 See Chaline (1998: I:95–101) and Rohrbach (1966: 254–255). Soldiers later reported that during the battle smoke or fire emanated from the Virgin’s eyes. 37 Giordano (1991: 179–188); Rohrbach (1966: 258); and Chaline (1999: 511– 578). Previously, the church had been dedicated to St. Paul. 38 Today, this church is best known for its Cornaro Chapel, with Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s ‘Saint Teresa in Ecstasy’ completed between 1647 and 1652. Dazzled perhaps by this sculptural masterpiece, visitors, as well as art historians, have largely overlooked the Bevilacqua Chapel dedicated to John of the Cross, with paintings by François Nicolas de Bar (Nicolò Lorense) completed between 1674 and 1680. 39 See Giordano (1991: 190). Also ‘Church of Our Lady Victorious’, accessed online: https://www.prague.eu/en/object/places/109/church-of-our-lady-victoriousinfant-jesus-of-prague-kostel-panny-marie-vitezne-prazske-jezulatko?back=1 40 ‘Klöster in Bayern’. Accessed online: https://hdbg.eu/kloster/web/index/php/ detail/geschichte?id=KS0240 The Duke also founded a Discalced Carmelite friary in Wùrzburg in 1627. 41 Chaline (1999: 516): ‘Quatre jours plus tard, eu lieu la canonisation de Thérèse de Jésus, autre succès du P. Dominique celui ci s’était employé, depuis la fin de l’année 1620, a utliser l’immense renom…pour obtenir cette canonisation, bloquée, comme de’autres, depuis 1615…La cause de la réformatrice du carmel fut portée por l’elan de la victoire de Prague’. 42 The following discussion draws upon Alvarez (1951). As far as I am aware, he is the only scholar who has examined the steps leading to John’s beatification at this level of detail. Regrettably, he ends his study at the beatification in 1675 without treating the next 50 years leading to the canonization in 1726. Richard P. Hardy at least includes a brief section toward the end of his biography, also based on the work of Alvarez (Hardy 2015: 129–134). 43 Alvarez (1951: 20–26). In 1628, Philip IV donated 500 ducats (AGOCD Plut. 315-R) for an unpublished account of the festivities in Segovia in 1627 composed by an anonymous devotee of John of the Cross (‘un devoto suyo’). The author claims that the celebrations continued until four in the morning. This was, he comments, ‘el principio a las esperanças a su beatificación’. There were developments in Ubeda as well. In August 1627 city councilors gave permission and funds to the Discalced Carmelite friars to construct a new oratorio in which to house the casket with John’s remains; it was completed in 1637 (AHM-Ubeda Actas del Cabildo 9 2r-13r; Libro de Protocolos 0716 248r-251v; Garnica: 1875: 318–319).

68  Jodi Bilinkoff 44 There is a substantial literature on this subject. See, for example, Ditchfield (2007 and 2010) and Gotor (2002), especially chapters VI and VII. 45 See ASV CR proc. 2843 for a chronicle of events dated 4th March 1652 describing John’s sepulcher in Segovia before and after the processus non cultu, (115v-118v). The anonymous author acknowledges that ‘antes de la copublicación desta ciudad de las breves de [Urban VIII] estaban dando culto y beneración [to John] en dicho sepulchro’. Twenty years before the scandal, a friar testifying during beatification hearings made an intriguing claim. On 30th August 1627, Jerónimo de la Cruz stated: ‘Y que en Roma, cuando se expidió breve para que las reliquias o retratos de personas que no están sanctificados no se venerasen como de santos hasta que la Iglesia los dé por tales, se eceptuó las del venerable padre fray Juan de la Cruz’, without providing further details. This is the only testimony I have seen that even alludes to the non-cultu issue (Moya and Moya 2006: 245). Urban VIII did make such an exception in at least one case: Jan Machielsen, ‘Forcing the Papacy’s Hand: The unlikely but inevitable beatification of the martyrs of Gorkum, 1572–1675’, unpublished paper presented at the British School of Rome, 27 October 2020. 46 See Ruiz (1991: 366–371) and de Cáceres (1983 and 1987). Today visitors can still see the hole in the floor of the friary’s chapel as well as the small casket, preserved in a display case. 47 Alvarez (1951: 26–39). There was one more minor slip-up at the Toledo friary in 1662 relating to the distribution of printed images of John, but this was apparently resolved quickly (pp. 63–65). 48 Transcribed in Filippo Maria de San Paolo, Vita del Gran Servo di Dio Giovanni della Croce…Rome, 1673: 267: ‘… Areopagita Dionysio, Dulcissimo Bernardo, Angelico Aquinate, Seraphico Bonaventura, Ruzbrochio, Susone, Taulero, Sancta Teresia, & aliis Mysticis…haec Opuscula magno animarum suarum fructu legerunt…’ 266: [Ginetti summarizes to the Congregation] ‘constat non solum in dictis Opusculis nihil contineri contra fidem, vel bonos mores, nullamque doctrinam novam, nec peregrinam’. See also Alvarez (1951: 62–63, note #98). Five years earlier, in 1650, Lezana had translated the Vita of the Florentine Carmelite nun Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi from Italian to Spanish, further evidence of his enthusiasm for mystics. 49 Alvarez (1951: 41): ‘Nombrado a 24 de agosto ponente de la causa el. Card. Ginnetti [sic], que tan vivo interés se ha de tomar por fray Juan de la Cruz’. 50 Luciano Osbat, “Clemente IX, papa,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 26 (1982). Accessed online: http://trecanni.it/enciclopedia/papa-clemente-ix, Von Pastor (1940: XXXI:319–322, 338–340, 428–430). 51 Filippo Maria di San Paolo 1673: Dedication, n.p.: ‘All’Eminentiss.e Reverdiss. Signore Il Sig. Cardinale ALTIERI Nipote di N. Signore CLEMENTE DECIMO Camerlengo di S. Chiesa e Protettore de’ Carme.ni Scalzi’; ‘Ma non solo il motivo universale della mia Religione mi persuade di dedicare all’Eminenza V.il presente libro; vi si aggiunge altro spetiale debito, che alle sue gratie professo, e singlolarmente in essersi degnata di ascrivermi tra Consultori delle Sacre Congregationi dell’Indice, e de’ Riti’. Eventually the Congregations of the Index and of Sacred Rites became two separate entities. 52 Alvarez (1951: 40–41). He includes a partial transcription of this letter. 53 Morgan Currie, ‘Sanctified Presence: Sculpture and Sainthood in Early Modern Italy’, Doctoral Dissertation, Art History, Harvard University, 2014, 308, note #833; see AGOCD Plut. 315-N for an authorized copy of a letter from Eleonora Gonzaga to the Cardinal of Tübingen asking him to intercede with Innocent X; Almut Bues, “Eleonora Gonzaga, imperatrice,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 42 (1993), 425–428. This author characterizes the empress’ patronage of Discalced Carmelite houses as part of a family tradition: ‘Il particolare sostegno da lei accordato ai carmelitani rispondeva a una tradizione asburga risalente alla battaglia del Weissenberg’, pp. 439–440.

John of the Cross 69 54 AGOCD Plut. 315-N, for authorized copies of letters from both monarchs dated 22 March 1646 and a second from Ladislaus IV dated 28 April 1646. 55 Daniel à Virgine Maria, Speculum Carmelitanum…Antwerp, 1680, II:786–787: ‘Quia vero specialis mea in Divum Johannem a Cruce Religiosum, instituti S. Matris Teresae, Patrum Carmelitarum Discalceatorum, devotion, singularia omnipotens Dei in me derivavit & (ut confide) derivabit auxilia…’ See AGOCD Plut. 315-N for the Italian translation of a letter John II Casimir wrote to Cardinal Virginio Orsini on 8th March 1654 requesting his help in expediting John’s cause with Innocent X. Four years earlier, the king had appointed Orsini Cardinal Protector of the Polish Crown. 56 “Maria Anna Vasa,” Wikipedia. Accessed online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Maria_Anna_Vasa (29 March, 2023). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_II_ Casimir_Vasa. The monarchs stayed at the religious houses during Advent of 1660, ‘History of the Monastery,’ Karmelici Bosi Czerna. Accessed online: http:// karmelczerna.pl/historia-klasztoru Bozena Fabiani, “Habit Królewny: Portret Wazówny, 1651,” [‘Princess wearing a Habit: Portrait of a Vasa, 1651’], Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie [Yearbook of the National Museum of Warsaw] 16 (1972): 5–86. This article includes a reproduction of this extraordinary portrait and a summary in French, 85–86. While the Spanish Habsburgs had been naming their daughters ‘Teresa’ for some time, the use by members of the Austrian branch apparently dates to this period of close association with Saint Teresa of Avila and the order she founded. 57 Silverio (1935: V:775–776): ‘Don Pedro de Aragón, gentilhombre de la Cámara del Rey nuestro Señor, y mi tío, del Consejo de Guerra, capitán de la guardia alemana: Los religiosos Carmelitas Descalzos tienen en esa Corte negocios de tanta importancia como es la beatificación del venerable y santo padre fray Juan de la Cruz, primer carmelita descalzo, compañero y coadjutor de Santa Teresa de Jesús en la fundación y reforma; y porque yo soy muy devota de la beata Madre y de su Sagrada Religión, deseo que por intercesión mía tenga bueno y breve despacho y así os encargo favorezcáis afectuosamente con Su Santidad la justa pretensión destos religiosos; que además que por ser del servicio de Nuestro Señor tendréis en ella mérito, quedaré yo muy agradecida y con particular memoria para todo lo que se os ofreciere. De Madrid, a 3 de octubre de 1664. Yo la Reina’. 58 de Santa Teresa (1675: 133–150); he also transcribed the Bull of Beatification, pp. 145–150. Silverio (1935: V:777–778); Alvarez (1951: 65–66). 59 Alvarez relates how in June 1674, ‘en vísperas de la Beatificación’, one of the cardinals appointed Promotor of the Faith (or more colloquially, ‘Devil’s Advocate’) announced his unwillingness to accept as authentic certain reported miracles: ‘Fue preciso que el Papa [Clement X] personalmente interviniese, supliendo las formalidades que faltaban al infolio’ [from the Proceso Apostólico in Valladolid, 1625] Alvarez (1951: 65–66); ASV CR proc. 2866 includes many of the relevant documents, but they do not describe the pope’s exact actions. Clement X was a member of the Altieri family, devotees, as we have seen, of Teresa of Avila and her order. 60 To show how confusing these questions can be, consider the eminent Discalced Carmelite scholar José Vicente Rodríguez, who has spent decades studying John of the Cross. As a young friar in 1956, writing for a specialized journal, Rodríguez related how after John’s ‘miracles were approved on October 6, 1674, the brief of beatification was published by Pope Clement X on January 25, 1675, and the solemnization was celebrated in St. Peter’s on the following April 21 [ie.1676]’. In 2012, he published a magisterial 900-page biography with a more general Catholic press; its ‘Chronology’ states simply: ‘In 1675 [John] is beatified by Clement X, on January 25’. “Bibliographicum Carmelitanum” (Supplementum ad Ephemerides Carmeliticae) 1 (1956): 23–26. Accessed online at: carmelnet.org/biographies/ johncross.pdf [English translator not listed]; Rodríguez (2012: 886).

70  Jodi Bilinkoff 61 Editor’s note: although see Prof. McGinn’s account in the previous chapter which covers much of this ground. 62 Storia della vita, virtù, doni e miracoli di San Giovanni della Croce…Rome, 1726, ‘Relazione delle Istanze, e Decreti della Beatificazione del Santo Padre, e de’ Miracoli seguiti doppo di essa, e de’ Decreti per la Solomne Canonizazione’, 199–214. Silverio (1935: V:780–781); ASV CR proc. 2846: “Procesus pro miraculosa paralisis sanatione…in civitate Barii in personam Sororis Anna Theresia a S. Benedicto…” 8 June 1680. McGinn suggests another reason for the delay between John’s beatification and canonization, describing in the previous chapter how ‘through a kind of subterranean guilt by association’ the Carmelite’s writings became implicated in the Quietist controversies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 63 ASV CR proc. 2847 319v-322r. These hearings, held between 1713 and 1715, were further delayed because of the contested appointment of a new archbishop of Toledo; the bishop of León was eventually called in to preside. 64 ASV CR proc. 285241r-61r. Hearings were held between 1723 and 1725. The two cases of nuns from Bari and Neufchâteau recall Teresa of Avila’s narrative in chapter 6 of her Life of being cured from illness and paralysis thanks to the intercession of St. Joseph. 65 Storia della vita… 209–212. There were reports of miracles and hearings to confirm their authenticity concerning two other towns as well: Montoro, near Córdoba in Spain, and Aveiro, Portugal, in the diocese of Coimbra, where whole families testified that they had received aid from John of the Cross. ASV CR proc. 2851 and 2848. 66 Abregé de la Vie de Saint Jean de la Croix, Premier Carme Deschauseé. Avec les Miracles que Dieu a operé par son intercession…et des Prières por l’invoquer. Senlis, 1727. 67 An eight-day poetry competition was held in honor of John’s canonization in Mexico City in 1730, Estela de San Juan de la Cruz en la Nueva España, ed. Patricia Villegas Aguilar. Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2008. 68 The cabildo’s notary recorded that this announcement: ‘ha sido de summo gusto para toda la religión y que lo será para esta ciudad por haber muerto y obrado tantos milagros en ella. Y estar en dicho su convento parte del cuerpo del glorioso santo’, AHM Actas del Cabildo 26 231v-233r. For the city council’s reaction to the news of John’s canonization on 14th February 1727, see AHM Actas de Cabildo 130 r-v. The feast day of Saint John of the Cross is still observed every year in Ubeda, although more quietly than in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The city’s original patron saint is the Archangel Michael, believed to have aided Christian forces during the Reconquest. 69 Giordano (1991: 186). Efforts to beatify this friar have so far been unsuccessful, but the Catholic Church recognizes him as ‘Venerable’. 70 I consulted the first Spanish translation: Wilhelm Lamormaini, Virtudes y Vida Espiritual de Ferdinando de Austria, Segundo del Nombre, Emperador de Romanos … Zaragoza, 1640, 53–56, 136–137. Of course, the way the author relates the emperor’s preferences in religious orders endorses his own Society of Jesus, as well as the Discalced Carmelites. 71 Both empresses were named Eleonora Gonzaga, as great-aunt and great-niece they were quite close. Daniela Frigo, “Les deux impératrices de la Maison de Gonzague et la politique ‘italienne’ de l’Empire (1622–1686),” Dix-Septième Siècle 9 (2009): 219–237. 72 See AGOCD Plut.315-R for copies of letters from Charles VI, his ambassador to the curia, and the governor of Mantua and the bull of Benedict XIII of 13 August 1728 confirming John as patron saint of the city and duchy. Michele Francesco di San Giovanni Battista, Vita, gesta, e miracoli del dottor mistico s. Giovanni della Croce primo carmelitano scalzo, comprottetore della città e ducato di Mantova,

John of the Cross 71 Mantua, 1728. City chronicles provide copious details about the ceremonies, speeches, and monuments that exalted Emperor Charles as well as St John, see, for example, Federigo Amadei, Cronaca Universale della Città di Mantova. Mantua: CITEM, 1957 [original ed. 1740–1750] IV: 406–407; 414–418. 73 Teresa of Avila once said of John, ‘although he is small, I know that he is great in the eyes of God’ (The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, 2001, I: 60). Even today he is sometimes cloyingly dubbed ‘el Frailecito de Fontiveros’. 74 Guía de Patrimonio Religoso de la Ciudad de Puebla. Puebla: Ayuntamiento de Puebla, 2012, 79–97. Frances L. Ramos, Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012, 83. Between November 1677 and January 1678, the city council, cathedral chapter, and archbishop of Palermo, Italy petitioned Innocent XI to name John of the Cross one of their patron saints as well. The pope denied this request, most likely because John had not yet been canonized, AGOCD Plut. 315-Q.

4

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns Reciprocity and Communion Shelagh Banks

Introduction: The Mutuality of Love My aim in this chapter is first of all to show that John’s relationships with the nuns of the Reform played an important part not only in his life as a Discalced Carmelite friar but also in prompting and shaping much of his literary output. I will then look briefly at the reception of his works by three of his most famous spiritual daughters, and conclude with some remarks on the continuing transmission of his doctrine in our monasteries today. In a remarkable passage of the commentary on stanza 27 of the Spiritual Canticle (redaction B), John speaks of the profound mutuality that characterizes the relationship between God and the soul. The Beloved has brought the bride into the ‘inner wine cellar’ (stanza 26), where he teaches her ‘a sweet and living knowledge’ (stanza 27). John comments: ‘The tenderness and truth of love by which the immense Father favours and exalts this humble and loving soul reaches such a degree – O wonderful thing, worthy of all our awe and admiration! – that the Father himself becomes subject to her for her exaltation, as though he were her servant and she his lord’ (CB: 27.1, italics mine). In response, John says, the soul ‘makes a complete surrender of herself’ (2). He goes on to identify this ‘sweet and living knowledge’ as ‘mystical theology, the secret knowledge of God that spiritual persons call contemplation. This knowledge is very delightful’, he says, ‘because it is a knowledge through love’ (5). Through this reciprocal exchange, the soul ‘is really and totally given to God without keeping anything back, just as God has freely given himself entirely to her’ (6).1 The human soul, then, is called to share the life of God in loving communion. This is the reason for practising detachment and self-denial, and this is where prayer is meant to take us. This doctrine seems already to have been fully formed by the time of John’s escape from prison in Toledo in 1578 – and indeed the first 31 stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle were among the poems he composed during that time of appalling suffering. But whatever John’s natural gifts of mind and spirit, this ‘secret knowledge of God’ is not something he was born with: it was the fruit of all his experience – of being loved and of loving, of poverty and suffering, of prayer and transformation. As he came to DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-6

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns 73 perceive the breath-taking humility of God’s love for us, he himself became a person whose humility and gentleness won him the love and devotion of all who truly knew him. John’s writings have sometimes been interpreted as advocating a life of heroic asceticism in isolation from other people, but this is not borne out by the way he lived himself. He was kept extremely busy for virtually all his time as a Discalced Carmelite, holding one position of responsibility after another, travelling immense distances, constantly in demand as superior or spiritual director, often praying through the night, and snatching time for writing when he could.2 Further, although his major writings tell us little of his personal life, his letters and the testimonies of those who knew him show him to have been a person of great warmth, with strong affections and sympathies and a lively interest in other people. He found great joy in the beauty of creation and loved to share his joy with others. We see from his letters that nothing that he suffered made him withdraw into anger or bitterness. In July 1591, five months before he died, when he had been deprived of office and was the victim of a campaign of defamation, he was able to write to a nun in Segovia: ‘Do not let what is happening to me, daughter, cause you any grief, for it does not cause me any. … Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love’ (E: 26, to Madre María de la Encarnación). Relationships with the Nuns It is evident, then, that John lived what he taught, and that the mutuality of love that characterized his relationship with God also characterized his relationships with other human beings. This can be seen in his relationships with the nuns of the Reform, beginning, of course, with Teresa. John first met Teresa in 1567, when he was 25 and she was 52. She had just received permission from the Superior General to extend her Reform to the friars, and recognized immediately that John was just the person she needed. When, the following year, she was offered a property for her first community of friars, Teresa asked John to join her at Valladolid, where she was making a foundation of nuns, so that she could instruct him in the spirit of the Reform. And so, she says in The Book of Her Foundations, ‘there was an opportunity to teach Father Fray John of the Cross about our way of life so that he would have a clear understanding of everything, whether it concerned mortification or the style of our community life and the recreation we have together… He was so good that I, at least, could have learned much more from him than he from me. Yet this is not what I did, but I taught him about the lifestyle of the Sisters’ (F:13.5, italics mine).3 After this, John went to Duruelo, where the first foundation of Discalced friars was made in November 1568. From the outset, then, John’s understanding of the Reform was shaped by Teresa, and it is clear that a deep bond grew up between them. When Teresa was appointed the prioress of the Incarnation in Avila in October 1571, she

74  Shelagh Banks asked John to come and serve as a confessor there. From his arrival in May 1572 until Teresa finished her term in October 1574, they lived and worked closely together. When Teresa left the Incarnation, the nuns begged that John should be allowed to stay. It was from there that he was kidnapped in December 1577 and imprisoned in Toledo. On his escape the following August, he sought refuge first of all with the Teresian nuns there, who took him in and protected him. John was then sent for his safety to Andalusia, and stayed initially at Beas, a community of nuns founded by Teresa three years earlier, in 1575. The prioress was the aristocratic and gifted Anne of Jesus (Lobera). At first, she was unimpressed by John, and was somewhat indignant when she heard him refer to Teresa as ‘my daughter’. Relaying the conversation to her community, she said: ‘Fray John of the Cross seems very good, but very young to call our Mother Foundress “my daughter”’ (Crisógono 1958: 126). It is worth noting that Teresa in her turn referred to John as ‘my son’! Anyway, Anne wrote in a similar vein to Teresa, and in the same letter complained of the lack of a good spiritual director whom they could talk to about spiritual things. Teresa replied brusquely, saying: I was amused, daughter, at how groundless is your complaining, for you have in your midst mi padre Fray John of the Cross, a heavenly and divine man. I tell you, daughter, from the time he left and went down there I have not found anyone in all Castile like him, or anyone who communicates so much fervour for walking along the way to heaven. You will not believe the feeling of loneliness that his absence causes me. Realize what a great treasure you have there in that saint. All the nuns in your house should speak and communicate with him on matters concerning their souls, and they will see how beneficial it is. … I declare to you that I would be most happy to have my father Fray John of the Cross here, who truly is the father of my soul and one from whom it benefited most in its conversations with him. (LL: 277, November–December 1578) Anne of Jesus came to discover the truth of Teresa’s words, and a deep and lasting friendship grew up between John and the Beas community. Even after he moved, first to El Calvario and then to Granada, he continued to visit Beas regularly and to serve the nuns in both spiritual and practical ways. John shared with the sisters the poems he had composed in prison. They were deeply moved by them and asked him for explanations, especially of the verses of the Spiritual Canticle. It was his discussions with the nuns that prompted John to begin writing prose commentaries on some of his poems. After speaking with them, he would reflect on their conversation and then write notes on it. He even composed the last five stanzas of the Canticle in response to a conversation with one of the nuns. When he asked Francisca de la Madre de Dios how she prayed, she replied that her prayer consisted in ‘looking at the beauty of God and rejoicing that he has it’ (Crisógono 1958: 134). This so

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns 75 delighted John that he went round for several days meditating on it and then added the last five stanzas of the poem, beginning with the lines: Let us rejoice, Beloved, And let us go forth to behold ourselves in your beauty.

(CB: 35)

It was for the community at Beas that many of The Sayings of Light and Love were written: John would write a sentence or two on a scrap of paper to suit a particular sister’s need or character. He also gave each of the sisters at Beas a copy of his sketch of the ascent of Mount Carmel. And it was for them that he wrote The Precautions, a short treatise in which he gives advice on how to survive community life which remains extremely pertinent today. We can see the respect in which John held Anne of Jesus from the Prologue to the Commentary on the Spiritual Canticle. John completed this in 1584, by which time Anne was the prioress of the monastery in Granada, whose foundation John had overseen in 1582. He states in the title: ‘This commentary … was written at the request of Mother Ana de Jesús’ and goes on to say in the Prologue: ‘Even though Your Reverence lacks training in scholastic theology’ – actually, she was very well educated, though as a woman she was debarred from the scholastic training in the universities – ‘…you are not wanting in mystical theology, which is known through love and by which these truths are not only known but at the same time enjoyed’ (CB: Prol. 3). Anne remained John’s devoted friend for the rest of his life. John did not come to the nuns merely as someone whose education and gender were seen as fitting him to impart instruction, but as someone engaged in the same quest for the Beloved. He was always eager to learn, and open to receiving comfort and inspiration from them. Of his 31 surviving letters, 19 are addressed to nuns and demonstrate the genuine affection and concern that he felt for them. Throughout his 23 years as a Discalced Carmelite, John was closely involved with the life of the nuns. In fact, in the last months of his life, his detractors in the Order were busily seeking evidence in the hope of being able to charge him with inappropriate behaviour with the nuns. One of the nuns who knew him, María de San Pedro, summed up her impression of John by saying that he ‘was a small man, not handsome, but light shone through’ (Crisógono 1958: 309). It is clear, then, that John’s burning focus on the Beloved in no way precluded human intimacy but, on the contrary, the very mutuality and reciprocity that he experienced in his relationship with Christ can be seen reflected in his relationships with other people, and perhaps with particular clarity in his relationships with the nuns. Spiritual Daughters Turning now to subsequent generations, we shall see that the nuns have played a not inconsiderable part in the transmission of John’s teaching. In France, John’s writings were little known in the seventeenth century, even

76  Shelagh Banks though the Teresian Carmel was brought to France by six of Teresa’s nuns, including Anne of Jesus and Teresa’s companion and nurse, Anne of St Bartholomew. One factor in this may have been the determination of Cardinal de Bérulle to impose his own spirituality on the nuns, as a result of which Anne of Jesus and Anne of St Bartholomew soon left for the Spanish Netherlands.4 Then, as we have already seen, the condemnation of Quietism at the end of the century undoubtedly affected John’s reputation. But in the late nineteenth century, translations of John’s works into French were published, including a four-volume edition by the Carmelite nuns of Paris.5 Both St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) and St Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) had access to the fourth volume of this edition, which contained The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. These two texts had a more profound influence on them than any other writings apart from the scriptures. In fact, I suggest one could say of both of them that, very different as they were, it was their appropriation of John’s teachings that enabled them to understand and give expression to the working of God within them. In her Story of a Soul, Thérèse exclaims: ‘Ah! how many lights have I not drawn from the works of our holy Father, St. John of the Cross! At the ages of seventeen and eighteen I had no other spiritual nourishment’ (Thérèse of Lisieux 1996: MS A 83r). That should not be taken as implying that at other times she found other writers more helpful. Thérèse quotes or refers to John at key points throughout her development. For instance, in MS B, the central part of Story of a Soul, written when she was 23, she describes how she came to understand that her vocation was to be ‘love in the heart of the Church’. Although she does not mention John’s name, she borrows two statements from The Spiritual Canticle. First, drawing on the commentary on stanza 9, she says: ‘I know it, love is repaid by love alone’ (Thérèse of Lisieux 1996: MS B 4r;cf. CB: 9.7),6 and then a little later, she quotes a sentence from the introduction to stanza 29: ‘I recall that “the smallest act of PURE LOVE is of more value to [the Church] than all other works together”’ (Thérèse of Lisieux 1996: MS B 4v; cf. CB: 29.2). Thérèse’s writings show that she interiorized John’s message so deeply that she was able to live it in an extraordinarily radical way. She didn’t simply substitute his thinking for her own, but she reframed it, using her own imagination and experience in a way that made it remarkably accessible to all kinds of people. In the last months of her life, Thérèse kept her copy of The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame at her bedside, and in a shaky hand noted down some page references on a card she was using as a bookmark. Guy Gaucher infers from this that ‘Thérèse, sick and dying, was rereading her life in the light of the teachings of St. John of the Cross’ (Gaucher 1999: 158, italics original). Elizabeth of the Trinity was given copies of both the third and fourth volumes of the 1877 French translation just before she entered the Carmel of Dijon in August 1901. There is no evidence that she did more than dip into John in her early months in Carmel, and it is unlikely that she had been

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns 77 allowed to keep these books in her cell. But then in February 1902, a second copy of volume four was given to her (Elizabeth of the Trinity 1995: Letter 106), and during her profession retreat in January 1903, Elizabeth began a thorough reading of The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame, which from then on would constitute her main reading matter, along with the letters of St Paul (Mosley 2012: Vol. 1 305 and note 9). In November 1903, Elizabeth wrote to a seminarian7 with whom she corresponded: ‘At the moment I am reading some very beautiful pages in our blessed Father Saint John of the Cross on the transformation of the soul in the three Divine Persons’ (Elizabeth of the Trinity 1995: Letter 185): the doctrine that formed the bedrock of her spirituality. She reflects in this letter that ‘even here below [the Trinity] is our cloister, our dwelling, the Infinite within which we can pass through everything’, and marvels at the ‘abyss of glory’ to which we are called. Elizabeth found this phrase, ‘abyss of glory’, in the 1877 French translation of the commentary on stanza 39 of The Spiritual Canticle (CB: 39.4) and it became very dear to her (Elizabeth of the Trinity 1995: Letter 185 n. 4; cf. Mosley 2012: Vol. 1 306 and note 10). She speaks in this same letter of John’s doctrine of spiration: when the soul is united to God, ‘the Holy Spirit raises it to so wonderful a height that He makes it capable of producing in God the same spiration of love that the Father produces in the Son and the Son in the Father, the spiration that is the Holy Spirit Himself! To think that God calls us by our vocation to live in this holy light!’ (Elizabeth of the Trinity 1995: Letter 185; cf. CB: 39.3). It was through reading John’s works that Elizabeth learnt to articulate the keynotes of her mature spirituality, and her major works, all written in 1906 in the last months of her life, are suffused not only with the words but also with the spirit of John, whom she described as ‘our Father who went so far into the depths of the Divinity!’ (Elizabeth of the Trinity 1995: Letter 136). John was equally formative for Edith Stein (1891–1942), canonized as St Teresia Benedicta a Cruce.8 We do not know when Edith first became acquainted with John’s writings but we do know that she requested the title ‘of the Cross’ because she saw herself as sharing with him a special vocation to live the mystery of the cross.9 The card commemorating her first profession at the Carmel of Cologne in 1935 bore the words: ‘To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing’ from The Ascent of Mount Carmel (A:1.13.11) and for her final profession in 1938, she chose a text from The Spiritual Canticle: ‘One thing alone I do, and that is love’(CB: stanza 28, Stein 2002: xx). In German-speaking countries, John had likewise been little known, but a German translation was produced by the Carmelite friars in the 1920s.10 After Edith moved to Echt Carmel in the Netherlands at the end of 1938, seeking refuge from the Nazi regime, her prioress there asked her to write something for the occasion of the fourth centenary of John’s birth in 1942, to make him better known and understood. When Edith was arrested on 2nd August 1942 and sent to her death at Auschwitz, she left her book The Science of the Cross open on her desk. It seems it only lacked a few finishing touches (Stein 2002).

78  Shelagh Banks In this book, Edith offers an exposition of John’s doctrine with comments of her own. She lays more stress on the ascetical aspects of his teaching than Thérèse or Elizabeth, but she was familiar with all his writings, and she too presents the reciprocal surrender of mystical marriage as the goal towards which all his teaching leads. As a result of the mutual surrender of God and the soul, she says, ‘one takes possession of God in a way so daring that it surpasses all human understanding. John of the Cross gives clear expression to this when he says that the soul can now give God more than she is herself: she gives to God, God himself in God. … This divinizes the soul herself’ (Stein 2002: 179; cf. LF: 3.78). To look finally at John’s reception in Great Britain, the first full English translation of his works was made by David Lewis (1814–1895) in 1864. Lewis had been an Anglican curate under John Henry Newman at the University Church in Oxford, and followed him into the Catholic Church in 1846; his translation was undertaken at the request of another convert, Fr Frederick Faber (1814–1863), and was subsequently revised by the Carmelite Benedict Zimmerman (1859–1937) in 1906, 1908, and 1916. Then in 1935, Edgar Allison Peers (1891–1952) produced the scholarly translation which brought John’s works to the notice of a wider reading public; a more modern translation has been provided by Kieran Kavanaugh (1929–2019) and Otilio Rodriguez (1910–1994) (see Bibliography). All these versions have been welcomed by the British Discalced Carmelite nuns, whose history began with the foundation of an English-speaking Carmel in Antwerp in 1619. At the end of the eighteenth century, the English-speaking communities in the Low Countries relocated to England and also founded the first Carmel in North America. In the nineteenth century, other foundations were made from France, including Notting Hill (1878), from where many Carmels were founded in England, Scotland, and Wales in the twentieth century. Among the nuns, the standing of John of the Cross as Teresa’s collaborator and the Father of our Order has been undisputed but his works have not always been readily available or well appreciated. In the past, at least in England, the emphasis tended to be placed firmly on The Ascent and The Dark Night as presenting his authentic teaching, while The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame might be locked away in a cupboard. This view is nicely echoed in the words of Sr Ruth Burrows: ‘What good do they do us, these attempts to draw aside the curtain from the mystery of the summit? All we need to know is how to get there. Show us the way and let the end look after itself!’ (Burrows 1987: 4, italics original). Now, however, with the benefits of a broader formation within Carmel and the excellent studies of John which have appeared in recent years, it is possible to gain a fuller understanding. The Reception of John Today That is not to say that John is every nun’s favourite author (odd as that may seem), nor is it to deny that there have always been nuns who have discovered the treasures to be found in his works for themselves. Each sister finds

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns 79 her own sources of support, and these may change over the years. But there are certain aspects of John’s writings which are of perennial relevance for anyone attempting to live the enclosed Carmelite life. I will close by mentioning three of these. The first is his eminently practical advice on how to live in community. There are a couple of passages in his Precautions which in my experience are quoted in community, generally with a certain ruefulness, more than anything else he wrote. In the first precaution against the flesh, John says: … [T]o free yourself from the imperfections and disturbances that can be engendered by the mannerisms and attitudes of the religious and draw profit from every occurrence, you should think that all in the community are artisans – as indeed they are – present there in order to prove you; that some will fashion you with words, others by deeds, and others with thoughts against you; and that in all this you must be submissive as is the statue to the craftsman who moulds it, to the artist who paints it, and to the gilder who embellishes it. (PR: 15) Another very wise observation comes in the third precaution against the world, where he tells us not to mind other people’s business, or be scandalized or astonished by anything we see others doing. ‘For’, he says, ‘should you desire to pay heed to things, many will seem wrong, even were you to live among angels, because of your not understanding the substance of them’ (PR: 9). Clearly, then, John knew all about community dynamics and the challenges of living with a group of disparate people not of our own choosing, and he can help us to do so in peace and freedom of heart. Another area where John is very helpful is the encouragement he gives to persevere in prayer. When we read his works, we cannot doubt that he speaks as one who knows God, and this means we can be consoled and reassured by what he says. For instance, he assures us that ‘if anyone is seeking God, the Beloved is seeking that person much more’ (LF: 3.28). He tells us where to look for him, saying: ‘You yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place. There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him’ (CB: 1.7). And John developed his teaching on the dark night because he was grieved to see many people failing to advance because they were unable to understand God’s work within them (see, e.g., A: Prol. 3–7). Finally, there is his understanding of the ultimacy of love. In the eyes of many, our life as contemplative nuns is a scandalous waste in a world torn by suffering and need. But John insists that ‘there is no greater or more necessary work than love’, and that, as we have seen, ‘a little of this pure love is more precious to God and the soul and more beneficial to the Church, even though it seems one is doing nothing, than all … other works put together’

80  Shelagh Banks (CB: 29.1,2). This takes us back to the description with which we began of the mutual surrender made between the soul and God, of which John says: ‘This love is the end for which we were created’ (CB: 29.3). John habitually speaks of this love in nuptial terms: Jesus is the Beloved, the Bridegroom, and the soul is the bride. And really there is no other language that can do justice to the transformative union which John is describing. As Edith Stein puts it: The relationship of the soul to God as God foresaw it from all eternity as the goal of her creation, simply cannot be more fittingly designated than as a nuptial bond. Once one has grasped that, then the image and the reality directly exchange their roles: the divine bridal relationship is recognized as the original and actual bridal relationship and all human nuptial relationships appear as imperfect copies of this archetype. (Edith Stein 2002: 242) After the Second Vatican Council, there was a reaction against the application of bridal imagery to nuns, but rather than throwing out the imagery altogether we need to affirm that every soul is called to enter into a spousal relationship with God. The only difference in the case of nuns is that our entire life is ordered to this end. But that is the scandal – exacerbated by the common misapprehension that nuns float around with nothing much to do! ‘Why don’t you do something useful?’ is the cry. However, if it is our conviction that the most powerful force for the healing and transformation of the world is love, then the struggle to become love in the heart of the world is always worthwhile. As John sees it, the whole of creation is an overflow of the exchange of love between the Three Persons of the Trinity, and is held in being by means of its substantial union with God. And God’s desire is that each soul should further be united with him in the likeness of love, and so come to share in the very life of the Trinity (see, inter alia, R: 1-4; A: 2.5.3; CB: 5.1-4, 39.3-4, 11). Wherever we are on our Carmelite journey, we hope that by responding as fully as we can to this invitation to share in the life of God, we may allow his love to flow through us into the world and to be directed wherever it is most needed. We constantly fall short. But our desire is that through our lives something of the truth John taught may be transmitted so as to further the communion of love to which we are all called. Consequently, we shall turn to this ‘transformation in love’ in the following chapters. Notes 1 All quotations from John’s writings from The Collected Works of St John of the Cross, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez, 1991. 2 See Terence O’Reilly’s chapter above. 3 All quotations from Teresa’s writings from The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez, 1980–87.

John of the Cross and the Carmelite Nuns 81 4 See Bernard McGinn’s chapter above. 5 Vie et Oeuvres Spirituelles de l’admirable docteur mystique le bienheureux P. Jean de la Croix. Traduction nouvelle faite sur l’édition de Séville de 1702 par les soins des Carmélites de Paris. 4 Volumes. Paris, 1877. Interestingly enough, the good sisters of Paris refer to John as ‘mystical doctor’ several decades before the title was officially conferred by Rome. 6 Thérèse inscribed these words on her coat of arms in January 1896. 7 This was André Chevignard, the brother of Elizabeth’s brother-in-law. Elizabeth wrote some of her most profound letters to him. 8 Various translations of her name are given, most usually in English ‘St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross’; see Tyler (2023) for variant interpretations. 9 For more on this relationship, see chapter by Peter Tyler later in this book. 10 Des Heiligen Johannes vom Kreuz sämtliche Werke, trans. Aloysius of the Immaculate Conception and Ambrosius of St Teresa, Munich, 1924–29, 5 vols.

Part II

John of the Cross: Love, Desire and Transformation

5

¡Amada en el Amado Transformada! John of the Cross on Transformation Steven Payne

Introduction During my nearly 50 years as a Carmelite, I’ve had the opportunity to write and speak often on John of the Cross, and he remains my favorite among all our rich array of Carmelite saints and spiritual teachers. More often than not, I’ve tended to focus on one or another aspect of his ‘dark night’ themes and the process of purification that he describes in such detail. Perhaps that’s because, like so many people, I find John an admirable guide and support in our ‘times of anguish’ and ‘impasse’ (see, for example, John Paul II 1990 and FitzGerald 1984). But in these later years of my own life journey, I’ve been reflecting more and more on the eventual outcome of the process. Where exactly is all of this purification heading? What can we expect on the other side of the dark night, as dawn approaches (if it ever comes)? And so when I was invited to write this chapter on the theme of John and transformation, I welcomed the opportunity. From 2005 to 2017, I was assigned to the Carmelite formation community in Nairobi, Kenya, and worked at Tangaza University College next door. I was often struck during those years by the popular buzzwords among the Kenya educators and students. I first noticed, for example, a lot of conversation about ‘sustainable development’ as a top priority (obviously, many economic development projects in Africa and the global south have failed because they were not sustainable in the long term). But in my final years there, it seemed that everyone was talking about ‘transformation’. Our ‘Institute of Social Ministry in Mission’, sponsored by the Comboni Fathers, changed its name to the ‘Institute for Social Transformation’, and launched a PhD in social transformation. Our Institute for Leadership and Management shifted from talking about ‘servant leaders’ to ‘transformational leaders’. The college itself, as we began applying for a university charter, changed its motto to: ‘Teaching Minds, Touching Hearts, Transforming Lives’. Rarely was any attempt made to define the term, but ‘transformation’ was all the rage there (and perhaps still is). Likewise, in Sanjuanist studies, we shouldn’t imagine that the theme of ‘transformation’ has been previously ignored. The early 1960s, for example, saw the publication of Eulogio de San Juan de la Cruz’s thesis, La DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-8

86  Steven Payne Transformacíon total del alma en Dios según San Juan de la Cruz [The total transformation of the soul in God according to St. John of the Cross] (Eulogio de San Juan de la Cruz 1963), as well as George Morel’s massive threevolume Le sens de l’existence selon Saint Jean de la Croix (Morel 1961), which deals extensively with the topic. Decades earlier, Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen had written on ‘L’union de transformation dans la doctrine de Saint Jean de la Croix’ [The union of transformation in the doctrine of St. John of the Cross] (Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene 1925), among other examples on the theme. But this theme of ‘transformation’ seems to be coming to the fore once again. It is taken up, for example, in Sam Hole’s important new study in the Oxford University Press series ‘Christian Theology in Context’ entitled, John of the Cross: Desire, Transformation, and Selfhood (Hole 2020). The 2021 anthology, Desire, Darkness, and Hope: Theology in a Time of Impasse (Cassidy and Copeland 2021), gathers a number of articles by Constance FitzGerald, together with various responses, largely dealing with how to apply John’s insights to some of the great social challenges of our time and the need for global transformation.1 In this chapter, then, I will take a closer look at this word ‘transformation’ and its variants in the writings of John of the Cross – its frequency, its specific usage, the particular contexts in which it appears, the other terms with which it is associated – in order to see what light it sheds on his teaching, especially with regard to our ultimate destiny. What I have to offer are some preliminary reflections to ground and orientate reflection on the topic of ‘transformation’ which will serve as a basis for further discussion in this section of the book. ‘Transformation’ and Related Terms Let me begin with a few linguistic observations. The Spanish term ‘transformacíon’ itself along with related expressions (such as ‘transformar’ and ‘transformada’) appear relatively often in John’s works, more than 250 times if we include both redactions of the Canticle and Living Flame commentaries, and almost always in relation to what the purification process is meant to bring about in the soul.2 This number, of course, does not include many other expressions and images he uses to describe the goal of the spiritual journey. But the frequency is perhaps surprising, given that the term is used hardly at all by St. Teresa of Avila, whose writings John admired (see CB: 13.7).3 It is also noteworthy how often John conjoins the term ‘transformación’ with ‘unión’, as when he writes in the Ascent, for example, that ‘by the mere fact that a soul loves something [created], it becomes incapable of pure union and transformation in God’ (A: 1.4.3) and that if souls detach themselves from lesser favors, ‘the Lord will not cease raising them degree by degree until they reach divine union and transformation’ (A: 2.11.9). Likewise in the exceptionally rich commentary on stanza 39 of the Spiritual Canticle, John insists that ‘the soul united and transformed in God breathes out in God to God the very

‘¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!’ 87 divine spiration that God – she being transformed in him – breathes out in himself to her’ (CB: 39.3). And the heading of the commentary on the Living Flame declares that the stanzas ‘treat of a very intimate and elevated union and transformation of the soul in God’ (LF, heading; see also A: 2.5.5). It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that if you look up ‘Transformación’ in the massive and authoritative Diccionario de San Juan de la Cruz, you are simply referred to the entry on ‘Unión’ (Pacho 2009: 1180). Elsewhere, John describes ‘spiritual marriage’ in terms of ‘transformation’, as when he writes that ‘spiritual marriage is incomparably greater than the spiritual betrothal, for it is a total transformation in the Beloved’ (CB: 22.3), and ‘one does not reach this garden of full transformation, which is the joy, delight, and glory of spiritual marriage, without first passing through the spiritual betrothal’ (CB: 22.4). Thus, we can already see that John often uses ‘transformation’ as a synonym for the particular mode of union with God associated with spiritual marriage. And perhaps most importantly, all of these themes and terms are gathered together around the centrality of love and conformity to Christ. Thus in a splendid passage from the commentary on stanza 12 of the Canticle, which I want to cite at some length, he writes: This is the meaning of St. Paul’s affirmation: Vivo autem, iam non ego; vivit vero in me Christus (I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me) [Gal. 2:20]. In saying, ‘I live, now not I’, he meant that even though he had life it was not his because he was transformed in Christ, and it was divine more than human …. In accord with this likeness and transformation, we can say that his life and Christ’s were one life through union of love. This transformation into divine life will be effected perfectly in heaven in all those who merit the vision of God. Transformed in God, these blessed souls will live the life of God and not their own life although, indeed, it will be their own life because God’s life will be theirs …. Although transformation in this life can be what it was in St. Paul, it still cannot be perfect and complete even though the soul reaches such transformation of love as is found in the spiritual marriage, the highest state attainable in this life. Everything can be called a sketch of love in comparison with that perfect image, the transformation in glory. Yet the attainment of such a sketch of transformation in this life is a great blessing, for with this transformation the Beloved is very pleased. (CB: 12.7-8, italics mine except for the Pauline quotation) Moreover, as John will say elsewhere, Father, Son, and Spirit all play a role in this transformation, which also somehow is a transformation in divine wisdom and beauty, according to the Mystical Doctor. In short, John generally uses the term ‘transformation’ and its variants not so much to describe the purifying journey toward union with God, but rather to speak about the culmination of that journey: spiritual marriage in this life and beatitude in the next.4 John’s ‘transformation’ language directs us especially to

88  Steven Payne the outcome of a process that is theological (in the sense of involving the theological virtues), Christological, Pneumatological, and Trinitarian. We now turn to the implications of these various axes of transformation. Transformation and Continuity Before going further, there is a fairly basic philosophical point to be made here. It is that normally we understand ‘transformation’ to involve not only an element of change but also an element of continuity. If I were to come back from my annual retreat boasting that I had been ‘transformed’ by the experience, I can imagine my fellow Carmelites observing skeptically, ‘To us, you look and act the same, so what’s different? If there’s no change, there’s no transformation’. However, if I revisit my childhood home after many years and discover that where my favorite oak tree once stood there is now a pine tree, I would assume that the oak had been replaced, not that it had been ‘transformed’ into a pine. If my sightings of the oak and pine were separated by only a few moments, I’m not sure what I would say. But the point is that ‘transformation’ in standard usage involves change, but not a wholesale substitution of one thing for another, or a total merger of one thing with another. Rather, it is normally understood to involve a continuous subject or ‘suppositum’ undergoing the change, the numerical identity of which is not lost in the process. I mention this to counter the claim sometimes heard that all authentic mystics, including the Christian ones, are really monists at heart. Walter Stace, for example, famously defended the notion that mysticism consists in ‘consciousness without content’, an experience of ‘pure undifferentiated unity’ and ‘absolute oneness’, upon which John of the Cross, Teresa, and others merely superimposed dualistic interpretations in order to maintain the distinction between the divine and human partners required by orthodox Christian doctrine.5 John’s use of the language of ‘transformation’, however, provides further evidence that he does not conceive of the goal of the spiritual journey as an annihilation of the human soul or its absorption into a complete ontological union with God, still less as a discovery that we were fully divine all along. Admittedly, John does speak of the ‘essential or substantial union’ between God and creatures when referring to the divine primary causality by which God ‘conserves their being so that if the union should end they would immediately be annihilated and cease to exist’, but he distinguishes this kind of union from ‘the soul’s union with and transformation in God that does not always exist, except when there is a likeness of love’ (A: 2.5.3; see also CB: 11.3-4).6 Indeed, John is careful to stress that even in the most intimate mystical union, God and the soul still ‘differ in substance’ (CB: 31.1; see also A: 2.5.6,CB: 22.4). Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suppose that, for John, spiritual growth is about an essentially static and self-contained human individual merely praying more often and more deeply, accumulating novel religious experiences, committing fewer sinful acts, and performing a greater number of praiseworthy

‘¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!’ 89 deeds. Rather, for John, it involves a radical reordering, renewal, and augmentation (though not replacement) of all our human capacities. It’s not so much a matter of gaining new information about God, but rather of becoming a different kind of knower. It’s not so much a matter of refocusing our same old affections, but rather of becoming a different kind of lover. Transformation of Love This is what John is struggling mightily to articulate, it seems to me, when he talks about how the theological virtues purge and elevate our spiritual faculties of intellect, memory, and will to operate at a level we could never achieve simply by our own efforts. As we know, John’s notorious pessimism about the harm caused by our unbridled desires and attachments is more than offset by a remarkable optimism about the transformation possible through grace as the disorder is healed. God is always already present, to us and within us, with the offer of divine loving self-communication, like sunlight shining on a dirty window, to cite one of John’s favorite traditional comparisons (see, for example, A: 2.5.6-7, 2.11.6, 2.16.10; CB: 26.4, 26.17; LF: 3.27). Once the ‘smudges and smears’ of our disordered attachments to creatures are wiped away, ‘the soul will be illumined by and transformed in God’ and ‘will appear to be God himself’ (A: 2.5.7). Interestingly, he does not use ‘transformation’ language when describing how the intellect is purified by faith through dark contemplation (what he calls the ‘secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God’ [DN: 1.10.6]), perhaps because of the tendency we noted to reserve such terminology for the outcome rather than the process. But he does say that ‘this place (the intellect – the holder on which the candle of faith is placed) must remain in darkness … in this life, until the daybreak of transformation in and union with God, the goal of a person’s journey’ (A: 2.16.15). Likewise, John observes that ‘when the memory is transformed in God [presumably following its purification in hope], the knowledge and forms of things cannot be impressed on it’, and ‘as a result all the operations of the memory and the other faculties in this state are divine … because of their transformation in him’ (A: 3.2.8). But it is the will and third theological virtue that receive the most attention in John’s treatment of transformation. Over and over, he links the two, repeatedly speaking, not of the transformation of faith or hope but of the transformación de amor [transformation of love] (see A: 1.4.3; CB: 9.2, 12.7-8, 13.1, 20&21.10, 26.2, 38.3, 39.5, 39.8; LF: 1.4, 1.16, 1.25). ‘A person who has reached complete conformity and likeness of will’, says John, ‘has attained total supernatural union and transformation in God’ (A: 2.5.4). And he adds that ‘in this high state it is as conformed to the will of God and satisfied as it is transformed in love’ (LF: 1.27): Love produces such likeness in this transformation of lovers that one can say each is the other and both are one. The reason is that in the union and

90  Steven Payne transformation of love each gives possession of self to the other and each leaves and exchanges self for the other. Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love. (CB: 12.7) This ‘likeness of love’ in which God and soul seem lost in each other is beautifully echoed even in the sound of those haunting words from the Noche oscura poem from which the title of this chapter is taken: ‘Oh noche que juntaste/Amado con amada/Amada en el Amado transformada’ (an effect that the English translation, ‘lover transformed in the Beloved’ doesn’t really capture). Yet, the full equality of love for which the soul yearns will only be attained, John tells us, through the work of the Spirit in the next life, when: She will also love God as she is loved by him. As her intellect will be the intellect of God, her will then will be God’s will, and thus her love will be God’s love. The soul’s will is not destroyed there, but is so firmly united with the strength of God’s will, with which he loves her; for the two wills are so united that there is only one will and love, which is God’s. Thus the soul loves God with the love and strength of God himself, united with the very strength of love with which God loves her. (CB: 38.3) In other words, it is total and unimpeded mutual love between God and the soul which lies at the heart of what John means by ‘transformation’. John embraces the classic view that ‘love effects a likeness between the lover and the loved’ (A: 1.4.3; see also CB: 38.3-4, Romances 7). So although John relates the theological virtue of charity particularly to the will, this inflow of God’s boundless love not only affects the human will that returns the divine love it receives but results in a transformation of the whole person. ‘God’s love has arrived at wounding the soul in its ultimate and deepest center, which is to illuminate and transform it in its whole being, power, and strength, and according to its capacity, until it appears to be God’ (LF: 1.13, italics mine). Or again, ‘because God vitally transforms the soul into himself, all these faculties, appetites and movements lose their natural imperfection and are changed to divine’ (CB: 20&21.4). Deeper into the Thicket But what does it actually mean to say, as John does, that ‘the union wrought between the two natures and the communication of the divine to the human in this state [of transformation] is such that even though neither changes its being, both appear to be God [que, no mudando alguna de ellas su ser, cada una parece Dios]’ (CB: 22.4)? There is no real danger, one supposes, that someone who reaches spiritual marriage, like Teresa of Avila or John himself, might

‘¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!’ 91 actually be mistaken for the deity. Presumably, no matter how exalted the union may be, not all of the divine attributes can be ascribed without qualification to the human partner. The Bride does not literally become omnipotent, omnipresent, impassible, and so on, even if, as John says, such souls ‘ordinarily bear in themselves an “I-don’t-know-what” [un no sé qué] of greatness and dignity’ that ‘causes awe and respect in others because of … their close and familiar conversation with God’ (CB: 17.7). And yet, after insisting that ‘the transformation of the soul in God is indescribable’, John adds: ‘Everything can be expressed in this statement: The soul becomes God from God, through participation in him and in his attributes …’ (LF: 3.8; see also LF: 3.2, CB: 14&15.12-18). What, then, is this ‘participation’ that characterizes the transformed soul? If even John of the Cross himself, who could presumably speak from experience, declares it to be ‘indescribable’, perhaps it would be wiser just to fall silent, having reached the limits of what language can adequately express. And yet, John himself does not fall silent. He continues struggling to describe the state of transformation, especially in the Living Flame and the later stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle, apparently hoping that, even for those of us who still lag far behind in the spiritual journey, his words may entice us with at least some glimpse of this great destiny to which we are all called. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to try to grasp as much as we can of what he says, or better, to be grasped by it. I am not at all confident of my ability in this regard, and certainly don’t pretend to be comprehensive. But in this final section, I would like to explore briefly the suggestion that John’s linking of ‘transformation’ and ‘participation in God’ can be helpfully interpreted from a Christological and Trinitarian perspective. Transformation and Incarnation Thus, vastly oversimplifying, it seems that for John the closest analogue to the state of transformation in spiritual marriage and beatitude is the Incarnation itself. Our Christian faith tells us that in Christ Jesus, there is one person with two natures, human and divine, each of which is fully actualized and complete, though not in competition. Likewise, the divine Word that became incarnate in Christ is constituted by its eternal filial relationship with the Father, and insofar as we are joined to Christ through baptism, we share in that filial relationship. All of these traditional Christian doctrines John fully accepts, while exploring their deeper spiritual implications. According to the Mystical Doctor, the same Holy Spirit through whom the Incarnation was wrought over 2,000 years ago also works today in us through love, to bring our wills into full conformity with the Father’s will, as Christ’s always was.7 Our intellects as well, no longer distorted by uncontrolled appetites and selfish obsessions, become like Christ’s as far as possible and function as God originally intended, open to the Spirit’s inspiration and able to fully engage the world around us as it is, rather than how we wish it to be. In a word, we

92  Steven Payne become ‘Christified’. Though John never uses the term itself, he says as much in so many words. The Father loves [souls] by communicating to them the same love he communicates to the Son, though not naturally as to the Son but … through unity and transformation of love …. Accordingly, souls possess the same goods by participation that the Son possesses by nature. As a result they are truly gods by participation, equals and companions of God. (CB: 39.6; see also A: 2.5.5-7; DN: 2.20.5; CB: 22.3-4, 36.5; LF: 2.34, 3.8; D: 107; R: 4) And while he occasionally refers to this transformed state as a ‘restoration’ of what was lost by original sin (see CB: 23.2-6, 26.14), his preferred exemplar of the transformed soul is not Adam before the Fall but Christ, whose life the soul now shares (see CB: 12.8; R: 4) and through whose incarnation and resurrection all creation has been ‘clothed … entirely in beauty and dignity’, both natural and supernatural (CB: 5.4). Transformation and the Trinity But going further, John will say that in the state of transformation and union, we not only participate in the fully human Christ’s way of relating to the created order but we become participants, through the working of the Holy Spirit, in the inner life of the Trinity itself. By his divine breath-like spiration, the Holy Spirit elevates the soul sublimely and informs her and makes her capable of breathing in God the same spiration of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father. This spiration of love is the Holy Spirit himself, who in the Father and the Son breathes out to her in this transformation in order to unite her to himself. There would not be a true and total transformation if the soul were not transformed in the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity in an open and manifest degree …. Even what comes to pass in the communication given in this temporal transformation is unspeakable, for the soul united and transformed in God breathes out in God to God the very divine spiration that God – she being transformed in him – breathes out in himself to her. (CB: 39.3; see also CB: 13.11; LF: Prologue, 4.17) According to John, then, in beatitude (of which spiritual marriage offers a foretaste), we will not be merely passive spectators over here gazing for all eternity on God’s glory over there. Rather, through our union with Christ wrought by the Holy Spirit, we will become eternally active participants in the dynamic divine perichoresis. Our ‘urgent longings’, so problematic when misdirected, will not be destroyed but fulfilled when our desires are enfolded

‘¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!’ 93 in the infinite and unmerited loving desire of God for us. As Sam Hole has astutely observed, ‘the flourishing of the soul’s desire [culminates] in the revelation that this desire is reflective not simply of God’s own desire for union with the soul, but of the very desire that unites the persons of the Trinity in love for one another’ (Hole 2020: 181). Transformed Knowledge According to John, the Bride-soul’s ‘transformation in love’ also has a noetic dimension, for ‘in this transformation she drinks of God in her substance and in her spiritual faculties’, so that ‘with the intellect she drinks wisdom and knowledge’ (CB: 26.5). John writes that ‘the Bridegroom will really transform her into the beauty of both his created and uncreated wisdom, and also into the beauty of the union of the Word with his humanity’ (CB: 38.1; see also CB: 36.7-8). He adds that the Bride and Bridegroom together will ‘enter this thicket of God’s wisdom and know its beauty from within’, going on to the ‘high caverns in the rock’ of Christ, which include ‘the sublime, exalted, and deep mysteries of God’s wisdom in Christ, in the hypostatic union of the human nature with the divine Word, and in the corresponding union of human beings with God, and the mystery of the harmony between God’s justice and mercy with respect to the manifestations of his judgments in the salvation of the human race’ (CB: 37.2-3; see CB: 37.6). It is worth noting that John seems to focus here precisely on the three interconnected ‘mysteries’ of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and grace, which (according to Karl Rahner and others) are fundamentally one mystery from which all other ‘particular mysteries’ of the faith are derived (see Rahner 1982: 72). John, too, sees them all as somehow interconnected (see CB: 37.7; LF: 3.2-17). What sort of new knowledge does John associate with the state of transformation? Without wanting to venture into the complex issues of religious epistemology, perhaps it is sufficient here to say that it seems to be a kind of participatory or experiential knowing. A male obstetrician may have all of the scientific data on childbirth at his fingertips, but he will never know what it is to bear a child in the intimate personal way that every mother knows. We can study swimming from textbooks and videos, but there is a sense in which we won’t really know what swimming is like until we actually get into the water. Similarly, for those in the state of union and transformation, it is not a matter of gathering new information about God, or coming up with new concepts, though they may be able to offer fresh perspectives, as John does. Rather, it is a matter of experiencing the Trinity, the Incarnation, and grace from the inside, so to speak. We come to a deeper knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity because we share in the dynamic inner life of the Divine Three, in the breathing of the Spirit between the Father and Son. We understand the Incarnation in a deeper way because we become by participation what Christ was by nature, and like him, our wills are conformed to the Father’s in filial love. We come to understand the work of grace in our salvation because we

94  Steven Payne now recognize how God’s love has providentially guided us from the beginning (see CB: 37.6, 38.6-9). That is to say, those who reach this state of transformation have a kind of first-hand knowledge of the very mysteries that theologians struggle to explore and articulate (see Payne 1992b: 207–213). Transformed in Beauty And what are we to make of John’s enigmatic statements about the transformation of the Bride ‘in beauty’? For John, ‘beauty’ is among God’s most important attributes. Perhaps the most famous Sanjuanist passage on beauty is the paragraph of the commentary on stanza 36 of the Spiritual Canticle that begins: ‘Let us … attain to the vision of ourselves in your beauty …. That I be so transformed in your beauty that we may be alike in beauty, and both behold ourselves in your beauty, possessing then your very beauty …’ and goes on in the same vein to use the word ‘beauty’ another 18 times (CB: 36.5)! A few sentences later, John adds that the Bride is urging the Bridegroom to ‘transform me into the beauty of divine wisdom and make me resemble that which is the Word, the Son of God’, and also asking ‘that he inform her with the beauty of this other, lesser wisdom contained in his creatures and other mysterious works’ (CB: 36.7). These and other texts suggest that, for John, the beauty associated with the state of transformation is multi-faceted. First, insofar as transformation involves a certain participation in the divine attributes and a certain conformity to Christ, the transformed soul’s beauty will be a ‘shadow’ of God’s beauty and the beauty of the Incarnate Word (see LF: 3.14). But second, John seems to suggest that the transformed soul somehow shares more deeply in the beauty of all creation. Certainly, now that her faculties have been purged of the distorting tendency to see everything only in terms of her own selfish wants, she is able to relate to the world as it is, in all its wonder. John writes that the Bride asks ‘for the grace, wisdom, and beauty that every earthly and heavenly creature not only has from God but also manifests in its wise, well ordered, gracious and harmonious relationship to other creatures’, all of which ‘fascinates and delights the soul’ (CB: 39.11). But John appears to suggest that there is not only a heightened appreciation of created beauty but a deeper participation in that beauty. The soul seemingly comes to recognize more profoundly her place within the created order, and her interconnectedness with all things (see LF: 4.4-9). Perhaps this also means that, given her participation in the inner life of the Trinity, she now, somehow and in some way, participates in God’s own creative love as it brings forth and sustains all things in existence. Conclusion: Theosis and a New Relation to Creation To sum up, in this chapter, we have surveyed the significance of John of the Cross’ frequent use of the word ‘transformation’ and related terms in his various writings. As we have noted, he tends to equate transformation with

‘¡Amada en el Amado Transformada!’ 95 spiritual marriage in this life and beatitude in the next, and thus applies the term especially to the outcome of a process that is theological, Christological, Pneumatological, and Trinitarian. He speaks repeatedly of ‘transformation and union’, ‘transformation in love’, and ‘transformation in wisdom and beauty’. But most fundamentally for John, as I understand him, the state of transformation involves being drawn into the inner life and love of the Trinity itself, and coming to ‘possess the same goods by participation that the Son possesses by nature’, thereby becoming ‘truly gods by participation, equals and companions of God’ (CB: 39.6). It was often said in the past that the doctrine of divinization or theosis is found mainly in the Eastern church but little known, and perhaps feared, in the West. More recently, however, numerous theologians have been arguing for its presence (though in a variety of forms and using a variety of other terms) in Western authors as diverse as Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, Leo the Great, Boethius, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Calvin, and many others.8 John of the Cross uses expressions such as ‘estar deiforme’ (CB: 39.4) ‘endiosar’ (CB: 26.10, 27.7; LF: 1.35), and ‘endivinar’ (LF: [redaction A] 2.18) relatively rarely, and it would require another paper to situate his approach historically among the others. But John clearly does see divinization as the goal of our spiritual journey, though (I would argue) he more often uses ‘transformation’ language to refer to this surpassing destiny of participation in God.9 Finally, let me take a step beyond what John says explicitly to what I think may be implied. As we know, in order to be truly fruitful, the relationship between a Bride and Bridegroom, no matter how profound, needs to move beyond the stage of simply being lost in love of one another, ‘Amada en el Amado transformada’. In recent years, I have been struck by the way in which the lover and the beloved in the Spiritual Canticle, after the consummation of their union, move forward together in the final stanzas. It is as if they are no longer simply gazing into one another’s eyes, but jointly looking outward with a shared loving gaze. We can say that there would not be a complete ‘transformation in love’ if the soul did not learn to love what God loves, in the way that God loves. John describes certain profound ‘awakenings’ at this stage in which ‘the soul knows creatures through God and not God through creatures’, as they ‘disclose the beauties of their being, power, loveliness, and graces, and the root of their duration and life’ (LF: 4.5). Here, he says, ‘the soul is able to see’ God ‘moving, governing, bestowing being, power, graces, and gifts on all creatures, bearing them all in himself by his power, presence, and substance’; moreover, she sees ‘what God is in himself and what he is in his creatures in only one view’ (LF: 4.7). In other words, John’s words would seem to imply that the transformed soul in some way now sees all people and all creation through God’s eyes, sharing God’s loving care and concern for all; today, we would note that this includes especially the poor and marginalized who are the focus of God’s preferential love. To me, this shows that ‘transformation’ is not a selfish or otherworldly goal but rather immerses us more deeply into the interconnectedness of all things and

96  Steven Payne persons, and lights within us a fire of compassionate love for the entire cosmos. This has important implications for contemporary spirituality, I think, in showing that our ‘urgent longing’ for God does not end in an eternally frozen ecstasy and cannot be divorced from active concern for the great issues of our time, including racism, social and economic injustice, and environmental degradation. And it is to this ‘transformation in love’ that we shall turn in the next chapter. Notes 1 We shall return to the work of Constance Fitzgerald in a later chapter. 2 See the entries for ‘transformación’ and ‘transformar’ in Astigarraga et al., Concordancias (1990: 1824–1828). The number more than doubles if one also includes what Kees Waaijman calls the broader ‘semantic field’ of terms such as ‘conformar’, ‘reformar’, and so on; see Waaijman (2002: 455). 3 Unless otherwise noted, all English-language quotations of John’s writings are taken from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez, 1991. 4 See, for example, John’s famous comparison between purgative contemplation and the effect of fire on a log of wood, in chapter 10 of book 2 of the Dark Night. There, he writes that ‘before transforming the soul, it purges it of all contrary qualities’, and that ‘the very loving light and wisdom into which the soul will be transformed is what in the beginning purges and prepares it’ (DN: 2.10.2-3, italics mine). 5 See, for example, Stace (1960a: 102–103, 222–235) and Stace (1960b: 126–130). Stace’s views have been sharply criticized in a series of anthologies edited by Steven T. Katz, such as Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) and Mysticism and Religious Traditions (1983). 6 Likewise, in his later Spiritual Canticle and Living Flame commentary, John will speak again of ‘substantial union’, but in order to make a different distinction, between the permanent union wrought in spiritual marriage and the transitory moments when this union is experienced with particular clarity and intensity (see CB: 26.11, LF: 1.5). 7 See, for example, John’s discussion of the role of the Holy Spirit in the ‘transformation of love’, in CB: 39.3; LF: 1.1-6. 8 For recent overviews, see, for example, Christensen and Wittung, eds. (2007); Olson (2007), Bloor (2015), Keating (2015), Arblaster and Faesen, eds. (2019), Ortiz, ed. (2019), and Papanikolaou (2020). 9 Eloquently defending John against the charge by some Orthodox theologians that he leaves souls in the dark night, David Bentley Hart (2003) insists that ‘the governing theme of all his writings’ is ‘the progress of the soul towards divinization in Christ’.

6

Perfect Love, Described: Exploring the Significance of Love for John of the Cross Iain Matthew

Introduction The hallmark of a Carmelite vocation, be it lay or religious, is acceptance of this statement: ‘A little pure love does more good than all other works put together.’ At least, that’s what a visiting friar told us when I was a student in the early 1980s. And he added: ‘You don’t have to believe it to be saved; it’s not de fide. But you should only become a Carmelite if this is how you see it.’ Bold words from the speaker and bolder still from John of the Cross whose Spiritual Canticle he was quoting. But how can they be true? Does a little pure love really do more good than all other works put together? How can a hidden thought, an unnoticed action, done in pure love, be more significant than, say, moving vast quantities of medicine or food without love? We can push the question further by calling on a second witness. In her Manuscript B, St Thérèse famously re-lives her discovery of a vocation to be love at the heart of the Church. Her meditation then brings her to declare: ‘My Jesus, I love you, I love the Church, my Mother, I remember how “the smallest movement of pure love is more useful to her than all the other works put together.”’ This provokes in her the question, ‘but is there really pure love in my heart? … These immense desires of mine, aren’t they just a dream, just folly? … If this is how it is, Jesus, enlighten me; you know I am looking for the truth.’1 With her natural and supernatural genius, Thérèse has more to say on this as the manuscript continues, but her question stands in its own right: is there ‘pure love’ in my heart? How would I know? What would it look like? Where can we find it? If so much is at stake – doing more good than all other works put together – these are not self-indulgent questions. If so much is at stake – doing more good than all other works put together – these are not self-indulgent questions. Thérèse’s dedication is well placed: je cherche la verité. In what follows, we seek further light on John’s statement about the incommensurable value of pure love. The phrase comes in the introduction to his commentary on stanza 29 of the second redaction of the ‘Spiritual Canticle’ (Cántico B). In the first place, we offer a translation of the extended DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-9

98  Iain Matthew passage (CB 28.10–29.4),2 beginning at the final paragraph of the commentary on stanza 28: Now that loving is my sole pursuit. What a wonderful life, what a blessed way to be, and how happy the person who reaches it, where now all is shot through with love and joy and the delight of bride and bridegroom! Here she can truly say to the divine Spouse those words which in pure love she says in the Song of Songs: ‘I have kept all the apples, new and old, for you’ (Song of Songs 7.13). It’s as if she said, My Beloved, all that is bitter and heavy I choose because of you; and everything delightful and sweet I choose for you. By extension, this verse is saying that the person’s normal condition in this state of spiritual espousal is union in God’s love, a steady, ongoing loving presence to God in the will. [29.1] Truly this soul is lost to all things and gained in love alone, devoting her spirit to nothing else. Therefore she steps back from what makes for an active life and external activities, so as truly to fulfil the one thing which the Bridegroom said was necessary, which is the practice of being continuously present to God in love. He so values this and rates it so highly that, just as he admonished Martha for wanting to make Mary leave her place at his feet and get on with other jobs in the Lord’s service – Martha reckoning that she was doing everything and Mary wasn’t doing a thing, sitting there and enjoying being with the Lord; whereas the truth was quite the opposite, since there is no better work, no more necessary work, than love – so too in the Song of Songs does he defend the Bride [Song 3.5 …]. [29.2] Now, for a person who has not reached this condition of union of love, it is good for her to practise love in both the active and the contemplative life. But when she does reach it, it is not good for her to be taken up in other works and external practices which could get in the way, however slightly, of that loving presence to God, even though they be of great service to God; for a little of this pure love is worth more to God and to the soul, and does more good to the Church, even though it seems to be achieving nothing, than all those other works put together. This is why Mary Magdalen, even though she did much good through her preaching and could have done very much good thereafter, yet, because of her great longing to please her Spouse and to benefit the Church, she hid herself in the desert for thirty years, in order to give herself in truth to this love. It seemed to her that she would in every respect obtain much more like this, because of the great good and the great importance a little of this love has for the Church.

Perfect Love, Described  99 [29.3] So when a person has something of this kind of solitary love, it would be doing a great injury to her and to the Church if, even briefly, they wanted her to be taken up in external things and activities, however worthwhile they might be. Since God warns them not to wake her from this love, who would dare do so and escape reprimand? When all is said and done, it is for this love that we were created. Those who are very busy with their world preaching-tours and projects should realise that they would do the Church much more good and would please God much more (quite apart from the good example they would be giving) if they were to spend even half that time being with God in prayer, even if they haven’t reached such a sublime prayer as this. Then they would certainly achieve more, and with less effort, by one work than by a thousand. Their prayer would merit it and they would have gained strength through that prayer. Otherwise, it’s all hammering away and achieving little more than nothing, and sometimes nothing, and sometimes even doing harm. God save us from the salt starting to lose its savour. Things may well look productive from the outside, but in reality they wouldn’t amount to anything – given that, without a doubt, good works can only be done in the power of God. [29.4] Oh how much one could write here about this! But this isn’t the place for it. I have said the above in order to give the sense of this next stanza, because here the soul gives her answer to all those who are against this holy leisure of hers and want nothing but outwardly visible, eye-catching, work; oblivious to the root, the hidden conduit whence comes the water and produces all the fruit. Hence she tells out the stanza: So if you no longer see me or find me in the market or on the green, say that I got lost; that going forth in love I made sure that I got lost and so was found.3 Reading the whole passage, several things come to the fore concerning the incommensurable value of a little pure love. The first is that the author means what he says. One tell-tale sign of his seriousness is the exclamation with which he ends the passage, ‘Oh! how much one could write here about this!’4 John uses such exclamations intensively, as he says in the Living Flame: ‘These words, Oh and How, denote a warmth and intensity; whenever they are uttered, they reveal more of what’s going on within than the tongue manages to articulate.’5 The exclamatory particle features in high octane texts like the culmination of Cántico 39, ‘Oh souls created for this greatness and summoned to it! What are you doing?’6 Here are matters of passionate concern to the author.

100  Iain Matthew Also revealing is the way that in the extended quotation, John repeats his point. I find this helpful because the phrase about pure love which we are considering is highly quotable; it could easily sound like a cliché, or look like a triumphant flourish in the flush of the moment. In fact we see that it is part of the web of a whole discourse: the highlighted phrases in the full quotation bear this out. Pure love, loving presence to God, pleasing God and doing good to the whole Church, more good than alternatives can do – these threads reappear through the length of these paragraphs. Again, the very length of the quotation is significant. One thing that distinguishes the second redaction of Cántico from the first is the frequent addition of an introduction – anotación – to the original commentary on the stanzas. Of them all, this, the anotación to stanza 29, is the longest, and even there the author has to stop himself if he is going to get on with his line by line commentary (see CB 29:4). John’s commitment to his message – the fact that he really means it – is showing up, then, in various elements in this passage. However, mention of the second redaction begs a question. The anotación, and so our key phrase within it, is not present in the first. Was it an afterthought? Or at least a laterthought? Here, the history of John’s writings is significant. As we have heard, the major prose works were completed during fruitful years in Granada, 1582–1588. Specifically, the completed Cántico was given to Ana of Jesus, prioress of the community of sisters in Granada, in 1584. Subida and Noche were each completed (or rather, abandoned) a little later. Then, for Doña Ana de Peñalosa, John wrote the commentary on Llama, some time between 1585 and 1586. After this, 1585–1586, there appeared a revised version of the Cántico (we know that this second redaction post-dates Llama, because it explicitly mentions that work).7 And finally, Llama itself received some fine-tuning, possibly in the last months of John’s life, 1591. Our passage about pure love appears in that second redaction of Cántico, 1586.8 What is significant for our purposes is that the first redaction of Llama – written, therefore, prior to our CB 29 passage – already includes this telling phrase: And so, the soul’s acts of love here are of supreme value, and she merits more in one of them – one of them is worth more – than all she had done throughout her life without this transformation, however great it may have been, etc. [LF: 1.3]9 I have long been irritated by that ‘etc.’ Here is John of the Cross, talking about the most sublime realities one could imagine, and he hustles us along with an ‘etc’! But I here see it as evidence that John is writing what he had told Doña Ana so many times; as if he were saying, You’ve heard this so often; we don’t need to go over it again! This, then, is something that was fundamental to John’s teaching, so well known to those who dealt with him that they could be expected to have ‘got it’ by now. That’s fine in Llama, for Doña

Perfect Love, Described  101 Ana. But as the Cántico becomes better known (the second redaction), not everyone has got it, and the annotation of CB 29 calls forth John’s teaching. A second conclusion to draw from reading the passage in context concerns the ethos of John’s discourse. In the introduction I presented the phrase about pure love as a kind of problem: ‘How can love have such value, such power? Where does it occur, and would we know it when we saw it?’ But for John, this love is not a problem; it is a delight, a gift, for contemplation and gratitude. Que ya sólo en amar es mi ejercicio, ‘What a wonderful life, what a blessed way to be, and how happy the person who gets there, where now all is shot through with love and joy and the delight of bride and bridegroom’ (CB 28.10). John’s statement that a little pure love means so much to the church, the world, is proposed to our intuitive grasp; something for us to recognise, relate to, rise up to. And that is the primary criterion for interpreting John’s words. They invite a grateful ‘Yes; yes, that’s it. What I hoped was true is indeed true.’ This ambience of gratitude is the hallmark of John’s writing. If his prose comments on his poetry, those poems – Noche, Cántico, Llama; also Fonte, and in a more narrative way, Romances – all do the same thing. Each says, ‘You have been thus for me – you are thus, for us – I praise you.’ This is beautifully expressed in the Cántico stanzas, Mi Amado las montañas (CB 14–15): ‘In these stanzas she does nothing other than tell over and sing out the greatness [or great deeds] of her Beloved, which she knows and in which she delights in this union.’10 Contar y cantar las grandezas de su Amado: joining John in wonder is the precondition for understanding his more doctrinal or ascetic statements, a point made so well by Steven Payne in the earlier chapter. That indeed makes sense in the present case. Our ‘pure love’ phrase occurs in a context, stanzas 28–29, which indeed speak of the bride’s all-consuming love for Christ: ‘now love is my one pursuit’ (pues ya sólo en amar es mi ejercicio, 28); ‘going forth in love, I made sure …’ (andando enamorada, me hice perdidiza, 29). But those stanzas about the bride’s love are, in turn, set within a wider context of love received, John’s mystical knowledge of Christ’s all-consuming love for him: ‘in the inner wine-cellar/I drank of my Beloved’ (en la interior bodega/de mi Amado bebí, 26)11; ‘there he gave me his heart’ (allí me dio su pecho, 27). The commentary on Stanza 27 begins thus: God communicates himself to the soul in this inner union with such a real love, that no mother has ever cherished or caressed her child so tenderly; with this love of God no brother’s love or friend’s friendship can compare. So tender and so real is the love of the all-encompassing Father that – how amazing this is, how awe-inspiring, what a wonder! – he truly submits himself to this humble, loving soul and makes her great […]. For in communicating love like this, he in some way does that service which he says in the Gospel he will do for his chosen in heaven, namely, that, girding himself, and going from one to another, he will serve them.12

102  Iain Matthew This helps in understanding how the soul’s love can be so powerful: if there stands behind it, or pulsates within it, a love of this intensity. And this divine love does indeed pulsate within it. The stanzas following disclose a synergy between bride and bridegroom, together gathering flowers, ‘blossoming in your love, and bound by a single hair of mine’ (en tu amor floridas, y en un cabello mío entretejidas, 30); the bridegroom willingly captivated by the bride’s gaze (31), she made beautiful in his prior gaze upon her (32). This synergy comes to supreme expression in the last stanzas of the poem. Here the first redaction is especially powerful. Commenting on the verse, ‘There you will show me/what it is I longed for so’ (Allí me mostrarías/aquello que mi alma pretendía, CA 37, CB 38),13 John describes a masterclass in loving, a class given by the Maestro himself: He does not say he will ‘give’ her, but he will ‘show’ her, show her how she is to love him. It is true of course that he gives her his love, but the words ‘show her love’ are just right: he shows her how to love him with the love he has for himself. For God, loving us first, teaches us to love wholly, purely, as he loves us. In this transformation, God communicates himself to the soul: he shows her love, love that is total, generous and pure; love in which he communicates the whole of himself to her, most lovingly [amorosísimamente], transforming her in himself. Here, as we said, he is giving her his own love for her to love him with. So this really is ‘showing her how’ to love – [like a craftsman] putting the instrument in her hands, telling her how to use it, and using it along with her. In this way she loves God as much as she is loved by him. […] So it is that the soul has been not only instructed in love; she has become a maestro in loving [hecha maestra de amar], united with the maestro himself; and, as a result, she has found fulfilment. Fulfilment will be hers only when she comes to love like this. (CA 37.3)14 If a little pure love has power to change the world, where hard-hitting projects keep failing, this is because the love in question is held within, imbued with, God’s loving first. John knew this from graced mystical experience, uttered it in poetry, and affirmed it, quite stunningly, in the commentary surrounding the ‘pure love’ stanzas in Cántico. This suggests a kind of definition of love. ‘In this transformation, God communicates himself to the soul: he shows her love, love that is total, generous and pure.’ Love is here appearing as self-communication, the gift of self, a gift received and returned. Hence John’s signature phrase, ‘union of love,’ ‘unión de amor’ (CB 29.2; 28.10).15 Several other elements in the CB 29 text call for attention. The title of this chapter is ‘perfect love, described’; and of course that’s not actually what John says. He speaks in CB 29.2 of pure love, not perfect love. In the spiritual

Perfect Love, Described  103 marriage, love is indeed perfect,16 which suggests a having – come-to-fulness, a dynamism followed through – per-factus. But the adjective puro is also important to John: pure, as genuine, fresh, not contaminated, not falsified; like a glass of pure water (not ‘a glass of perfect water’).17 He can also use the term as we might in modern English – ‘pure genius’ – indicating unadulterated, the real article, through and through.18 And puro goes with simple, pura y sencilla, and speaks of the simplicity of attentiveness.19 So ‘a little pure love’ will be love at its most real, genuine, alive, unrefracted. It suggests the limpidity of a welcoming gaze, a tender look upon the other; letting the other be himself, herself, for me, letting them shine forth on me, without my muddying the light. So the love we have here is a contemplative receiving – la contemplación pura consiste en recibir (LF 3.36, redaction B). This love is receptive, not in a quietist sense, but as realised and set free by the love of the other. I say ‘not in a quietist sense.’ One might question that in view of phrases such as these: ‘it is not good for her to be taken up in other works and external practices which could get in the way, however slightly, of that loving presence to God, even though they be of great service to God’ (CB 29:2); ‘it would be doing a great injury to her and to the Church if, even briefly, they wanted her to be taken up in external things and activities, however worthwhile they might be’ (CB 29.3).20 What are we to make of this? As religious superior of Carmelites in Andalusia, John himself was highly ‘taken up in external activities,’ at the very time when he was completing the second redaction of Cántico. Hence his enthusiastic letter to Ana de San Alberto, June 1586: ‘the Lord is keeping us so busy these days that we can’t keep up with it all!’21 Further, before and after the CB 29 paragraphs, John speaks of how love means doing as well as suffering,22 and needs expression, interiorly yes, but also outwardly: ‘in the efficacious exercise of actual loving, be it interiorly, in affective willing, or outwardly, doing works which belong to the service of the Beloved.’23 Nonetheless, the hunkering down which John’s account of pure love seems to demand begs the quietism question, already addressed by Bernard McGinn in an earlier chapter and to which we shall return. ‘Pure love’ has a further connotation. It is pure because it has been purified. There is a qualitative difference between pure love and almost pure love; a quantum leap has intervened, or a quantum lift, uplifted by the principal agent, the principal lover. This qualitative difference between nearly pure and pure, nearly genuine and genuine, nearly alive and alive, recurs through John’s writings. I find it disturbing because it cuts across my hopes that, however far down the track I am, incremental progress will get me there eventually. In fact, there is room too here for organic continuity. John’s discussion of the deepest centre of the soul in Llama is a magisterial expression of it: the deepest centre, he says, suggests other centres, less deep, but still centred. God is the soul’s centre, and love takes her there. And although the fulness of love is the goal, yet just one degree of love already centres her in him, unites

104  Iain Matthew her to him (see LF 1.10–13, redaction B; see also A: 2.5.4). In the CB 29 quotation we have given, the author throws the net to bring in those who cannot identify with the pure love of spiritual marriage: ‘even if they haven’t reached such a sublime prayer as this’ (CB 29.3). So I here want to acknowledge the otherness of the pure love John describes; and simultaneously to read it inclusively, not as a debarring. This love is pure because purified: purified by God’s silence. ‘Where have you hidden, Beloved? … I went out calling you, and you were gone’ (CB: 1). Love’s quantum leap has taken John beyond any sense of entitlement. The dark night has educated him in the gratuity of the Beloved’s self-gift; perhaps as a couple would cherish each other’s presence in a new way if one of them has been facing death. It almost doesn’t matter what they do; what matters is that they are with each other (it could have been so different). John now knows each moment of the Beloved’s presence as an unconstrained gift and so as pure joy. The ‘sublime prayer’ which pure love entails is a grateful presence to the one who is, breathtakingly, present.24 The quantum leap in the quality of love entails a quantum leap in its fruitfulness, its power for change. In the author’s terms, this pure love will do incommensurable good to the Church. There is a clear apostolic intent in the paragraphs we are considering, a corrective to the privacy and exclusivity natural to the Song of Songs vocabulary. Not that John is trying to correct the Song! On the contrary, he is, again, glorying in the truth he perceives, that this intimate relationship with God is – simply is – supremely important for the world. ‘For the world’; yes, that is justified (in view, for instance, of Romances 111–125, 149–156). Nonetheless John’s phrase is, ‘for the Church’ – five times, in our CB 28.10–29.4 passage. So the Church is benefitted most by people who love purely: this ‘does more good to the Church, even though it seems to be achieving nothing.’ Love’s counterintuitive fruitfulness suggests a level which may not be perceptible, but at which in some way the Church connects. This is of a piece with the Romances, where the Church is the bride, comprising many, but constituted as one by their love of a single Spouse.25 In the Romances, the word ‘Church’ does not occur. However, prior to penning the anotación about the fruitfulness of pure love, John had already spoken in the first redaction of the togetherness of the Church (CA 35.3, repeated in CB 36.5). The passage is famous for its reiteration of ‘beauty,’ hermosura, 20 instances in nine lines of text to which Steven Payne referred to earlier. It is the lines that follow that are to our purpose here: This is the adoption of the children of God, who in all truth will say to God what, through Saint John, the Son himself said to the eternal Father […] ‘Father, all that is mine is yours, and yours mine’ – he, essentially, being Son by nature; us, by participation, being children of adoption. So he said this not just for himself, the head, but for all his mystical body, which is the Church.26

Perfect Love, Described  105 This is what John means by ‘the Church’ in CB 29.2. Pure love will be entering Christ’s work of salvation, serving his work of divinisation, fuel for humankind’s passage from selfishness into the freedom of the heart of the Father. To recap: ‘A little of this pure love is worth more to God and to the soul, and does more good to the Church, even though it seems to be achieving nothing, than all those other works put together.’ The longer quotation in which this statement occurs has shown us the intentionality with which John is writing – he really means it; and it has pointed up the true context, that of grace, of primordial divine love. But it also brings into focus the paradoxical nature of John’s statement. Here are some of the challenges:

• There is the fundamental contradiction between what seems to be the case

the world over, and what John is affirming. Our culture intent on quantifiable results stands athwart the proposal that an unnoticeable movement of the soul can change the world. How can pure love make such a difference, especially when it seems to achieve nothing? • There is a problem too with the ethos of these stanzas in Cántico. How can we relate to this ecstatically loving discourse, Song of Songs to boot, and not lose touch with the real world? • There is the accusation of quietism. What about the inactivity, the passivity? Do we have here a re-run of the trope about the superiority of contemplative life, a relic of Platonism, frankly distant from the Jesus of the Gospels? • And even if those questions were resolved, is not John’s offer so top-end – a quantum leap away – that it is irrelevant for common Christians like myself? There are several avenues one could pursue to take our study further. Openings might be found in the tradition history (not least that interpreting the Martha and Mary scene, or the Mary Magdalen legends)27; or in the experience of other mystics and the interpretation they give; or in systematic theories of human Christian growth, and John’s vision measured against them. What we want to do here is more internal to John’s writings. The author himself endorses such an internal hermeneutic. ‘The reader shouldn’t be surprised if it seems rather obscure. I can quite understand that. It will be, when she starts reading. But as she goes on, she’ll find herself understanding better what she read at first, because one thing will be shedding light on another’ (A: Prol: 8).28 One thing will explain another. The author says this of Subida-Noche, but it applies more widely. His writings, though distinct, are internally connected across a common project, the call to and gift of union in love with God. The fact is that John’s prose issues from his poetry, and that poetry shares a common ethos because deriving from a unified experience, the Beloved’s gift of self to John. It is therefore possible in principle to look

106  Iain Matthew for connections across the works, where ‘one thing will be shedding light on another.’ One such internal connection powerfully illuminates the ‘pure love’ text, and responds, at least in part, to the paradoxes we have encountered.29 That is to say, there is a striking parallel, in structure, vocabulary, and theological temperature, between CB 29.2, our pure love passage, and A: 2.7.11, the account of Jesus’ dereliction on the cross. The second book of Subida ostensibly concerns the person’s active journey in faith to union with God. Chapter 7 seeks to ground the proposal in the teaching and example of Jesus. Here is a translation of the Subida passage, and then the sections of the two passages where the correspondence is most striking: And since I have said that Christ is the way and that this way means dying to our natural self at the level of sense and of spirit, I want to show how Christ taught this by example, since he is our example and our light. First of all, it is certain that he died at the level of sense: spiritually in his life, and naturally in his death. For as he himself said, in his life, he had nowhere to lay his head; and at his death, he had less. Secondly, it is certain that when he came to die he was annihilated also in his soul, with no consolation or relief. The Father left him like that, in intimate dryness (according to the lower part),30 so that he had to cry out, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ (Mt 27.46). This was the greatest abandonment he had felt in his life. And in it he did the greatest work of his whole life, greater than he had done through miracles and deeds, on earth or in heaven; namely, he reconciled and united the human race by grace with God. And this, as I say, was at the time, the very moment, when this Lord was most annihilated in everything – in his reputation among men, since in seeing him dying, they mocked him instead of in any way esteeming him; in his nature, since his natural self was annihilated in dying; and in support and spiritual consolation from the Father, since at that time he withdrew his support so that he might pay the debt purely and might unite humankind with God, staying like that, annihilated and reduced as if to nothing. Hence David says of him: Ad nihilum redactus sum, et nescivi (Psalm 72.22; ‘I am brought to nothing, and I knew not’),so that the person truly seeking the spiritual path may understand the mystery, the door and the way of Christ, in order to be united with God; and that they might know that the more they be annihilated for God, according to both dimensions, sensory and spiritual, the more they are united with God and the greater the work they do. And when they come to remain in nothingness, which will be absolute humility, then is established the spiritual union between the soul and God,

Perfect Love, Described  107 which is the greatest and most sublime state which one could reach in this life. So it doesn’t consist in good times and gratification and spiritual feelings, but in an inner and outer, sensory and spiritual, living death on the cross. I don’t want to expand further on this, although I’d prefer never to stop speaking of it, because I can see that Christ is very little known by those who reckon themselves his friends. (A: 2.7. 9–12) On first viewing, this and the Cántico 29 text are poles apart: one presents the agonised death and spiritual dereliction of Jesus and draws extreme lessons from that for discipleship; the other is commenting on a lyrical love poem, and is witnessing the most intense, joyful mystical experience, in love received and returned. In short, one describes what I would most readily flee from; the other, what I wish I could have even a taste of in my life. Despite the acute difference between them, the chapter from Subida and the commentary in Cántico are yet connected in several ways. One connection is the common atmosphere signalled by the exclamation, ‘Oh.’ We saw John at such a pitch in CB 29, ‘Oh! how much one could write here about this!’31 The same intensity obtains in A 2.7: in the run-up to our passage, we read, ‘Oh, who could show the way to grasp and practise and savour what this counsel which our Saviour gives us here is really about’32; ‘Oh who could ever get across just how far our Lord wants this negation to go!.’33 In Cántico, the exclamation signals what turns out to be the conclusion of the anotación, as the author has to stop himself or he would never get on with his commentary: ‘How much one could write here about this! But this isn’t the place for it.’ A similar reining-in marks the conclusion of the Subida passage: ‘I don’t want to expand further on this, although I’d prefer never to stop speaking of it.’34 In both, John is in his element and nothing would be easier than to keep going forever! In terms of content, each text opposes a more sellable world-view: CB 29 opposes the view that ‘value’ should be measured by productivity and efficacy; A 2.7 opposes the view that the spiritual journey should deliver felt consolation. In both cases, the author is making a counterintuitive proposal.35 And there is an ultimacy in both texts, a paschal extremism. In CB 29, this is present in the loss-and-gain language of the poem, which the commentary will relate to Jesus’ invitation to lose one’s life so as to find it (CB 29.11). This same Gospel saying, Mt 16.25, is quoted in our 2 Subida 7 chapter, shortly before the paragraph we have quoted (see A: 2.7.6). Again, both texts ring with the ultimacy of the unum necessarium, described in Cántico 29 as ‘the practice of being continuously present to God in love’ (CB 29.1), and in Subida as refusal to be hostage to anything else: ‘this way of God’ consists, not in a busy mind and a symphony of emotions, but in ‘only one necessary thing, which is knowing how truly to say “no” to self.’ (A: 2.7.8).36

108  Iain Matthew These various connections surround and confirm the parallel at the heart of our two texts: … for a little of this pure love is worth more to God and to the soul, and does more good to the Church, even though it seems to be achieving nothing, than all those other works put together.

… porque es más precioso delante de Dios y del alma un poquito de este puro amor y más provecho hace a la Iglesia, aunque parece que no hace nada, que todas esas otras obras juntas.

‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ This was the greatest abandonment he had felt in his life. And in it he did the greatest work of his whole life, greater than he had done through miracles and deeds, in earth or in heaven; namely, he reconciled and united the human race by grace with God … staying like that, annihilated and reduced as if to nothing.

‘¡Dios mío, Dios mío! ¿por qué me has desamparado?’ Lo cual fue el mayor desamparo sensitivamente que había tenido en su vida. Y así, en él hizo la mayor obra que en [toda] su vida con milagros y obras había hecho, ni en la tierra ni en el cielo, que fue reconciliar y unir al género humano por gracia con Dios.

There are a number of parallels: (1) a relationship, between God and the person; (2) appears unpromising; (3) yet has great value; (4) value, that is, for the Church/the world; (5) though it seems to be worth nothing; (6) and yet is in fact worth more than all else. 1 to God and to the soul/my God … you … me [de Dios y del alma/Dios mío! … me has] 2 a little/abandonment [un poquito/desamparo] 3 worth more/the greatest work [más precioso/hizo la mayor obra] 4 to the Church/the human race [más provecho hace a la Iglesia,/al género humano] 5 achieving nothing/reduced as if to nothing [parece que no hace nada/resuelto así como en nada] 6 than all those other works put together/of his whole life, greater than he had done through miracles and deeds [que todas esas otras obras juntas/ que en [toda] su vida con milagros y obras había hecho].

Perfect Love, Described  109 It is not that John is making some kind of deliberate cross-reference here – as if, in writing the Cántico 29 anotación he expected his readers to interpret it in terms of what he had written in the Subida passage or vice versa. What the parallel between the two passages reveals, rather, is the kind of thing that happens at a certain spiritual temperature, a shared dynamic which obtains at a particular vital intensity. It is as if the different shafts reach a common cavern where, from their separate routes, they all communicate. If you go far enough, deep enough, you reach the hidden spring of what on the surface of life flows its varied ways. Accordingly, John knows an ultimate degree of vital intensity, where what seems ineffective and therefore valueless is in reality achieving more of value than all else in the world. At that level of vital intensity we find the most pure contemplative love, and we find the godforsaken Jesus. At that level of vital intensity, the two – pure love, Jesus – are the same. Our consideration of the ‘pure love’ text had led us into a series of paradoxes. We are now seeing how that text and John’s presentation of Jesus’ dereliction are internally connected, and to be interpreted one in the light of the other. This indeed speaks to those paradoxes. Firstly, the counterintuitive statement that little is great. In Cántico 29, John writes of a situation where what seems to be least significant – what is generally regarded as such – is in fact doing more good than all other enterprises or achievements. He considers that the value of such an experience needs to be defended, its centrality protected, because it is so counterintuitive, and because, conversely, so much is at stake for the world. He names this situation ‘pure love.’ Now, in Subida, we find that situation described: ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’: Jesus, his reputation destroyed, his body tortured to death, his inner self forsaken. A little pure love does the greatest good to the Church, even though it appears useless; the littleness of Jesus does more good – here, he ‘reconciled and united the human race by grace with God’ – even though it seems to be useless. Indeed, it is useless: what does dying pinned on wood, exhibited and disgraced, achieve? Yet, in his dereliction, Jesus ‘did the greatest work of his whole life, greater than he had done through miracles and deeds, in earth or in heaven.’ That is, ‘a little pure love does more good than all those other works put together.’ For this love, John says (CB 29.3), we were created. In this light, the dying Jesus’ love is the event of humanisation, the point at which humanity breaks out into full potential, finds their hope fulfilled. His loving self is the axis on which the world can be turned around. The ‘pure love’ of Cántico seems unrealisable, too top-end for the likes of me. Putting it alongside the Subida text, it becomes even more unrealisable for the likes of me. But that is not the point. The point which the conjunction of texts confirms is that the perfect love is realised by Jesus, and that it is his love that will save me. This ‘pure love’ is the Son’s love, the divine Son loving humanly in his abandoned soul and brutalised body.37 His love therefore divinises humankind; in John’s language, ‘unites’ humankind with God, effects ‘union of love with God.’ Though humanity’s crucifixion and rejection of

110  Iain Matthew God’s Son maps the empire of hate, stakes out the realm of non-love, where love should be and isn’t, Jesus’ pure love replenishes that vacuum or plenishes it for the first time. Where the all-loving God should be loved but was hated, there Jesus makes up the infinite shortfall, makes good the deficit of love, pays, one might say, the debt of love; ‘puramente pagase la deuda y uniese al hombre con Dios.’ What about the challenge of the ‘ecstatically loving discourse’ of the Cántico? The internal connection with Jesus’ dereliction sheds light here too. In short, love need not feel consoling. ‘What a wonderful life, what a blessed way to be, and how happy the person who reaches it, where now all is shot through with love and joy and the delight of bride and bridegroom! Here she can truly say to the divine Spouse those words which in pure love she says in the Song of Songs’ (CB 28.10). What greater consolation could there be than to be loved and to be able to love with one’s whole being, to love ‘purely,’ perfectly. The lyrical language of Cántico is necessary: here is ultimate joy and fulfilment. But if the Cántico text and the Subida text cover the same spot, then ‘good times and gratification and spiritual feelings’ are no sine qua non. On the contrary, pure love may typically be marked by ‘no consolation or any relief,’ ‘in intimate dryness,’ a sense of abandonment. Ultimate joy may consist in not reneguing on the Father, not saying ‘no’ to the Beloved. The other question we encountered was whether sanjuanist ‘pure love’ falls prey to quietism. Action, enterprise, generous initiative, sweat, and perseverance are part of the life of the Church. But the cross-reference between Cántico and Subida puts the immobilised Jesus at the centre of the drama. The Cántico text spoke of a hidden spring from which this activity must be nourished, a living water for which it must be a conduit: … the soul gives her answer to all those who are against this holy leisure of hers and want nothing but outwardly visible, eye-catching, work; oblivious to the root, the hidden conduit [vena] whence comes the water and produces all the fruit.38 A little pure love is more effective than all else put together because it accesses the hidden conduit, the vena, at the point where the water ‘is born,’ nace. The term vena is significant; it is not so common in John’s writings (12 occurrences).39 One of the Dichos de luz y amor (D 16) links it to divine love: ¡Oh dulcísimo amor de Dios mal conocido! El que halló sus venas descansó. ‘Oh sweetest love of God, so little known. Who finds its veins finds rest.’ What links this saying more closely to our passages is the emphasis that what is most valuable (God’s dulcísimo amor) goes unrecognised (‘so little known’). Similarly in CB 29.4, John contends with those who are ‘against’ or ‘oblivious to’ the vena oculta where pure love is born; and in A: 2.7.12, we have a Christ who is ‘very little known by those who reckon themselves his friends.’

Perfect Love, Described  111 ¡Oh dulcísimo amor de Dios! The superlative dulcísimo is also noteworthy. For all his negation, John cherishes a sweetness which he finds in, specifically, Jesus. Hence the prologue to Dichos looks to those who want to follow tu dulcísimo Hijo, nuestro Señor Jesucristo, God’s ‘most sweet Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and become like him.’40 So too Cántico concludes in prayer for those who invoke the name of the Bridegroom, identified as el dulcísimo Jesús.41 That sweetest love of God, so little known, of which the discovery brings rest, refers us therefore, in the sanjuanist lexicon, to the incarnate Son. Indeed, the mysteries of Christ, his incarnate, crucified, risen reality, are the culmination (so John declares in CB 37.4) of all spiritual, mystical experience in this life, ‘since all such blessings are lesser than the wisdom of these mysteries of Christ, since they are all a kind of disposition for reaching that.’42 And – we are told – Christ’s mysteries are worth reaching because they are like an inexhaustible mine with seam after seam of treasures: those who dig deep in this mine, ‘never will they come to an end’; on the contrary, ‘they keep finding new veins [nuevas venas] of new riches on every side.’43 To describe perfect love, one needs, says John, to attend to the hidden conduit, the vein, whence comes the living water which produces all fruit. There one finds oneself within the mysteries of Christ, within the heart of Christ – el pecho del Amado (CB 37.5). The veins which bring oxygen to the world are those bleeding from the cross. A person who waits there, at the mouth of the cavern in the rock, is doing the most useful thing for the world. That is so when the person feels nothing and has no sense of achievement, does not have any sense of God’s presence or of God’s favour. The figure of the disabled, abandoned, ineffective Jesus, describes perfect love. Notes 1 ‘O mon Jésus! je t’aime, j’aime l’Église ma Mère, je me souviens que: “Le plus petit mouvement de pur amour lui est plus utile que toutes les autres oeuvres réunies ensemble’”; ‘mais le pur amour est-il bien dans mon coeur? … Mes immenses désirs ne sont-ils pas un rêve, une folie?… Ah! s’il en est ainsi, Jésus, éclaire-moi, tu le sais, je cherche la vérité…’ (Thérèse de Lisieux 1992: 229, Ms B 4v, my translation). 2 Original Spanish texts of John are from San Juan de la Cruz: Obras Completas. Ed, José Vicente Rodríguez, Federico Ruiz Salvador, 2009. All translations into English are my own. 3 Que ya sólo en amar es mi ejercicio, ‘Dichosa vida, y dichoso estado, y dichosa el alma que a él llega, donde todo le es ya sustancia de amor y regalo y deleite de desposorio, en que de veras puede la esposa decir al divino Esposo aquellas palabras que de puro amor le dice en los Cantares, diciendo, Todas las manzanas nuevas y viejas guardé para ti (Cant. 7.13). Que es como si dijera: Amado mío, todo lo áspero y trabajosoquiero por ti, y todo lo suave y sabroso quiero para ti. Pero el acomodado sentido de este verso es decir que el alma, en este estado de desposorio espiritual, ordinariamente anda en unión de amor de Dios, que es común y ordinaria asistencia de voluntad amorosa en Dios. [29.1] Verdaderamente esta alma está perdida en todas las cosas, y sólo está ganada en amor, no empleando ya el espíritu en otra cosa. Por lo cual, aun a lo que es vida activa y otros ejercicios exteriores desfallece, por cumplir de veras con

112  Iain Matthew la una cosa sola que dijo el Esposo era necesario, y es: la asistencia y continuo ejercicio de amor en Dios. Lo cual él precia y estima en tanto, que, así como reprendió a Marta porque quería apartar a María de sus pies por ocuparla en otras cosas activas en servicio del Señor - entendiendo que ella se lo hacía todo y que María no hacía nada, pues se estaba holgando con el Señor, siendo ello muy al revés, pues no hay obra mejor ni más necessaria que el amor - así también en los Cantares defiende a la Esposa… [29.2] Donde es de notar que, en tanto que el alma no llega a este estado de unión de amor, le conviene ejercitar el amor así en la vida activa como en la contemplativa. Pero cuando ya llegase a él, no le es conveniente ocuparse en otras obras y ejercicios exteriores, que le puedan impedir un punto de aquella asistencia de amor en Dios, aunque sean de gran servicio de Dios, porque es más precioso delante de Dios y del alma un poquito de este puro amor y más provecho hace a la Iglesia, aunque parece que no hace nada, que todas esas otras obras juntas. Que por eso, María Magdalena, aunque con su predicación hacía gran provecho y le hiciera muy grande después, por el grande deseo que tenía de agradar a su Esposo y aprovechar a la Iglesia, se escondió en el desierto treinta años para entregarse de veras a este amor, pareciéndole que en todas maneras ganaría mucho más de esta manera, por lo mucho que aprovecha e importa a la Iglesia un poquito de este amor. [29.3] De donde, cuando alguna alma tuviese algo de este grado de solitario amor, grande agravio se le hacía a ella y a la Iglesia si, aunque fuese por poco espacio, la quisiesen ocupar en cosas exteriores o activas, aunque fuesen de mucho caudal. Porque, pues Dios conjura que no la recuerden de este amor, ¿quién se ateverá y quedará sin reprensión? Al fin, para este fin de amor fuimos criados. Adviertan pues aquí los que son muy activos, que piensan ceñir al mundo con sus predicaciones y obras exteriores, que mucho más provecho harían a la Iglesia y mucho más agradarían a Dios, dejado aparte el buen ejemplo que de sí darían, si gastasen siquiera la mitad de ese tiempo en estarse con Dios en oración, aunque no hubiesen llegado a tan alta como ésta. Cierto, entonces harían más y con menos trabajo con una obra que con mil, mereciéndolo su oración, y habiendo cobrado fuerzas espirituales en ella; porque de otra manera, todo es martillar y hacer poco más que nada, y a veces nada, y aun a veces daño. Porque Dios os libre que se comience a envanecer la sal que aunque más parezca que hace algo de fuera, en sustancia no será nada, cuando está cierto que las obras buenas no se pueden hacer sino en virtud de Dios. [29.4] ¡Oh cuánto se pudiera escribir aquí de esto! mas no es de este lugar. Esto he dicho para dar a entender esta otra canción; porque en ella el alma responde por sí a todas aquellas que impugnan este santo ocio del alma y quieren que todo sea obrar, que luzca e hincha el ojo de fuera; no entendiendo ellos la vena y raíz oculta de donde nace el agua y se hace todo fruto. Y así, dice la canción: Pues ya si en el ejido de hoy más no fuere vista ni hallada, diréis que me he perdido, que andando enamorada me hice perdidiza y fui ganada.’ 4 ‘¡Oh cuánto se pudiera escribir aquí de esto!’ (CB 29.4). 5 ‘…estos términos: ¡oh! y ¡cuán!, que significan encarecimiento afectuoso; los cuales, cada vez que se dicen, dan a entender del interior más de lo que se dice por la lengua.’(LF 1.2, see also 2.5). Quotes from Redaction B of the Living Flame. 6 ‘¡Oh almas criadas para estas grandezas y para ellas llamadas!, ¿qué hacéis?’ (CB 39:7).

Perfect Love, Described  113 7 CB 31.7: ‘… en la declaración de las cuatro canciones que comienzan ¡oh llama de amor viva! está dicho algo de ello.’ 8 On the redaction history of John’s works, see Pacho (1997: 571–611). We take the sanjuanist authorship of the second redaction as now established; see Thompson (1977) and Pacho (1988). The dating of Subida and Noche is less documented than that of Cántico. Pacho considers that Subida was effectively begun for the friars in Baeza or even El Calvario, although the major writing was done at Granada, and for a time concurrently with that of Cántico. The latter however got ahead in the final lap and was completed and given to Ana de Jesús, as the first of John’s major prose works. See also Segura (2018: 39–54), especially p. 45. 9 ‘Y así, estos actos de amor del alma son preciosísimos, y merece más en uno y vale más que cuanto había hecho toda su vida sin esta transformación, por más que ello fuese, etc.’ (LF 1.3; both redactions). 10 ‘En las [canciones] no hace otra cosa sino contar y cantar las grandezas de su Amado, las cuales conoce y goza en él por la dicha unión’ (CB 14.2, referring here to desposorio). 11 The ‘de mi Amado’ could refer either to the wine-cellar or to that of which the bride drinks. The ambiguity is masterfully intentional. 12 The full text reads, ‘Comunícase Dios en esta interior unión al alma con tantas veras de amor, que no hay afición de madre que con tanta ternura acaricie su hijo, ni amor de Hermano ni amistad de amigo que se le compare; porque aun llega a tanto la ternura y verdad de amor con que el inmenso Padre regala y engrandece a esta humilde y amorosa alma, ¡oh cosa maravillosa y digna de todo pavor y admiración!, que se sujeta a ella verdaderamente para la engrandecer, como si él fuese su siervo y ella fuese su señor. Y está tan solícito en la regalar, como si él fuese su esclavo y ella fuese su Dios. ¡Tan profunda es la humildad y dulzura de Dios! Porque él en esta comunicación de amor en alguna manera ejercita aquel servicio que dice él en el Evangelio que hará a sus escogidos en el cielo, es a saber, que ciñéndose, pasando de uno en otro, los servirá’ (CB 27.1; cf. Lk 12.37). 13 A phrase written at this point in John’s own hand in the margin of the Sanlucar manuscript, CA 37.1, ‘porque el fin de todo es el amor’ (Obras loc. cit. p. 990 n.1), does not appear in the second redaction equivalent (CB 38) but it does find a close echo in our CB 29 text: ‘Al fin, para este fin de amor fuimos criados’ (CB 29.3). 14 ‘No dice que la dará, sino que la mostrará cómo le ha de amar ella, porque, aunque es verdad que le da su amor, pero muy propriamente se dice que le muestra el amor, esto es, la muestra a amarle como él se ama; porque Dios, amándonos primero, nos muestra a amar pura y enteramente como él se ama; porque Dios, amándonos primero, nos muestra a amar pura y enteramente como él nos ama. Y porque en esta transformación muestra Dios al alma, comunicándosele, un total amor generoso y puro con que amorosísimamente se comunica él todo a ella, transformándola en sí - en lo cual la da su mismo amor, como decíamos, con que ella le ame - es propiamente mostrarla a amar, que es como ponerla el instrumento en las manos, y decirle él cómo lo ha de hacer, e irlo haciendo con ella; y así, aquí ama el alma a Dios cuanto de él es amada. […] De donde no sólo queda el alma enseñada a amar, mas aun hecha maestra de amar, con el mismo maestro unida, y, por el consiguiente, satisfecha; porque hasta venir a este amor no lo está. Lo cual es amar a Dios cumplidamente con el mismo amor que él se ama; pero esto no se puede perfectamente en esta vida, aunque en estado de perfección, que es el del matrimonio espiritual, de que vamos hablando, en alguna manera se puede.’ (CA 37.3) 15 Where the divine Other is the ‘principal lover,’ c.f. CB 31.2: ‘mayormente siendo Dios aquí el principal amante,’ John’s emphasis on love as negation makes sense: ‘When the person makes room - […] and that means having one’s will perfectly united with God’s, because to love is to work to divest and strip oneself for God of all that is not God - then is she lit up and transformed in God, and God so

114  Iain Matthew communicates God’s supernatural being to her that she appears as God himself.’ (‘En dando lugar el alma - que es quitar de sí todo velo y mancha de criatura, lo cual consiste en tener la voluntad perfectamente unida con la de Dios, porque el amar es obrar en despojarse y desnudarse por Dios de todo lo que no es Dios luego queda esclarecida y transformada en Dios, y le comunica Dios su ser sobrenatural de tal manera que parece el mismo Dios.’) (A: 2.5.7). God’s inpouring gift of self requests that one free up space to receive; and love’s effect, where the principal agent is the divine Other, will be divinisation as Steven Payne pointed out earlier. See LF (second redaction) 3.46; also CB 31.8: ‘if he in his great mercy did not look upon us and love us first, as St John says, and make himself lowly, […] our poor love could never take hold of him’; ‘si él por su gran misericordia, no nos mirara y amara primero, como dice San Juan, y se abajara, ningua presa hicera en él […] nuestro bajo amor.’ A mark of St Thérèse’s genius is the way that she personally arrives, at the end of Ms B, at this same resolution in her search for ‘la verité.’ 16 See CB 20.2; 24.8; 25.10; 26.3; 28.1; 32.2; and, referring to beatific vision, 38.5; 39.14 bis. 17 Love is ‘pure’ also in A: 1.5.7; 1.8.2; 2.24.8, ‘amor de Dios muy puro’; 27.5, ‘puro y entero amor’; DN: 1.13.10; CB: 2.2; 27.8; 28.10; D: 2; 20; E: 7. 18 See, for instance, CB 26.13, perhaps also 28.10, ‘aquellas palabras que de puro amor…’; LF 2.14 (redaction B); A: 1.4.1. 19 See A: 2.14.8: ‘la contemplación, que es la noticia general […] es a veces tan sutil y delicado, mayormente cuando ella es más pura y sencilla y perfecta y más espiritual e interior.’ See also, for instance, Dichos 2, ‘con amor puro y sencillo’; A: 1.4.1; 2.14.8; 2.15.4; 2.16.6,7; DN: 2.3.3, ‘pura y oscura contemplación’; DN: 2.5.5, ‘esta contemplación es muy clara y pura’; DN: 2.8.2, ‘luz […] sencilla y pura’; DN: 2. 8.5, ‘luz […] sencilla, pura y general’; DN: 2.9,3; CB 26.17; 39.2; see also LF 1.9 (redaction B). 20 Llama is equally uncompromising since the Beloved’s happiness is at stake: ‘Oh how important it is to draw apart and flee from business, and live with immense tranquility, so that even the slightest speck or noise will not ruffle or disturb the heart of the Beloved’ LF 4.15 (both redactions). 21 E: 5: ‘que se da el Señor estos días tanta priesa, que no nos damos vado.’ 22 CB 28.8: ‘todo se mueve por amor y en el amor, haciendo todo lo que hago con amor y padeciendo todo lo que padezco con sabor de amor.’ See also CB 27.8, the bee that gets honey from all flowers, even those that do not smell so sweet. 23 CB 36.4: ‘en el ejercicio de amar efectiva y actualmente, ahora interiormente con la voluntad en acto de afición, ahora exteriormente haciendo obras pertenecientes al servicio del Amado.’ 24 See our CB 28.10–29.4 quotation above: ‘the person’s normal condition in this state […] is union in God’s love, a steady, ongoing loving presence to God in the will,’ ‘ordinariamente anda en unión de amor de Dios, que es común y ordinaria asistenica de voluntad en Dios’ (CB 28.10); a presence to one who is personally present: ‘the practice of being continuously present to God in love,’ ‘la asistencia y continuo ejercicio de amor en Dios’ (CB 29.1); ‘that loving presence to God,’ ‘aquella asistencia de amor en Dios’ (29.2); which Mary of Bethany practises by ‘sitting there and enjoying being with the Lord,’ ‘se estaba holgando con el Señor,’ (29.1). The prayer which pure love enacts is an estarse con Dios, a ‘being with God’ (29.3). 25 Romances 121–124: ‘pero todos son un cuerpo / de la esposa que decía: / que el amor de un mismo Esposo / una esposa los hacía.’ 26 ‘Ésta es la adopción de los hijos de Dios, que de veras dirán a Dios lo que el mismo Hijo dijo por San Juan al eterno Padre […] Padre, todas mis cosas son tuyas, y tus cosas son mías (Jn 17.10). Él por esencia, por ser Hijo natural, nosotros por participación, por ser hijos adoptivos. Y así, lo dijo él no sólo por sí, que era la cabeza, sino por todo su cuerpo místico, que es la Iglesia’ (CA 35.3).

Perfect Love, Described  115 27 There is information in the critical edition by Eulogio Pacho, San Juan de la Cruz: Cántico Espiritual segunda redacción (CB) 1998, 326 n.2. Consulting the photographic copy of the Breviarium Carmelitarum 1575 edition, one is struck by the predominance of scriptural material for the feast of Mary Magadalen; the legendary material is exiguous. https://books.google.it/books?id=g-ww_9IQc_8 C&printsec=frontcover&dq=breviarium+carmelitarum+1575&hl=it&sa=X& ei=X8H2VP7xEKnlywOfwIHoBA&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=con sumens&f=false, last accessed 21.6.21. 28 ‘… no se maraville el lector si le pareciere algo oscura. Lo cual entiendo yo que será al principio que la comenzare a leer; mas, como pase adelante, irá entendiendo mejor lo primero, porque con lo uno se va declarando lo otro…’ (A: Prol: 8). 29 ‘… no se maraville el lector si le pareciere algo oscura. Lo cual entiendo yo que será al principio que la comenzare a leer; mas, como pase adelante, irá entendiendo mejor lo primero, porque con lo uno se va declarando lo otro…’ (A: Prol. 8). Other interconnecting texts which show John’s commitment to a ‘small-is-great’ paradigm include A: 3.27.5; 3.28.8; E: 23, ‘a una dirigida suya’ [date and address unknown]; A: 2.22.19. The first of these affirms that the value of good works derives not from their kind or quantity, but from ‘the love of God which she invests in them,’ ‘love pure and whole’; ‘sino en el amor de Dios que él lleva en ellas,’ ‘con más puro y entero amor de Dios.’ A: 2.22.19, on how spiritual directors should kindly guide people who present supernatural visions, reads: ‘Let them guide them in the way of faith […] helping them to grasp how one work or act of will done in charity is more precious to God than all the heavenly visions and communications possible, since these involve no merit or demerit; and how many people, who have none of these kind of things [supernatural visions etc.] are incomparably more advanced than others who have many!’ ‘Encamínenlas en la fe, […] dándoles a entender cómo es más preciosa delante de Dios una obra o acto de voluntad hecho en caridad que cuantas visiones y comunicaciones pueden tener del cielo, pues éstas ni son mérito ni demérito; y cómo muchas almas, no teniendo cosas de éstas, están sin comparación mucho más adelante que otras que tienen muchas.’ 30 The significance of this phrase según la parte inferior is rightly debated. It seems to attenuate the extent of Jesus’ abandonment, limiting it to the level of sense and emotion, but excluding it from the spiritual level. Von Balthasar suggests that the phrase is a later interpolation but there is no textual evidence to support him. Others would say that, simply, John does not see Jesus as a model or participant in the spiritual suffering which the night of spirit involves. But that goes against the very logic and the vocabulary of the paragraph. Moreover, there are other mystics who employ the phrase but clearly do not see it as attenuating the ultimacy of Jesus’ suffering (Henry Suso; Johannes Tauler). The solution is surely this: John uses the phrase, learned in his Thomistic studies at Salamanca, and included de rigueur, without fully integrating it into the dynamic of what he is saying. In fact, the phrase does something important. Even though John believed that Jesus suffered abandonment at the level of spirit, and so at a deeper level than Thomas wanted to affirm, yet for John as for Thomas the incarnate Son’s union with his Father was not broken. At the deepest level, their communion perdures – that is what turns godforsakeness into the place of salvation. (This is examined in Iain Matthew The Impact of God, 2010: 129–132, and in the unpublished DPhil thesis, ‘The knowledge and consciousness of Christ in the light of the writings of St John of the Cross,’ Oxford University 1991. For more on John’s relationship with Thomas, see Sam Hole’s chapter in Part 3.) 31 ‘¡Oh cuánto se pudiera escribir aquí de esto!’ (CB 29.4). 32 ‘¡Oh, quién pudiera aquí ahora dar a entender y a ejercitar y gustar qué cosa sea este consejo que nos da aquí nuestro Salvador’ (A: 2.7:5; referring to Mk 8.34–35).

116  Iain Matthew 33 ‘¡Oh, quién pudiese dar a entender hasta dónde quiere nuestro Señor que llegue esta negación!’ (A: 2.7.6). 34 ‘¡Oh cuánto se pudiera escribir aquí de esto! mas no es de este lugar’ (CB 29.4). ‘No me quiero alargar más en esto, aunque no quisiera acabar de hablar en ello’ (A: 2.7.12). 35 ‘… all those who are against this holy leisure of hers and want nothing but outwardly visible, eye-catching, work’ (CB 29.4); ‘Christ is very little known by those who reckon themselves his friends’ (A: 2.7.12). 36 ‘[E]ste camino de Dios no consiste en multiplicidad de consideraciones, ni modos, ni maneras, ni gustos - aunque esto, en su manera, sea necesario a los principiantes - sino en una cosa sola necesaria, que es saberse negar de veras…’A: 2.7.8; see Lk 10.42. Where the divine Other is the ‘principal lover’ (CB 31.2: ‘mayormente siendo Dios aquí el principal amante’) John’s emphasis on love as negation makes sense: ‘When the person makes room - which means taking away every veil, every creaturely stain from herself; and that means having one’s will perfectly united with God’s, because to love is to work to divest and strip oneself for God of all that is not God - then is she lit up and transformed in God, and God so communicates God’s supernatural being to her that she appears as God himself.’‘En dando lugar el alma - que es quitar de sí todo velo y mancha de criatura, lo cual consiste en tener la voluntad perfectamente unida con la de Dios, porque el amar es obrar en despojarse y desnudarse por Dios de todo lo que no es Dios - luego queda esclarecida y transformada en Dios, y le comunica Dios su ser sobrenatural de tal manera que parece el mismo Dios’ (A: 2.5.7). 37 The dogma of the incarnation is centrally placed in John’s writings: R: 4–9; A: 2.22; CB: 23; 37; ‘la unión hipostática de la naturaleza humana con el Verbo divino,’ CB 37.3; ‘este gran Dios nuestro, humillado y crucificado,’ E: 25, 6th July 1591. 38 ‘…el alma responde por sí a todas aquellas que impugnan este santo ocio del alma y quieren que todo sea obrar, que luzca e hincha el ojo de fuera; no entendiendo ellos la vena y raíz oculta de donde nace el agua y se hace todo fruto’ (CB 29.4). 39 A: 1.10.2; DN: 2.17.6; CB 14.17, 18 [bis]; 20.14; 26.5; 29.4 [our text]; 37.4; LF: 2.10; 3.8 (redaction B); D: 16. These include duplicates in CA and LF redaction A occurrences. 40 ‘… seguir a tu dulcísimo Hijo, nuestro Señor Jesucristo, y hacerse semejantes a él,’ D: Prol. 41 ‘…el dulcísimo Jesús, Esposo de las fieles almas’ CB 40.7; the first redaction equivalent CA 39.6 reads, ‘el Señor Jesús, Esposo dulcísimo.’ In Cántico, the bridegroom’s first gift to the bride in ‘the state of spiritual marriage’ (CB 22.2) is deeper knowledge of what he has done for her: the mysteries of the incarnation, which are, specifically, ‘dulces’ (CB 23.1). The bride’s voice too will be sweet to perfection when she sings in the caverns of the rock ‘that is, in the transformation in the mysteries of Christ of which we spoke,’ ‘esto es, en la transformación que dijimos de los misterios de Cristo,’ CB 39.3. 42 ‘… porque todas estas mercedes son más bajas que la sabiduría de los misterios de Cristo, porque todas son como disposiciones para venir a ella,’ CB 37.4. 43 ‘… hay mucho que ahondar en Cristo, porque es como una abundante mina con muchos senso de tesoros, que, por más que ahonden, nunca les hallan fin ni término, antes van en cada seno hallando nuevas venas de nuevas riquezas acá y allá,’ CB 37.4.

7

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey in the Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross Colin Thompson

Introduction Much has been written about the symbols of betrothal and marriage, the dark night and the flame in the major works of John of the Cross, and rightly so. But there are other significant symbols in his poetry which have received less attention. In this chapter, I propose that the symbol of the lovers’ gaze across the ‘Spiritual Canticle’ poem also represents the whole mystical journey, if we are properly sensitive to the flow of its language.1 My purpose, therefore, is to trace the gaze of the lovers as it develops across the poem, creating a dynamic symbol which gathers into itself absence, longing, presence and mutual love: in other words, one which embodies the whole shape of the relationship of the lovers, from the voice which cries out to lament the painful absence of the Beloved to the mysterious encounters of the last five stanzas. This gaze catches up into itself a series of related and dependent images: alongside seeing and being seen and looking at and being looked at there must also be included their antithesis, absence and hiddenness, with the suffering and death they cause; and the corresponding grace and beauty which sight bestows.2 This symbol is not, of course, exclusive to John; indeed, it has a significant literary and theological context which needs to be understood in order to appreciate his appropriation of it. The secular love poetry of the Golden Age often alludes to the gaze of the desired woman as responsible for the death of the would-be suitor, either as an erotic metaphor or as an image of his frustration. It has its counterpart in the popular religious poetry of the period, most obviously in the paradox of ‘muero porque no muero’, ‘I die because I do not die’, used by both John and Teresa in their verses in a popular idiom. In the Bible, which we know St John loved and which he constantly cites in his commentaries, this dangerous gaze comes not from a feminine protagonist but from God, because humans are not permitted to see God in this life and direct vision of him brings about death. The classic example is that of Moses, who asks God to reveal to him his glory and hides in the cleft of a rock waiting for an answer. God refuses: ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live’ (Exodus 33.20). Instead, he DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-10

118  Colin Thompson only grants Moses a partial, indirect vision: ‘thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen’ (33.23; Vulgate ‘Non poteris videre faciem meam; non enim videbit me homo, et vivet […] videbis posterior mea: faciem autem meam non poteris’).3 It is no accident that this is one of John’s favourite texts. He quotes it four times in the Ascent-Dark Night, four times in the Canticle and twice in the Living Flame. Despite this apparently absolute prohibition, the sacred text also offers a more nuanced perspective. In Isaiah 6.5, the prophet’s vision in the Temple leads him to cry out: ‘Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips […] for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’ (Vulgate: ‘Vae mihi, quia tacui, quia vir pollutes labiis ego sum[…] et regem Dominum exercituum video oculis meis’). Isaiah’s vision does not cause death; conversely, it marks the beginning of his vocation to prophecy. John alludes to this text just twice (A: 2.6.5, 2.16.3), but, as his ballads on the Prologue of St John’s Gospel make clear, it is the Incarnation, and specifically John 1.14, ‘We beheld his glory […] full of grace and truth’ (Vulgate. ‘Et vidimus gloria eius […] plenum gratiae et veritatis’), which has enabled humans to see God and live. The ending of the ‘Fountain’ poem provides an incarnational and Eucharistic version of the same theme, similarly inspired by the Gospel of John (4.14, 6.35): ‘Aquesta viva fuente que deseo/en este pan de vida yo la veo/aunque es de noche’, ‘This living fountain which I desire, I see in this bread of life, although by night’.4 Such vision in the darkness must necessarily be partial, whereas the intimacy of the lovers’ gaze in the concluding stanzas of the ‘Canticle’ will indicate something much closer to the unitive state. With these secular and biblical traditions in mind, I turn to the symbol of the gaze, which occurs in its most explicit yet puzzling form in the ‘ya bien puedes mirarme/después que me miraste’ (‘you may well look at me/after you looked at me’; CA: 24, CB: 33).5 What is the meaning of this double glance, one requested in consequence of another which has evidently already happened in the past? The only way to make sense of this is to track the development of the image across the poem. When we do, we discover that it forms part of a sequence of significant moments centred on looking in the relationship between the lovers. In what follows, I will, for convenience, distinguish the female protagonist (‘amada’) from the male (‘amado’), using the traditional terms lover and Beloved. But it should be noted that there is a grammatical equivalence between them in the Spanish since both are past participles of the verb ‘amar’, ‘to love’, and are differentiated only by gender: a female beloved and a male beloved. The problem with ‘lover’ and ‘Beloved’ is that they are active and passive grammatical forms and imply a distinction between one who loves and one who is loved, which the Spanish text does not. This needs to be remembered in a poem which will, in its later stages, signal an equality of loving between them. The poem begins with an anguished cry addressed to the absent Beloved in his unknown hiding-place. Though he cannot be seen, his presence in the past has left a mark, a cry of lament (‘gemido’) and a wound (‘habiéndo me

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  119 herido’), which have impelled the lover in her desperate search for him. She adopts three strategies to find him. The first comes in the second verse, when she asks shepherds to let her know if they have caught sight of him, and if they do, to tell him of her sufferings (‘adolezco, peno y muero’, ‘I suffer, grieve, and die’). From the start, therefore, the absence of the Beloved is associated with pain and death. But it is expressed through a surprising inversion of the biblical tradition, for in the poem, not to see the divine Beloved is to die. The movement of the opening verses also makes it clear that the lover is no passive victim, some latter-day Dido bewailing her abandonment by Aeneas. Her second strategy, despite the silence of the shepherds, is to take the initiative; she will set out undeterred, whatever obstacles may present themselves (CB: 3; ‘Buscando mis amores/iré’; ‘Searching for my love I shall go …’). Her third strategy, in stanza 4, rewrites a passage in the Confessions of St Augustine (x.6), in which the saint asks the elements of creation where he can find God. They reply that they are not God, but that it was God who made them and endowed them with beauty, a word which will become increasingly important as the ‘Canticle’ moves forward. In the poem, the lover asks the creatures if the Beloved has passed by the woods and meadows through which she is travelling, and they reply in the affirmative: ‘pasó por estos sotos con presura/, y, yéndolos mirando,/con sola su figura,/vestidos los dejó de hermosura’ (CB: 5; ‘he passed quickly through these thickets, and having looked at them, with his face alone left them clothed in beauty’).6 Here is the first sign of the presence and gaze of the Beloved. As we have noted, John has reversed the biblical paradigm, by making the hiddenness of the Beloved rather than the sight of him bring about the lover’s suffering and death. He has also changed the way relationships are envisaged in the secular love poetry of the period, in which the gaze of the beautiful woman the male subject admires causes pain, even death, by making the absence of the male Beloved bring about the female lover’s suffering. At the same time, he attributes the powerful gaze not to the feminine subject but to the divine Beloved and sees its consequence not as death but as the gift of beauty the Beloved has conferred on the natural creation. This association of ideas and images, this gaze which in its absence brings suffering and death and by its presence, however transitory, confers beauty, will reappear in the poem in a more developed form, as we shall see. It is in such subtle manipulations of theological and poetic traditions that we begin to become aware that the love celebrated in the ‘Canticle’ is of a different kind from that of its secular counterpart, something which can be deduced from careful attention to the poem’s use of language, without recourse to the subsequent commentary. This first gaze of the Beloved, however, leaves the lover unsatisfied, because it does not reveal his hiding-place and leads only to a partial, indirect knowledge of him. Her tone changes in the following stanzas (6–10). She rejects the help of all intermediaries, like the shepherds and the creation itself, ‘porque no saben decirme/lo que quiero’ (6; ‘because they cannot tell me what I want to know’), that is, where he is to be found.7 Instead she

120  Colin Thompson returns to direct address of the hidden Beloved, articulating her suffering at greater length, before concluding with the only answer which will satisfy her, in the form of a third-person imperative: ‘y véante mis ojos/pues eres lumbre dellos,/y sólo para ti quiero tenellos’ (10; ‘and let my eyes see you, for you are their light and fire, and I desire to have them only for you’). The theme continues in stanza 11, added to the second version of the poem (CB): ‘Descubre tu presencia,/y máteme tu vista y hermosura’, ‘Reveal your presence,/ and may the sight of you and your beauty kill me’, on the grounds that the sickness of love can only be cured ‘con la presencia y figura’, ‘by presence and in person’.8 These verses conclude the first part of the drama. We have learnt of the existence of a hidden Beloved and of a lover for whom nothing in creation, animate or inanimate, can substitute for his actual presence. She persists in calling out to him, as she has from the very beginning, her sense of loss and the suffering it engenders impelling her to keep searching and appealing to him, because he is the ‘lumbre’ of her own eyes. As the early seventeenthcentury dictionary of Covarrubias points out, this Spanish word ‘significa claridad; pero en romance el mismo fuego, no solo encuanto da luz, pero encuanto calienta, abrasa y consume’ (Covarrubias 1998: s.v. lumbre), ‘means brightness; but in the vernacular fire itself, not only in the sense that it gives light, but that it warms, burns and consumes’. Attentiveness to the vocabulary John uses shows that she desires not only to see her Beloved clearly, but also to experience the fire of his love, a theme central, of course, to the ‘Living Flame’ poem. Once again, this is quite different from the fire of passion which features so often in secular love poetry, usually as the result of the woman’s icy indifference. In the ‘Canticle’, it is the female lover who desires and the male lover who is silent. There is still no answer from him. The lover turns to address the ‘cristalina fuente’, ‘crystal fountain’, the habitual meeting-place of lovers in Renaissance pastoral poetry and prose: ‘si en esos tus semblantes plateados/ formases de repente/los ojos deseados/que tengo en mis entrañas dibujados’, ‘if you would but suddenly form in your silvered features the eyes I desire, of which I have the sketch in my inmost self’ (CB: 12). As Luce López-Baralt has pointed out in her fine study Asedios a lo Indecible (1998: 42), John is here inverting the ancient myth of Narcissus. The verse is complex and marks a significant development in the quest for the divine gaze. The metaphor comes from painting. The ‘dibujo’, ‘drawing’ or ‘sketch’ is the necessary first task of the painter before colour is added to complete the picture. Unlike Narcissus, it is not her own reflection she asks to see in the fountain, but rather the finished picture of the outline of the Beloved’s eyes which she carries deep within her.9 At the end of stanza 12, just as we await an answer to the plea of the previous stanza and the apostrophe to the fountain, a new stage of the lovers’ relationship begins. It is marked by an astonishing textual silence between stanzas 12 and 13, out of which everything which follows derives.

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  121 From it we must deduce (for we are never told) that the lover’s desire to see her beloved’s eyes reflected in the fountain has been granted. But the effect on her has been so powerful that she cannot bear for a moment longer the very thing she had longed to see, the vision of his eyes looking back at her. Her response to this vision, which takes place in the gap between the two stanzas, comes in a second imperative addressed to the Beloved. The first was for him to reveal his presence (‘Descubre tu presencia’), whereas this one is its antithesis: ‘Apártalos, Amado/que voy de vuelo!’, ‘Take them away, my love/for I am flying’. The insignificant enclitic pronoun ‘-los’ is the clue which unlocks the meaning: it refers back to his eyes, while the verse describes their ecstatic effect on her in terms of the Vulgate source text (Song of Songs 6.4). The consequence of seeing him in this way is, however, not death but an ecstatic taking wing. Her prayers have been answered, and with such force that we might say she has been swept off her feet. The Beloved now speaks his first words in the poem. He who had fled like a stag and wounded her (1; ‘como el ciervo huiste/habiéndome herido’, ‘you fled like the stag, having wounded me’) has himself now become the ‘ciervo vulnerado’, the wounded stag, no longer hidden, but present. Such interchangeability of images between the lovers is, I believe, the poetic equivalent to the ‘igualdad de amor’, ‘equality of loving’, which, as will become apparent, forms an important element of John’s teaching in the commentary (CB: 38.3). His unbearable gaze leads into her hymn to the Beloved’s beauty (14–15) and her command to wild beasts, cold winds and nymphs of Judea not to disturb the lovers in their garden paradise (16–18). The symbol of the gaze returns in the nineteenth stanza with the lover’s request for the Beloved to hide. Given that his hiddenness was the source of all her woes in the first line (¿Adónde te escondiste?’) we might reasonably ask why she now asks him to do something which had previously caused her so much pain. This movement, from a wholly negative hiddenness to one she now desires, marks the distance she has travelled, from a sense of utter abandonment to a desire to be hidden with him. This is underlined by her double request for him to look, ‘mirar’, first at the ‘montañas’, ‘mountains’, but then at ‘las compañas/de la que va pour ínsulas extrañas’, ‘the companies of she who goes by strange islands’. The logic of these images might suggest that she is asking him to look at himself, because both mountains and islands were used by her five verses earlier as attributes of the Beloved (‘Mi Amado, las montañas’, ‘las ínsulas extrañas’; 14). But a closer reading shows that the mountains are now associated with his silence about something we can only guess at (‘y no quieras decillo’, ‘and do not say it’), and the islands with her companions, with whom she travels, as if to say that her onwards progress is through him. The connections between these repeated images in the poetic world of the ‘Canticle’ are unlike anything found in the poetry of the period, and it is important to follow them through as the poem proceeds to begin to appreciate the meanings they convey.10

122  Colin Thompson The symbol of the mutual gaze recedes from the poem over the next eleven verses, but it reappears to dominate stanzas 31–33 and culminates in another, more paradoxical double gaze, one which has taken place in the past and may now be given in the present: ‘ya bien puedes mirarme/después que me miraste’, ‘well may you look upon me after you looked upon me’ (33). These were the lines that first prompted this investigation, as I mulled over what these apparently prosaic lines might mean. In 31, the tense suddenly switches from the future of the previous verse into a series of four preterites addressed to the Beloved, of which ‘miraste’, ‘you looked’, is the third. In 32 they change again, this time to imperfects: ‘Cuando tú me mirabas’, ‘When you were looking at me’, and ‘lo que entivían’, ‘what [my eyes] were seeing in you’. In 33, they return to both present and preterite, ‘puedes mirarme’, ‘you may look upon me’, and ‘me miraste’, ‘you looked upon me’. Is this repetition of verbs of looking and seeing a failure of poetic inspiration?11 I do not think so. First, this rhetorical figure (polyptoton) demarcates precisely the different stages of the relationship between the lovers. She reminds him of how he had contemplated (‘consideraste’) a strand of hair moving across her neck and been captivated by it, which led to his being wounded by one of her eyes: ‘en uno de mis ojos te llagaste’, ‘you were wounded by one of my eyes’. The imagery here closely follows Song 4.9, ‘Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa; en uno oculorum tuorum vulnerasti cor meum, et in uno crinecolli tui’, ‘Thou has wounded me, my sister, my bride; thou hast wounded my heart in one of thine eyes and in one strand of hair upon thy neck’. Once more we encounter that close relationship between the seeing eye and the wound of love, and once more it is expressed in a language which reveals mutuality: it is she who had been wounded by his absence at the start, and now it is he who has been wounded by her eye. Her eyes were then sightless without him; now, one of those same eyes, which had previously longed to see him, has wounded him.12 This is the first explicit look the Beloved is said to have conferred on the lover in the poem and it does not lack mystery: I say explicit because the poem has only hinted at previous ones, in the silence between stanzas 12 and 13 and in the imperatives of stanza 19. We have moved from the double imperative in the present tense of that verse, ‘mira’, ‘mas mira’, ‘look’, ‘but look’, which has no specific answer, to the preterites of 31, ‘consideraste’, ‘miraste’, ‘you considered’, ‘you looked’, which imply that the request was definitively answered at some point in the intervening stanzas (20–30). It is the sequence of tenses in these three verses which matters. In stanza 31 the four verbs are all in the preterite, indicating a completed action in the past, a moment when the Beloved looked upon the lover and fell in love with her: ‘consideraste’, ‘mirástele’, ‘quedaste’, ‘llagaste’. In the following stanza, all five shift into the imperfect tense, referring to a process which was taking place at that time: ‘mirabas’, ‘imprimían’, ‘adamabas’, ‘merecían’, ‘vían’. During that time, the gaze of the Beloved imprinted its grace upon her, and for that reason her own eyes, she says, were worthy of adoring what they

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  123 saw in him. The gaze has become mutual, from him to her, and back from her to him. The choice of the verb ‘merecer’, ‘to merit’, is an interesting one, given how controversial the notion of merit had become during the Reformation. Stanza 33 completes this dense linguistic pattern. The verbs are present or preterite, indicating a reality which connects the two times: ‘no quieras’, ‘hallaste’, ‘puedes mirarme’, ‘miraste’, ‘dejaste’. The verbal contrast between a mutual gaze which is now possible but earlier had not been is significant. She was once not worthy of his gaze but from the moment he looked upon her she is, because that gaze bestowed his grace and beauty on her, and this is what he sees when he looks upon her. John’s argument suggests that the soul has no inherent merit of her own, but acquires it from the Beloved’s gaze, which enables her to adore him as she should. The role of the eyes as the windows of the soul in Petrarchan love poetry is well known. Garcilaso’s eighth sonnet, for example, begins ‘De aquella vista pura y excelente/salen espírtus vivos y encendidos’, ‘There come forth from that pure and excellent gaze living and fiery spirits’ (de la Vega 1995: 22). At its most neo-Platonic, such poetry adds a more spiritual element to the amorous gaze, as the lover imagines a soul-to-soul relationship which elevates it beyond a purely physical attraction. But the gaze of the Beloved in the Cántico is of a different order, because of the ontological disproportion between a divine Beloved and the human lover. John will develop this at some length in the commentary, but the poem implies it. It is not within the lover’s power to bridge that gap, however hard she tries. It can only be overcome when the loving gaze of the Beloved creates a new reality in her. The saint is echoing the Prologue to the Gospel of St John, which he himself versified in his nine ballads on the Trinity. In the third of these, the Father speaks: Una esposa que te ame mi Hijo, darte quería que por tu valor merezca tener nuestra compañía y comer pan a una mesa del mismo que yo comía porque conozca los bienes que en tal hijo yo tenía, y se congracie conmigo de tu gracia y lozanía. (Romance 3, ll. 1–10) My Son, I wish to give you a bride who will love you, and who through your valour will deserve our company and eat bread at the same table

124  Colin Thompson from which I eat, so that she will know the good things I have in such a Son, and share with me the grace of your grace and beauty. The repetition of grace in two forms, ‘congracie’, ‘gracia’ (the rhetorical figure of polyptoton again) is not simply a stylistic device. The grace of the Beloved bestowed upon the Bride makes it possible for her to share with the Father the grace and beauty (‘lozanía’) of the Son.13 The prologue to the Gospel of John tells us of the Incarnation that ‘vidimus gloriameius, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis’ (Jn 1.14; ‘We have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’). Grace and truth in the Gospel become ‘gracia y hermosura’ here, as they do in the ‘Canticle’, but the equivalence of truth with beauty and beauty with truth is an ancient one, long preceding Keats’s famous lines in his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. All this is very much in line with John’s theology, in which the initiative which brings about union must come from the divine side, since, as one of his fundamental principles sets out, ‘ninguna criatura […] le puede servir [al alma] de próximo medio para la divina unión con Dios’ (A: 2.8: ‘no creature can serve [the soul] as a proximate means of divine union with God’). We find in embryo in this ballad and in a more developed form in the ‘Canticle’ the doctrinal substratum which supports the mystical theology of the saint, according to which everything other than God belongs to the category of ‘creature’, the human soul as much as the woods and meadows which the lover questions early in the poem and which testify to the swift and beautiful passage of the Beloved through them. At that initial stage of the lover’s quest the Beloved’s gaze revealed only the traces of a presence which has moved on: the swift passage of the Beloved as he looked upon creation endowed it with ‘mil gracias’ and ‘hermosura’, ‘countless graces’ and ‘beauty’. At the end of stanza 33 grace and beauty reappear, but as attributes of the lover, given to her at some unspecified time by the Beloved. The poetic text itself, without any need of commentary, has charted a movement of the divine gaze, from its indirect reflection in the created order to its action in bestowing these same qualities upon the lover herself. I am not saying, of course, that the commentary is redundant. It offers a more considered and full account of the mystical journey of the soul. But I do want to insist that attentiveness to the language of the poem reveals its shape and enables us to make perfect sense of the puzzling request the lover makes to the Beloved to look at her after he looked at her. When he looked upon her, his eyes imprinted grace in her (32), so that he may well look on her after this, because ‘gracia y hermosura en mí dejaste’, ‘you left grace and beauty in me’. The wound received by the Beloved in stanza 31 provides a similar example of the evolution and transformation of the fundamental imagery of

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  125 the poem. We have already noted how the lover’s wound at the beginning is caused by the absence of the Beloved, and how the Beloved who fled like a stag in the first stanza, reappears as ‘el ciervo vulnerado’, ‘the wounded stag’ (13). Now, in stanza 31, we learn that at some unstated point in the past, he was wounded by one of her eyes (‘en uno de mis ojos te llagaste’). She had longed to see his eyes reflected in the crystalline fountain (12), yet could not bear the sight. Now the reverse is true: it is her eyes which have caused him to suffer and fall in love with her. These images, repeated across the poem – eyes, look, grace, beauty, wound – form one of its most meaningful symbolic clusters. Read together, they act as a hermeneutical clue which illuminates the lovers’ relationship, from separation to mutuality of love, possible only because, as St John tells us in A: 1.4.3, it is only love which can create a likeness between creature and Creator. The Beloved loves the lover because his gaze has imprinted his grace on her, as she confesses (CB: 32): ‘por eso me adamabas,/y en eso merecían/los míos [ojos] adorar lo que en ti vían’ ‘for that reason you loved me greatly,/ and for that reason/my eyes deserved to adore what they saw in you’. According to Covarrubias, the verb ‘adamar’, already archaic by the early seventeenth century, is one used by old ballads (Covarrubias 1998: s.v. amores) but it is also an intensifier, as John explains in the commentary: ‘Adamar es amar mucho; es más que amar simplemente; es como amar duplicadamente, esto es, por dos títulos o causas’ (CB: 32.5; ‘Adamar is to love greatly; it is more than simply loving; it is like loving twice over, that is, for two reasons or causes’). The lover loves the Beloved greatly because when he gazes on her after the bestowal of his grace, he no longer sees the sinful creature, but the soul fully possessed of divine love. The Beloved’s gaze first beautifies the created order, then provokes a flight of ecstasy in the lover, and finally bestows the grace on her without which their mutuality of loving is impossible. When the Beloved contemplates the lover after endowing her with his grace and beauty, he does not, as in the myth of Narcissus, fall in love with himself, but with the lover transformed in him. That is how we begin to glimpse in the poetic text, with its play of exchanged glances, what in his commentary John will call ‘igualdad de amor’, that ‘equality of loving’ between them, alone able to overcome the otherwise unbridgeable gulf which separates creature from Creator. ‘Ya bien puedes mirarme/después que me miraste’ (CB: 33, ‘Now truly you can look at me/since you have looked at me’): here is the barest yet most complete expression of the theological substratum of the double gaze, double in that it took place in the past yet is a present reality. John’s poetry contains many images familiar to readers of the secular love poetry of the age, and others, mostly inspired by the Song of Songs, which are not. But it is also characterized by linguistic expressions like this which are unusual for the poetry of his time, and which call for explanation. The relationship between these enigmatic glances cannot properly be understood unless we pay attention to the way in which he has carefully delineated their different

126  Colin Thompson stages: his hiddenness and absence; his gaze which endows creation with grace and beauty; her desire to see him; the sudden revelation of his eyes which she cannot bear; her request for him to hide, and to look upon those who accompany her as she journeys on. Now, in stanzas 31–33, these earlier moments reach their resolution. In stanza 31, the first glance from the Beloved, wounded and imprisoned by the sight of a strand of her hair, establishes the theme of mutuality of loving, because for the first time we discover that he has been wounded by love for her just as she had been for him. In 32, his gaze imprints his grace on her and enables her eyes to adore what they see in him. But before the sequence can be completed, a dark shadow threatens, as she takes up another passage from the Song (1.4–5) to reveal her fears (CB: 33): ‘No quieras despreciarme;/que si color moreno en mí hallaste’ (‘Do not despise me, for if you found a dark color in me’), as if that were an obstacle in their progress to union. The link between this ‘dark color’ and beauty is a prominent theme of the first chapter of the Song, when the Bride announces that she is ‘dark but comely’ (1.4) and asks the Bridegroom not to reject her because the sun had burnt her skin (1.5). But a few verses later, the shadow must have passed, because the Bridegroom twice praises the beauty of the Bride (Song of Songs 1.14, 15) and she his (1.15). John fuses these three elements into one in stanza CB: 33: the Bride’s fear that her sunburnt skin will make him reject her, the gaze of the Bridegroom, and the beauty of both.14 In his commentary, unsurprisingly, John interprets this ‘dark color’ as the sins and imperfections of the soul’s natural state. But the conditional ‘si’ and the preterite ‘hallastes’, ‘if once you found’, indicate that just as in the previous two stanzas, this relates to a time in the past when there was still an inequality in love between the protagonists, he the uncreated sum of all perfections, she a creature and an imperfect sinner. Remembering this earlier state can no longer affect the relationship between the two because, as she makes clear, he beholds her now not as the sinful creature she was but as one who has been clothed by his gaze in his grace and beauty. The reappearance of beauty as an essential quality of the gaze of the Beloved completes the series of associations begun in stanza 5, when he bestowed ‘mil gracias’, ‘countless graces’, on creation and left it dressed in beauty, as a witness to a powerful but fleeting presence which only served to increase the lover’s suffering. When she asked him to reveal his presence in stanza 11, it was to see his beauty: ‘Y máteme tu vista y hermosura’, ‘Let the sight of you and your beauty kill me’. And although after the ecstatic experience of stanza 13, when that request was fulfilled, she sings of his beauty in lines unequalled in Spanish poetry, it is only after 20 more stanzas in version B (and almost as many in A) that his beauty as well as his sight and his grace become hers. These three stanzas (31–33) contain the densest network of allusions to the mutual gaze of the love and to the grace and beauty they share, but

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  127 they are not quite the last word. After two stanzas (34–35) in which the Beloved speaks of the lover in terms of the ‘palomica’ (‘dove’) of Noah and the ‘tortolica’ (‘turtle-dove’) of popular balladry, the theme reappears in the words of the lover: ‘Gocémonos, Amado,/y vámonos a ver en tu hermosura/ al monte y al collado,/do mana el agua pura;/entremos más adentro en la espesura’ (36; ‘let us rejoice, Beloved, and let us go to see in your beauty/the mountain and the hillside/where pure water springs;/let us go deeper into the wooded slopes’). The use of the three first-person plural imperatives ‘Gocémonos’, ‘vámonos’ and ‘entremos’ indicates that the lovers are now journeying together, as the mutuality of loving expressed in the double gaze of 33 has become a lived experience. The verb tenses have changed, too: a past marked by absence, lament, fear and questioning has given way to a shared present and future which offers a fresh vision of creation itself. It is no longer the landscape in which the lover searches vainly for the Beloved and finds only passing signs of his presence in its beauty, nor even the ‘otero’, ‘hill’ where the Beloved appeared as a wounded stag, nor yet the mountains she evokes as an image of his beauty. Yet, paradoxically, it is a landscape which consists of those same elements, wooded hills and flowing waters, albeit expressed through near synonyms (‘montes’, ‘riberas’ and ‘sotos’ in 3 and 5; ‘monte’, ‘collado’, ‘aguapura’ and ‘espesura’ in 36). This is creation as contemplated through his beauty, ‘en tu hermosura’; just as he has conferred his beauty on her, so now together they see creation as he sees it, in its divine expression. Although John makes no mention of it in his commentary, I believe he is here suggesting what he makes explicit in the commentary on the fourth verse of the ‘Llama’ poem, which sets out the essential difference between knowing God through the creatures, indirectly, and knowing the beauty and grace of creation through God, which is only possible for the soul in union with him (LF: 4.5). John creates the poetic world of the ‘Canticle’ with great care, most of all, perhaps, in the way the same images reappear in new combinations to mark the different stages of the soul’s progress. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the way the image of hiddenness develops from a negative to a positive one. The poem begins with a Beloved inaccessible to the grieving lover, who is ignorant of his whereabouts. When the lover exclaims ‘Escóndete, Carillo’ (‘Hide, my dearest’) in stanza 19 it is already clear that the hiding-place of the Beloved has evolved from being a cause of pain to something desirable. Finally, in stanza 37, as she looks forward to being with him in ‘las cavernas de la piedra’ which are ‘bien escondidas’ (‘the caverns of stone’, ‘well hidden’), hiddenness has become the sign of an idyllic place where the lovers can be alone and enjoy each other’s company in safety and secrecy. These three images of hiddenness, distinguished from each other in the poem, mark the journey of the lover from absence to presence, from painful separation to union with the Beloved. At this point the power of language fails, as the poem itself struggles to articulate what it is that will happen in such a place. The Beloved will show her something, but she cannot say what that is, ‘aquello

128  Colin Thompson que mi alma pretendía’ or ‘aquello que me diste el otro día’, ‘what my soul was seeking’, ‘what you gave me on that day’ (CB: 38). The commentary will interpret this in terms of ‘igualdad de amor’, ‘equality of love’, a fundamental part of St John’s mystical theology. But I hope I have been able to show how the poem, through its developing imagery, witnesses to the same idea, once we read it with that loving attention St John advises in his spiritual teaching. We have almost reached the end. But the final act remains, the last, mysterious verse of a poem full of mysteries: ‘Que nadie lo miraba …/Aminadab tampoco parecía’ (‘For no one was looking, nor did Aminadab appear’); and ‘[.] la caballería/a vista de las aguas descendía’ (CB: 40; ‘the cavalry/ descended at the sight of the waters’). The puzzle is threefold. First, there is an act of not looking at ‘lo’, ‘it’, but the object of this absent gaze is unclear: the ‘lo’, ‘it’, of the Spanish might refer back to the two ‘aquellos’ of stanza 38 or to the lyrical images of stanza 39. Second, a Hebrew name appears for the first and only time at the very end of the poem, only for the reader to be told that he is not there. How does this look which is not a look and this presence of a person who is not there relate to the symbol of the gaze? Third, what is this troop of horsemen who see the waters and descend to them which brings the poem to its close? The commentary interprets Aminadab as the devil. But we hardly need it to know that his must be a disturbing presence, because he is absent. Likewise, the fact that no one is looking indicates the absence of any external threat which might endanger the lovers’ exchanges, like the nymphs of Judaea or the mountains and valleys and sirens’ song and lyres earlier in the poem (CB: 18, 20) which each asks not to disturb the lover as she rests. The poem provides the relevant clues. First, the ‘Canticle’ begins and ends with absence, but of a quite different order, the first a separation which causes pain and grief, the last a sign that the lovers can at last enjoy one another’s company in absolute peace and security. Second, in the Song of Songs the Bride’s soul is dismayed ‘propter quadrigas Aminadab’ (6.11; ‘because of the chariots of Aminadab’). His association with chariots of war helps to explain the presence of the ‘caballería’, a word with military associations in Spanish (see Covarrubias 1998, s.v. cavallero), but now detached from him and no longer posing a threat. Third, the ‘aguas’ of the last line are one of the elements the Bride looked forward to when she is with the Beloved ‘do mana el agua pura’, ‘where the pure water springs’ (36). In other words, whatever else it does, this mysterious ending engages with images present in earlier parts of the poem, as it does with the biblical book which inspired so many of them. The poem makes it abundantly clear that the hiding-place of the Beloved is intimately connected to his gaze, from the anguished plea of the lover to the shepherds to tell her if they see him (1), to her desire to see him with her own eyes (10–11), until the gaze which becomes his own self-bestowal (31–33), past and present, and a future which brings with it a renewed vision of the created order (36). This gaze is also associated with grace and beauty, from its outpouring on creation (5), to her desire to see his beauty and die (11),

The Lovers’ Gaze as a Symbol of the Mystical Journey  129 and then to grace and beauty he bestows on her (33) and the beauty they will both see as they contemplate creation from their secret place of mutual love. If I have chosen to emphasize the connections between the different moments of the poem it is because taken together, they form a meaningful conjunction, through imagery carefully structured by John with its own poetic logic. The hiding-place, the wound, the gaze, the grace and beauty, form a family of images which, far from being developed in a haphazard fashion contain in microcosm the fundamental elements of the story, from abandonment and desperate searching to the fruition of love. In the poetic imagination of this humble friar the astonishing world of the ‘Canticle’ becomes an extraordinary literary achievement, the profundity and depth of which, after so many years and books and articles, my own included, we are yet to exhaust.

Notes 1 In order to distinguish poem from commentary, the title of the former is given in this chapter between inverted commas, the latter in italics. 2 This chapter is a revised English version of that found in Thompson (2017). 3 All biblical quotations in English are from the Authorized Version (King James Bible). The Latin texts come from Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, the version that John would have been familiar with. 4 Quotations from St John’s works are from Obras completas 2002; English translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. 5 Both poem and commentary exist in two redactions, abbreviated as throughout the book as CA and CB. The order of verses is significantly altered in the second redaction. 6 For ‘figura’ as ‘face’, see Covarrubias (1998: s.v. figura). 7 See the commentary at CA/CB: 6.6 for an exposition of the limitations of this indirect knowledge. 8 I will not enter here into the arguments about the authenticity of this stanza, which have been exhaustively covered by many critics. 9 A secular parallel to this image is found in a very different and later masterpiece of Golden Age poetry, Góngora’s Fábula de Acis y Galatea, when the nymph Galatea first chances upon the sleeping form of Acis, ‘viendo/ colorido el bosque jo que ya había/ en su imaginación Cupido hecho/ con el pincel que le clavó el pecho’ (lines 269–272; ‘seeing the sketch which Cupid had already made in her imagination coloured in with the brush which pierced her breast’) (de Góngora 2000: 260). 10 The same may be said of the Beloved’s ‘haz’, ‘face’, with which he is asked to look at the mountains. It is a near synonym of the ‘figura’ the lover longs to see at the end of stanza 11 and which she evidently can see now. 11 Polyptoton, the repetition of the same word in different grammatical forms, is more common in Spanish than in English Renaissance poetry; see, for example, Garcilaso de la Vega’s first sonnet, with its repeated play on ‘acabar’, ‘to finish’ (de la Vega 1995: 12). 12 While in the Vulgate these words are spoken by the Beloved to the Bride, in the poem, they are transferred to her, an example of the freedom San Juan characteristically takes in adapting the biblical text for his own ends, and indicative of a mutuality of loving, since she is here depicted as speaking the same words in the poem as he does in the Song.

130  Colin Thompson 13 I do not believe that John is using ‘congraciarse’ in the sense that Covarrubias gives it (Covarrubias 1998: s.v.congraciarse), which is closer to the English ‘ingratiate’. It appears to have the more theological sense of ‘share grace with’, more in line with its etymology. 14 Pale or white skin was a sign of someone belonging to the leisured classes of society; skin burnt by the sun indicated someone who had to work outdoors and who was therefore of low social status.

8

The Unfathomed Embrace The Language of Abyss in John of the Cross Tessa Holland

Introduction John of the Cross, as a master of the apophatic, is known especially for his language of ‘dark night’. Over the last 30 years or more, a significant amount of attention has been given in scholarship to this dominant metaphor. There is good reason, for John’s eloquent apophatic language brings to life both the difficulties and the beauty of the path to spiritual union. This evocative metaphor, despite sometimes being misused, continues to be relevant in the personal and societal dark nights of contemporary life and experience, a subject we will return to later in this book. At the same time, a close reading of the text, focusing on the language of abyss, reveals that there is more to the apophasis of John of the Cross than solely dark night language. This is not to undermine or reject the night metaphor but to demonstrate that the language of abyss adds to our understanding of John’s apophasis and, in this particular instance, of his expression of the dynamic of divine and human desire. An initial challenge is that if one considers the number of times the Spanish terms for abyss appear in the primary text, it would appear not to be a major theme. Neither is there much commentary in secondary sources, which suggests that ‘abyss’ in John has yet to be considered a theme worthy of attention.1 The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of where and how abyss language is present, looking in brief at the poems Dark Night and The Spiritual Canticle and, in more detail, at The Living Flame of Love, along with the relevant prose works and commentaries. In so doing, it will be demonstrated that whilst the language may at times be subtle, the metaphor is a significant one through which the mechanics of human desire are subverted.2 Approaching the Text The initial analysis of the Spanish text for the noun and adjective forms of the term ‘abyss’ (abismo and abisal) has revealed that there are no explicit references for these terms in the major poems.3 Turning to the prose works and commentaries, overall there are six references where the adjective abisal DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-11

132  Tessa Holland appears.4 Of these, four occur in The Spiritual Canticle commentary and two in The Living Flame of Love commentary.5 There are a further 14 references overall to the noun abismo as in ‘abyss’. Seven occur in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, two in The Dark Night, two in The Spiritual Canticle commentary and three in The Living Flame of Love commentary.6 Twenty references in all for both terms, which is not many compared to over 200 references to night (noche) (de San José 1980). Something Lost However, to attend only to these explicit references is potentially to give a false reading of abyss language in John: something has been lost through the processes of editing and translation. In The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the Spanish BAC edition records an extra phrase in parentheses, ‘y abisal deleite’, which literally translated is ‘and abyssal delight’.7 No further comment is made. In the English translation by Allison Peers from Silverio, the same phrase in brackets appears in the text with a footnote, which says that the omission is possibly a copyist’s mistake. The Saint certainly wrote abisal, a word that had passed out of use when the editio princeps was made, in 1616.8 If, as it would seem, the term became redundant by the early 17th century, this makes the presence of explicit abyss language in John more difficult to assess. This is compounded when one considers the English translation by Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, where the phrase has been omitted. Therefore, in order to identify key elements of abyss, other terms such as profundo (deep) and vacío (empty) have been considered which help demonstrate the presence of abyss language in the text. In addition to the identification of references to abyss and associated terms, I have adopted a contemplative methodology to accommodate the times where the subject matter and John’s language become more intense. In doing so, my reading treats the text as distinct from the author and recognises the interaction between the text and the reader. The Text as Distinct from the Author John’s writing, as a work of art, may be considered to be an artefact which is distinct from the author and his experience. From their very inception and throughout the last four centuries, his writings have undergone a process of revision, transmission and interpretation. Written in the vernacular, his poetry is not only to be considered as a private, intellectual discourse, but primarily as a passionate form of expression in the context of community. In comparison, the commentaries are at times quieter, to be read alone or in community, John does not say. In both cases, this is text to be meditated upon and inhabited.

The Unfathomed Embrace 133 My approach is that John’s discourse of desire is multi-faceted, polyphonic and apophatic in its performance, thereby enabling transformation, not only in the soul of the mystical discourse, but potentially in the reader. Poetry is an oral art form, designed to be spoken and heard, as well as seen and read. Writing requires a body and physical resonance plays a part here. The whole person is included. The writing of a poem is a physical act, a deed that elbows into its space and time in the day or the night … Poets are voices upon time. What makes poetry so giddyingly different from other forms is how naturally and plainly its reader can inhabit that voice. (Maxwell 2012: 13–14) The Text-Reader Dynamic This reading also pays attention not only to what is said, or not said, but how it is said. As well as objectively looking, searching and analysing, it considers the linguistic and mystical strategies within the text and recognises the dynamic between the reader and the text. In his theory of aesthetic response, Wolfgang Iser suggests that interpretation and the creation of meaning happen in the process of reading, in the direct interaction between reader and the text. That is when the text begins to unfold its potential; it is in the reader that the text comes to life … As the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text and relates the different views and patterns to one another, he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too. (Iser 1978: 19, 21) Thus, to begin to ‘unfold the potential’ of the language of abyss, we turn now to a brief overview of the poem One Dark Night, together with its accompanying prose works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. One Dark Night (Una Noche Oscura) One Dark Night is a poem of eight stanzas, considered to have been composed between 1578 and 1579. It is a song of the soul about the journey of spiritual negation through a dark night to find her beloved. The soul speaks in the past tense, of a journey done, her search completed successfully, ending in the intimate embrace between the soul and God. The themes of night, hiddenness, darkness, secrecy, solitude, woundedness, suspension and forgetfulness run through the poem. There is no explicit language of abyss, yet the poem performs spaciousness, stillness and intimacy in the language of night. The sense of delight and desire is palpable in the vocabulary and the strong emotions of the soul are expressed in the tempo of the stanzas and the engagement of the breath in poetic form. The language of abyss may not be explicit, but the poem evokes yearning, expansive desire.

134  Tessa Holland However, within the prose work which accompanies the poem, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, there are three key phrases worthy of attention: two in the first book, ‘abisal deleite’ (abyss-like delight A 1.5.7) and ‘hartura increada’ (uncreated fullness A 1.6.2) and one in the second book, ‘un abismo de fé’ (an abyss of faith A 2.4.1). The comment by Allison Peers about ‘abyssal delight’ remains pertinent. This single phrase alludes to how the emptying of the soul, felt painfully as a cry, is also one where the soul begins to enter into the divine gift of delight which has abyss-like qualities. This is what the soul can look forward to as a result of the dark night of sense and the process of detachment. There is a shift in energy and attention, from the soul’s finite wants to becoming receptive to infinite delight, from being self-centred to becoming other centred. Nonetheless, the encouragement to become empty is not an end in itself. This brings us to another element of abyss language. The purpose is to be like Christ, naked and empty in order to be able to receive the uncreated fullness (la hartura increada) of God.9 Nothingness (la nada) is to be embraced by the soul, not for its own sake, but as a necessary condition in which to receive God, for unlike the appetites, ‘nothingness does not resist’.10 This ‘uncreated fullness’ conveys endless divine abundance, without limit, without end. In order to make space for this fullness, the soul is counselled to become empty, emptied of everything but the hunger and desire for God. A further aspect of explicit abyss language appears in Book Two of Ascent. The soul is encouraged to enter ‘this abyss of faith’ (este abismo de la fe) (A 2.4.1). The soul is to journey by way of emptiness and darkness, by faith, which is an abyss of unknowing rather than a method or way that can be known. Souls are to give themselves to the work of being empty and annihilated, to go beyond knowledge, the senses and the imagination on a path which has no mode, for God cannot be possessed or owned by the faculties (A 2.4.3–4). Souls must ‘pass beyond everything to unknowing’ (se ha pasar al no saber) (A 2.4.4). In these few pages, the text has moved from explaining what is meant by a night of faith, to naming faith as an abyss. The way in which the text performs also changes, from a careful point by point argument about faith, to one of apparent contradiction and paradox. The soul is to walk this road of faith, by leaving one’s own road. And turning from one’s own mode implies entry into what has no mode, that is, God. Individuals who reach this state no longer have any modes or methods … Within themselves, though, they possess all methods, like one who though having nothing yet possesses all things.11 There is a neither-this-nor-that sense to the explanation, the effect of which moves forward by way of stillness and silence, the soul suspended with only faith as a guide in the dark. Everything feels provisional. There is no certainty along this path, no sense of knowing that this is the way. The soul is to trust to that which has no method and which is not a path.

The Unfathomed Embrace 135 In the second prose work to accompany the poem, The Dark Night, the language of abyss, whilst sparse in explicit form, becomes more intense in the dark night of the spirit. In Book Two, chapter 6 (DN 2.6.3), John, citing a favourite passage from Jonah (Jonah 2:4–7), speaks of the abyss in terms of drowning and abandonment using the phrase, ‘el absimo me ciñó’ (the abyss went round about me). The passage evokes a disorientating sense of a dark, never-ending abyss from which there is no escape. The second and third explicit references to abyss occur together further on in Book Two of The Dark Night where John discusses the gift of contemplation, which he calls ‘mystical wisdom’, the quality of which is to hide the soul within itself: This mystical wisdom occasionally so engulfs the soul in its secret abyss that they have the keen awareness of being brought into a place far removed from every creature … Souls are so elevated and exalted by this abyss of wisdom.12 Within this abyss, John describes the soul as feeling as though it were in ‘a deep and vast wilderness’, ‘an immense, unbounded desert’. There is a gulf between the abyss of abandonment from Jonah and the secret abyss of wisdom that is spoken of here. At the same time, there is an overlap and shift of perception between the first abyss and the second, where the soul’s cry of yearning desire, is now overwhelmed by divine desire, which acts as a catalyst for the soul to surrender herself completely. The symbolism changes from an abyss of death in the waters drowning the soul, blocking out light and air, to an abyss which draws the soul into the life of love itself. The Spiritual Canticle Turning to The Spiritual Canticle and its commentary, once again, there are no explicit references to abyss as either a noun or an adjective (abismo or abisal) within the poem. However, woven within the text are images which evoke the language of abyss: from the earthed spaciousness of the landscape to the infinite gaze between the soul and Beloved and a journey into the caverns of the wound of love (again, see Colin Thompson’s chapter above). Within the forty stanzas of the poem, there is also a shift in rhythm, from the active frustrated search of the soul, to one of stillness and quiet contemplation in one another’s company, to a growth in intimacy, culminating in silence. In contrast, in the commentary on the poem, there are four references to abisal, as in abyss-like, and two references to abismo, abyss.13 I mention them in passing as there is some overlap with what, in a moment, I shall be exploring in The Living Flame of Love. From Chapter 12, ‘esta fuente abisal de amor’ –‘the unfathomable spring of love’ (CB 12: 9). ‘Una abisal y oscura inteligencia divina’ – ‘an abyss-like and dark divine knowledge’ (CB 14 and 15: 22). In Chapter 17, the soul is described as having a ‘gran fuerza de deseo

136  Tessa Holland abisal por la unión con Dios’, ‘a great strength of abyss-like desire for union with God’ (CB 17: 1). In the last of the explicit abyss references in this commentary, the source of the soul’s inebriation is the abyss-like desire and passion of God, of whom John says: God is the principal lover, who in the omnipotence of his fathomless love [abisal amor] absorbs the soul in himself more efficaciously and forcibly than a torrent of fire would devour a drop of morning dew that usually rises and dissolves in the air!14 She is absorbed into the divine abyss at the same time as the Trinity is also emptied out in desire for the soul. There is an emptiness which is also a fullness. To be empty for God is to be full of God. This abyss is both a nothingness and, at the same time, a transfiguring ‘all-ness’. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the poem The Living Flame of Love and its commentary which I will begin by reproducing in its entirety: The Living Flame of Love 1. O Living Flame of Love That tenderly wounds my soul In its deepest center! Since now you are not oppressive, Now consummate! If it be your will: Tear through the veil of this sweet encounter! 2. O sweet cautery, O delightful wound! O gentle hand! O delicate touch That tastes of eternal life And pays every debt! In killing you changed death to life. 3. O lamps of fire! In whose splendors The deep caverns of feeling, Once obscure and blind, Now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely, Both warmth and light to their Beloved. 4. How gently and lovingly You wake in my heart, Where in secret you dwell alone; And in your sweet breathing, Filled with good and glory, How tenderly you swell my heart with love.15 The poem, The Living Flame of Love, is an intense work of four stanzas. The soul speaks in the present tense, addressing God directly as the living flame of love. The tone is tender, yet imploring and the intensity of language and expression is conveyed by the staccato-like short phrases. Throughout the

The Unfathomed Embrace 137 whole piece, the soul’s desire is present in the sense of suspension, anticipation and stillness focused in her expression of delight in union with God. Again, it should be noted that neither term abismo nor abisal appears in the poem. In the commentary, written for one of John’s spiritual directees, Doña Ana del Mercado y Peñalosa, the terms ‘abismo’ (abyss) and ‘abisal’ (abyss-like) appear in varying degrees of frequency. The adjective ‘abisal’ appears just twice, once in the first chapter of the commentary and once in the third. The noun, ‘abismo’ (abyss) is used once in chapter two of the commentary. However, it appears on ten occasions in chapter three, nine within the same passage. An Unfathomed Embrace The first reference is in a passage which addresses those readers, particularly spiritual directors, who doubt that the soul is in a state of contemplation. The defence is twofold; first, God is declared as abundantly generous, with a desire to be with those who make space for him. The defence of the soul is that ‘it should not be found as incredible’ that a soul so emptied and faithful is where God chooses to live. The passage encourages and admonishes at the same time: The Most Blessed Trinity will come and dwell in anyone who loves him. The Blessed Trinity inhabits the soul by divinely illumining its intellect with the wisdom of the Son, delighting its will in the Holy Spirit, and absorbing it powerfully and mightily in the unfathomed embrace of the Father’s sweetness.16 ‘El abrazo abisal’, the ‘unfathomed embrace’, is the climax describing how in union the Trinity illumines the intellect in wisdom, delights the will and absorbs the soul. The word needs to be received in the context of the phrase. It is a meditation in itself, with every word of that phrase an aspect of abyss language. An unfathomed abyss-like embrace is not one of closure and arrival, but the touch of being set free, being awakened from sleep. This embrace, the touch that heals, is by the Trinity, the Father in relation with the Son with the sweetness of the Holy Spirit, which also evokes taste, fragrance and breath. The phrase conveys both the transcendence and immanence of God and divine desire as passionate, relational and overflowing: this is a union of inflamed love which is personal, tender and abundant.17 Brought Back from the Abyss, Absorbed in Desire The second reference, this time in the noun form of ‘abismo’ (abyss) is towards the end of the commentary on the second stanza. The soul is giving thanks for having passed through all the difficulties and is now receiving the rewards of the kingdom of heaven: What great tribulations you have shown me, many and difficult, and you have freed me from them all, and have brought me back again from

138  Tessa Holland the abyss of the earth. You have multiplied your magnificence and turning to me have comforted me.18 God has rescued the soul from death and gifted himself to the soul. In complete contrast to her former life, the soul receives everything she desires, which is both the death of the appetites, which were death to the soul, along with ‘the perfect spiritual life, the possession of God through union of love’ (LF: 2.31–32). In this union the faculties of the soul (the intellect, memory and will) through the virtues of faith, hope and love, become divine. The desire of the soul is also transformed: The natural appetite that only had the ability and strength to relish creatures (which causes death), is changed now so that its taste and savor are divine, and it is moved and satisfied by another principle: the delight of God, in which it is more alive. And because it is united with him, it is no longer anything else than the appetite of God.19 The ‘seeking satisfaction’ that begins the journey of the desire of the soul in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, is now ‘moved and satisfied by another principle’. Here, in The Living Flame of Love, the appetites have been put to sleep and a deeper desire has been awakened and enlivened within the soul by the desire of God for the soul. The soul’s desire is absorbed into God’s desire. In doing so it becomes infinite, it is more alive and, in that sense, complete, as in whole. The language continues through the rest of this chapter to be that of the shared delight between God and the soul. So far, these two explicit terms serve to make clear the central theme of Flame that runs throughout the poem and commentary. The terms ‘abyss-like’ and ‘abyss’ do not stand on their own. The first, ‘abisal’, abyss-like, illustrates the infinitude of God’s desire for the soul and its effect on the soul of being totally embraced and absorbed within the life of the Trinity. The second acts as a reminder of the depths of suffering that the soul has endured and the way in which the unfathomed embrace is one that rescues. Delivered from the abyss of abandonment and death, the soul now experiences an intimate enfolding within the Godhead, feeling both delight in God and the delight of God in the soul. From an Abyss of Darkness to the Abyss of Delights It is in the third chapter of The Living Flame of Love commentary that the language of abyss develops and becomes more central and the prose work becomes an extension to the poem. It is a prayer and meditation in itself and the passage is worth quoting in full: O abyss of delights! You are so much more abundant the more your riches are concentrated in the infinite unity and simplicity of your unique being, where one attribute is so known and enjoyed as not to hinder the

The Unfathomed Embrace 139 perfect knowledge and enjoyment of the other; rather, each grace and virtue within you is a light for each of your other grandeurs. By your purity, O divine Wisdom, many things are beheld in you through one. For you are the deposit of the Father’s treasures, the splendour of eternal light, the unspotted mirror and image of his goodness.20 This abyss of delights heralds a song of praise and adoration on the infinite beauty and virtue of the Trinity, each person within the Godhead mirroring and enhancing the other in a way that expands and moves outward. This abyss of delights is God. Along with the poem, the language in the commentary performs so that the text works at an affective level in the reader. This tempo and style in the commentary offers a glimpse into the infinitude of the beauty of God, where there is a flowing expansive movement within the Trinity of enjoyment and delight. However, before we move onto the rest of chapter three and the continued use of explicit abyss language, other terms come into play which complement and deepen the description of what is happening to the soul. The poem speaks of ‘las profundas cavernas’, ‘the deep caverns of feeling’ within the soul. To recap, the verse is as follows: O lamps of fire! in whose splendors the deep caverns of feeling, once obscure and blind, now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely, both warmth and light to their Beloved.21 These caverns are the emptied faculties of the soul, the intellect, memory and will. The term ‘vacío’, empty, occurs repeatedly, describing how ‘anything less than infinite fails to fill them’ (LF 3.18). The repetition throughout the passage reinforces the point. The void of the intellect is ‘a thirst for God’, the void of the will is ‘a hunger for God’ and the void of the memory is ‘a yearning and melting away of the soul for the possession of God’. The process of emptying in order to enter the abyss is simultaneously one of receiving. The abyss annihilates the ‘something’ of the soul: the intellect through unknowing, the memory through the loss of identity and the will through the loss of focus on the self. The process annihilates not in order to destroy, but to create and the imagery of fire which runs through the poem is one of infinitude, absorption and transformation, key elements of abyss language.22 Through this process of emptying of desire for anything other than God, the desire of the soul for God is infinitely enlarged in order to receive God: The capacity of these caverns is deep because the object of this capacity, namely God, is profound and infinite. Thus in a certain fashion, their capacity is infinite, their thirst is infinite, their hunger is also deep and infinite.23

140  Tessa Holland The prose uses the terms profundo/a (deep) and infinito/a (infinite) and conveys the intense longing of the soul’s desire within these caverns of the faculties which continues in a way that is both more excessive and yet more gentle. The soul has, it would seem, become all desire within an abyss of delights. Returning to explicit abyss terms, in the commentary on the line from the poem, ‘once obscure and blind’, ‘abisal’, abyss-like, is used twice and ‘abismo’ occurs nine times.24 In the beginning of this passage, the discourse weaves together this language with other phrases, interpreting scripture to draw an image of the transformation of the soul in the language of creation: Until the Lord said, fiat lux, darkness was over the face of the abyss of the caverns of the soul’s feeling. The more unfathomable and deep-caverned is the feeling, the more profound are its chasms and its darknesses regarding the supernatural, when God who is its light does not illumine it.25 These few words encapsulate the previous state of the soul, where she was shrouded in darkness. She was blind and insensitive to the light of God, who was darkness to her. The use of scripture links the state of the soul in darkness with the act of creation. This is the soul lost within an abyss of her own darkness, unable even to desire God: Thus it is impossible for it to lift its eyes to the divine light, or even think of doing so, for in never having seen it, it knows not what it is. Accordingly, it will be unable to desire this light; it will rather desire darkness because it knows what darkness is, and will go from darkness to darkness, guided by that darkness.26 John quotes Psalm 41, ‘one abyss calls to another abyss’ (un abismo llama a otro abismo), turning it to his purposes. Just as one darkness calls to another darkness, so light calls to light: An abyss of light summons another abyss of light, and an abyss of darkness calls to another abyss of darkness, each like evoking its like and communicating itself to it.27 This divine light is the cause of the soul opening up, through its eye of faith, becoming receptive to the divine presence. In doing so, the divine abyss of light, the light of grace, calls to another abyss of grace within the soul, wherein lies her transformation and union with God: In this transformation the eye of the soul’s feeling is so illumined and agreeable to God that we can say that God’s light and that of the soul are one.28 This one passage contains the whole journey of the soul, from the night of faith, described in The Ascent of Mount Carmel as an ‘abyss of faith’ (A: 4.1),

The Unfathomed Embrace 141 right through to the divine abyss of grace calling to the same in the soul in union. This has been a journey, where, at the same time in this brief and intense description, this abyss of grace has been calling to the soul throughout. Conclusion A close reading of the text demonstrates that the language of abyss is very present within John’s writing. He has his own distinct language of abyss which includes the language of night and of absence, but is not restricted by it. He uses the language theologically, pointing towards God as immanent and transcendent, as one whose nature is both incarnate and infinite. Linguistically, it works affectively, at times creating a destabilising effect upon the reader. His language of abyss is integral to his language of desire, going beyond intellectual or imaginative ways of understanding or encountering God, taking the soul beyond her own understanding of desire and the search for satisfaction into the desire of God, which, like God, is infinite. The infinitude of God’s desire for the soul is communicated by the language of the unfathomed embrace, which heals, as we have seen, through wounding. The desire of the soul in this embrace is not closed down through the possession of God as an object but opened up in a continual movement of overflow and reciprocity in relation. Through the communication of the touch of God, the soul’s desire is disturbed from being self-absorbed to becoming awakened, opened out into the infinitude of divine desire. The voiding of the intellect, memory and will (LF 3:18–22) and the accompanying annihilation, emptiness and fainting of desire (LF 3:68) felt by the soul are not a failure of desire, but indicative of its expansion to the point that the soul becomes all desire in the imagery of fire. The corresponding growth of delight in the soul strengthens desire. What emerges is the way in which the abyss of grace is not only a place and time of intimacy, but is in itself the person of Christ at the heart of the Trinity. As the receptive soul is absorbed within the ‘unfathomed embrace of the Father’s sweetness’, there is a corresponding receptivity in God; welcoming, accepting, passionate, relational, overflowing and abundant. Union is a fiery abyss of reciprocal love where the soul’s desire is transformed and absorbed into divine desire, by consent, mutual and dynamic. The abyss of abandonment and death becomes an abyss of intimate enfolding within the infinite life of the Trinity. Divine desire makes space for the soul as she is absorbed in a process of divinisation into the flowing, expansive, delighting, movement of God. Notes 1 On the language of abyss in other mystical texts, see Bernard McGinn, ‘Lost in the Abyss’ (McGinn 2014). 2 For a more comprehensive account of this subject, see Holland (2020), The Apophasis of Desire in the Writings of St John of the Cross, PhD dissertation (unpublished).

142  Tessa Holland 3 I shall be using the Spanish version of the texts in Obras Completas de San Juan de la Cruz, 2002, ed, Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia. English translations are from Kavanaugh and Rodriguez’s (1991) translation unless stated. 4 The term does not translate well into English and I have interpreted it as ‘abyss-like’. 5 CB 12:9, CB 14:22, CB 17:1, CB 31:2, LF 1:15, LF 3:71 (redaction B). 6 A 2.4.1, A 2.18.2, A 2.19.10, A 2.29.5, A 2.29.7, A 3.7.2, A 3.22.6, DN 2.6.3, DN 2.17.6, CB 14:24, CB 20:14, LF 2:31, LF 3:17, LF 3:71 (redaction B, I shall be using this redaction throughout unless otherwise stated). 7 A 1.5.7 (John of the Cross 2002: 269). The phrase is in parentheses; the codex used is Alcaudete as well as the critical edition by Silverio (John of the Cross 2002: 251). For The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Kavanaugh and Rodriguez have translated from the codex of Alcaudete and, according to their introduction to John’s commentary, where necessary, they have used the codex of Alba (John of the Cross 1991: 109). 8 John of the Cross 1943, vol.1:33. The translation is from Silverio, including the footnotes. He adds in square brackets [More literally: ‘and abysmal delight’]. 9 A 1.6.1-4. See also Iain Matthew’s chapter above on the relationship between the reader, author and Christ. 10 A 1.6.4. ‘la nada, porque ésta no resiste’. 11 A: 2.4.5. ‘el pasar al término y dejar su modo es entrar en [el término] que no tiene modo, que es Dios; porque el alma que a este estado llega ya no tiene modos ni maneras, ni menos … aunque en sí encierra todos los modos, al modo del que no tiene nada, que lo tiene todo’. 12 DN 2.17.6. ‘en su abismo secreto, que el alma echa de ver claro que está puesta alejadísima y remotísima de toda criatura … Y tanto levanta entonces y engrandece este abismo de sabiduría al alma’. 13 Abisal: CB 12:9; 14:22; 17:1; 31:2; Abismo: CB 14:24; 20:14. 14 CB 31:2. ‘Dios aquí el principal amante, que con la omnipotencia de su abisal amor absorbe al alma en sí con más eficacia y fuerza que un torrente de fuego a una gota de rocío de la mañana, que se suele volar resuelta en el aire’. 15 John of the Cross 2002, English Translation (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez 1991). ¡Oh llama de amor viva, que tiernamente hieres de mi alma en el más profundo centro!; pues ya no eres esquiva, acaba ya, si quieres; rompe la tela de este dulce encuentro. ¡Oh cauterio suave! ¡Oh regalada llaga! ¡Oh mano blanda! ¡Oh toque delicado! que a vida eterna sabe, y toda deuda paga; matando, muerte en vida la has trocado. ¡Oh lámparas de fuego, en cuyos resplandores las profundas cavernas del sentido, que estaba oscuro y ciego, con extraños primores calor y luz dan junto a su querido!

The Unfathomed Embrace 143 ¡Cuán manso y amoroso recuerdas en mi seno, donde secretamente solo moras, y en tu aspirar sabroso, de bien y gloria lleno, cuánd elicadamente me enamoras! (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez 1991: 53) 16 LF: 1.15. This is Kavanaugh and Rodriguez’s translation in 1991: 646. In contrast, the translation by Allison Peers retains the sense of abyss with the phrase ‘absorbs the soul in the embrace and abyss of His sweetness’ (Peers 1943: 126). The original Spanish is: ‘vendría la Santísima Trinidad en él, y moraría de asiento en él; lo cual es ilustrándole el entendimiento divinamente en la sabiduría de el Hijo, y deleitándole la voluntad en el Espíritu Santo, y absorbiéndola el Padre poderosa y fuertemente en abrazo abisal de su dulzura’. 17 Iain Matthew has previously suggested that ‘Juan places Jesus in an unfathomed beyond’ (Matthew 1991: VII). My reading keeps the phrase intact as one of an endless and infinite embrace which holds together both the immanence and transcendence of God. 18 LF 2:31. ‘¡Cuántas tribulaciones me mostraste muchas y malas, y de todas ellas me libraste, y los abismos de la tierra otra vez me secaste; multiplicaste tu magnificencia, y, volviéndote a mí, me consolaste!’ 19 LF 2:34. ‘El apetito natural que solo tenía habilidad y fuerza para gustar el sabor de criatura, que obra muerte, ahora está trocado en gusto y sabor divino, movido y satisfecho ya por otro principio donde está más a lo vivo, que es el deleite de Dios, y, porque está unido con El, ya sólo es apetito de Dios’. 20 LF 3:17. ‘¡Oh abismo de deleites, tanto más abundante eres cuanto están tus riquezas más recogidas en unidad y simplicidad infinita de tu único ser, donde de tal manera se conoce y gusta lo uno, que no impide el conocimiento y gusto perfecto de lo otro, antes cada cual gracia y virtud que hay en ti, es luz que hay de cualquiera otra grandeza tuya; porque, por tu limpieza, ¡oh Sabiduría divina!, muchas cosas se ven en ti viéndose una, porque tú eres el depósito de los tesoros del Padre’. 21 LF 3. ‘¡Oh lámparas de fuego, en cuyos resplandores las profundas cavernas del sentido, que estaba oscuro y ciego, con extraños primores calor y luz dan junto a su querido!’ 22 Thérèse of Lisieux wrote of her personal transformation in similar terms. ‘Yes, in order that Love be fully satisfied, it is necessary that It lower Itself, and that It lower Itself to nothingness and transform this nothingness into fire’ (Thérèse of Lisieux 1996: 195); see also Shelagh Banks’ chapter above. 23 LF 3:22. ‘Es, pues, profunda la capacidad de estas cavernas, porque lo que en ellas puede caber, que es Dios, es profundo e infinito; y así será en cierta manera su capacidad infinita, y así su sed es infinita, su hambre también es profunda e infinita, su deshacimiento y pena es muerte infinita’. 24 LF 3:71. In the English translation by Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, ‘abisal’ has been interpreted as ‘unfathomable’ and ‘profound’. 25 LF 3:71. ‘Porque, hasta que el Señor dijo: Fiat lux (Gn. 1, 3), estaban las tinieblas sobre la haz del abismo (1, 2) de la caverna del sentido del alma; el cual, cuanto es más abisal y de más profundas cavernas, tanto más abisales y profundas tinieblas hay en él acerca de lo sobrenatural cuando Dios, que es su lumbre, no le alumbra’.

144  Tessa Holland Kavanaugh and Rodriguez have translated ‘sentido’ as ‘feeling’; it might also be interpreted as ‘sense’. 26 LF 3:71. ‘y así esle imposible alzar los ojos a la divina luz ni caer en su pensamiento, porque no sabe cómo es, nunca habiéndola visto; y, por eso, ni la podrá apetecer, antes apetecerá tiniebla’. 27 LF 3:71. ‘un abismo de luz llama a otro abismo de luz, y un abismo de tiniebla a otro abismo de tiniebla, llamando cada semejante a su semejante y comunicándosele’. 28 LF 3:71. ‘es esta transformación divina del alma en Dios, con que el ojo del sentido queda tan esclarecido y agradable a Dios, que podemos decir que la luz de Dios y del alma toda es una’.

9

Transformation in John of the Cross What Deep Innate Human and Spiritual Ground Is Being Transformed in Each of the Dark Nights? Ronald Rolheiser

Introduction John of the Cross is one of the great spiritual masters in the history of Christian spirituality and his insights into how human and spiritual transformation take place within us has left us with a template for human and spiritual growth that has few equals, even after almost 200 years of development in the field of contemporary psychology. His insight into the human soul is precious. When most people hear the name John of the Cross, what comes to their minds immediately are the words dark night of the soul. What is a dark night of the soul? How does a dark night transform us? From what to where does it take us? And, how does it do this? How do we mature, humanly and spiritually? What is maturity? What transforms us and how exactly does it do it? The task of this chapter is to give John of the Cross’ insights into these questions. However, before looking in depth at John’s overall paradigm for transformation, it is necessary first to have some sense of his system as a whole. A Quick Overview of the Spiritual Journey in John of the Cross John takes the question that is the hinge for his entire spirituality out of Scripture and the early Desert hermits. Some of this is explicit in his writings, while other parts are implicit, assumed. In essence, this is the background to his spirituality. Scriptural Background In the Old Testament, there is a poignant motif that is expressed in the phrase, longing to see the face of God. Not seeing God’s face was believed to constitute the deepest human pain. Initially the idea of wanting to see God’s face was taken quite literally in that people wanted to know what God looked like. For example, in the Book of Exodus (Chapter 33), Moses asks God outright to see his face. Eventually however this becomes a metaphor, that is, longing to see the face of God is used to express all the longings and hungers of the human heart. To see the face of God came to mean consummation, complete peace, satiation from all longing, all aching, and all hunger. Thus, DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-12

146  Ronald Rolheiser in the later books of the Old Testament, longing to see the face of God is a catch-all phrase for final fulfillment, consummation, heaven, and it is now expressed as an ache, a painful plea to fill an unquenchable thirst inside of us. We see this expressed repeatedly in the Psalms; for example, in Psalm 42 where the Psalmist says, As a deer that longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you O Lord.1 As we can see, this is now expressed as an ache, as an anxious plea for what will quench our deepest thirst. To see the face of God would be to have all our hungers and thirsts satiated. But what must we do to see the face of God? Who can see the face of God? The Old Testament doesn’t answer the question, rather it ends with it, Who can see the face of God? Jesus answers this question in a single line, though one which contains an entire spirituality. Who can see the face of God? Jesus’ answer: Blessed are the pure of heart, they will see God (Matthew 5.8). Desert Spirituality and John The Desert monks (men and women) took this up as a one-line summary of Christian discipleship and spirituality, the pure of heart will see God. Spirituality therefore is nothing more (and nothing less) than the constant attempt to attain purity of heart so as to ‘see God’ and thus to come to fulfillment, consummation, heaven. This motif, the pure of heart will see God, is the cornerstone of John’s entire spirituality. For him, in line with the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the spiritual journey (as well as the human journey) is simply the attempt to come ever more to purity of heart. This undergirds his entire spirituality. How might that be summarized? This is not an easy task (and that is why so many people struggle to understand John of the Cross). The hope is that the diagram at the end of this section will help provide a certain visual graph around which to synthesize John’s vision of the spiritual life. John begins with us, the human person, and with the human person as fired into life by a powerful God-given eros which leaves us dis-eased and perpetually longing for something more. For him, we are born with an insatiable ache for God. Our hearts want and need to find their rest in heaven, and for John, heaven means coming face to face with God, with each other, with our true selves, and with the cosmic world. This is for that which we incurably long. But what keeps us from being face to face with God, each other, our true selves, and the cosmic world right now? For John, as for Jesus, and as for the Desert monks, the answer to that is simple, lack of purity of heart. John resonates with St. Paul when (1 Corinthians 13, 12) he writes, Now [in this life] we see as through a glass, darkly (an enigma) but then [in heaven] we will see face to face. Our spiritual task is to come to purity of heart so as to remove everything that separates us from being face to face with God, others, ourselves, and the world. What blocks us right now from

Transformation in John of the Cross 147

Figure 9.1  John’s process of transformation. Note: This overview graph obviously needs a lot more explanation than has just been given. I suspect it will be more helpful once one has read the subsequent sections on how we are purified through the dark night of the senses and the dark night of spirit.

seeing face to face? What, for John, constitutes our impurity of heart? John sees three blockages, three impurities of heart, that constitute the ‘glass, darkly’ that separates us from seeing purely. I suggest that we interpret the three ‘veils’ that John speaks of in the Flame (F: 1.29) according to his scheme of purgation in the Ascent-Night: the Veil of the Senses, the Veil of the Spirit, and the Veil of Mortal Life. For him, each of these needs to be transformed through a dark night of the soul. What follows is an attempt to illustrate this in a diagram, followed by (the main task of this chapter) an in-depth examination as to how each of these veils is transformed through a dark night.

John’s Paradigm – An Overview 1 John sees three ‘veils’ as separating us from seeing God and each other. These are removed progressively by ‘dark nights’ which give us the ‘purity of heart’ needed to see God and each other face to face (see Figure 9.1). John takes his essential vision out of Scripture and the early Desert Monks. In the Old Testament, there is a poignant theme where people ‘long to see the face of God’. Initially, this was taken more literally – What does God look like? (Exodus 33 – Moses asks to see the face of Go). Eventually, this becomes a metaphor, that is, to express all the longings and hungers of the

148  Ronald Rolheiser human heart. Thus, to ‘see the face of God’ would mean consummation, complete peace, satiation from all longing, aching, and hunger. In the late Old Testament, the hunger to see the face of God means longing for consummation, for final fulfillment. This is seen strongly in the Psalms; for example, psalms 42 and 63. (As a deer that longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you O Lord.) But the Old Testament doesn’t answer the question. It ends with the question: Who can see the face of God? Jesus answers the question (Who can see the face of God?) in one single line: Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see the face of God (Matthew 5, 8). The Desert monks (men and women) took this up as the one-line summary of Christian discipleship and spirituality: The pure of heart will see the face of God. Hence their spiritual quest was simply this: to try to come to purity of heart. This is the background to John of the Cross’ spirituality. He begins with a text from St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13, 12 – For now we see as through a glass, darkly (an enigma) but then we will see face to face. John asks, what blocks us from seeing face to face right now? His answer: Lack of purity of heart. Concretely, what is that? For John, we are blocked from seeing face to face by three veils: inordinate affectivity (the gratification principle inside us); our own natural metaphysics’(our propensity to relate to others, God, and the world, through concepts, possessiveness, and security); and by natural life itself. Hence, his overall paradigm for our spiritual journey looks like this: we have three veils separating us from being face to face with God, others, and the world – and each of these needs to be stripped away by a particular dark night of the soul.

The Process of Transformation: Three Veils, Three Dark Nights, Three Transformations For John, three veils, three imperfections, three impurities, block us from the purity of heart we need in order to see God, others, our true selves, and the cosmic world face to face. Each of these veils is stripped away by a dark night of the soul, that is, by a healthy crisis of the heart that purifies us and transforms us. Let us look at each of these, in turn. The Veil of the Senses – The Transformation of Our Instinctual Motivation2 For John, the first thing that blocks us from purity of heart, from seeing face to face, is the veil of the senses. What is this? We could call it a form of ‘inordinate affectivity’. Simply put, this is what today we would call ‘the gratification principle’ inside us, the natural instinctual motivation with which we are

Transformation in John of the Cross 149 born. We are not born altruistic. We are born with powerful natural instincts given to us by our nature to ensure our survival. These instincts serve us well but have their downside. Crassly put, we are born selfish and we come to altruism only through transformation of this ‘inordinate affectivity’ that we are born with. But, how exactly does this constitute an impurity of heart that keeps us from seeing face to face? The answer to this is not abstract. Here’s an example. Think of a baby, in all its beauty and innocence, it does not (at this stage of its life) truly see its mother. It sees its mother from the mirror of its own hunger and neediness. This is entirely forgivable in a baby, but it becomes less forgivable as we grow into adulthood. Another example might be this. Does a teenage boy, powerfully charged with sexual hormones, really see his girlfriend? Or is he seeing her from the mirror of his own sexual desire? This is the particular blindness that constitutes the ‘veil of the senses’. For John, that is the first major purification we need to undergo, that is, each of us has to break the pleasure principle as our essential motivation for acting so as to see others as they truly are in themselves rather than as they are in relationship to our own needs. How does one break through this veil? How are we initially transformed from our instinctual selfishness? For John, we are transformed through love; the agent of our transformation is love. How does this work? Let me attempt to explain this through a story. To paraphrase the renowned novelist Morris West, we could indeed say that All miracles begin with falling in love. John of the Cross would agree. Here is a story to illustrate how love can purify our motivation. Imagine a young man (let’s call him Jack). Jack is 24 years old and has just graduated from university. During his university years, Jack was sexually promiscuous without ever giving any serious thought as to its right or wrong, nor ever worrying about whom he might be hurting. He was simply enjoying his youth. Now, in this rather amoral state, ironically feeling pretty good about himself morally, Jack goes to a gathering where he meets a woman named Mary and they fall deeply in love. Mary’s history has not been one of sexual promiscuity or of irresponsibility of any kind. She simply loves Jack and does not explicitly confront him vis-à-vis his years of promiscuity. She does not have to. Her love for Jack and his love for her trigger a deep moral and psychological crisis inside Jack. No words have to be spoken. Her love becomes a mirror in which for the first time he sees clearly and painfully his selfishness, his amorality, and his irresponsibility. The very goodness of her love for him now triggers a deep pain inside of him (a dark night of the soul) that moves him to sincere repentance. Notice it is not the fear of hellfire that puts him into pain or frightens him into repentance, it is the pain, the darkness of soul, of seeing his own immaturity and his own selfishness in the light of a purer love that brings tears of repentance to his eyes and leads him to vow sexual fidelity for the rest of his life. One kind of love in him is transformed by meeting a higher love.

150  Ronald Rolheiser Notice that it was not fear of punishment that triggered a bitter pain in Jack. Love was the agent. Indeed, the pain he experienced is nothing less than the pain of purgatory, the purifying pain of being embraced by love and of having the very warmth and unconditionality of that embrace become a mirror in which we see our immaturities, our self-centeredness, and our sin. Real moral transformation is always a transformation through love. A purer and more powerful love orders our disordered love. This example is what one might call an ‘ideal-type’ example, but not everyone is lucky enough to fall in love and be so unconditionally embraced by this kind of love. So John works this motif in a variety of ways, though in essence the principle is always the same. We do not overcome selfishness through threat or through fear of punishment. For him, a disordered love can only be ordered through a higher love. John’s full spirituality as to how we are purified by love at this stage of our lives merits a lot more discussion than can be given in this chapter. At the end of the day, moral transformation is more complex than is captured in this simple example of Jack’s transformation, despite its validity. After this initial purification in love, Jack will eventually have to deal with the waning of his initial fervor in his love for Mary, the death of the honeymoon, and have to work through a time of disillusionment where his unrealistic idealization of Mary will desert him and leave him then with the opportunity to genuinely see the real Mary face to face. In summary, for John this first purification changes our fundamental principle of motivation, essentially breaking the gratification principle in us and lands us in initial maturity, that is, a state within which we are more othercentered than self-centered. However, for him, this is only an initial transformation, far from a complete one. We are still partially seeing through a ‘glass, darkly’. The complete transformation will only occur after we are purified through two further dark nights.3 The Veil of the Spirit – The Transformation of Our Natural Faculties4 For John, even when we have passed through the dark night of the senses and attained an essential maturity, we are still not fully seeing face to face. We now have a second veil that obscures things, a second impurity of spirit, that keeps us from seeing God, others, ourselves, and the world as they really are. John calls this the ‘veil of the spirit’ and tells us that another, very painful, dark night is needed to free us from this imperfection. What, specifically, constitutes this imperfection? For John, we are partially blocked from seeing things face to face by our own metaphysics, that is, by the natural way that our faculties work. Here is his analysis. In understanding the human person, John leans on the philosophical anthropology of his time (which is arguably still valid). Following thinkers like Aquinas, John believed that we have three natural faculties: Intellect; Will; and Memory.5 In popular language, we might translate them as Head, Heart, and Person.

Transformation in John of the Cross 151 What are the natural movements of each of these faculties? In essence, by instinct, they work this way:

• The Head – seeks concepts/pictures/imaginative constructs • The Will – seeks to possess what it is drawn to • The Person – seeks control and security For John, the natural instinctual movements of our head, heart, and person serve us well for a good period in our lives, but eventually they become a blockage to seeing others as they really are. How so? Let me risk a story that might serve to illustrate this. Some years ago, there was a very popular Broadway play that was later turned into an Academy Award-winning movie. Entitled Children of a Lesser God, it tells the story of a young woman with a double disability.6 She was deaf and mute. She was also very brilliant and strong-willed and consequently became too much of a challenge for most teachers. However, one day she meets a gifted teacher, a young man whose intelligence and spirit are her equal. He is able to effectively help her relate to the world beyond disabilities. His teaching and guidance help lead her out into the world, and open her up to life in a way she had never experienced it before. It is also a love story. They fall in love and for a time bask in its fervor. Given the strength of their love, one would expect that they would live happily ever after – but they don’t. After a time, a powerful tension begins to develop within their relationship. They both feel it, are afraid to express it, and do not understand it. For reasons she does not understand, she feels a need to take space from him. And, given her gratitude for all he has done for her, she feels guilty about this. He, for his part, cannot understand why she is doing this and cannot but feel some resentment toward her. The situation grows worse and eventually culminates in their breakup. Their breakup conversation could serve as a textbook explanation of how John of the Cross sees our natural metaphysics as eventually standing in the way of us really seeing each other. She tells him that he has been wonderful and that he has taught her to understand herself, helped her open herself to love, and helped her to be free. She tells him that he has been a great teacher and that she feels awful about breaking up with him, given how much he had given her. But the pain of her having to push him away has taught him something that he didn’t ever know he needed to learn. This, in effect, is his response to her. I’ve been a good teacher, but not a great one. Why? Because …

• I taught you to understand yourself, but not to understand yourself better than I understand you.

• I taught you how to open yourself for love, but not so far that my love can no longer possess you.

• I taught you how to be free, but not so free that you don’t need me anymore.

152  Ronald Rolheiser In writing about this, John states that at a certain point in our lives and our relationships we need to learn to understand more by not understanding than by understanding. That may sound nonsensical, but it’s an important paradoxical piece of wisdom. For instance, imagine this. A friend comes up to you and says, ‘I understand you. I have known you for forty years. I know your family background, I know your ethnicity, I know your religious background, I know your strengths and quirks of personality, and I even know your Enneagram number and where you land on the Myers-Briggs personality charts! I understand you perfectly!’ Would you feel understood? On the contrary, you would feel violated. So imagine this instead. A friend comes up to you and says, ‘I have known you for forty years, and you’re a mystery to me! You really are your own person!’ In this, you would feel understood. For John of the Cross, the first purification of our lives happens through a dark night of the senses that takes us into initial maturity. But a second purification (‘a dark night of the spirit’) is eventually needed because even though we are living inside this maturity, after a while the natural instinctual movements of our head, heart, and person (which up to now served us well, as they did the young couple in Children of a Lesser God) will become a blockage to real seeing because we are not seeing others as they really are, but only in ways in which they fit our understanding, our possessiveness, and our security. For John, we are purified of this impurity by a painful dark night in which we are forced to accept that we cannot see reality (others, God, our true selves, and the world) face to face if they have to fit them inside our concept of them, our possessiveness, and our security. Once our heads can no longer picture or imagine something, we begin to relate by faith; once our hearts stop trying to possess what they desire, we begin to relate through charity; and once our persons can no longer control things so as to feel secure, we begin to relate through hope (as is illustrated in the Figure 9.1). This second dark night purifies our eyesight so as to let us see through the eyes of faith, charity, and hope, rather than through the eyes of conceptual imagining, possessiveness, and control. How do we enter this second dark night? Most of us will enter it through normal growth, relationships, aging, and circumstance (as did the young man in Children of a Lesser God). Inside our life’s circumstance, dark nights of the soul will happen. Most often these happen through breakdown, heartbreak, sickness, diminishment, marginalization, helplessness, and crises of all kinds that are calibrated to force us into a deeper maturity. Normally in life, circumstance will eventually lead us to the brink where our natural instinctual way of knowing, feeling, and acting will no longer function for us and this crisis, this dark night, will, if we let it, transform us and move us toward the purity of eyesight that is given in faith, hope, and charity John, however, also offers us a proactive way of entering into this dark night of the spirit.7Although he announces his counsel for proactively entering the dark night of the spirit numerous times, it is always the same. For him,

Transformation in John of the Cross 153 we can enter this second dark night proactively by taking the literal word of scripture and using it to make decisions in our lives that will precisely have us live beyond our natural conception of things, our natural possessiveness, and our natural tendency to ensure our own security. Thus, we enter the night of the spirit when, either through circumstance or through a proactive gospel choice, we live in such a way that we are no longer guided by concepts, possessiveness, and security. Like Abraham and Sarah in their latter years, we set out ‘not knowing where we are going’ but trusting in God’s word. It’s then, finally, that we begin to see face to face. And what does that feel like? Initially, it is felt as a pain such as we have never experienced before, a crushing emotional darkness. Paradoxically however it is felt, at the deeper level, as a strength, as our first true experience of non-fragility. Eventually, the feeling of emotional darkness changes and the sharp pain turns into simple dryness which feels steadying. Finally, if we live long enough and God gifts us this experience, we might even begin to experience intermittent periods of ecstasy (something which John calls the ‘living flame’ experience, see the poem of that name). We have attained purity of heart and are as face to face with God, others, the world, and our true selves, as much as is possible in this life. Only one last veil sits between us and perfect vision, the veil of mortal life itself, and this veil is shed through death. The Veil of Mortal Life and Our Transformation through Death8 Since death is something that comes to us naturally, John doesn’t spend much time talking about it, other than to affirm that it is our final purification from all that keeps us from full purity of heart – and also that it is our final release from all of our hungry longings. Like many other mystics, John employs a sexual metaphor vis-à-vis how he views our dying. He looks forward to death (and even prays for it) fantasizing dying as finally coming to ‘consummation’, our wedding night. In that consummation, now, finally, completely pure of heart, we will see God, each other, our true selves, and the cosmic world as they really are, face to face, naked, pure, and ecstatic. A Supplemental Note on the Darkness that We Experience in a Dark Night of the Soul The word darkness is not a univocal term. There are different kinds of darkness and different reasons why we cannot see. Sometimes we cannot see because there is no light by which to see. It’s pitch black. However, sometimes we cannot see for the exact opposite reason, the very intensity of the light blinds us; for example, if someone should look straight into the sun with unshielded eyes. Excess light also knocks out our vision.

154  Ronald Rolheiser This is the way John of the Cross understands the darkness of faith and why it happens that as we grow deeper in faith and trust, dark nights begin to beset us; for example, the famous case of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.9 As we grow more mature and grow deeper in genuine faith, very often a strange paradoxical thing happens. In our head, in our heart, and in our conscious personality, our sense of God seems to disappear. We feel like God has died. This is what constitutes a dark night of the soul. What is actually happening here? Perhaps this analogy can be helpful. Imagine a mother fish deep in the ocean and her baby fish asking, ‘Mother, where is this water that everyone talks about?’ Well, today, this mother fish, thanks to the marvels of contemporary technology, could give her young an answer. She would set up a PowerPoint projector and begin to show these young fish some images of water: a running tap, Niagara Falls, a tide moving in and out, a flowing river, someone drinking from a glass, and so on. Initially, the young fish would be very taken by those images and the images would deeply imprint themselves in their minds and hearts and they would have a concept of water – and firmly believe in its existence. Eventually though, most of them would lose their initial enthusiasm for the images, but still cling to them as their concept of water. Now, imagine that one day, after the young fish had saturated themselves with these PowerPoint images, the mother would say to them, ‘It’s enough now with these pictures. They aren’t really water. They’re pictures of water! Now I am going to turn off the PowerPoint projector and I want you to instead come to the sense that you are living in water, surrounded by water, breathing in water, existing in water. Just swim in it and let it flow through you’. Initially, no doubt, that would be very perplexing for the young fish because their belief in water is tied to their pictures of it and the reality of water is too huge for them to form into a concept. These young fish would be experiencing a dark night of the soul – but also an immense, needed purification. They had been seeing water as ‘through a glass, darkly’ and now they are seeing water face to face. The Last Word to John of the Cross Many of us, I am sure, are familiar with a prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi, The Prayer of St. Francis.10 It is deservedly popular because in a few short verses it summarizes the moral and spiritual challenge of Jesus’ central teaching, highlighting the great paradoxically, difficult truth that we can only find life by giving our own lives away, and we can only find happiness by trying to make other people happy. John of the Cross, in offering us a series of counsels vis-à-vis moving toward maturity, gives us something very similar. I shall end with this ‘prayer’ of St John as a summary of all that we have discussed here on his teaching of the purification of the ‘dark nights’: To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession in nothing. To possess all, desire the possession of nothing.

Transformation in John of the Cross 155 To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing. To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing. To come to the pleasure that you have not, you must go by a way in which you enjoy not. To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. To come to the possession you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To be what you are not, you must go in a way in which you are not. When you turn toward something, you cease to cast yourself upon the All. For to go from all to the All, you must deny yourself of all in all. When you come to the possession of the all, you must possess it without wanting anything. Because if you desire to have something in all, your treasure in God is not purely your all. In this nakedness, the spirit finds its rest; for in coveting nothing, nothing raises it up, and nothing weighs it down because it is in the center of its humility; when it covets something, it is, by its very desire, wearied (A: 1.13.11-13). Notes 1 Throughout I am using my own translations of scripture. Sometimes, I am giving a rendering of the essence rather than the exact text. 2 John traces out the transformation that takes place as we journey through the ‘veil of the senses’ in two of his books: The Ascent to Mount Carmel, Book I & The Dark Night, Book I. 3 The dark night of the senses will hit most of us passively, through circumstance. However, in a section very rich in spiritual guidance, John also gives a series of counsels vis-à-vis how to enter the night of the senses proactively. See The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Chapter 13. All quotes from John are from the Collected Works edited by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991). 4 What constitutes the veil of the Spirit and how we are transformed through the dark night of the spirit is found in these books, The Ascent to Mount Carmel, Books II & III, & The Dark Night, Book II. 5 In the terminology of his time, the word ‘memory’ did not have the connotations it has today, i.e., as a faculty that remembers. Rather, it referred to the deepest part of us, something beyond the conscious ego, something which today we might call ‘the gut’ or ‘the person’. For John and for medieval anthropology, the idea was that we think with our heads and we feel with our hearts, but who does the thinking and the feeling? It’s the part of us that sits behind the head and heart and does the remembering; hence, it is being referred to as the ‘memory’. 6 Children of a Lesser God is a play written by Mark Medoff which premiered on Broadway in New York in 1979 and was later produced as a major film. 7 John’s prescriptions for this are given in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, chapters 5 and 6. 8 John’s theology of death is explicated most succinctly in the final book he wrote, The Living Flame of Love.

156  Ronald Rolheiser 9 The story of Mother Teresa and her 60-year struggle with a dark night of faith is extensively documented in a book written by the postulator of her cause for canonization. See Kolodiejchuk (2007). 10 This prayer, now in the public domain, is popularly attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Scholars, however, are generally skeptical as to Francis’ actual historical authorship but they agree that it wonderfully reflects his thought and his person and is aptly called The Prayer of St. Francis.

10 The Ascent of Mount Carmel as a Way of Transformation Pavel Pola

Introduction Richard Rohr says that ‘John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila were part of the “final supernova” of non-dual, mystical consciousness in the 16th century, before it all but disappeared for five hundred years in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the enlightenment, and the invention of the printing press’.1 So let us hope that this book is one of the signs that this ‘final supernova’ is reappearing. In my chapter, I would like to bring to a conclusion this section on desire, love and transformation in John by dwelling on the image of the mountain that John of the Cross used as one of his main metaphors. His Ascent of the Mount Carmel was probably inspired by the book of the Franciscan Bernardino de Laredo, The Ascent of Mount Sion, but John of the Cross undoubtedly had his own experience of climbing the mountains, and he knew the transformative power of walking there. Just simple physical walking in the mountains transforms a person. It teaches discipline, improves physical condition and first of all the climber gains a new perspective and view of the world and consequently of his own life. How does this transformation happen? We don’t know exactly the core of this process. But we know the ‘entry requirements’. In principle, they are two: on the side of the climber and on the side of the mountains. The climber first of all has to make a decision to climb, he has to want. Then, he needs preparation and equipment before he starts, and on the way he will need effort, resistance and concentration. But all these things alone simply will not cause transformation. The mountain also comes into the game as well. With its challenges, steepness and inaccessibility. There’s also the weather and all the unplanned situations that might cause a climber to reach the bottom of his or her strength. In the middle of 2021, we followed with excitement – live on the air, so to speak – the story of two Czech climbers who were stranded in the Himalayas on Mount Baruntse, in the so-called white darkness. They had to stay motionless for four days in terrible and dangerous conditions, in the bitter cold and with dwindling supplies. They survived. I read a nice interview with them. There was a great longing for life in all of their answers and a DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-13

158  Pavel Pola determination not to give up. They said that despair and lamentation in a situation like this is so dangerous because it takes away one’s strength and energy and at the same time doesn’t help at all. This interview was a beautiful example of how mountains can transform people. Every mountain also has a peak, which can be seen as its reward. Not that it’s a particularly pleasant place to dwell, actually it is often very uncomfortable but it does offer a beautiful and new view. A view you can’t get anywhere else, and you can’t understand it if someone tells you about it. Only a combination of the person’s efforts and the mountain’s power can bring about a transformation. With all this together, one returns to the valley transformed. This introduction has perhaps helped us to understand a little bit more why John of the Cross chose this metaphor for his fundamental work describing the spiritual journey. Christopher Cook already introduced John’s sketch of the Mountain of Perfection in Figure 0.2 earlier. It is represented as Mount Carmel, with the description of the path that leads to the top, but also the other paths that end back in the valley. On the top of this mountain ‘dwells only the honour and glory of God’, as John writes. We can see this peak as the goal of human life, the destination of our spiritual journey. According to John, the goal of life is union with God. But when it is put that way, many imagine that this union is a long way off. They imagine a God who is somewhere outside, even far away, not seen or heard. Like the unreachable top of a 30,000-foot mountain. After all, even John’s metaphor would give that impression. But let’s look closely at his drawing of the mountain. It doesn’t look like a mountain at all. The whole drawing is an oval, and the peak is right in the middle. Either John couldn’t draw, or he wanted to express something else with his drawing.2 Rather than a mountain, this drawing is more like a mandala. Unlike Hildegard of Bingen, John did not draw mandalas, but it is possible that he knew them and that this is an allusion to them. So what is this drawing trying to tell us? In The Living Flame of Love, John writes that the centre of the soul is God (LF: 1.12). As has been said several times already, this means that God is closer to us than we can understand and closer than we are to ourselves. But not only does he dwell in our centre (and he might not), but he himself is that centre, inseparable from us. And so it may well be that the sketch of this mountain is a sketch of ourselves, and it expresses that in our very centre dwells the honour and glory of God. So the way to God, the way to the top of the mountain, is actually the way to our own centre. We can imagine the way to the mountain; we may have climbed a mountain peak. But how does one go to one’s own very centre? I think we can find some similarities to climbing a real mountain. It takes a decision, preparation, gaining competence and strength, making an effort, of course of a different type than in the case of a real mountain. But that alone is not enough. The mountain also adds its not insignificant part to it. This journey takes place in cooperation and sometimes in tension between the person and the mountain.

The Ascent of Mount Carmel as a Way of Transformation 159 John’s drawing of the mountain of perfection may remind us much more of Teresa’s interior castle, where God is also present at the very centre. This decision, effort and God’s touch all together become the way of transformation. The spiritual journey is not a movement from place to place, but a kind of movement within ourselves. Just as the biblical exodus was not a mere geographical change of place, from that bad and unsuitable Egypt to the ideal promised land. In fact, the promised land was not ideal. The promised land didn’t exist. For there is no ideal place, and in that sense neither is heaven. Because even in the most perfect conditions, one can be unhappy.3 The exodus was more a journey of inner transformation. The slaves were to become free people. And that’s why they were in the wilderness for 40 years because that transformation took time. And it is no coincidence that this transformation takes place in the desert as a particularly opportune place. John describes this journey into our centre, the way of transformation, the way of ‘exodus’, with the word nada, nothing – seven times – just as Teresa’s interior castle has seven mansions through which the human being passes on their way to union with God. The word nothing sounds rather negative to us. In our life, we prefer something. Actually, the way of nothing is a way of losing, that is not pleasant. It is a losing of dependencies, negative things, but not only that. Nothing means nothing. So losing will include also positive goods. The ascent is actually more of a descent. Is John’s metaphor of the night (discussed in previous chapters) somehow related to this journey of nada? I think that night can be just a concomitant of experiencing nothingness. Night is an important part of the aforementioned ascent/descent. Night is one of the conditions that the mountain prepares for the climber. The experience of nothingness, the experience of the dark night, transforms us, but not in itself. It needs our share as well. It depends on the attitude we take in the face of darkness and nothingness. There are certainly attitudes that are not helpful on this journey, such as the aforementioned lamentations and despair. Or trying to move on or do something at all costs. However, realistic acceptance of the situation, patience, looking for what is possible in the midst of all the limits, or gratitude for what is, are attitudes that make sense. Darkness and nothingness become fruitful only when we freely accept it and thus cooperate. I will try to illustrate this fruitful attitude with the experience of John’s best student, Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse talks of her Little Journey, which is strikingly reminiscent of John’s Way of Nothing. It is possible that she had John’s sketch before her eyes when she wrote about her little journey in Manuscript C (Thérèse de Lisieux, 1996). She discovers this journey as she is experiencing a great trial in the last 18 months of her life: The mists that surround me suddenly thicken, invading my soul and enveloping it so that I cannot find the sweet turn of my country in it again, everything has disappeared! When I want my heart, tired of the

160  Pavel Pola darkness that surrounds it, to rest… my anguish is redoubled, it seems to me that the darkness borrows the voice of sinners and mocks me: Come nearer, nearer still, look forward to a death that will give you not what you hope for, but a deeper well, a night of nothingness. (Thérèse de Lisieux 1996: 6) Thérèse combines night and nothingness – precisely the night of nothingness. One could understand it as a nihilistic expression of a resigned person. But for Thérèse, nothingness was not a negative concept. She herself longed to be small. To be so small as to become nothing. This does not imply a desire for annihilation; rather, it is a radical acceptance of self. Desire to accept all. Thérèse’s main attitude on her little way (or on the way of Nada) is trust, or courageous trust. This path of nothingness is not a path of contempt for life, of senseless self-destruction and rejection of anything good. But it is a path of radical humility and freedom. It is the way of complete reliance on God. As long as a person has some certainties, something they can rely on, something they consider an unquestionable possession, they are not yet fully prepared for union with God. In radical trust, the loss of our current certainties is an opportunity to open ourselves to God. It is not automatic. One can look for substitute certainties; one can go back on one’s journey. Only the acceptance of one’s own nothingness, one’s own dependence on God, is true liberation. And it should lead towards openness for God. This path may in many ways resemble the spiritual paths of certain Eastern religions. The goal of their spiritual practice may be seen as a form of nothingness, or emptiness. The path of Christian mysticism and contemplation may be similar in many ways. We can walk a long way together. John’s and Teresa’s approach directly encourages this. But the Christian faith and experience described by these mystics describe nothingness and emptiness not as the goal but the path. The path that leads towards everything, that we dare to call God. Towards union with this Everything that is already fully present in our deepest centre. This union is not in our hands but we long for it through our hope, faith and love. Exactly as can be read from the drawing of John of the Cross. Notes 1 See https://cac.org/praying-in-our-time-2020-04-19/ 2 Although, as we heard earlier, John was trained as a draughtsman, so this must not be the case. 3 Again, we may remember here Iain Matthew’s distinction between ‘purity’ and ‘perfection’ in his chapter.

11 ‘Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me’ (Job 30.21) John of the Cross on Job Louise Nelstrop

Introduction Most famously depicted sitting on his dunghill, Job’s phrase ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away’ (Job 1.21) has had a long reception history. As Gamble L. Madsen comments, ‘Beginning in the early Christian period, theological exposition … identified Job as an instructional model of human behaviour in the face of both physical and psychological challenge’ (Madsen 2016: 289; cf. Dinkova-Bruun 2016). Gregory the Great’s sixth-century Moralia in Iob was pivotal in this, exerting an enormous shaping influence on subsequent attitudes towards this biblical book into the early modern period (Straw 2016: 73). Indeed, Robert L. Wilken notes that ‘no exegetical work from the early church was more admired, studied, excerpted, and cited that Gregory the Great’s large commentary on the book of Job, the Moralia’ (Wilken 2001: 213). It would certainly have been known to John of the Cross. It is important to note that Gregory’s exegetical approach to Job differs from that of modern commentators who tend to view Job as one afflicted by God in ways that seem hard to justify. William Whedbee, for example, suggests that ‘what began as a test of Job has now turned into a test of God … Since Job is convinced that his suffering is not attributable to any particular sin, he senses that his misfortune is symptomatic of a grave and general disorder of the universe. … God often emerges as a grotesque, demonic deity’ (Whedbee 1977: 15). Indeed, Whedbee argues that ‘Job’s language of attack against God is probably the most searing in the Hebrew Bible’ (Whedbee 1977: 15). Yet although, following Gregory, the figure of Job was held up as a model of patience throughout the Middle Ages, and was seen as indicative of God’s omnipotence and transcendence, as in Gregory’s account, commentators were not always sure what to make of Job’s suffering or quasi-suicidal cries of desolation (Madsen 2016: 289). In this respect, Carole Straw argues that the Moralia is not the most satisfying read. As she puts it, ‘Gregory allegorises the problematic passages … these attempts can be quite feeble and unpersuasive’ (Straw 2016: 79). She moots that ‘Gregory struggles with the text’, vacillating, and revealing what Straw describes as ‘sobering’ attitudes towards suffering in early medieval Christian communities (Straw 2016: 84). DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-14

162  Louise Nelstrop Yet, while John of the Cross’ response to Job owes an important debt to Gregory’s legacy, John’s seems to constitute a rather different treatment of Job’s suffering, one that respects it as truly painful. In this regard John’s treatment of Job sheds light on the role that he holds feeling and empathy to play in spiritual love. In relation to Job, we find him emphasising that human loving continues to play a role within mystical union even after all natural human desires have been desolated. In what follows, I will begin by outlining Gregory’s treatment of Job and then move to examine Job’s function in John’s writings and the implications of John’s treatment of Job for a form of what we might term ‘protective integrity’ of the soul in loving union with God, even when deified, meaning that the human capacity to suffer is not entirely denigrated even if feeling is in other senses negated. St Gregory the Great on Job St Gregory the Great or pope Gregory I (590–604) composed his Moralia in Iob between 579 and 602 (Steinhauser 2016: 35). It is one of five extant commentaries on Job written by this period (Steinhauser, 2016). Straw notes that it was ‘the first line-by-line commentary on Job in the Christian tradition’ (Straw 2016: 71). Gregory treats the book of Job to a fourfold reading, building on Cassian’s exegetical model which posits that scripture contains literal, allegorical, moral or tropological, and anagogical senses, a point that Cassian clarifies with reference to the word ‘Jerusalem’: [O]ne and the same Jerusalem can be taken in four senses: historically as the city of the Jews; allegorically as the Church of Christ, anagogically as the heavenly city of God ‘which is the mother of us all’, tropologically, as the soul of man, which is frequently subject to praise or blame from the Lord under this title (Ps.147:12). (Cassian 1894a: 8.406) In the Moralia Gregory’s treats each sense separately. Yet, as the title of his commentary suggests, he is particularly interested in its moral meaning. In her modern study of pain, suffering and comedy in the book of Job, Katherine Southwood likewise moots that ‘illness and pain are presented as moral events that provoke profound introspection’ (Southwood 2021: 1). Yet rather than meeting Job’s response to pain head on as Southwood does, Gregory cannot accept its literal face value, especially when at its most raw. He instead allegorises Job’s pain, a point we see clearly in his treatment of the difficult statements that we find in Job 3. In Job 3 we read that Job cursed the day on which he was born: ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man child is conceived’ (Job 3.3). Later in the same chapter, Job bemoans the fact that he was not stillborn: ‘Why did I not die in the womb? why did I not perish when I came out of the belly? Why received upon the knees? why suckled at the breasts? For

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 163 now I should have been asleep and still, and should have rest in my sleep’ (Job 3.11–13). Gregory argues that we cannot take these cries of desolation literally. Nothing would be ‘more reprehensible’ than wishing one had never been born (Gregory the Great 1844: IV.preface.ii, 102). Given Job’s resignation to God’s omnipotence – ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away’ (Job 1.21) – earlier in the text, if read literally, the former would entail a contradiction, making it at best a ‘mischievous curse’ (Gregory the Great 1844: IV.preface.ii, 103). Not only this, but it would seem to run counter to the claim that Job had never sinned in his speech: ‘In all these things Job sinned not by his lips, nor spoke he any foolish thing against God’ (Job 1.22). Gregory suggests that the word ‘night’ therefore lends itself to a moral reading: ‘we must enquire why man is said to be born in “the day” and conceived in “the night?”’ (Gregory the Great 1844: IV.xii.25, 115). Surely, he argues, the ‘day’ which Job wishes to have perished is all the delights that hurry him into the night of sin, adding that Job’s subsequent statement, ‘Let the day become darkness’ (Gregory the Great 1844: V.xiv.26, 116) highlights the soul’s realisation that its evil inclinations are leading it into ruin. Again, when commenting on Job 3.11–13 Gregory argues that moral and allegorical readings are the only way to understand what is meant if we are to interpret this passage in a Christian manner. Such an approach to Job’s suffering creates the possibility for Gregory to make a typological connection between Job and Christ (cf. Gregory the Great 1844: I.xi.15, 20). For example, arguing that Job’s name can be interpreted as ‘grieving’ in relation to Job 1.8, we see him move to a passage from Isaiah’s suffering servant commonly associated with Christ in early Christian exegesis. This facilitates an expansion of Christology in accord with the Chalcedonian formula into which Gregory weaves ideas of spiritual progress and deification that resonate with Cassian’s defence against Nestorianism. In this relation, Gregory argues that humans are intended to be divine by adoption, which sets them apart from Christ who alone is divine by nature. He clarifies that just as Christ’s humanity in no way impaired his divinity, just so his divinity did not consume his humanity: He is truly called ‘Grieving’ in figure, Who is declared by the testimony of the Prophet ‘to bear our griefs.’ [Isa. 53, 4] Who has not His like on the earth; for every man is only man, but He is both God and Man. … because though every son by adoption attains to the receiving of the Divine nature, yet none ever receives so much, as to be, by nature, God. [In this he does] not undergo alteration in that which He had, He neither lessened the Divine by the Human, nor swallowed up the Human in the Divine. (Gregory the Great 1844: I.xxii.42, 54) Viewed in this way, Gregory’s exposition of Job becomes a platform for discussion of imitatio Christi: For there came among men the Mediator between God and Man, the Man Christ Jesus, for the giving an example of living, perfect [simplex];

164  Louise Nelstrop in respect of His rigour towards the evil spirits, upright; for the exterminating pride, fearing God; and for the wiping off impurity of life in His Elect, departing from evil. (Gregory the Great 1844: I.xxiii.43, 54; c.f. McGinn 2020b) This slippage between Job and Christ likewise allows Gregory to develop Job himself as a model of imitatio Christi. We see this, for example, in his exposition of Job 6, where Job’s sufferings are said to demonstrate the foolishness of the wisdom of the world, a clear allusion to 1 Corinthians 1.18, where the message of the cross is described as foolish to those who are not being saved: Blessed Job had undergone the loss of his property; being given over to the strokes of evil spirits, he was suffering the smarts of their wounds; yet in loving the wise foolishness of God, he had trodden under foot the foolish wisdom of the world with inward scorn. Therefore in opposition to the rich of this world he is called poor, in opposition to the powerful he is called oppressed, in opposition to the wise he is called a fool. (Gregory the Great 1844: VII.xxxv.52, 238) Building on this Christological motif, in Gregory’s model Job is one who arrives at greater union with God through suffering (Gregory the Great 1844: VII.xvi.19, 222). That Job does not on a literal level advocate this himself in the text – indeed, it is a position advanced in this sense by Eliphaz (Southwood 2016: 56)– is not of concern to Gregory, who reads both Job and Eliphaz in a spiritual sense, and as such as offering important (but similar) truths to the reader (Dunham 2016: 54–56). It is Job’s suffering as read through Gregory’s eyes that became the dominant model for understanding him into the early modern period and beyond. As Straw notes, ‘Gregory’s exegesis left a mark on virtually every writer of note in the medieval Church and its schools’ (Straw 2016: 71 esp. n. 3). As such, his was also a model which was an important source of inspiration for images of suffering in the Latin West across this period (Madsen 2016: 297–298).1 We should not therefore be surprised to find elements of this reading of Job in the writings of John of the Cross. Job as a Companion on the Way in the Works of John of the Cross Even a cursory glance at the index of scriptural quotations and references at the end of E. Allison Peers’ edition of The Complete Works of St John of the Cross indicate that John was particularly interested in Job. After the Psalms and the Song of Songs, almost no text is as frequently referenced as Job, save Isaiah, and the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John – all of which are referred to in roughly equal number to Job. Peers counts 64 references to Job, 67 to Isaiah, 65 to the Gospel of Matthew, 55 to the Gospel of

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 165 Luke and 86 to the Gospel of John. Job is clearly an important scriptural text for John of the Cross and engagement with it occurs across his corpus. Not counting allusions, John refers directly to Job 5 times in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, 11 in the Dark Night of the Soul, 7 in the first redaction of the Canticle, and 12 in the second, 10 times in the first redaction of the Living Flame and 7 in the second. This in itself is noteworthy – given that Job’s suffering functions as a referent for physical and psychological challenge in the Moralia of Gregory the Great, we might expect references to Job to congregate in the Ascent and Dark Night, whereas in fact Job remains a ubiquitous figure, mentioned by John even in relation to perfection. Yet there is also no doubt that John of the Cross owes a debt to the reading of Job that Gregory inspired. John too treats Job to allegorical interpretation, and reads his sufferings ultimately as a form of blessing. In the Dark Night, for instance, he writes of how Job’s suffering points to God’s transcendence (DN 2.17.8) and he refers to Job’s dunghill, which operates as a symbol of patience (DN 1.9.3). Elsewhere, he compares Job’s sufferings to those of Christ, writing in the Living Flame of ‘how necessary it is to suffer and endure to reach this lofty state … [to] bear the cross, together with pure vinegar and gall, and … count this a great happiness … we read of Job [that God] granted him the favour of sending him those heavily trials, that He might afterwards exult him’ (LF 2.24). However, while Gregory’s exegesis of Job can give the impression that we should not think of Job himself as falling into the depths of despair, in John’s writing he is often in genuine, if spiritual, pain.2 We see this, for instance, in the opening section of the Living Flame, where John refers to Job in recounting how painful the living flame of love can be to a soul that has not undergone purgation. Job is one who is portrayed as having suffered likewise. The following quotation helps to illustrate this point: In its substance the soul suffers profoundly from its poverty and abandonment. Dry and cold, and at times hot, it finds relief in naught, nor is there any thought that can console it, nor can it raise its heart to God, since this flame has become so oppressive to it. Even so, says Job, did God treat him in this operation, where he says: ‘Thou art changed to be cruel to me’. For, when the soul suffers all these things together, they become like purgatory to it and any description of this falls short of the reality. … I can think now of no way to describe … it, save by using these words of Jeremias. (LF 1.18) As we can see here, Job is not the only biblical figure used to help elucidate the soul’s suffering. Jeremiah is also one whose words are deemed useful.3 Yet, Job is referenced far more frequently as one who has experienced beforehand the suffering into which the directee is now plunged and with whom he or

166  Louise Nelstrop she can empathise. We can see another example of this in John’s discussion of the purgation which the soul must undergo described in the Dark Night (DN 2.9.7). Speaking of how the soul becomes ‘alien’ to itself as it lets go of its ‘common knowledge of things’ – a process that it must undergo if it is to attain a unified knowledge of all things in God – John writes of the very real desolation that the soul must experience. This causes the soul to groan and cry inwardly with such vehemence that sometimes the pain is said to ascend to the mouth, where it is given literal voice: ‘the spirit experiences pain and sighing so deep that they cause it vehement spiritual groans and cries, to which at times it gives vocal expression’ (DN 2.9.7). Job, John says, is one who knew this too: ‘this roaring implies great pain … and I know not how the affections of the soul could be described [or felt] save in the similitude of holy Job, when he was in the same trials, and uttered these words: “Even as the overflowing of the waters, even so is my roaring”’ (DN 2.9.7). Likewise, in the Spiritual Canticle, Job is one who understands what it truly means to languish in love to such an extent that he is said to have lived in a state of dying. As John puts it: The third kind of pain in love is like to dying, which is as though the soul had the sore festered. The soul has become so wholly festered, and lives while yet dying, until love slays it and so makes it to live the life of love, by transforming it into love … As the prophet Job said: Quid mihi det, ut qui coepit ipse me conterat? Which is to say: Who will grant me that he that hath begun me, the same shall end me? (CA 7.4) While Job’s suffering is viewed as pertaining to his spiritual journey rather than to his loss of physical goods, health and persons by John, his cries of desolation are nonetheless real. He truly longs to die so that his suffering will cease. As such, he is one who has already experienced that which the devotee is now feeling and so is one with whom he or she can both identify and empathise. We see this too in the Dark Night when the soul learns ‘discretion in detachment of desire’ (DN 1.12.3) in its converse with God through the dark night of the senses. As the soul comes better to know itself, it becomes aware of its unworthiness before God, and so realises that up to this point its spiritual life has been overly audacious, and it no longer finds comfort in its old practices. Just in a moment when the directee can’t see beyond his or her own suffering, Job’s spiritual journey engenders hope: [T]he preparation which God granted to Job in order that he might speak with Him consisted not in those delights and glories which Job himself reports that he was wont to have in his God, but in leaving him naked upon a dung-hill, abandoned and even persecuted by his friends, filled with anguish and bitterness, and the earth covered with worms. And then the Most High God, He that lifts up the poor man from the dung-hill, was pleased to come down and speak with him there face to

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 167 face, revealing to him the depths and heights of his wisdom, in a way that He has never done in the time of his prosperity. (DN 1.12.3) Job’s presence here has the effect of taking the reader out of themselves and their own suffering in which they might otherwise wallow. In this respect John does not simply presents Job to the reader as a sort of spiritual Everyman. He invites identification at the level of empathy. In empathy one identifies with a perspective other than one’s own. Empathy does not simply enable one to feel less alone, it pulls one out of one’s own perspective, and so acts as a potential source of unselving. As Hollan and Throop point out, empathy entails a ‘de-centering of the self from its own self-experience … imagining the perspective of another from a quasi first-person perspective … [and] approximating the feelings, emotions, motives, concerns, and thoughts of another mind’ (Hollan and Throop 2012: 217; cf. Throop and Zahari 2020: 289).4 John appears to use Job as such a catalyst in the soul’s ‘pilgrimage’ into self-alienation (DN 2.9.5), and it is not only John who views Job in this way. Richard Rohr makes a similar point about Job’s empathetic potential in his popular commentary on the Book of Job: When you are feeling abandoned, pick up Job’s book and speak Job’s prayers and know they have been prayed before and that we are part of a great history and we are all in this together. There are no feelings we feel that others have not felt before. At such times, in our prayer, we unite ourselves in solidarity with others who suffer and who have suffered before us. Often, that’s the only way out of our self pity and preoccupation with our own feelings. We have to choose solidarity with the ‘communion of saints’. (Rohr 1996: 94) In these above examples from John’s writings and in many others that we could cite, the reader is not simply being invited to identify imaginatively with Job. Indeed, in chapter 14 of the Ascent, John has already explained, citing Job, that there will come a point when imaginative devotions and meditations no longer provide any spiritual sweetness or sustenance, and only devotion that in some way nourishes the soul is worth continuing. Job appears here and then helps to lead the reader into the suffering that feeds which he has already encountered, acting as a spiritual guide but one who is first and foremost such because he is a figure of empathy. This is not to say that John is always true to the absolute desolation of Job’s cries. Part of John’s portrayal of Job’s suffering includes the idea that suffering is a necessary part of the soul’s progress towards spiritual transformation. For example, in Book II of the Dark Night, the kind of testing which Job is said to have undergone is described as allowing the soul to develop perseverance because it provides the devil with an opportunity of conquering

168  Louise Nelstrop the soul, which can then be resisted (DN 2.23.6). As such, John gives suffering a purpose that is not necessarily borne out by Job’s own literal words in this scriptural book. Indeed, in John’s account, as in Gregory’s, Job’s thinking sometimes appears to be elided with that of his friends as a consequence of the spiritual reading that is applied to the text. For example, Eliphaz’s words are treated by John as a vision of hidden truth which makes his skin shrink, revealing that suffering has a spiritual purpose: [T]his Prophet [Eliphaz] declares here that, as at the time when men go to rest they are want to be oppressed and terrified by a vision which they call a nightmare, which comes to them between sleep and waking – the point when sleep begins – even so at the time of this spiritual transit from the sleep of natural ignorance in the waking of supernatural knowledge, which is the beginning of rapture or ecstasy, the spiritual vision which is then communicated to them fills them with fear and trembling. (CA 14-15.18) Yet, Eliphaz’s argument in scripture, if read on the literal level, appears to be intended to bring Job’s innocence into question. The author(s) of Job pits this speech at odds with Job’s thinking. As Southwood points out, ‘Rather than adhering to Eliphaz’s moralising advice, therefore, Job insists on pointing out the ‘Eliphaz in the room’, so to speak, by uncovering his friends’ argument’s shortcomings’ (Southwood 2021: 54). John here, however, follows Gregory, who suggests that while the words of Eliphaz should be rejected on a literal level, they are spiritually truthful. John weaves them into a Macrobian sense of dream vision as a way of justifying this. Between sleep and waking is the moment at which Macrobius argues that somnus, that is prophetic dreams, occur (c.f. Spearing 1976: 10). Even so, and despite the unselving that empathising with Job’s sufferings seems designed to cultivate, given that the readers’ engagement with Job operates at the level of feeling, we might expect Job to play little function in John’s descriptions of perfection or desireless desire, if this is understood to be a state in which all human desire has been annihilated – a view of contemplation mooted by Thomas Merton, which he holds to accord with the thought of John of the Cross. As Merton asserts, During the ‘dark night’ of faith, one must let himself be guided to reality not by visible and tangible things, not by the evidence of sense or the understanding of reason, not by concepts charged with natural hope, or joy, or fear, or desire, or grief, but by the ‘dark night’ that transcends all desire and sees no human and earthly satisfaction, except what I will by God or connected with his will. (Merton 2003: 16) Merton’s reading in many ways accurately captures John’s. John clearly posits that the soul must move beyond all natural or ordinary ways of

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 169 understanding the world. The empathy that engagement with Job derives pulls the devotee out of himself and into the will of God. We might, however, be forgiven for thinking that Merton is therefore suggesting that feeling ceases to matter at this point for John. Yet Job, the model of how to feel, appears at almost the very end of the Living Flame, where John talks of how ‘the soul knows and feels [conoce y siente] … the excellence of God [which] is wholly indescribable’ (LF 4.10). The discussion pertains to how the soul can bear the glory of God that it encounters in spiritual awakening once it has reached ‘the state of perfection’ (LF 4.12). Again Job is one who has gone before and has asked the difficult question of how the soul can possibly endure the presence of God without being annihilated. John writes: Concerning this Job enquires, when we have such difficulty hearing a drop,5 who has been able to abide the greatness of his [God’s] thunder. And elsewhere he says ‘I will not that He contend and treat me with much strength, lest perchance He oppress me with the weight of His greatness.’ (LF 4.11) While in his response John’s stresses that the soul will not suffer in the same way that it did before it was purified, he nonetheless states that there is still the potential for it to suffer even at this point, on account of that which it now experiences as exceeding its nature. A longer quotation here helps to clarify these points. As John puts it: [B]eing, as it now is, in the state of perfection, wherein its lower part is thoroughly purged and confirmed with the spirit, it feels6 not the suffering [no siente el detrimento] and pain that are wont to be experienced in spiritual communications by spirit and sense when these are not purged and prepared to receive them; although this suffices not to prevent the soul from suffering when it is faced with such greatness and glory; since, although its nature be very pure, yet it will be corrupted because it exceeds nature, even as a physical faculty is corrupted by any sensible thing which exceeds its power, in which sense must be taken that which we quoted from Job. (LF, Redaction B, 4.12) The notion of suffering invites Job’s presence, which, in turn, reinforces the human element in the spiritual life – its capacity to feel and to suffer– even at this point of spiritual progress. While the soul is not feeling with natural feelings, it is nonetheless able to feel, albeit in a supernatural way. John’s solution to the problems of why the soul does not suffer at this point of union is to stress firstly that God prevents this from happening through his grace and secondly that God ‘protects its nature’ (LF 4.12). John writes: For, just as God shows the soul greatness and glory in order to comfort and magnify it, just so does He grant it grace so that it receives no

170  Louise Nelstrop suffering, and protect[s] its nature, showing the spirit His greatness, with tenderness and love, without the natural senses perceiving this, so that the soul knows not if it is in the body or out of the body. (LF 4.12) John goes on to stress that it is easy for God to do this, who likewise protected Moses, enabling him to see God’s glory. The soul, although it does not know suffering with its ordinary senses, still has a capacity to suffer. Indeed, it is its capacity to feel in a total transcendent way that brings the allusion to St Paul’s entry to the third heaven, where in 2 Corinthians 12.3 Paul states that he did not know whether he was in or out of his body when he heard God’s secrets that no one may utter. This potentially frightening encounter is, according to John, an entry into the tenderness of God’s love, a point reiterated through John’s comparison of it with Queen Esther fainting at the sight of the king who revived her by touching and embracing her. Indeed, in John’s account it is not Paul but Job who accompanies the reader into God’s glorifying presence and as such a special emphasis is placed on feeling and so the soul’s continued integrity despite its perfection and unity. This is indicative of the fact that God has transformed the soul rather than obliterated it, and one way that we know this is so is because the soul continues to have the capacity to feel. Even if this feeling is beyond the work of the soul’s natural senses, feeling is still connected to its human nature, which God protects even in the highest level of loving union. The understanding of loving union that I am suggesting we find discussed in relation to Job at the end of the Living Flame accords with recent appraisals of John’s disinterested desire more generally. David Sanderlin, for example, argues that it does not exclude neighbourly love, stating that for John ‘God does not destroy our nature but perfects it, as well as raising us to supernatural life’ (Sanderlin 1993: 93). Frank England stresses that the contrary would go against the very nature of love. As he puts it ‘the love of the beloved permits, generates, and sustains the love of the lover’ (England 2013: 91), a point similarly made by John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, who have argued that the emphasis on love in Marguerite Porete’s discussion of mystical union makes it unlikely that even the most radical accounts of deification intend to imply the annihilation of the created aspect of the soul (Arblaster and Faesen 2012; c.f. Faesen 2016). John too speaks of deification in relation to the loving union that the soul comes to share in and experience. For example, in his Canticle, stanza 17.6–8 he states that although the soul cannot understand God and so love him with its natural powers, God infuses love into the soul in a supernatural manner, thereby deifying it (CA 17.6–8).7 Although John does appear to suggest that feeling disappears in deification and is replaced by desire, for example in Canticle 36.10–12, Job is also present in this discussion. Job’s sufferings open the door to the wisdom that is arrived at this point. Here John speaks of the ‘thicket’ of trials and tribulations through which the soul must pass. Yet he also speaks of the ‘thickets’ of wisdom,

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 171 implying the possibly of suffering in even wisdom, a point reinforced by Job’s presence here, which again appears to be offered as an empathetic model. This emphasis on feeling raises questions about John’s spiritual anthropology. Sam Hole has recently argued that John’s anthropological model is largely, although not totally, indebted to Aquinas in this respect (see Hole 2020: 3 and the following chapter). Aquinas sets out in his own understanding of deification to safeguard the soul’s capacity, which he considers to be threatened by the model of deification offered in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, I, d. 17, c. 6. 1 (thinking which probably originates from William of St. Thierry). Lombard claims that: ‘the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son by which they love each other and us. It must be added to this that the very same Holy Spirit is the love or charity by which we love God and neighbour’ (Peter Lombard 2007–2010: vol 1. 88).8 This is an understanding of union that Philipp Rosemann has characterised as ‘theological dynamite’ (Rosemann 2004: 410), since as Geetjan Zuijdweg has pointed out this would mean that the soul’s created love plays no part in the unitive love into which God draws it, which would imply that the soul lacked freedom.9 As Aquinas puts it in Quaestio disputata de caritate 1.a.: ‘Therefore if the soul does not effect an act of charity through some proper form, but only because it is moved by an extrinsic agent, i.e., by the Holy Spirit, then it will follow that it is considered only as an instrument for this act’ (Aquinas 1984: 22).10 This does not mean that Thomas rejects deification entirely, however. As Zuijdweg goes on to illustrate, Thomas holds that so long as the Holy Spirit works as a created human habitus or virtue, so that the soul can freely participate in the loving, and so garner merit, deification is possible since it entails no loss of freedom. The soul can enter into the most intimate loving union with God through the operation of the Holy Spirit – but it doesn’t completely either disappear or play no part in the process of loving in so doing. As the Holy Spirit provides the soul with a supernatural but created virtue, this gives the soul the capacity to will the good in a way that supersedes its natural capacities (Zuijdwegt 2012: 65). As Zuijdwegt puts it: ‘the supernatural virtue of charity changes the created subject in two ways, first, it offers a new way of being (forma) and secondly, it offers a new power of acting (habitus). Because it supernaturally changes the created subject in this way, it is itself created’ (Zuijdwegt 2012: 65). This model would therefore safeguard the possibility of suffering even in the highest state of union. However, it is not entirely clear that this is model of deification John advocates. There are instances in which John seem to come close to Aquinas. For example, in his Canticle, stanza 17.6–8, referred to earlier, he discusses how although the soul cannot understand and love God by means of its natural capacities, the infused love of God deifies it, giving it supernatural capacities (CA 17.6–8). This appears to echo Aquinas, with John clarifying that this means ‘to infuse into it [the soul] grace, gifts and virtues’ (CA 17.4). In this regard, Monika C. Benitan has suggested that John is following and extending Aquinas’ thinking of deification when he makes a distinction between

172  Louise Nelstrop infusing the soul in this way and the activation of these infused virtues (Benitan 2022). As she points out, John states: There is a great difference between the breathing of God into the soul and the breathing of God through the soul. To breathe into the soul is to infuse into it grace, gifts and virtues; and to breathe through the soul is for God to touch the virtues and perfections which have already been given to it, refreshing and moving them so that they may diffuse wondrous fragrance and sweetness. (CA 26.4) Benitan argues that only the latter – breathing through the soul – pertains to theosis, and that by making this distinction John develops Aquinas’ thought on this topic into what she terms ‘embodied theosis’, that is a theosis that illustrates that ‘God can (and does) take charge also of the human body in union without violating human nature or freedom’, despite John’s stressing that ‘God cannot be grasped by the bodily senses’ (Benitan 2022: 6). However, it is not entirely clear that John moves much beyond Aquinas here if he is indeed extending him. In emphasising the body, one could argue that John actually accords with Aquinas on this point, since as Hole notes, ‘[i]n line with Aquinas, John understands the “soul” to be the “form of the body”. His use of the notion [soul] therefore refers both to the physical and spiritual aspects of a single unified entity’ (Hole 2020: 2, n.1), such that we argue that both promote embodied theosis. At the same time, Edward Howells has argued that John in fact appears to accord more closely with Peter Lombard’s model of deification (Howells 2002). John speaks of the Holy Spirit breathing directly through the soul in both the Living Flame and his Canticle. Indeed, one could argue that in emphasising that the Holy Spirit is both the creator and motivator of the supernatural virtue, human agency is potentially undermined to a greater extent in John’s account than in Aquinas’. Yet John affirms human agency in union, a point he makes, for example, in Canticle 38.4. Howells also stresses, with reference to Canticle 13.6 that ‘the soul is not torn from the body’, rather the Holy Spirit ‘meets the soul in her humanity’ (Howells 2019: 412). Whether John is closer to Lombard or Aquinas in his description of deification, John’s use of Job as a model of the soul’s capacity to feel suffering at this stage of spiritual development cited elsewhere in his corpus militates against an understanding of John’s thinking on deification that excludes human feeling. Thus there is a ‘protective integrity’ of the soul in loving union with God, even when deified, in John’s account that serves the same purpose as the created habitus in Aquinas’ account, whether or not John follows Aquinas’ spiritual anthropology here. John’s use of Job as empathetic model for feeling reinforces the human element in disinterested love. Job is one whose feelings and humanity matter to God throughout his spiritual journey. As such, Job’s ubiquitous presence in John’s corpus points towards a spirituality that values the humanity of the

Thou Art Changed to Be Cruel Toward Me (Job 30.21) 173 directee. John’s presentation of Job as a kind of suffering spiritual Everyman who draws the readers out of themselves through empathy has the effect of reinforcing the role that feelings and experience play in the directee’s spiritual journey without undermining the detached love into which the soul has entered. For John, as Mark Wynn comments, ‘the “soul’’ registers its condition in the felt recognition of its own nothingness – that is, in its feeling of its alienation from created things’ (Wynn 2012: 97). This emphasis on feeling ensures that the reader knows that they never complete disappear into God. God sustains them at the level of feeling, retaining their human integrity even though in their union with God their own desires have been abandoned. This approach to union can be read Christologically. Just as Christ does not sacrifice his divine nature to become human, so too the soul does not sacrifice its human nature to become divine – deification in John’s account, following the Christological typological of Job is a true imitatio Christi. Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to highlight the role that Job plays in John of the Cross’ treatises. He is a ubiquitous presence, a spiritual companion on the way, with whom the reader is encouraged to identify at the level of feeling and empathy. Job not only helps readers to know that their feelings are appropriate – even if their friends may doubt this – he draws them out of themselves, pulling readers through the text, pushing them to move beyond their own suffering rather than get stuck in it or fall into despair as they empathise with him. Job’s presence in John’s corpus is not only part of the soul’s unselving, it also draws attention to the continued role that feeling plays even in the heights of loving union, where Job appears in relation to the soul’s continued capacity to feel. That the soul continues to be able to suffer even after all of its own desiring has ceased draws attention to its continued engagement in the loving union that occurs even when it is deified. Job’s role as discussed here accords with an anthropology that recognises the soul’s continued agency and also highlights the Christological dimension of John’s spirituality. What is more, through Job’s companionship – since Job himself points always towards Christ – readers are invited to pursue a pathway towards imitatio Christi in which, while becoming divine, they retain their human nature, a point they are reassured of through their retention of their capacity to feel at the level of suffering. Notes 1 As Madsen stresses here, Gregory’s was not the only model that influenced images of Job. We also find in the writings of John Tauler numerous references to Job and his suffering in relation to the purification of the soul, where Job is at times almost offered as a sort of spiritual friend. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to explore similarities with John of the Cross’ account of Job here, it is important to note that John is not the first or only mystical author to develop a rapport with

174  Louise Nelstrop Job that moves beyond Gregory’s model in an empathetic direction. See, for example, Tauler (1901, 1910). 2 All references to John’s works are from the Complete Works edited by E. Allison Peers (1943) unless otherwise stated. Full details are in the Bibliography. 3 We see this elsewhere, for example in A 2.19.7; John quotes Jeremiah 4.10 in relation to how the words of God are different from our words and not be taken at the literal level. This, he states, in the past led to suffering because rather than realising the God had sent his Messiah to bring spiritual peace the peoples of that time thought that God had said that there would be a literal end of wars and so they despaired: ‘we have looked for peace but there is no boon of peace’. This is an important point, because it pertains to how John understand scripture – it is not to be taken literally but the spiritual meaning elicited, which is what John does with the book of Job. As John puts it here: ‘And thus, when interpreting prophecy, we have not to consider our own sense and language, knowing that the language of God is very different from ours, and that it is a spiritual language, very far removed from our understanding and exceedingly difficult’ (A 2.19.7). 4 Throop and Zahari stress that, ‘Empathy is not about me having the same mental state, feeling, sensation, or embodied response as another, but rather about me being experientially acquainted with an experience that is not my own. Empathy targets foreign experiences without eliminating their alterity. In empathy, I am confronted with the presence of an experience that I am not living through myself’ (Throop and Zahari, 2020: 289). 5 Redaction B has ‘spark’; see Allison Peers vol III, 191. 6 I have quoted from Redaction B as it emphasises feeling. Redaction A reads ‘it has not the suffering’ [‘non tiene el detrimento’]. It is not clear whether the shift from ‘tiene’ to ‘siene’ in Redaction B is the result of miscopying. The sense of feeling in terms of suffering is nonetheless present because of Job’s presence. All Spanish quotes are from the Obras edited by P. Silverio de Santa Teresa (1931); see Bibliography for details. The Second Redaction is in Vol. 4. 7 John also speaks of the soul entering into some form of deification such that nothing enters the soul that is not in accord with the will of God in C 18.5: ‘It is, as it were, Divine and deified, so that in even its first movements it has naught whereto the will of God is opposed’. 8 ‘[...] omnes catholici concedunt, scilicet quod Spiritus Sanctus sit caritas Patris et Filii; quod autem ipse idem sit caritas qua diligimus Deum et proximum, a plerisque negatur ’ (Peter Lombard 1971–81: vol 1, I, d. 17, c. 6.1, 148–149). 9 A point which Zuijdwegt notes that Aquinas roundly rejects in his Quaestio disputata de caritate, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, I, d. 17, q. 1, a. 1 and Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi and I, d. 17, q. 1, a. 2, as well as his Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 23, a. 2 (Zuijdwegt 2012). 10 ‘Si anima non agit actum caritatis per aliquam formam propriam, sed solum secundum quod est mota ab exteriori agente, scilicet Spiritu sancto, sequetur quod ad hunc actum se habeat sicut instrumentum tantum’, Aquinas (1953: a. 1, resp., 755).

Part III

John of the Cross in Dialogue

12 The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross Sam Hole

Introduction Famously, the neo-Thomism of the first half of the twentieth century tended to envisage a very close connection between the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John of the Cross. In the 1930s, the writings of theological giants of the age such as Jacques Maritain and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange assumed that John’s thought transposed that of Thomas to the genre of spiritual direction and guidance. Thomas was the Angelic Doctor; John was, after in 1926 being declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI, commonly known as the Mystical Doctor. What Thomas offered for systematic theology, John offered for mystical theology, and the two were on the fundamental principles entirely in agreement (see, e.g., Garrigou-Lagrange 1937: 2–3, and Maritain 1995: 338, 346). More recent scholarship on John has, however, stepped away from this grand series of assertions. The Augustinian, Dionysian, and (more distantly) Platonic roots of John’s thought have been highlighted, with attention paid to the extent to which these influences remain true to their Thomistic reception and inflection. Greater attention has been paid to the ways in which John’s thought either seems unaware of, or ignores, or deliberately contradicts the thought of Thomas. And modern scholars have, overall, been more content to observe the originality of John’s own thought. The shift in scholarly consensus is summed up well in the following comment by Steven Payne, offered in 1990: Even those familiar with scholasticism have often erred by assuming too readily that John was fundamentally a Thomist. More recent studies have shown that John disagreed with Aquinas on a number of substantive issues. And although his basic intellectual framework was undeniably scholastic, John was an original thinker who was not afraid to modify received views in order to deal with the spiritual life more clearly and accurately. (Payne 1990: 17)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-16

178  Sam Hole This chapter agrees with this consensus and seeks to offer a brief study – not available elsewhere in modern English-language scholarship on John – of how we may best sum up the influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross.1 This chapter proceeds in three parts. It first reviews what we know from John’s biography of the extent to which (and with which writings in particular) John may have been familiar with the writings of Aquinas. Second, it turns to the evidence within John’s own writing. John’s direct citations of Aquinas offer us little to increase our understanding. I therefore examine instead two aspects of John’s thought that have been central to much recent scholarly attention to John – first, his anthropology; and, second, his understanding of the relationship between nature and grace that is encoded in his account of the various stages of the spiritual ascent. In both these areas, I argue, we may trace resonances with Aquinas, but also important divergences. Finally, it points out that, even if we allow for particular areas of Thomistic influence on John, we need to be cautious about thereby agreeing on a direct agreement between Thomas and John, not least by examining John’s use in two parts of his work of pseudo-Thomistic works that John may well have understood to be genuine writings of Thomas Aquinas. In exploring this influence of Aquinas on John, I draw on my recent book on the significance of desire in John (Hole 2020), while expanding in multiple places on the material offered there. I examine English, French, and Spanish scholarship, conscious of the language barriers that have all too often limited the transmission of foreign-language insights into Englishlanguage scholarship. Aquinas is certainly an influence on John’s thought – perhaps one of the more major influences when set alongside the other past theologians with whose thought John resonates. John is an individual thinker who is informed by multiple theological authorities – Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, and Aquinas prominent among them – but whose writing is too distinctive and creative to be narrowly parcelled out according to the influence of different authorities. In our study of John we must be careful not to overstate Aquinas’ influence, and must always keep at the forefront of our mind John’s central concern which overrides his faithfulness to any one theological tradition – namely, to help those for whom he had pastoral responsibility as a spiritual director to ascend towards union with God. John’s Biography: His Likely Knowledge of Aquinas The first significant question that this chapter examines concerns what knowledge John may have had of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The scholarly focus in consideration of this question during the mid-twentieth century was what knowledge of Aquinas John gained during his studies at the University of Salamanca from 1564 to 1568. For, during these years that university was central to a revival and transformation of Thomist thought. Figures at Salamanca associated with this mid-sixteenth-century Thomist revival include Francisco de Vitoria, OP (?1486–1586); Domingo de Soto, OP (1495–1560);

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross 179 Melchor Cano, OP (1509–1560); Domingo Bañez, OP (1528–1604); and others. For much of the twentieth-century scholars found it tempting to believe that John came into contact with these significant thinkers, and that they were the significant influences in John’s own knowledge of Thomism. Between 1989 and 1993, however, Rodríguez-San Pedro Bezares published both a short monograph and a series of articles which drew on the archives both of the University and of the College of San Andrés to lay out how much of Aquinas’ thought John may have learned during his time at Salamanca. As Bezares’ findings continue to be reflected only to a limited extent in the England-language literature on John, it is worth summarising his key arguments, which show just how partial John’s exposure to Thomism during these years is likely to have been.2 First, Bezares addresses what teaching John is likely to have received before arriving at Salamanca. Between 1559 and 1563, John studied at the Jesuit college in Medina del Campo. It is known that the college taught classes in Latin, on classical authors and on rhetoric. Yet, we cannot say much more – and while some scholars have posited that John may have gained an initial education in logic and philosophy during these years, Bezares cautions that no evidence exists either way on this theory (Bezares 1992: 12–13). In 1563, aged 21, John entered into the Carmelite friary of Santa Ana in Medina del Campo, taking the name Juan de Santo Matías. The following year, in autumn 1564, John was sent by the Carmelite Order to Salamanca. In his first three years at Salamanca – from 1564 to 1567 – John would have followed the standard course in Arts, the major subjects of which were logic, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy. During this first year, it is most likely that John mostly received teaching on the Sumulae (a summary of the fundamental principles of logic) of Domingo de Soto and parts of Aristotle’s Logic. In his second year, between 1565 and 1566, John studied further Logic, most probably being taught by Hernando Rueda and Gaspar y Torres and therefore learning more of Aristotle’s Logic and Physics (Bezares 1992: 35–48). In his third year, between 1566 and 1567, John received a training in philosophy, most likely attending lectures on Aristotle’s Physics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, the Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics (Bezares 1992: 49–71). All this, Bezares notes, constituted a fairly standard training of the era – and, we may add, involved no study of Aquinas. While pursuing his studies at the university, John lived at the Carmelite College of San Andrés. Some have mooted that John may have received significant further theological education through that college. Bezares, however, doubts that John would have gained much systematic exposure to theology or philosophy through the college. There is no evidence of any lectures in arts or theology at the College of San Andrés before 1571. Even if they did take place, Bezares suggests that the university timetable seems to have been sufficiently full that any teaching at the College is likely to have taken the form of less formal debates and discussions (Bezares 1992: 13–15). It is unlikely, in short, that John gained much knowledge of Aquinas through his Carmelite college.

180  Sam Hole In the summer of 1567 (though we do not know the exact date), John was ordained priest. He returned to Medina del Campo to say his first mass in the presence of his mother. There, he met Teresa of Avila – an event which would shortly be of seminal significance for John’s future life. Initially, however, he returned to Salamanca and began his fourth year there, beginning his study of Theology. It is here that he is likely to have received his most systematic exposure to Aquinas’ thought. There is no evidence concerning precisely which courses John attended during this year. Yet Bezares theorises a likely timetable for John’s studies in theology, drawing on the 1561 Statutes and what is known of the teaching in the academic year 1567–1568 itself (Bezares 1992: 112–120). Taking the lecture courses for the day in order: first, the Prime lectures for the year of John’s studies in Theology examined the start (probably the first nine or ten questions) of the Tertia Pars of Aquinas’ Summa Theologicae – exploring, therefore, questions about the Incarnation (Bezares 1992: 111). Following this came a lecture on the Bible by Gaspar Grajal; during John’s time, the material examined was probably Psalms 50–73. After that came a lecture on Thomas Aquinas. John may have heard lectures: first, on the questions on Penance in III.85–90 of the Summa; and, second, on a further ten questions in the Additions to the Summa on the same subject. The final morning lecture, almost certainly taught in 1567–1568 by Luis de León, examined the writings of the thirteenth-century canonist Durandus: if John attended these, he will have heard consideration of the nature of faith. The Vespers lectures, from 3 to 4 pm in winter, drew in 1567–1568 on the opening nine or ten questions of the Prima Secundae, therefore examining the ultimate end of human life and considering human action. The course on Duns Scotus, taught by Cristóbal Vela, began from the question of the resurrection of the dead. In mid-1568, however, John ended his studies at Salamanca to join the Carmelite reform movement centred on Teresa of Avila. Bezares is clear (against a minority who argued that John left Salamanca after the expected course of study) that John must have abandoned the course. For instance, Bezares points out, other Carmelites who studied at Salamanca in the 1560s undertook at least three (and others more) years of study in theology, and this tallies with the University’s requirement for students to take at least four courses in theology (in other words, likely spending four years studying Theology) (Bezares 1992: 131). On 9th August 1568, John set off with Teresa from Salamanca for Valladolid, where they prepared together to spread the Teresian reform. John’s formal education had reached its end. There would, of course, have been other means beyond formal study by which John came to know of the thought of Thomas Aquinas – through conversations, and through reading of Aquinas, textbooks and florilegia. In John’s few direct citations of Aquinas (to be examined shortly) we may well have evidence of John’s use of florilegia; in John’s citation of two pseudoThomistic texts (to be examined later on) we have evidence of the particular kinds of reception of Aquinas which may have shaped John’s understanding

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross 181 of Aquinas’ thought. This is all to come. At this point, however, Bezares’ granular attention allows us to offer the following summary of what knowledge of Aquinas John may have gained through formal study. John seems unlikely to have engaged at any point during his time in Salamanca (or before then) in formal study of significant amounts of Aquinas’ thought. Other than his final (and incomplete) studies of 1567–1568, there is no evidence of John’s formal study of Aquinas. And during that particular year, since the lectures on the Summa Theologicae ran on a three year cycle, John must have gained only a partial knowledge of Aquinas. He likely heard lectures on parts of the Prima Secundae and Tertia Pars – though hardly enough to gain a systematic appreciation of Aquinas’ thought. Most pertinently, perhaps, the parts of the Summa which he studied seem to bear little relation (as we will shortly see) to the parts of Aquinas’ thought from which John quotes or on whose framework of thought John draws in his writings: if John’s studies of Aquinas did in fact influence his thought, this is not evident in his writings. Biographical study does not, unfortunately, get us very far in assessing the influence of Aquinas on John. John’s Citations of Aquinas We must therefore turn to the internal evidence within John’s own writing for further evidence as to the extent to which John was influenced by Aquinas. Examination of the three occasions on which John explicitly mentions Aquinas offers us only limited insights. First, in A: 2.24.1 John correctly cites ‘St. Thomas in the first Quodlibetum’ (to be precise, Quodlibetum 1.1. ad 1) to affirm that the vision of St John in Revelation 21 was indeed ‘received through a light from above’. Second, in DN: 2.17.2, John states that ‘contemplation is mystical theology, which theologians call secret wisdom and which St. Thomas says is communicated and infused into the soul through love’. The most likely source of this in Thomas’ writings, Kavanaugh and Rodríguez suggest, is The Summa Theologica (ST) II-II.45.2.3 Third, in DN: 2.18.5 John introduces the conceit of ‘a ladder of love by which the soul ascends to God’, promising to distinguish the signs and effects of each step of the ladder ‘as do St. Bernard and St. Thomas’. Here, however, as we will see in more detail below, John is drawing not directly on Aquinas but on a later work commonly attributed to Aquinas. We may acknowledge, at least from the fact of John’s citation of Thomas, that he accepts Thomas as a theological authority. John explicitly cites few authorities (other than Thomas he only refers to Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux), and makes such citations infrequently (Gregory is cited five times; pseudo-Dionysius four times; Augustine and Boethius three times; Bernard once). Yet, the details of each of John’s three citations of Aquinas gives us little insight into what exactly John knew of Aquinas, and certainly does not provide strong evidence for John’s reliance on Aquinas concerning these specific theological topics.

182  Sam Hole We need, therefore, to turn to John’s writings and examine to what extent his thought is in alignment with (and therefore possibly influenced by) the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In their translation of John’s writing, Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez offer multiple footnotes which offer Thomas as a possible source for multiple aspects of John’s thought, including his understanding of grace, faith, prophecy, limbo, and angels.4 In none of these cases does John explicitly cite Aquinas, and it would take a more extensive study of medieval theology than space allows here to say for certain whether Aquinas is indeed likely to be the background influence on John regarding these matters, or whether John’s thought in these instances may simply reflect broadly recognised (but not necessarily Thomistic) currents in sixteenth-century theology. Accordingly, I will focus in on two particularly significant areas for the study of the possible influence of Aquinas on John of the Cross. The first of these is John’s anthropology; the second is the relationship of nature and grace. These areas are significant for two reasons – first, because there is indeed a live scholarly question as to whether Aquinas was an influence on John in these areas; and, second, because the answer we give to that first question has broader significance for scholarly understanding of John’s spiritual writings, and of the modern-day relationship of spiritual and theological writings. Anthropology John’s analysis of the structure of the human person, and of the dynamics involved in advancing towards union with God, is undoubtedly informed by scholastic understandings. To say that this is distinctively Thomist, however, is to go too far. This point is made compellingly in Steven Payne’s analysis of John’s anthropology, which remains the definitive recent study (Payne 1990: 16–49). Therefore, I will briefly summarise here some of Payne’s main points, before engaging in greater depth with two aspects for which recent scholarship has deepened and extended Payne. First, John’s understanding of the soul is indeed very similar to Aquinas’ Aristotelian position that the soul is the ‘form of the body’ (ST I.76.1). In other words, John is no dualist; as Payne puts it, ‘for John the human subject’s physical nature is also included in the meaning of “soul”’ (Payne 1990: 18). That said, John does on repeated occasions show much greater concern than Aquinas about the ways that the body prevents the individual from proceeding on the spiritual ascent. His more dramatic language speaks of the soul’s existence in the body resembling ‘the presence of a prisoner in a dark dungeon’ (A: 1.3.3), and of it being a ‘captive in the mortal body, subject to passions and natural appetites’ (A: 1.15.1; cf. also A: 2.8.4; CB: 18.1). In a similar fashion, John is far more concerned than Aquinas to lay out the many ways in which the body is drawn towards created objects preventing its engagement with God (e.g. A: 1.6.1). This is a marked difference from Aquinas’

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross 183 description of the operation of the appetites, which is given without such concern for the appetites’ prevention of the soul’s engagement with God. Second, John structures his anthropology, like Aquinas, around a distinctive division between the lower ‘sensory’ part of the soul and the higher ‘spiritual’ (or, for Aquinas, ‘intellective’) part of the soul (ST I.78.1). Within the sensory part of the soul, both Aquinas and John distinguish between external and internal senses. John is in line with standard medieval practice in identifying the external senses as sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. With regard to the internal senses, however, there is evident difference. While Aquinas identifies four, John speaks of only two – namely, the imagination and the phantasy – with a further difference being that these two labels are given by Aquinas to identify just one of his four internal senses (A: 2.12.3; ST I.78.1). In a further similarity, however, the way John envisages the operation of these various parts of the soul seems very much in accord with Aquinas’ understanding. It is when we turn to consider the spiritual (or intellective) part of the soul that we may fruitfully turn to two recent scholarly enquiries that have extended Payne’s analysis. In the first place, attention has for many decades been given to the status of memory in John’s thought. In Aquinas’ scheme, memory is an internal sense (ST I.78.1). John, however, only once describes memory as an internal sense (CB: 18.7). He far more frequently describes it as a spiritual faculty alongside the intellect and the will, thereby aligning him with Augustinian anthropology rather than the Thomist understanding of the two spiritual faculties of intellect and will. Half a century ago, André Bord astutely demonstrated the distinctive role that John accords memory: it is not a receptacle for memories themselves, but rather indicates the extent to which our spiritual ascent is enabled or held back by our relationship with our past. For John, the purification and purging of the memory is not meant to indicate a need to forget the past, but to live in healthy relationship with it, so that the individual may proceed filled with the theological virtue of hope (Bord 1971). In recent years, Dominic Doyle has helpfully extended Bord’s analysis (Doyle 2011). Observing the ‘memory loss’ that occurs in the Canticle and Flame, works in which John speaks more commonly simply of two spiritual faculties of intellect and will, Doyle offers two possibilities for this shift. First, he suggests, this change is taking place in John’s later writing, and may represent the steady coming apart of his earlier neat correlations under the pressure of a growing awareness of the complexity of the soul. Second, and most importantly, John’s later works describe states closer to union with the eternal God, into which it is harder to incorporate the intrinsic temporality of memory and hope. Accordingly, the temporality of the soul’s yearning for God comes not to be represented by means of the spiritual faculty of memory, but rather through the depiction of the whole soul as a temporal entity, progressively divinised. Whatever the reasons we give for John’s thought and its changes, we may at least agree that this is a distinctively different understanding of memory from that offered by Aquinas.

184  Sam Hole A second aspect of John’s anthropology that has received recent scholarly attention is John’s depiction of the operation of the will. This in some respects resonates with that offered by Aquinas, but in its entirety offers a distinctively different depiction from Aquinas of the role of the will in the spiritual ascent. John’s broad account of the operation of the will is, as Payne notes, scholastic (Payne 1990: 34). But, as I have argued recently (and as Payne himself also recognises in a brief aside), John’s account of human appetite and affectivity is far broader than a narrow analysis of the operation of the will.5 He offers a whole array of language – ansia, aspiración, codicia, concupiscencia, desear, gustar, hambre, inclinación, pretender, querer – to depict what we in English might call the yearning, seeking, longing, and above all, desire of the soul for union with God. All in all, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere, we do well to see desire as a constellating theme that runs through John’s writings – both his poetry and his prose – and which is evident too in his anthropology. This is, however, a stark contrast with Aquinas’ dispassionate analysis of the operation of appetition in the soul in its sensory and spiritual parts. The analysis above serves to indicate the limited extent to which John’s anthropology may fruitfully be described as Thomist. There are certainly similarities with Aquinas’ anthropology, not least in the understanding of the basic structure of the soul. Yet there are significant differences between John and Aquinas at the level of basic structure, in terms of how the various appetites and faculties are understood to operate, and in terms of the overarching way in which they are envisaged to bring the soul into deeper relationship with God. John’s anthropology is best characterised not as Thomist, but instead as a distinctive system. Ascent and Union A further aspect of John’s thought concerning which extensive parallels with Aquinas have been drawn is his understanding of the relationship of nature and grace. Of particular interest has been John’s depiction of the changes in the role of nature and grace over the course of the spiritual ascent, with especial interest shown in the changes in the transition from meditation to contemplation. In this area, it is very plausible that John understood himself to be aligned with aspects of Aquinas’ depiction of the workings of grace. In particular, in John’s distinction of the active and passive nights in the Ascent and Night, he presumably saw himself as explaining for spiritual theology the distinctions of cooperative and operative grace provided by Aquinas in his own discussion of grace (ST IIII.109–114, esp. ST II-II.111.2): some forms of grace occur through an act of the will in which human agency cooperates with divine grace, but other forms are brought about solely by the operation of God on the soul. The transition to contemplation is therefore, at its deepest level, the moment when the soul opens itself to graced divine operation. This is, in John’s terminology, a moment in which the soul opens itself to a divine infusion

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross 185 of ‘loving knowledge’ (A: 2.13.7), which he elsewhere calls ‘dark and general knowledge’ (A: 2.10.4), ‘supernatural knowledge’ (A: 2.15.1), Dionysian ‘mystical theology’ (A: 2.8.6), and, above all, ‘contemplation’ (e.g. A: 2.15.5). This infusion is, in John’s account that draws closely but complexly on Aquinas’ depiction of operative grace (ST I-II.111.2), the soul’s reception into the passive intellect (A: 2.34.4; CB: 14-15.14; CB: 27.5; CB: 39.12; LF: 3.34) of the communication of God untied to the senses. It therefore marks the beginning of a new depth of prayer in the soul, in which the soul is more fully attuned to the divine intellect and will, and thereby begins to find its desires increasingly aligned with those of God. When he turns to analyse the higher levels of the spiritual ascent, John chooses to turn away from the framework of nature and grace, thereby marking a shift away from Aquinas’ framework of thought. Instead, John’s depictions of these higher levels in the Night, Canticle and Flame all instead offer a series of vivid metaphors (e.g. the ladder of love; the end of the hunt; the flame) to depict the interactions of God and the soul. Yet Aquinas’ framework was evidently still in John’s mind as he turned to the state of union. John’s own account of union (A: 2.5.3; c.f. CB: 26.11, CB: 39.5) follows Aquinas (ST I-II.28.1) in distinguishing between the ‘union of substance’ (also known as ‘essential union’) and the ‘union of likeness’, which is gradually developed through the soul’s transformation in God and is the focus of the ascent. Drawing on terminology used by Aquinas, John also occasionally speaks of the state of union as ‘habitual’ union (A: 3.2.8; CB: 36.4; LF: 1.3–4), although this is not a significant aspect of his definition of union.6 Yet even if John drew on Aquinas’ framework of thought for the depiction of union, it does not appear that he felt wedded to the entirety of Aquinas’ approach. There existed an extensive medieval debate on the relative importance of the intellect and will in ascent and union – concerning both the relative importance of the two faculties in propelling the soul towards God in the course of the ascent, and additionally whether one faculty was more important than the other in the state of union. For Aquinas, the intellect is the ultimate locus of contemplation, and the beatific vision is a moment when we will see (and thus know) God fully. But at all stages of the ascent, for Aquinas, perfection grows through love (ST II-II.184.3; c.f. I-II.28.1; II-II.180.1), and the beatific vision is finally consummated in the immensity of joy that will immediately arise in the will (ST I-II.3.4). In some respects John upholds Aquinas’ position: the shift to contemplation is marked by the infusion of a different kind of knowledge of God, and at no stage of the ascent is it possible to treat the acts of intellect and will independently. Yet in his account of the purification of the will, it becomes clear that John wants to emphasise, to a far greater extent than Thomas, the importance of love guiding faith, drawing and propelling the soul further through the darkness of the ascent. This is particularly evident in John’s mature thought in the Canticle and Flame, in which works John’s account of the soul’s yearning is given its fullest expression, with John foregrounding the role of the will in

186  Sam Hole uniting the soul with God to an extent that John does not seem initially to envisage in the Ascent and Night. John’s discussion of the progressive purgation of the spiritual faculties in the active night of spirit begins by emphasising the importance of the transformation of the intellect in faith. Yet, this night at root requires the purification of the desires of the soul, through the purgation of the memory and, above all, the will. It is in relation to this question of the interactions and relative importance of the intellect and will in ascent and union that two connections with Aquinas present themselves. The first is an intriguing and tantalising suggestion in need of further research. In a recent article on John and Teresa’s reception of pseudo-Dionysius, Luis Girón-Negrón describes Aquinas’ Commentary on the Divine Names as ‘a particularly important source for [John]’ (GirónNegrón 2008: 695). Girón-Negrón does not offer further evidence at this point in his text, but in two subsequent footnotes he points in particular to Divine Names 7 and Aquinas’ commentary on that chapter, describing this as a ‘pivotal reference for John’.7 Girón-Negrón’s suggestion is that Aquinas’ influence is evident, first, in John’s explanation in A: 2.8.5-6 of how the intellect must be ‘blinded’ for union with God to occur; and, second, in John’s consideration in DN: 2.12.5 and 2.17.2 of ‘dark knowledge’. Certainly, these are distinctive Dionysian themes in John’s writing. It is a pity, however, that Girón-Negrón does not provide further justification here for his claims of a connection with Aquinas’ Commentary, since the potential influence is by no means apparent from the portions of the text he points to.8 If justification of Girón-Negrón’s assertion could be given, this would indicate a striking Thomist conduit for John’s reception of the Dionysian themes that are so central to his account of union. The second connection with Aquinas in regard to the operation of intellect and will is found in John’s use, as he comes to describe the higher stages of union, of two late medieval pseudo-Thomist works.9 The first of these two works, De decem gradibus amoris (‘On the Ten Degrees of Love’), is used extensively by John near the end of the Night to deliver a summary of the spiritual ascent which places heightened emphasis on the soul’s love as that which propels the spiritual ascent (DN: 2.19–20).10 John draws on the second, De Beatitudine (‘On Beatitude’), to consider the seven human acts that are involved in the beatific vision: the knowledge, love, enjoyment, union, praise, acknowledgement, and worship ‘of’ God, ‘through’ God, and ‘in’ God; it is also a crucial source for the important role that John accords to the Holy Spirit in these final stages of union (CB: 38.3; CB: 39.3; CB: 39.5; LF: 4.7).11 In both cases, these pseudo-Thomist works offer an account of the soul’s engagement with God that is far more affective in quality than that offered by Aquinas. The heightened role that John accords to love in the higher stages of the ascent may well, therefore, be in part informed by his reading of works that he understood to be written by Aquinas.

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on John of the Cross 187 Conclusions The foregoing survey has made evident the difficulty we have in trying to pin down any direct relationship between writings of Thomas Aquinas and John of the Cross. This is in part an intrinsic result of the challenge of this kind of historical study, in trying to isolate connections across a three hundred year time-span between theologians writing in very different genres and with somewhat different purposes in mind. But it is, I would particularly suggest, reflective of the fact that trying to identify one particular theological influence on John of the Cross is a fruitless endeavour. John was a creative thinker with a limited formal theological education. His writing frequently appeals to theological authorities (Aquinas, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and so on), but such citations and appeals form only a small part of John’s writing: in his ultimate purpose of providing counsel on the nature and experience of the spiritual ascent, he draws on a range of theological sources without being bound to any one particular tradition. John is influenced by Aquinas, by Augustine, by pseudo-Dionysius and others, but any attempt to pin him down as a Thomist, Augustinian, Dionysian, or so on immediately raises so many questions that such a simplification proves unhelpful. While there are areas where we may point to the possible influence of Aquinas on John, there are arguably many more areas where Aquinas’ influence appears distant and perhaps non-existent. These areas – such as John’s poetry, and his extensive use of the imagery of erotic love and desire in depicting the soul’s ascent – are also those areas which have been most extensively recovered in the scholarship of the last half-century, having been largely ignored in the days of neo-Thomist dominance. And yet, that said, we do indeed need to recognise the importance that John attached to Aquinas’ thought (he would surely have considered himself to be writing in loyalty to such a great theological authority), and the influence of the great Dominican on John in specific if limited areas. In closing, I offer two areas where future historical investigation may extend – and indeed transform – our understanding of John’s relationship with Aquinas. Both point to the need to move more cautiously from Aquinas to John if we are to understand the precise nature of possible influence on John. First, there remains the unanswered question of how exactly John knew Aquinas’ writing. It seems to me most likely that, in addition to his basic theological education at Salamanca, John did indeed gain most of his understanding of Aquinas through conversations and florilegia – that is, medieval collections of quotations from a range of texts. If so, further exploration of cultures of reading and networks of theological discussion, especially among the nascent Discalced Carmelite community, would be invaluable. Secondly, I have here advanced the argument that we may cautiously attribute the influence of Aquinas to particular parts of John’s thought. What is absent from my argument, and from those on whom I have drawn, is an

188  Sam Hole articulation of the other theologies circulating in sixteenth-century Spain – not least other scholastic theologies offering slightly different views from Aquinas on particular issues – by which John may have been influenced. In the absence of a good knowledge of the other theological currents swirling around John’s intellectual milieu, the current state of understanding of the influence of Aquinas on John may be said to identify various similarities, but not to advance a strong argument for the specific influence of Thomist thought on John. Both these enquiries are beyond the scope of this essay. Future historical enquiry in both directions may, however, greatly enrich our understanding of John’s relationship to wider patristic and medieval thought – and, in turn, deepen our ability to engage theologically with John today. Notes 1 It also thereby helps fill in a gap left by Bernard McGinn in his important recent survey of John and other sixteenth-century spiritual writers, in which he asserts (without offering further details) that ‘most recent scholars have found in Thomas only a quite partial resource for [John]’ (McGinn 2017: 245). 2 In what follows, I draw on the monograph which provides the fullest account of Bezares’ conclusions (Bezares 1992). He gives a full list of his writings on the subject on pp. 10–11. 3 See Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991: 436). Citations from John are from the Collected Works edited by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991) and the Obras Completas edited by L. Ruano (2002). Citations from Thomas’ Summa Theologica are from the 1920–4 translation of the English Dominican Fathers (see bibliography for more details). Hereafter, the Summa will be abbreviated as ST. 4 In addition to the three direct citations of Aquinas given above, these footnotes are given at: A: 1.6.1; A: 2.3.2; A: 2.8.2; A: 2.8.3; A: 2.4.11; A: 2.24.10; A: 3.2.7; A: 3.6.1; A: 3.12.1; A: 3.16.2; A: 3.26.6; A: 3.26.8; A: 3.27.1; A: 3.29.2; DN: 1.4.2; CB: 11.10; CB: 20-21.10; CB: 31.4; LF: 2.34. 5 Hole (2020: 1–24) lays out particularly succinctly my understanding of the centrality of desire to John’s thought. 6 Helpful further comparison of Aquinas and John on ‘union’ is contained in Wojtyla (1981: 49–50, 249–250). 7 Girón-Negrón (2008: 706 nn.32, 35). See also n.37, which argues for a further resonance between Divine Names 7 and LF: 3.40-48. 8 The only English translation of Aquinas’ commentary is provided in Marsh (1994). 9 I offer further analysis of these texts in Hole (2020: 87–90). 10 The influence of this text on John is examined in de Surgy (1951: 18–40, 237–259, 327–346). 11 The most extensive study of John’s use of this text is González (1962).

13 Desire and the Transformation of Suffering in John of the Cross and Catherine of Siena Emma Mavin

Introduction There is a tradition of the medieval and early modern period where enthusiastic pain-seeking in a religious context was valorised, an era marked by what Esther Cohen has termed ‘philopassianism’: the love of pain (1995: 52). We could summarise this idea in the phrase: Suffering is good for the soul. In suffering, we resemble Christ, and in pain we may be purified; it is a tool of infinite worth, and the surest road to mystical union with God. This tradition of finding value in pain was broadly reflected in an embrace of physical illness, in the self-infliction of bodily pains (corporal mortification), and in an acceptance of non-corporal pain as necessary for spiritual growth, although these were not always valued equally. I will argue in this chapter that the pain-seeking tradition changed over time, and that the development and complexities of this tradition can be demonstrated in two mystical writers: Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) and John of the Cross. In investigating three main sources – the hagiography of Catherine of Siena (the Legenda Major), her own writings, and the works of John of the Cross – I argue that both Catherine and John saw enormous value in human pain when that pain went hand in hand with desire for Christ, and both of them stressed its power as a tool to transform the soul.1 Where they differ is on the value of self-inflicted bodily pains: Catherine of Siena’s influential hagiography presents an overwhelmingly positive view of self-inflicted physical pain, while her own writings are decidedly more ambiguous on its value. In the works of John of the Cross, this ambivalence has grown into a pronounced shift away from bodily to spiritual suffering, a development within the philopassianist tradition. Previous scholarship (especially the work of Esther Cohen) has concentrated on the tradition of positive pain in the later medieval period, while noting a concurrent criticism of self-inflicted suffering, but in this chapter, I aim to illustrate the shifting focus of the philopassianist tradition within the early modern era. Catherine of Siena was a lay tertiary affiliated with the Dominican Order in Italy, and an active Church reformer who travelled widely, maintaining correspondence with popes, prelates, and others amid the background of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-17

190  Emma Mavin Avignon papacy and the Western Schism. She was known in her lifetime for her heroic fasting as well as her ecclesio-political efforts, something dwelt on extensively in her hagiography, the Legenda major, written by her confessor Raymond of Capua (1862). She also produced her own works, including the Dialogue, a treatise consisting of a discussion between Catherine and God, as well as letters and prayers, and it is in comparing these with her hagiography that we can see some marked differences between Catherine’s own works and that of Raymond. In the Legenda, Raymond devotes much attention to Catherine’s selfinflicted physical pain and suffering, detailing her flagellation, sleep deprivation, and ingestion of noxious substances, but most of all, he emphasises her fasting. Raymond was intent on demonstrating that, in his words, ‘her existence was a miracle’ because she ate so little that she should have died (Raymond of Capua 1862: 1:V, p. 44), highlighting that the woman he hoped would become a saint was truly extraordinary. The Legenda gives several purposes for Catherine’s fasting, including suffering for the sake of souls in purgatory (2:VI, p. 157) and to train the soul away from vice (1:V, p. 43) but its greatest emphasis is on the idea that suffering makes the person Christ-like. In one incident, Christ says that ‘the more thou wilt resemble me in sufferings, the more, also, thou shalt be like unto me in grace and glory’ (p. 68; 1:IX), and Raymond records that Catherine’s continual denial of her bodily comfort led to rewards from God, which included mystical marriage (1:XI, p. 75), an exchange of hearts and wills (2:V, pp. 124; 132), drinking from the side-wound of Christ (2:III, pp. 108–109), and the reception of the stigmata (2:V, p. 135). The Legenda also connects Catherine’s sufferings with her active apostolate. In one incident, Raymond records that Catherine died for four hours before being brought back to life by God. Lamenting her revival, she says that now, ‘my great consolation is to suffer, because I am aware that by suffering, I shall obtain a more perfect view of God’ (Raymond of Capua 1862: 2:V, p. 151, emphasis in the original). This statement is immediately followed by a command from God to ‘renounce thy cell…teach my doctrine to the lowly and the great…I will place thee in the presence of Pontiffs, and the rulers both of the church and of the people’ (2:V, p. 152). Raymond then discusses her active life in Siena and elsewhere, while maintaining his focus on her chosen sufferings through fasting, including her final and fatal fast in 1380. Corporal mortification is presented as the ideal tool for personal transformation and imitation of Christ in the Legenda, even though Catherine is shown carrying it out to an extraordinary degree. This work was prepared as part of her canonisation proceedings and widely disseminated. Its presentation of the virtue of physical suffering is similar to that of other hagiographies of the period, and its intense focus on her fasts and other corporal mortifications has been described as an attempt to ‘present her as a conventional holy woman’ (Scott 2016: 151) concerned with what Caroline Walker

Desire and the Transformation of Suffering 191 Bynum (1987: 17) has depicted as a feminine medieval spirituality centred on personal experience of God through penitential asceticism. Raymond’s focus is primarily on Catherine as the recipient of extraordinary supernatural graces, a sharp contrast from her own self-presentation as a ‘lively and assertive apostle and… socially-oriented mystic’ (Scott 2016: 140), perhaps in an effort to hide the unusual extent of her political activity and very active life.2 Thanks to the Legenda, Catherine of Siena, and her bodily suffering, became a model of holiness for female religious in the 15th and 16th centuries (Luongo 2011: 29). Catherine’s own writings reveal more ambivalence. For Raymond, her ‘incredible sufferings…entitle her… to the dignity of martyr’ and ‘show how similar Catharine was to her Spouse’ (Raymond of Capua 1862: 3:II, p. 299) and, to an extent, Catherine agrees with this positive evaluation of pain. In her letters, she writes: ‘Do not evade suffering…the more pain we endure here below with Christ crucified, the more glory we shall receive’ (Catherine of Siena 2000: 1:93; Letter T225/G121) and she writes favourably of physical pains, including self-inflicted ones, telling correspondents to ‘punish and mortify’ their bodies (Letter 225/G121) and to ‘use our bodies to expiate our sins and failings just as we have used our bodies to offend’ (1:180; Gardner I/DT52). Catherine’s Dialogue also reveals the high value she placed on physical suffering. Suffering teaches us, she says, that our ‘goal is not this life, and that these things are imperfect and passing’ (Catherine of Siena 1980: 13, p. 49). Its aim is to cause the individual to reject sin, to kill the human will which leads to sin, and to focus solely on Christ crucified, the Bridge to God, Catherine’s central analogy in the Dialogue. For Catherine, the bridge between heaven and earth is built from the love and blood of Christ’s suffering (27, p. 66) and travelling along the bridge also requires suffering (45, p. 91). Christ’s example also means that human suffering becomes redemptive and those who suffer rightly can win atonement not only for their own sins, but for those of others (4, p. 30). The doctrine of purgatory, which increased in importance during the medieval period, allowed the dead to be assisted by the living through vicarious suffering, as Catherine did in taking on herself the pains her father was suffering in purgatory (Raymond of Capua 1862: 2: VI, p 157), and which also allowed her to imitate Christ; as Bynum writes, vicarious suffering was a ‘fusion with the suffering physicality of Christ’ (Bynum 1987: 207). Imitative of Christ and redemptive of others, suffering, Catherine says, ‘is of infinite worth, and so satisfies for the offense that deserved an infinite penalty’ (Catherine of Siena 1980: 3, p. 28), when suffering is formed by desire for God and contrition for sin, but Catherine’s own work also contains some important caveats about pain which are missing from that of her hagiographer. Catherine’s choice to suffer to an unusual degree aroused criticism from her contemporaries (Raymond of Capua 1862: 2:IV, pp. 69, 117–118) and, in one of the rare instances where she addresses the issue of her extreme

192  Emma Mavin fasting, she describes it as ‘a weakness’, and asks her correspondent to pray that she be able to eat (Catherine of Siena, 2000, 1:160-1; Letter T92/G305/ DT19). Catherine’s own fasting was extreme, but in her own advice to others, she recommends only moderate fasting (quoted in Cavallini 1998: 48) and in her theological writing, she reveals a distinct ambiguity about the worth of self-inflicted bodily pain (Catherine of Siena 1980: 32, Letter T225/G121; 1:94). In the Dialogue, Catherine places into context the purpose of pain, teaching that suffering in and of itself is valueless – more than that, it is a hindrance unless it is endured through love for Christ (e.g. in The Dialogue, Catherine of Siena 2000: 9, p. 40; 7, p. 37; 3, 4, pp. 28–29). Only through desire for Christ can pain be itself transformed into a tool to transform the human soul, and so she insists that transformative pain need neither be self-inflicted, nor centred upon the body. Catherine calls on her readers to discipline their bodies; to hurt themselves in order to spiritually progress, and says that ‘it is by…suffering that we become conformed with Christ crucified’ (Catherine of Siena, 2000, 1:205; Letter T29/G319/DT18), but she is insistent that ‘works of penance and other bodily practices [should] be undertaken as [a] means, not your chief goal’ (Catherine of Siena 2000: 11, pp. 42–43). She sounds a note of caution about the value of physical pain, and then augments it, pointing out that ‘no one born into this life passes through it without suffering of body or spirit’ (45, p. 91), and in her writing, God says, ‘you must offer me the vessel of all your actual sufferings, however I may send them to you – for the place and the time and the sort of suffering are not yours to choose, but mine’ (12, p. 46). Both the Legenda and Catherine’s own works were translated and published in Spain in the early 16th century, and it has been argued that, more than Catherine’s own works, ‘Raymond’s Life established a hagiographical model which women in sixteenth-century Spain could assimilate’ (Ahlgren 2000: 54). Ahlgren also argues that the Legenda ‘clearly influenced the Carmelite reformer and mystic Teresa of Ávila’ (p. 59), co-leader of the Discalced reform with John of the Cross, especially in her emphasis on humility and her readiness to allow her visions to be scrutinised by the Church, stating that these were techniques which helped to ‘develop an understanding of female virtue that incorporated heroic expressions of physical penance, patient forbearance of opposition, and humility meant to authenticate embodied religious experiences and their prophetic content’ and allowed Teresa to ‘adopt…Capua’s rhetorical strategy of paradoxical representation’ (Ahlgren 2000: 65) and win approval for her reforming efforts and visionary writings. While Ahlgren focusses on the influence of the Legenda on Teresa of Ávila’s writing, its use by her also shows the propagation among members of the Discalced reform of models of sanctity which include self-chosen suffering. Teresa’s colleague, John of the Cross, was preoccupied with the value of suffering in Christian spirituality. He wrote that ‘suffering is a surer and even

Desire and the Transformation of Suffering 193 more advantageous road than that of joy and action’ (DN: 2.16.9) and, for John, suffering is not just a tool, it is a necessity – there can be no growth without it. Similar to Catherine of Siena, there is some ambiguity about the role of self-chosen bodily suffering for him. The infliction of bodily pain was an ordinary part of Carmelite life, and John talks about ‘disciplining the sense of touch through penance’ (A: 2.17.4) and, like Teresa, he talks about the use of flagellation and other physically painful practices as a normal part of religious life, although both writers urge moderation (Teresa of Avila F: 18.7–9; John of the Cross DN: 1:6:1; CB: 20–21:8).3 While the cautious use of corporal mortification features in the works of both the founders of the Carmelite reform, it is notable that both Teresa and John are described in their canonisation proceedings as having personal, extreme practices of bodily pain. Teresa is described as using the discipline and cilicios on her body to the extent that her confessors had to intervene (Ahlgren2019: 154), while John of the Cross is described by his close friend as being ‘a man of great penitence…despite his frequent attacks of ill-health, he often did [physical] penance and had a great desire for it’.4 Speaking of John’s early life in the Carmelite Order, Teresa writes that she begged him and others ‘not to be so rigorous in penitential practices, for what they were doing was severe’ (Teresa of Avila F: 14.12). John’s writings reveal a preoccupation with the value of pain and he gives detailed descriptions of the many different types of pain encountered as the soul is purified of its attachments to all that is not God. As the soul journeys on its spiritual journey, it rises through layers of ever-increasing and intimate torments until it becomes one with the divine but, in his writings, John seldom mentions self-chosen physical pain, and more often depicts it in a negative, rather than a positive sense. He also never refers to his own corporal mortifications, focussing instead on the value of noncorporal suffering. Hagiographies of saints of this period often included descriptions of their asceticism and self-willed bodily pains and the normativity of descriptions of corporal mortification within hagiographies and canonisation testimonies can make it difficult to determine the extent to which a holy person did cause themselves bodily pain (see Weinstein and Bell 1986: 237). It has been suggested that the witnesses who wrote in support of Teresa of Avila’s canonisation may have exaggerated her self-induced physical pains in order to better conform her to what was expected of a holy woman,5 and it is possible that this is the case too for John of the Cross, particularly as the testimonies about him consist of references to an act of corporal mortification performed on a single occasion, and to Teresa’s memories of his austerities immediately after he joined the Discalced reform. Although depictions of chosen bodily pains both moderate and extreme are common in the lives of saints at this period, there is also evidence of unease about corporal mortification. The Legenda records that Catherine of Siena was heavily criticised for her asceticism, accused of being suicidal,

194  Emma Mavin fraudulent, attempting to surpass Christ and the saints (Raymond of Capua 1862: 1:X, p. 69) and Raymond also records that some of her critics ‘pretended that all excess is vicious, and that such as fear God ought to avoid it’ (1862: 2:IV, pp. 117–118). In John’s lifetime, Teresa of Avila was cautious about corporal mortification, both admiring it and seeing it as potentially a sign of melancholic illness which could give rise to false raptures and ‘a vicious cycle of excessive asceticism that weakened the body and the mind’ (Weber 2020: 143, see also 140). John echoes Teresa’s view of corporal mortification in his prose work, The Dark Night, where he is critical of those who, like the Catherine of the Legenda, enthusiastically embrace corporal mortification. Echoing Catherine’s critics, John writes that ‘all extremes are vicious’ (DN: 1.6.2), and he condemns those who ‘kill themselves with penances, and…weaken themselves by fasts’ (DN: 1.6.1), especially where they reject the efforts of other people to stop them. He describes them as unreasonable, imperfect, bestial, spiritually gluttonous, self-willed, addicted to vice, spurred on by the pleasure and delight they find in their penances to ever-greater and more self-destructive extremes (DN: 1.6.2). It is likely that John and Teresa had both observed that self-inflicted pain can produce an addictive euphoria, something discussed in modern psychiatric literature (see, for example, Van Ree, J.M. et al. 2000: 89), and his criticism centres on people for whom physical penance has become a quest in itself, a sign of deeper psychological issues unconnected with the desire for God. He echoes Catherine’s warning that physical pain should be only a means, never the goal, although positive references to bodily pain are far rarer in John’s work than in hers. In his writing, John of the Cross describes a movement from exterior to interior, from senses to spirit, a journey into the ‘deepest caverns’ of the soul, there to find God. For John, the soul is held captive in the body, and the exterior world is one of faulty knowledge, and confusing, distracting sensory input. To encounter God, he says, ‘the soul must in some fashion abandon the body’ (CB: 13.4) leaving behind creatures, all people and things, everything that is encountered by the senses, the senses themselves, all thought, word, image, and even its own self, as it journeys towards union (A: 1:6:3). In keeping with this inward turn, John’s focus is not on expiating the sins of others, or of the Church, but on the use of suffering for individual transformation. This journey of transformation necessarily involves suffering, as everything the soul loves which is not God is taken from it, as it sees itself in all its imperfections, as it feels abandoned by God, and suffers with longing for him. John’s words for beginners speak of causing yourself suffering as you relinquish attachments and close yourself off to the senses, but the aim is to move away from the body, not use sensory pain to make yourself ever more aware of it. This painful movement away from the senses and the created world is not a permanent abandonment or rejection of sensory inputs or creation; rather, it reflects a reorientation where the focus of the soul’s

Desire and the Transformation of Suffering 195 desire is God alone, a process which requires a negation of all the things which would distract it from him. John is concerned about the untransformed soul’s propensity to develop disordered attractions even to good things, which then distract it from God (CB: 3:5). Once those attachments have been purged, the soul is prepared for union with God, after which it ‘will have a very abundant and delightful divine sense and knowledge of all divine and human things’ (DN: 1:9:5) –a reorienting of the human condition which places the senses, and all created things in their proper place. This union and reorientation involves suffering but not the sensory suffering of corporal mortification. The suffering which John sees as essential is altogether deeper and more interior – necessary, but not bodily. The tradition of seeing pain as a tremendously positive force in spirituality had a significant influence on human behaviour, mystical writing, and hagiographical traditions, and both Catherine of Siena and John of the Cross were inheritors of that tradition. It is striking to note how much the emphasis on the self-chosen physical pain of corporal mortification varies between writing about, and writing by mystics, which may indicate a trend towards omission on the part of mystics, or may indicate that hagiographers fitted their subjects into a standardised model. Catherine of Siena’s hagiography is filled with descriptions of her chosen bodily sufferings, far more than her own writing, and there is also more stress laid on corporal mortification in descriptions of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. I have suggested that some of this emphasis may be explained by ideals of holiness into which a prospective saint was expected to fit, but that this seems to go in tandem with a growing realisation that philopassianism can be a sign of illness, rather than sanctity. Catherine of Siena valued self-inflicted physical pains as a spiritual practice, albeit not as much as her hagiographer, but while seeing corporal mortification as beneficial, her writing displays a level of ambivalence over whether it is better to simply use the suffering that God sends, rather than creating extra pain. John of the Cross’ work is less ambivalent – while he treats corporal mortification as an ordinary part of religious life, he also includes a sharp critique of those who pursue it, especially those who go to extremes, such as we read about in the accounts of Catherine. For him, suffering is necessary and essential to spiritual growth, but that suffering is neither bodily nor self-chosen; it is part of the process of the soul’s transformation and it is interior suffering which is good for the soul. Notes 1 References are given for specific letters, as numbered in the 2000 translation by Suzanne Noffke, including both page numbers and the letter references as given in that work. All references to the Dialogue refer to the 1980 translation by Suzanne Noffke. References are given to individual works of John of the Cross from the 1991 Collected Works translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez. 2 As Mooney (2016: 11) writes, ‘male hagiographers were more likely to conceal or diminish a saint’s this-worldly activities if the saint in question was a woman.

196  Emma Mavin Fear of offending a Church or public opposed to feminine assertiveness likely influenced their choices, but other agendas…also played a part’. For further discussion, see her Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (2016). 3 Quotes from Teresa of Avila taken from The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila, Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, 1980–1987. 4 From the English translation of the canonisation testimonies for John of the Cross in Appendix A of Allison Peers’ translation of John’s works (1943: 3.336). 5 See Weber (2000: 138, n.54) and Ahlgren (2000: 154–155) for an alternative view.

14 Desire for God and Its Realisation Henri de Lubac in Dialogue with John of the Cross Christof Betschart

Introduction1 The focus of this chapter, and indeed this book, is desire for God and its realisation. But what kind of desire is to be discussed? With Henri de Lubac, I will define human desire for God as ‘natural.’ Indeed, de Lubac criticises the Neo-Scholastic account of the nature-grace relationship, especially the concept of ‘pure nature,’ and offers his influential contribution by claiming – in a long tradition – that there is a natural desire for the supernatural. This desire is a desire of our human nature or, in other words, we are ourselves desire for God. According to this theological thesis, we are thus positively oriented towards union with God. But how does this relate to human experience? If every human being naturally desires God, how are we to explain that many people have absolutely no awareness of such a desire? Does it make sense to speak of a desire that is not lived, and which remains unrelated to human consciousness? For de Lubac, every human being naturally desires God but this desire as such is not personally lived desire. His point is not that the desire for God is hidden in every human finite desire – that, for instance, in a desire for world peace, the desire for God is implicitly present. De Lubac’s thesis is rather that through a transformation of lived desire the natural desire for God becomes conscious. De Lubac refers to John of the Cross as somebody who enables us to understand what is personally lived out and what transformed desire for God is. This personalisation of desire implies a conversion: not only from the multitude of finite and mundane desires to the desire for God, but even more from the autoreferential desire to possess God to the desire for a mutual gift in freedom and love, that is, union with God. Although this chapter will be mainly about de Lubac, John of the Cross will enable us to better understand what lies behind the thesis of natural desire for God. I shall proceed first by presenting de Lubac’s conception of the natural desire to see God, and shall try to situate his position with respect to other critical scholars. This should enable us to see de Lubac’s relevance for theological anthropology before and after the Second Vatican Council. I shall then seek to expose de Lubac’s understanding of the limits of his own DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-18

198  Christof Betschart research and the way in which he opens up to the idea of personalisation and realisation of the natural desire for God. I will then show how John of the Cross significantly contributes to our understanding of this personalisation and realisation, especially with respect to an erroneous understanding of possession. The Desire of Human Nature to See God2 In de Lubac’s struggle for a more unified conception of the nature-grace relationship, he places special importance on the interpretation of the desiderium natural videndi Deum, or what he calls the ‘natural desire for the supernatural’ (de Lubac 2010: 431).3 De Lubac is primarily concerned with the historical question of Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of natural desire.4 An examination of de Lubac’s thought will enable us to better understand the way in which he interprets Thomas in his own theological research.5 Let us begin by quoting an extract from a letter to Charles Journet in 1952: I still think that one of the weak points of the modern Thomistic school is that it refuses to carry out a methodical historical study, without prejudice, of the thought of Saint Thomas on this subject. I am very far from claiming to have made this study myself, which would be complex and difficult. However, almost all the objections presented to me seem more like flat dismissals (to put it mildly) than serious research into historical truth.6 Despite his own presuppositions and the limitations he recognises, de Lubac gives an account of the complexity of Thomas, in whom the biblical conception of the image of God and an Aristotelian conception of nature converge (de Lubac 2010: 431–438); hence, there is an ‘ambivalence of his thought in an unstable balance’ (2010: 435).7 In the task of interpreting this dual heritage in Thomas, his most influential disciples favoured the Aristotelian conception of nature, which, for de Lubac, leads to a one-sided reading of their master. Indeed, such a reading has led a number of Thomists to see in Thomas’ work a double ultimate end, one natural, the other supernatural, for human beings.8 In the discussion of Thomas’ texts invoked for such a double end,9 de Lubac seeks to show that Thomas does not distinguish between an ultimate natural end and an ultimate supernatural end, but that he uses other distinctions,10 the most important of which is that between a heavenly and an earthly beatitude. De Lubac does admit the natural and supernatural duplex beatitudo in Thomas, but at the same time he insists on the uniqueness of the ultimate end, namely heavenly beatitude in the vision of God. What de Lubac rejects and denies is the idea that ‘natural beatitude’ or the ‘natural end’ is the final end of human nature. He is well aware that St. Thomas often speaks of twofold happiness proper to human nature: there is a ‘natural happiness’ that is proportionate to human nature and an ‘ultimate

Desire for God and Its Realisation 199 beatitude’ that exceeds nature’s abilities. De Lubac accepts this duality as unproblematic, provided that the imperfect and penultimate character of ‘natural happiness’ is affirmed (see Healy 2008: 553). However, even if earthly beatitude can only be seen as a penultimate end, it has its own validity for this world. Human research, although unable to give definitive answers to the questions of human origin and destination, is nonetheless necessary for human life on earth. In Thomas, not only the question of the end, but also that of desire is complex. De Lubac interprets Thomas as positing an absolute natural desire, which does not mean that it is in itself effective: ‘The desire to see Him [God] is in us, it is ourselves, and yet it is only fulfilled by a pure gift.’11 We must recognise the difficulty of such an interpretation of human nature as desire, for in Thomas there are two series of texts which aim at ‘two different orders: the first concern, for example, the order of necessary bonds, the second the order of the free will; the first speak of an appetite of nature, the others of an act of elicit desire, etc.’12 Despite de Lubac’s attempt to articulate the two sets of texts and to show that the ancient tradition of natural desire for God persists in them, there are still interpreters today who think that the two sets of texts cannot be reconciled.13 There are also authors, such as Lawrence Feingold, who oppose de Lubac and seek to rehabilitate commentators such as Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara, Medina, Bañez, and Suárez in their fidelity to Thomas. In relation to our reading of de Lubac, the impossibility of dialogue is already present in the premises: an innate natural desire for a supernatural end is excluded, as it does not respect the principle that a natural desire must be proportionate to the object of desire (see Feingold 2010: 430). As an alternative, the author emphasises above all the distinction between natural and elicit desires: there can be no natural innate desire for the vision of God, but only an elicit desire for this vision.14 Today’s debate on the natural desire to see God falls into two camps: on the one hand, there is radical orthodoxy with John Milbank,15 which can be understood as a radicalisation of de Lubac, and on the other hand, there are Neo-Thomistic authors like Feingold who defend a view of Thomas in line with commentators such as Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara and Bañez. In this seemingly intractable situation, Jacob W. Wood has recently published his thesis on the relationship between nature, grace, and the desire for God in Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac. He proposes a reconciliation between these two camps by returning to Aquinas, whose Aristotelian perspective cannot be divorced from his Augustinian heritage. In contrast to Albert the Great, Thomas adheres more closely to Augustine, to the extent that he maintains the natural desire to see God in the sense of the beatific vision. But Wood introduces two important nuances into his interpretation of Thomas: on the one hand, he insists on the passivity of human nature in relation to grace,16 and on the other hand, he develops a conception of natural desire that seeks its fulfilment in the vision of God insofar as this is

200  Christof Betschart made possible by God’s grace.17 In other words, it is an ultimate end with two levels, the higher level of which is reached insofar as God grants his grace. According to Wood’s analysis, de Lubac is situated in the tradition of Augustinian Thomism following Giles of Rome. Because of this doctrinal filiation, certain orientations contrary to those of Thomas follow, notably the idea of an actively open nature for grace and the recognition of a single last end, which implies considering natural ends as penultimate. For de Lubac, it is precisely these two ideas of an active openness of nature for grace and the uniqueness of the last end that form the essence of the ancient tradition to be maintained. In other words, one should not limit oneself to a historical reading of de Lubac’s contribution, but evaluate the theological intuition as such, namely that of the organic unity between nature and the supernatural. Personalisation and Realisation of the Human Desire for God A difficulty for our investigation is that de Lubac does not explore in depth how natural desire is transformed in the lives of people. What does the thesis of natural desire mean for a psychological analysis? Following Antoine Vergote, Jean-Baptiste Lecuit thinks that it is not necessary to state that there is a natural desire: either such a desire has no significant relationship with lived desire and in that case it loses its existential significance, or it does have such a relationship and it would then have to be shown, because ‘[f]rom the point of view of the human sciences, no concrete observation can lead to the discovery of a pre-finalisation of desire.’18 Yet, Lecuit maintains that human desire is naturally unlimited (Lecuit2017: 156). In our view, this assertion opens up a loophole for the natural desire thesis, since the unlimitedness of desire implies that nothing limited will be able to definitively fulfil human desire and that it therefore transcends any limited created reality. This is not a philosophical or psychological proof, for de Lubac’s natural desire is above all a theological thesis that seeks to account for the fact that we are created towards God so that our created being can only rest definitively in the Trinity. Thus, the natural desire for God cannot be deduced from human experience but can become manifest through the transformation of desire by grace, as de Lubac acknowledges in his Mémoire: Finally, the transformation, or rather the turnaround of the desire for God under the action of grace, its (partial) metamorphosis into charity, was barely indicated in a few words in the conclusion [of Surnaturel], but this would have been the topic of another work. (de Lubac 1992: 202)19 If we can speak of a personalisation of natural desire as we have suggested, we must hold with de Lubac that it is primarily an action of grace. The shift

Desire for God and Its Realisation 201 from the vocabulary of the supernatural to that of grace is explicit in this passage. De Lubac emphasises in later writings that in the binomial naturesupernatural the emphasis is on the continuation and fulfilment of nature by the supernatural, whereas the binomial nature-grace presupposes the fall and includes an antagonism between grace and sin: The call of grace is no longer a call to a simple ‘elevation’, not even a ‘transformative’ elevation (to use the classic terms); more radically, it is a call to a ‘reversal’, a ‘conversion’ (of the ‘heart’, i.e. of the whole being). (de Lubac 2013: 84)20 We are faced with the mystery of conversion which cannot be adequately addressed without integrating the whole theology of grace, that is, the dependence on the paschal mystery of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, as well as the repercussions of sanctifying grace and the theological virtues in human beings. De Lubac’s formulation opens the way to a personalistic perspective since he speaks of a call of grace, which presupposes an interpersonal conception: a caller and a called. The perspective is no longer that of an abstract consideration of the supernatural, but that of the Christian mystery in terms of covenant or union with the Trinity. If we cannot go further in the elaboration of a theology of grace, we nevertheless presuppose it by addressing now the question of transformation, and even the conversion of desire in the spiritual and mystical life. Few authors have emphasised the link between anthropology and mysticism as de Lubac has.21 Mystics know not only in theory, but through experience, that humans have an ultimate end which transcends them and which is accessible only by grace.22 This mystical perspective, quickly sketched out in Surnaturel, is taken up again in a more detailed way in the last chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural which bears the title The Call of Love: It is important to remember that such a ‘desire’ [of nature], even before the transformation it must undergo so as not to miss its end, is of a different kind from all the desires, weak or strong, of our common experience. ‘Deny your desires,’ said John of the Cross, ‘and you will find what your heart desires.’ (de Lubac 2000: 282; see also 273–291)23 Common experience manifests – or can manifest, for it is not automatic – the unlimitedness of desire and the impossibility of satisfying it, but it does not reveal natural desire as such. Only the transformation of desire can make the desire of nature appear in one’s life. The negation of desire that John of the Cross24 speaks of is necessary because, if one lives in darkness, he desires darkness (see LF: 3.71, redaction B). This is, differently put, what Augustine says about the two cities with their two corresponding loves.25 It

202  Christof Betschart is a transformation that includes – to remain in Augustinian terminology – both aversion and conversion: aversion to limited desires centred on the person who becomes the object of self-referential desire, and conversion to the transcendent and eccentric desire that takes the person out of herself to meet the one who alone can fulfil the longing of the human heart. The passive and active purification and reorientation of desire leads the person to realise that one’s present desire for God is nothing other than the personal assumption of the desire of one’s heart, that is, of one’s very nature. There are people – let us call them mystics – who in their personal experience of the desire for God realise that this is the desire that is most adequate to what they are by nature and, therefore, they know that God alone can fulfil their desire. While this may seem like an experience reserved for only a few people, is it not more fundamentally the experience of the virtue of hope? To hope for God above all worldly hope is only possible in the faith which assures us that in God the unlimited desire of the human heart is fulfilled. The Christian spiritual tradition is particularly attentive to the idea of transformation.26 Starting from the theological triad formation-deformationreformation which accounts for the relationship between creation, sin, and grace, it considers the spiritual life with its dispossessions as a path towards divine union. Or to put it again with de Lubac: ‘The whole problem of the spiritual life will be to liberate this desire, and then to transform it: radical conversion, μετάνοια without which there is no entrance into the Kingdom…’ (de Lubac 2010: 483).27 Of course, de Lubac immediately adds that this is not his topic, for his purpose is only to set up its presuppositions. The indication he leaves us with is that the desire for God is not the desire to possess him as one might possess an object, but the desire that he may freely and lovingly give himself to us: The spirit, in fact, does not desire God as the animal desires its prey. It desires him as a gift. It does not seek to possess an infinite object: it wants the free and gratuitous communication of a personal Being. (de Lubac 2010: 483)28 The desire of a free and loving gift presupposes a desire that has already been converted, but this is the result of a long journey, as John of the Cross well understood.29 Our most spiritual desires can be ‘sensitive,’ that is to say, centred on the egoistic search for the self (see LF: 3.74, redaction B). One might think that it is enough to actively deny one’s multiple desires and to deny oneself in them in order to convert the self-centred desire for God. Certainly, John does not underestimate the ascetic and active dimension of such a negation, but he does so within a broader vision: on the one hand, negation has no value in itself, but only in view of the affirmation of God – the nada is in view of the todo; on the other hand, human effort is always preceded and made possible by God and this is also true for the conversion of the desire

Desire for God and Its Realisation 203 for God. John repeatedly denounces the danger of confusing God with his favours towards us. At the same time, he is patient because he knows that the conversion of desire comes from God: ‘the soul’s desire [apetito] for God is not always supernatural, but only when God infuses it and himself gives the strength for it. This is far different from the natural desire [apetito], and until God infuses the desire there is very little or no merit’ (LF: 3.75, redaction B).30 God’s initiative gives the strength to cooperate in the decentring of desire, which will no longer be simply the desire for an object that benefits us, but the desire for an interpersonal union that cannot be accomplished except in the reciprocal gift of self (see Ruiz 1989: 71–83). We should speak here of conversion, because the goal is no longer the fulfilment of oneself by means of God, but rather the union with him which involves this fulfilment. The transformation by grace that leads to this is not seen as a self-referential goal, but as what makes union with the Trinity possible. The union to be total requires the gift of self in freedom and in love. These are the two aspects that offer new insights into the personalisation and realisation of the desire for God and that we need to look at more closely. First of all, freedom. The desire for God as natural is not free, but it becomes free in the measure of being personalised. If this personalisation is a gift from God, it is directed towards full union, which, in order to be truly personal, requires reciprocal freedom. Thus, natural desire cannot be personalised if not freely and it cannot be realised unless in a union of which freedom is a condition. This way of considering reciprocal freedom as a condition for the personalisation and realisation of natural desire shows that the realisation of desire is neither exigible nor automatic.31 If we take seriously the fact that the object of desire is a reality for which both divine and human freedom, at their respective levels, are presupposed, its gratuitousness is assured. Basically, gratuitousness becomes problematic only insofar as the realisation of natural desire is seen from the perspective of possession of an object and not from the biblical perspective of covenant or the spiritual perspective of union. The personalisation of desire can only be achieved insofar as the gift of self is freely reciprocal, and this is on the part of both God and the human being. The second aspect of the reciprocal gift of self is love. Here again, John of the Cross in his Spiritual Canticle will help us to understand better, for few people have emphasised so insistently the aspiration to return to God the love with which he graces us: ‘The soul’s aim is a love equal to God’s. She always desired this equality, naturally and supernaturally, for lovers cannot be satisfied without feeling that they love as much as they are loved’ (CB: 38.3).32 This passage is very much in line with our research on de Lubac, since John emphasises the desire for equality of love as natural as well as personalised by grace (supernatural). Such equality and likeness cannot be realised except through the mutual gift of lovers which assimilates one to the other: Love produces such likeness in this transformation of lovers that one can say each is the other and both are one. The reason is that in the

204  Christof Betschart union and transformation of love each gives possession of self to the other and each leaves and exchanges self for the other. Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love. (CB: 12.7)33 The gift of self is much more than the offering of an object: it is the person herself who enriches the other person with her own nature and life. And because this nature and life are welcomed, integrated, the person makes them her own to the point of arriving at a fully reciprocal love. Thus, transformation is not an end in itself – one would then remain in a perspective centred on the person taken for herself– but a means for interpersonal love to become full. This implies that the resulting union is not a negation of the difference between persons, as is clear from the Pauline passage that John quotes: ‘yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me’ (Gal 2:20). The life of Christ does not replace the life of the believer, for he lives in him, in other words, his life is received in that of the believer by becoming his.34 John says it in an even more explicit way about the eternal life of the saints: ‘Transformed in God, these blessed souls will live the life of God and not their own life – although, indeed, it will be their own life because God’s life will be theirs’ (CB: 12.8).35 John thus expresses the traditional doctrine of divinisation which makes the person godlike and God by participation. The idea of divinisation has been misinterpreted as advocating a negation of our created human reality with its aspirations. For John, the transformation into God and the ensuing divine union is not an escape from human reality, but the fulfilment of its natural destination. Is it a coincidence that we find in this context the doctrine of the image of God in the penultimate stanza of the Spiritual Canticle? Through the transformation into the three divine persons the soul resembles God who ‘created her in his image and likeness [Gen 1:26] that she might attain such resemblance’ (CB: 39.4).36 The mystics have not forgotten for what purpose we have been created. Therefore, divinisation is not alien to what we are by nature, but is, on the contrary, the fulfilment of the vow of our nature. Divinisation and humanisation are not opposed, or to put it in the words of the International Theology Commission: ‘deification properly understood can make humans perfectly human: deification is the truest and ultimate humanisation of humans.’37 Conclusion As a conclusion to this chapter, I want to highlight what we have seen with de Lubac and John of the Cross by placing it against the background of two arguments often used, even nowadays, in opposition to the idea of a natural desire to see God.

Desire for God and Its Realisation 205 A first argument states that the thesis of a natural desire is to be abandoned because there is no way to prove that every human being has such a desire. De Lubac, however, insists on the possibility of a transformation and moreover a conversion of human desires. In his view, John of the Cross is a key reference in this regard when he states that the denial of limited desires may open us up to what the heart, the innermost person, desires. In other words, the conversion of desire allows for the discovery of a desire previously unknown. The conversion of desire is not the creation of a desire, but it is about the discovery of a desire for God that reveals the person’s ultimate destination. This discovery allows for a spiritually founded generalisation: John of the Cross, along with other mystics, concludes that such a natural desire for God is present, but not necessarily recognised, in every human person. The fundamental idea is that some persons experience what is hidden in everybody, because, as stated by the Second Vatican Council – following de Lubac – every human person has an ultimate, divine vocation (Gaudium et Spes 22, §5). A second argument in opposition to a natural desire for God is linked to this last affirmation. To have a divine vocation is not the same as to have a desire, that is, a natural and active orientation towards union with God because it seems that such a divinely given and active desire would have to be fulfilled automatically, leaving aside the gratuity of grace. De Lubac and, in a different way, John of the Cross are both convinced that such an active desire for God is not automatic in its realisation, because it is a desire attributed to human nature as spiritual and not simply applied to the natural movement of an object towards its goal. The end, here, is a personal union which requires a free gift of self. Moreover, the dynamic of desire is considered in the perspective of salvation history, that is, in the perspective of sin and redemption. This enables us to understand why, for de Lubac and John of the Cross, human desire requires not only a transformation, but, more profoundly, a conversion, made possible through Christ’s free and loving gift of self. De Lubac’s and John’s theological worlds are very different, but they fundamentally agree in considering the human being as a creature actively oriented towards union with God. De Lubac mainly deals with natural desire for God, whereas John is more concerned with its realisation. Notes 1 I am thankful to Sister Allison Braus of the Carmelite Monastery in Develier, Switzerland, who helped me correcting and improving stylistically this paper. 2 The following two paragraphs, slightly modified, are to be published in the French original as part of a chapter in my Habilitationsschrift: L’humain, image filiale de Dieu. Une anthropologie théologique en dialogue avec l’exégèse, Cogitatiofidei (Betschart 2022). The Œuvres complètes of de Lubac are published by Cerf, Paris (about 30 of the overall 50 volumes have been published since 1998). For a more

206  Christof Betschart detailed vision of Lubac’s publications on the supernatural, see the genetic index by Michel Sales at the end of his preface to a new edition of Surnaturel. Études historiques (de Lubac 2010). For the purpose of this contribution, I have directly translated the de Lubacian quotations from the French original, using DeepL as a starting point. More details in the bibliography. 3 ‘désir naturel du surnaturel’ is the title of the first historical note in the fourth part of the book. 4 For some fundamental texts on the desire for God in Thomas, see Pröpper (2011: 278) where he quotes passages from the Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas 1924): III, 25.50.51.57.63 and the Summa Theologicae (Aquinas 1964 – 73): Ia, q. 10, a. 5 ad 1; q. 12, a. 1; Ia-IIae, q. 3, a. 8; q. 62, a. 1 ad 3; q. 65, a. 2; IIa-IIae, q. 2, a. 3; IIIa, q. 9, a. 2 ad 3. 5 See Gomes (2005). The author situates himself in Lubac’s perspective and presents the natural desire for God as a fundamental paradox in de Lubacian thought. 6 Letter of de Lubac to Journet from March 17, 1952, quoted in de Lubac (1992: 202f.): ‘je persiste à penser qu’un des points faibles de l’école thomiste moderne est de se refuser à une étude historique méthodique, et sans préjugé, de la pensée de saint Thomas en la matière. Je suis très loin de prétendre avoir fait moi-même toute cette étude, qui serait complexe et difficile. Cependant, presque tout ce qu’on m’a opposé ressemble plus à une fin de non recevoir (pour ne rien dire d’autre) qu’à une recherche sérieuse de la vérité historique.’ 7 ‘l’ambivalence de sa pensée en équilibre instable.’ 8 See de Lubac (2010: 449–465) on natural beatitude according to Thomas. Besides Suarez as classical testimony, de Lubac quotes Sestili, Rousselot, Hugueny, Stufler, Cathrein, and Mulson. 9 See ‘Note C: La béatitude naturelle selon saint Thomas,’ in de Lubac (2010: 449–465). 10 De Lubac discusses the distinction between imperfect and perfect beatitude, i.e. in the case of humans the beatific vision after the resurrection of the flesh, as well as the distinction between primary and secondary beatitude, i.e. the beatitude that concerns the events of the created world as related to God. 11 De Lubac (2010: 209): ‘Le désir de Le [Dieu] voir est en nous, il est nous-mêmes, et il n’est pourtant comblé que par un pur bienfait.’ 12 De Lubac (2010: 226): ‘deux ordres différents: les premiers concernent par exemple l’ordre des liaisons nécessaires, les seconds l’ordre de la volonté libre; les uns parlent d’un appétit de nature, les autres, d’un acte de désir élicite, etc.’ 13 See Oakes (2016: 31,38): ‘Thomas never addressed that question directly, as we can see from the fact that he bequeathed to his disciples two seemingly contrary sets of texts that are left to his later interpreters to harmonize.’ 14 See Feingold (2010: 431). It is interesting that at the end of the presentation of Thomas’ works (1–45), Feingold lists the difficulties in interpretation, but the way he formulates them already points towards the adoption of the solutions Thomas’ followers provide. 15 See Milbank (2014: 113). He places great emphasis on the radicality of de Lubac’s thesis of the natural and absolute desire for God and points out two consequences: first, that secularisation, liberalism and conservatism follow the abandonment of the thesis of natural desire and the adoption of the system of pure nature. Secondly, that the doctrine of Origenian apocatastasis would be within de Lubacian logic, even if de Lubac himself rejects it. 16 See Wood (2019: 29): Thomas Aquinas ‘affirmed that human nature is absolutely passive with respect to grace, and yet that it has a natural appetite for the vision of God.’ 17 See Wood (2019: 29): ‘even our natural desire seeks at least implicitly the complete fulfillment of our natural appetite in the vision of God, insofar as is possible.’

Desire for God and Its Realisation 207 18 Trans. of Lecuit (2017: 160): ‘[d]u point de vue des sciences humaines, aucune observation concrète ne conduit à la mise au jour d’une préfinalisation du désir.’ 19 ‘Enfin, la transformation, ou plutôt le retournement du désir de Dieu sous l’action de la grâce, sa métamorphose (partielle) en charité, était à peine indiquée en quelques mots dans la conclusion [de Surnaturel], mais cela eût été l’objet d’un autre ouvrage.’ 20 ‘l’appel de la grâce n’est-il plus maintenant un appel à une simple ‘élévation’ même ‘transformatrice’ (pour reprendre les mots classiques); de façon plus radicale, c’est l’appel à un ‘renversement’, à une ‘conversion’ (du ‘cœur’, c’est-à-dire de tout l’être).’ 21 See de Moulins-Beaufort (2003). De Lubac’s anthropology is identified through the words he uses to describe the human: spirit, mystery, image of God (17 and 869f.). 22 De Lubac (2010: 122): ‘Seuls les mystiques, parce qu’on ne prendra plus au sérieux leur doctrine, auront licence de s’en souvenir.’ 23 ‘il importe de se rappeler qu’un tel “désir” [de nature], avant même la transformation dont il doit être l’objet pour ne pas manquer son terme, est d’une autre sorte que tous les désirs, faibles ou forts, de notre expérience commune. Nie tes désirs, disait Jean de la Croix, et tu trouveras ce que désire ton cœur.’ 24 Despite the exceptional absence of a reference in de Lubac, this is a quotation from D:15 in the Andújar autograph. We use the English translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991: 86): ‘Deny your desires and you will find what your heart longs for. For how do you know if any desire of yours is according to God [Ps 36,4]?’ In the Spanish edition edited by José Vicente Rodríguez and Federico Ruiz Salvador: Obras completas 2009: 100: ‘Niega tus deseos y hallarás lo que desea tu corazón; ¿qué sabes tú si tu apetito es según Dios?’ See as well John of the Cross (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez 1991: 88, n. 40): ‘What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.’ Obras completas, 103, n. 39: ‘Eso que pretendes y lo que más deseas no lo hallarás por esa vía tuya ni por la alta contemplación, sino en la mucha humildad y rendimiento de corazón.’ All further quotations are from these two editions. 25 See St Augustine (1887: XIV, 28): ‘two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.’ 26 See Waaijman (1998: 5): ‘The spiritual way is embedded in the perspective of “transformation in God”.’ Waaijman describes the transformation in five aspects or stages: in creation, in re-creation, in conformity, in love, and in glory. 27 ‘Tout le problème de la vie spirituelle sera de libérer ce désir, puis de le transformer: conversion radicale, μετάνοια sans laquelle il n’est point d’entrée dans le Royaume…’ 28 ‘L’esprit, en effet, ne désire pas Dieu comme l’animal désire sa proie. Il le désire comme un don. Il ne cherche point à posséder un objet infini: il veut la communication libre et gratuite d’un Être personnel.’ 29 I am thankful to Iain Matthew for his suggestions with respect to the following pages. 30 ‘No es aquel apetito, cuando el alma apetece a Dios, siempre sobrenatural, sino cuando Dios le infunde, dando él la fuerza del tal apetito, y éste es muy diferente del natural, y hasta que Dios le infunde, muy poco o nada se merece.’ Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from LF are from redaction B. 31 Vanneste insists that de Lubac does not push the personalistic perspective to its end; see Vanneste (1993: 311). While acknowledging that this aspect could be more fully elaborated, it must be accepted that Lubac limited his research to

208  Christof Betschart natural desire before being personalised. In other words, he has only laid the groundwork for such a personalistic vision to be developed. 32 ‘Esta pretensión del alma es la igualdad de amor con Dios, que siempre ella natural y sobrenaturalmente apetece, porque el amante no puede estar satisfecho si no siente que ama cuanto es amado.’ 33 ‘tal manera de semejanza hace el amor en la transformación de los amados, que se puede decir que cada uno es el otro y que entrambos son uno. La razón es porque en la unión y transformación de amor el uno da posesión de sí al otro, y cada uno se deja y trueca por el otro; y así, cada uno vive en el otro, y el uno es el otro, y entrambos son uno por transformación de amor.’ 34 See on this subject Matthew (2020: 21) and the chapter above. In both texts, Iain Matthew shows in the two texts mentioned in the title that the fullness of the mystical union of the Spiritual Canticle is founded in the mystery of Christ as presented in the Ascent of Mount Carmel. 35 ‘transformados en Dios, vivirán vida de Dios y no vida suya, aunque sí vida suya, porque la vida de Dios será vida suya.’ 36 ‘y para que pudiese venir a esto la crió a su imagen y semejanza [Gn 1,26].’ 37 International Theology Commission: Theology, Christology, Anthropology, Vatican City, 1981, I.E.4 trans. of the Vatican website modified.

15 Edith Stein and John of the Cross on the Dark Night Changing the Aspect of the Soul Peter Tyler

Introduction Having completed her novitiate in the Cologne Carmel, the extraordinary phenomenologist Edith Stein (now 47 years old and having taken the name in religion Sr Teresia Benedicta a Cruce) decided, after the horrific anti-Semitic riots of November 1938, that it was in the best interest of the convent and her sister, Rosa, if she left Nazi Germany and moved to the Carmel in Echt in neutral Holland. Her preference had been to go to Palestine and the Carmel at Bethlehem but it was decided that Holland would be the safest option in the short term, from where she might be able to travel outside Europe or to Switzerland. On 31st December 1938, Edith crossed the border from Germany to the Netherlands, whilst Rosa managed to join her in summer 1940 having arrived there via Belgium. Her new prioress, Mother Antonia, asked her to resume writing and in summer 1941, she finished an article on Dionysius the Areopagite. She also started work on a commentary on St John of the Cross that would be published several decades later under the title Kreuzeswissenschaft/ The Science of the Cross.1 This work holds a special place in the hearts of those who follow her writings today. First, there is the fact that she was working on the unpublished manuscript on the afternoon of 2nd August 1942 in the Echt Carmel when the Nazis arrived demanding that she leave with her sister, Rosa, who had become an extern sister at the convent. Whilst this commotion was going on, the unfinished manuscript had been left on the desk of her study. After her arrest, it passed into the safe keeping of the sisters who, during the bombing of Echt, took it, along with the rest of Edith’s manuscripts, to a farm outside the city for safe keeping. The manuscript was first published in 1950 as the first volume of the newly initiated Edith Steins Werke. The Science is quite unlike Stein’s other works. Written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the birth of St John of the Cross in 1542 for the Carmelite sisters, it is one of Stein’s most accessible works and large sections of it consist of unredacted quotations from the German edition of John and Jean Baruzi’s influential (and not uncontroversial) study of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-19

210  Peter Tyler saint.2 However, interspersed with these accounts of the saint, Stein also, perhaps unsurprisingly, weaves her own philosophy and theology – in particular her phenomenological interpretation of the self.3 From the point of view of Juanist and Steinian scholarship, the Science is significant for providing a phenomenological interpretation of key aspects of John’s anthropology and mystical theology. In this chapter, I shall highlight one of the key aspects of this interpretation: Stein’s exposition of John’s ‘Dark Night’ as a transformation of the ground of self according to her phenomenological anthropology. Stein’s Exposition of St John Throughout her exposition of John, Edith is clear that her own psychospiritual structure differs somewhat from the Spanish master’s. She is aware that he approaches the self through the prism of late medieval anthropology, whereas her own phenomenological, frankly more psychological, approach will necessarily differ from his. Yet, throughout the exposition, she is keen to demonstrate ‘whether it is in harmony with his teaching’ (CWES 6: 162/ESW 1: 144) and, indeed, may help to ‘clarify his doctrine’. This is certainly how I approach Edith’s exposition of John here – we could say that she is ‘rebooting’ John and showing how the essential psycho-spiritual categories used by John and explored elsewhere in the present volume can be translated into a contemporary 20th (and as I do here, into a 21stcentury) idiom. Drawing on John, Edith begins her own exposition of the purification of the self by stressing that: ‘this entire realm of enlightenment and graces has been unfolded only to show that one must renounce it’ (CWES 6: 81/ESW 1: 71). For just as John takes Augustinian anthropology as the basis of his exegesis so Edith takes the Mind-Soul-Body-Spirit synthesis that has been central to her own phenomenological anthropology as the basis for her own approach to John. What she terms ‘the total construction of the soul-mind being’ (‘Gesamtbau des seelisch-geistigen Seins’) (ESW 1: 99) – remembering, with John, that: ‘talk of superior and inferior parts is but a spatial image for a being which has nothing spatial about it at all’ (‘ein räumliches Bild für etwas, was ganz unräumliches Sein hat’) (ESW 1: 113). She retains here the three-fold understanding of personhood that she has been developing throughout her writing career. Thus, in this exposition, the movements of Geist/intellect are dependent upon Sinn/sense: The spirit (Geist) is dependent on the senses (Sinne) for its natural activity. It accepts what they offer, keeps what it perceives to be true, recalls it to view on occasion, connects it to other things, changes it, and arrives at judgements and conclusions… this process constitutes the actual function of the intellect (den eigentlichen Verstandesleistungen). (CWES 6: 114–115/ESW 1: 101)

Edith Stein and John of the Cross on the Dark Night 211 Geist,4 through the images presented by the senses, is able to undertake ‘acquired contemplation’ and a form of self-contemplation (Betrachtung), all of which is achieved ‘by our freedom and is completed under our own power’ (CWES 6: 117). Yet, in this final discourse on St John of the Cross, she suggests that ‘Geist’ and ‘Sinn’ must be separated – this is the breaking in of the realm of ‘mystical theology’ into a philosophy that she had largely expounded throughout her life in a purely phenomenological fashion: Therefore we must leave all creatures behind as well as all those powers by which we comprehend and understand creatures in order to raise ourselves in faith to God, the inconceivable and incomprehensible one. For this neither the senses nor the understanding are capable if we understand that capability as thinking in tangible concepts. When we surrender to the incomprehensible God in faith we are pure spirit, freed from all images and concepts. (CWES 6: 117–118/ESGA 18: 76)5 Geist now has been detached from Sinn, so that what is left is ‘pure spirit’. At this point, she develops the definition of ‘soul’ presented in Finite and Eternal Being so that it too will embrace this notion of ‘pure spirit’: After all, something must remain if union with God and transformation in God is still possible after the suspension of the powers. And this something, beyond the senses and the understanding united with the senses, must first be the Geist in its actual sense. John also speaks in this connection of the nature of the soul. The soul is in its nature spirit and is in its most inner nature receptive to everything geistige: for God, the pure Geist and everything that is created by Him thus possessing his innermost nature, is also geistige. (ESGA 18: 76)6 In these final writings, the soul seems to have detached itself from all creaturely attributes as it prepares for union with the divine. In this state, it is receptive to the divine inflow of graces in what John calls the ‘passive’, or in Freudian terms, we could call the ‘unconscious’ night as: ‘the powerful meeting of the natural world and the supernatural gifts of grace must be upset by an even mightier reality’ (CWES 6: 120/ESW 1: 106). In Christian terms, this is the ‘abandonment to the Cross’ which will lead to ‘the dark knowledge’ of God. The ‘Geistes Leben’, ‘natural life of the mind’, is now superseded as grace, through faith, leads the soul (CWES 6: 121–118/ESW 1: 107), which, in her last theological category, is ‘the true beginning of eternal life in us’ (‘Anfang des ewiges Lebens in uns’) which detaches the soul from all created things. Quoting John, she suggests that this is the point where: ‘the soul walks securely in darkness so that this light or obscure wisdom so absorbs

212  Peter Tyler and engulfs it in the dark night of contemplation and brings it near God that it protects and frees it from all that is not God’ (DN 2.16.10 in John of the Cross 2002: 561). Thus, as we saw in earlier chapters, just as John contrasts the ‘unknowing’ at the heart of the encounter with God with ‘particular’ experiences (the dulzuras, sabores and gustos so beloved of Teresa of Avila), so Edith makes a contrast between the particular experiences of the ‘mind’ and the ‘general’ sense of the ‘soul’. ‘Soul’, for her, signifies that greater sense of self that is expressed on the symbolic (poetic?) level of the mystical theology. This is the true encounter with the spirit that definitively distinguishes the psychological from the spiritual/theological. John calls it ‘the mystical wisdom’ (‘sabiduría mistica’) which is ‘secret’: ‘pure contemplation is indescribable and on this account called secret’ (DN 2.17.6 in John of the Cross 2002: 565). This moment of transition is for John like: Being led into the deepest and most remote place set apart from all creatures so that it considers itself to be in the deepest and widest solitude where no other human creature is encountered: it is like an immense desert which has no bounds but which is also the most delightful, delicious and lovely place for it is so deep, remote and solitary. (DN 2.17.6 in John of the Cross 2002: 565)7 This vast desert thus leads us ‘deep into the views of the wisdom of love’ (de sabiduria al alma) – the ‘science of love’ (‘ciencia de amor’) (DN 2.17.6 in John of the Cross 2002: 565). Edith and John are both expounding here a complete epistemological shift. ‘Soul’, at this point, has ‘become spirit’ but still ‘possesses her own shape’ (sie selbst ist eigentümlich gestaltet) (CWES 6: 153/ESW 1: 135). At this point, soul is no longer just ‘the form that animates the body’ or ‘the inner of an outer’; rather, soul is now ‘that which holds in itself the opposites of inner and outer’ (sondern es gibt in ihr selbst den Gegensatz von Innerem und Äußerem) (ESGA 18: 98).8 At this point, the soul is entirely ‘at home’ (eigentlich zu Hause) at its ‘innermost point’, its deepest nature or ground (im Wesen oder tiefsten Grund der Seele) (ESW 1: 136). In many ways, Stein had been working to this point in her earlier writings on the soul, but now, as she herself faced her final journey, she separates the three aspects of the soul she had described in Finite and Eternal Being so that, with John, it may make the final journey to the ‘dark night’. Having presented us with this final Steinian conception of the soul as ‘pure spirit’ on the edge of eternity she brings us back to her lifelong preoccupation with personal anthropology as she asks, ‘What then of the large mass of humanity who do not arrive at mystical marriage?’ (CWES 6: 162). Her answer illuminates her earlier anthropology as she posits different classes of people who reflect the three aspects of self she delineated in her later works. First, there are the people focused on the ‘sinnliche’ element,

Edith Stein and John of the Cross on the Dark Night 213 the sensory; secondly, those who have a strong intellective element who ‘seek the truth’, living ‘principally at the heart of an actively seeking intellect’ (Der Wahrheitsucher lebt vorwiegend im Herzpunkt der forschenden Verstandestätigkeit) (ESGA 18: 105). To these two categories, which reflect the ‘body’ and ‘spirit’ of her earlier anthropology, she now coins a new term by describing the third group of people barred from entering the ‘realm of the soul’ as ‘Ichmenschen’ (ESW 1: 145). As a category, I find it helpful in contrast to soul, and perhaps to stress this contrast rather than ‘I-person’ I shall henceforth translate it as ‘me-Person’ to emphasise the self-centredness she is intimating here: That is, the one for whom their own ‘I’ stands as their middle-point: to the casual observer it may appear that such a person is particularly close to their innermost self – yet, for no other type of person is the way to their innermost so barred. (ESW 1 145/6)9 Thus, for Edith, John’s exposition of the purification of the Dark Night is nothing less than the description of the means whereby we move from being a ‘me-Person’ to a person living from a ‘soul’ perspective: Everyone has within themselves something of the [me-Person], so long as they have not suffered the Dark Night to its end. (ESW 1 146)10 Yet, we are not fixed in this position; for all types of persons, there is the possibility for the ego to shift its perspective (Ichbewegung) to move from the ‘me-centre’ to the ‘soul-centre’. John’s spiritual ‘dark night’ thus becomes, in Stein’s interpretation, a means of reorientating our faculties so that now rather than operating from the ‘me’ or ‘ego’ we become ‘soul-folk’. Yet, in Stein’s exposition (as in John’s), this transformation, this work on the Reize (‘stimuli’ – equivalent to John’s ‘faculties’, c.f. Freud’s Triebe) is often a long, slow and painful one. The ‘old Adam’ does not give up its sensual/sensory orientation so easily: ‘the words are heard, and perhaps their immediate meaning may be understood, but the area where the real sense of the call would be received is buried in rubble’ (CWES 6: 164). In her earlier writing, she had written of the so-called ‘Seeletriebe’ – ‘drives of the soul’ that lead to spiritual integration in the spiritual seeker. Is this an example of such a ‘soul-drive’ overcoming the sensory/sensual Reize/Triebe? Sadly, we shall never know as Edith was not given more time to develop these ideas. For this transformation to occur from a ‘me-person’ to a ‘soul-person’, she suggests that there must be a ‘change of aspect’: [For this to happen] a position must be taken deep in the self: so deep that the crossing appears as a formal transformation of the person which

214  Peter Tyler perhaps is not possible by natural means but only can be grounded in an extraordinary awakening. (ESW 1: 147)11 Thus, the move to becoming a ‘soul-person’ is a search for the ‘innerste’ within12 – that ‘innerste’ is the depth of the soul which is the mystery of God: ‘one can never see through all this to the innermost part of the self’ (‘Bei all dem durchschaut er sein Innerstes niemals ganz’), for here lies ‘the mystery of God’ (Geheimnis Gottes) ‘which only God can reveal according to His wishes’ (‘das Er allein entschleiern kann, so wet es Ihm gefällt’). Thus, Stein has presented us with a sophisticated anthropology contrasting the Seele which overlaps with the mystery of God’s being in the ‘innerste’ with the dayto-day ‘I’, or as usually translated into English (following Strachey’s English translation of Freud), ‘ego’: The being of the soul – its greater and lesser depth, as well as its innermost – are its natural state and within this space, equally naturally, the ‘I’ [‘ego’] moves, grounded in the possibility of being. (ESW 1: 145)13 Here, we have moved far from John, or rather, using the vehicle of Edith’s anthropology, John has travelled far into our contemporary world. For Stein is using here the contemporary language of depth psychology – Ich and Seele – but making it her own. In a rather striking way, she is subverting Freud’s ‘godless’ Ich - Es - Über-Ich tripos to present an anthropology fundamentally calibrated (Wesensmöglichkeit) by the extent to which it acknowledges its grounding in the mystery of God (the Seelentriebe?). This is something both Freud and Jung never achieved or entertained. We thus have an ‘ego/I’ – ‘Soul’ polarity with various personalities located upon this spectrum, according to whether our preoccupation is more with the ‘me’ and ‘enjoyment of the sensory world’ (Sinnengenuss) or the movement away from this towards the pursuit of Truth (Der Wahrheitsucher) or the ‘developing understanding’ (der forschenden Verstandestätigkeit) (ESW 1: 145). In conclusion, she states her assumption which she has found throughout her whole intellectual and spiritual search that: A person who, only here and now, seeks what is right and accordingly decides by what he believes he knows, is on the way to God and on the way to himself even when he does not know this. (CWES 6: 165) In his last work, The Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was at pains to distinguish between ‘the continuous seeing’ of an aspect and the ‘dawning’/Aufleuchten of an aspect (Wittgenstein 1958: xi.194e/1993: 1.520) for, as he explains, ‘the expression of a change of

Edith Stein and John of the Cross on the Dark Night 215 aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception’s being unchanged’ (Wittgenstein 1958: xi.196e/1993: 1.522). For Aspect-seeing/the Dawning of an Aspect is a ‘half-visual, half-thought experience’ (Wittgenstein 1982: 1.554 ‘das Erlebnis des Aspektswechsels/ das Aufleuchten des Aspekts scheint halb Seh-, halb Gedankenerlebnis’). I would interpret this as Wittgenstein suggesting that the dawning of an aspect really goes beyond the logical faculty to a place that is ‘half seen/half thought’. Almost against the pull of reason, the conditions for the change of aspect reach beyond the bound of Aristotelian logic: ‘Aristotelian logic brands a contradiction as a non-sentence, which is to be excluded from language. But this logic only deals with a very small part of the logic of our language’ (Wittgenstein 1982: 1.525). For as Wittgenstein beautifully concludes: ‘Dem Aspektwechsel wesentlich ist ein Staunen. Und Staunen ist Denken’: ‘The Change of Aspect is essentially an astonishment. And astonishment is thinking’ (Wittgenstein 1982: 1.565). One of the chief characteristics of the Change of Aspect is that it occurs against our will (Wittgenstein 1982: 1.612); it occupies, we could say, adopting the language of mystical theology, the place of unknowing. Following Stein’s analysis and Wittgenstein’s description of the ‘Change of Aspect’, we can conclude by suggesting that Stein’s interpretation reveals John’s ‘Dark Night’ as the changing of an aspect in our selves. In Steinian terms, it is the reorientation of the self from the ‘me-perspective’ to the ‘soul-perspective’. Notes 1 The document was first published in German in 1950 (ESW 1/Stein 1950), receiving a second German redaction in 2003 (ESGA 18/Stein 2003), English translations appeared in 1960 and 2002 (CWES 6/ Stein 2002). I shall draw upon all versions here; full bibliographical details can be found in the Bibliography. 2 Edith cites passages from Des Heiligen Johannes vom Kreuz sämtliche Werke, trans. Aloysius of the Immaculate Conception and Ambrosius of St Teresa, Munich, 1924–29 as well as from Gerardo de San Juan de la Cruz’s critical Spanish edition of 1914. For more on the relationship between Baruzi and John, see Mark Murphy’s chapter below. 3 For a more detailed exposition of this, see Tyler (2023) in which a modified version of this chapter is to be found. 4 Due to the problems in translating the German Geist, I have tended to retain the German term: ‘spirit’, ‘intellect’ and ‘mind’ are all adequate translations but each English term misses the nuances of the German original. 5 ‘Darum müssen wir alle Geschöpfe hinter uns lassen und alle unsere Kräfte, mit denen wir die Geschöpfe fassen und begreifen, um uns im Glauben zu Gott, dem Unfaßlichen und Unbegreiflichen, zu erheben. Dazu sind weder die Sinne fähig noch der Verstand, wenn wir darunter die Fähigkeit zu begrifflichem Denken verstehen. In der gläubigen Hingabe an den unbegreiflichen Gott sind wir reiner Geist, gelöst von allen Bildern und Begriffen’. 6 ‘Es muß ja etwas bleiben, wenn erst nach der Aufhebung der Kräfte die Vereinigung mit Gott und die Umformung in Gott möglich sein soll. Und dieses Etwas jenseits von Sinnlichkeit und sinnlich-gebundenem Verstand muß erst der Geist

216  Peter Tyler im eigentlichen Sinne sein.Johannes spricht in diesem Zusammenhang auch vom Wesen der Seele. Die Seele ist ihrem Wesen nach Geist und ist ihrem innersten Wesen nach empfänglich für alles Geistige: für Gott, den reinen Geist, und alles, was er geschaffen hat und was seinem innersten Wesen nach auch geistig ist’. The CWES English version here introduces the definition of pure Geist as ‘beyond being’ but this phrase is neither in ESGA nor in ESW. 7 ‘Un abismo secreto... un immenso desierto que por ninguna parte ... fue, tanto más deleitoso, sabroso y amoroso, cuanto más profundo, ancho y solo’. 8 Here, Stein helpfully reminds us that we are using spatial images to refer to that which is beyond space, c.f. The Living Flame of Love 1.5.3: ‘the soul has no parts and there is no distinction here between inner and outer’ (ESW 1: 136). 9 ‘D.h. den für den das eigene Ich im Mittelpunkt steht; es mag dem oberflächlichen Blick scheinen, als sei ein solcher Mensch seinem Innersten besonders nahe, und doch ist vielleicht für keinen andern Typus der Weg dorthin so verbaut wie für diesen’. 10 ‘Etwas davon hat jeder Mensch in sich, solange er nicht die Dunkle Nacht bis ans Ende durchlitten hat’. 11 ‘Dazu muss er aber sehr tief in sich selbst Stellung nehmen: so tief, dass der Übergang einer förmlichen Umwandlung des Menschen gleichkommt und vielleicht natürlicherweise gar nicht müglich ist, sondern nur auf Grund einer ausserordentlichen Erweckung’. 12 Stein states at this point in the Science of the Cross: ‘Der Mensch ist dazu berufen, in seinem Innersten zu leben und sich selbst so in die Hand zu nehmen’ (ESW 1: 143) which is translated in CWES 6: 160 as ‘Human beings are called upon to live in their inmost region and to have themselves as much in hand as is possible only from that center-point’. Unfortunately Stein does not use the terms Zentrum or Zentrumpunkt here which is found in the English translation, for as we have seen, she consistently seeks to retain a central unknowing instability in the ‘space of the soul’ which would accord with her (in my view correct) interpretation of John on this point (see Tyler 2013). 13 ‘Der Wesensbau der Seele – ihre grössere und geringere Tiefe, auch das Innerste – besteht von Natur aus, und in ihm ist, gleichfalls natürlicherweise, die Bewegung des Ich in diesem Raum als Wesensmöglichkeit begründet’.

16 John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas The Quest for God beyond Being David B. Perrin

Introduction Emmanuel Lévinas spent most of his life in France but travelled frequently to Germany to pursue his studies with Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). In his brief autobiographical account, Lévinas makes it clear that, as a practising Jew, his approach to life and philosophy from his childhood onwards was shaped by the Hebrew Bible (Lévinas 1990:291–295). As we know, John of the Cross, after studies at the University of Salamanca (1564–1568), joined Teresa of Avila to spearhead the reform of the men’s side of the Carmelite Order. Through his writings and witness of his life John profoundly shaped the Western mystical tradition in countless ways. The apparent contrast between these two eminent thinkers could not be greater. Lévinas worked assiduously to remain within the confines of philosophy in order to bring his profound reflections, even those about God, to common discourse, focussing his God-talk in the realm of discrete interhuman relations. John of the Cross, however, a trained theologian in the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas, talked and wrote about God unabashedly. While Lévinas, the philosopher, hesitates to speak or write of God in theological categories, John of the Cross wrote frequently of his encounter with the mysterious Other and quoted often from theologians (even though he seldom cites them directly). For Lévinas, philosophical discourse can include God-talk only if this God has a meaning (Peperzak et al. 1996:130); for John, theological discourse can include God-talk only if one encounters the mystery of God in faith (CB 1).1 What then brings these two men together in this chapter: one from the upheavals of sixteenth-century Spain, the other from war-torn twentiethcentury France and Germany? Simply put, both of these men refused to start their reflection on life and the human encounter with divine Otherness from self-contained abstract principles. Rather, they both launch their reflections from the ambiguity and complexity of the experience of human nature. As a result, they both refused to bottle up God in a metaphysics that ultimately would freeze solid the very Mystery which spurred DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-20

218  David B. Perrin them on in their various existential pursuits. Their search for God was a search for a God beyond Being or, perhaps better, ‘not contaminated by Being’ (Lévinas 1998: xlviii).2 This statement does not negate the fact that John embraced the God of the Incarnation to the point where John describes his delight in the ‘spiritual feelings’ and ‘delightful touches’ graced to him by God’s presence in the world (see A 2.24.4). We see immediately the enigma of John’s ‘God’ – the God of the ‘nada’ and the God of the ‘everything’ which creates a tension not easily resolved: a personal God who advents in time and space yet a God beyond Being – at least as we understand it. Both John and Lévinas knew that Being is not the foundation of the mystery of life, but rather, both encountered, each in their own way, a level of reality beyond being – in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.3 It is from within the space of non-being between the I and the human Other that the dynamics of transcendence emerge. The alterity of the Other (human or divine) is the ground for what can be said of the Other. The Ground of life is thus never a given as a non-disputable ontological foundation. Specifically, the question this chapter seeks to address is the relationship between John’s nada4 and Lévinas’ ‘trace’. While John uses nada to describe the nothingness of God and the ultimate absence of the divine Other, Lévinas uses ‘trace’ to describe the impossibility of God’s presence. For Lévinas, ‘trace’ signifies that which has never been and cannot be made present in the being of objects or distinct concepts. But this begs the following question: Do John and Lévinas lead us to an impossible dead end? Do they leave us with our crying existential plea, that there must be something more to life, without so much as providing a clue as to what that more may be? Both understand that descriptive theological language about God risks destroying the possibility of a personal relationship to that which is being described – to the God who is being sought. Both understand that anything we attempt to say about God can be contradicted within the same breath. The quandary is how we speak about God and what the consequences are of John’s and Lévinas’ radical negation of the Being of God – a God who is present in the absolutely absent.5 In addressing these questions, we will discover a central point of unity between John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas: both emphasize that there is no access to God except through the charged but formless space which exists between oneself and one’s neighbour. It is the thick and fleeting space between here and there, between the I and the Other, that reveals the possibility of the presence of the absolutely absent divine Other. Ironically, for both, it is the irrefutable fact of transcendence that leads to immanence.6 Transcendence and immanence are two sides of the same coin. It is this key understanding that is at the basis of the search for a God beyond Being.

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 219 God and Desire in John of the Cross Christian tradition attests that God has self-revealed in history: the Word became flesh (Jn. 1:14). But Christian tradition also attests that we cannot see or know God directly (e.g. Ex. 33:20; Jn. 1:18). Nonetheless, the search goes on; by the very nature of what it means to be human, John of the Cross tells us that we possess an urgent and insatiable desire that drives us to search for the ever-elusive God (CB 6.4). John calls desire ‘love’s urgent longings’ (A 1.1.11). As the pilgrim searches for God and draws near to the Mystery, John says that she encounters a darkness that is ever more intensely the absence of God. However, it is this very absence which drives the search with even more desire. The encounter of ‘darkness’ as one edges closer to God leads John of the Cross to the symbol of the ‘night’ as the descriptor of the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ of the mysterious encounter in darkness (DN 2.24.4) for John says: ‘God is … a dark night to the soul in this life’ (A 1.2.1). For John, the symbol of the ‘night’ is the primary image for God because in darkness we can see no-thing; there is nothing there that the senses can sense or the intellect can grasp.7 For John, human beings literally experience nothingness in their approach to God, but still the insatiable desire for God grows ever more intense. The Disproportionate Nature of Human Beings to the Nature of God Why is this desire and darkness so intense and so unfathomable? To answer this question, John turns to the scholastic traditions of his day, found both in philosophy and in theology, that describe the disproportionate nature of God to human creatures (A 2.8.2).8 Even though creatures carry a trace of God, they have no essential likeness to God. One cannot know what is radically dissimilar to oneself.9 The dissimilarity has to do with the faculties or powers through which human beings come to know themselves and the world. John describes these as the sensitive faculties (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) and the spiritual faculties (memory, will and intellect).10 God cannot be known conceptually by the sensitive or spiritual capacities of the human being (A 2.24.2, 3.12.1). John knew that God cannot be reduced to the measure of human constructs, ideas and knowledge. Attempting to do so is disparaged by John (CB I.4). Instead, he turns to the language of faith to name not an ontological reality but a relationship of transcendence, that is, of faith, hope and love (A 3.12.2-3). What the soul is searching for, therefore, is a God without measure, without conceptual clarity and without ‘being’ as humans understand it. Thus, John encourages a passive reception of God’s love and not an active plan, which John refers to as our ‘lowly’ operation (A 3.13,3–4).

220  David B. Perrin However, as already mentioned, John describes ‘spiritual feelings’ and ‘delightful touches’ experienced in the soul which are experiences of God’s presence in the world (see A 2.24.4). Through these feelings and touches, God imparts a loving and obscure knowledge of God which John calls ‘faith’. But even these experiences must not be clung to lest they, too, begin to lead the soul astray. To follow the path of being, that is, knowledge, images and apprehensions, is to follow the path of the exact opposite of what is sought. The Beyond Being of God: The Dark Night of the Soul Entry into the beyond Being of God is through the encounter of John’s wellknown ‘dark night of the soul’ (A I.2ff). To experience this night is to enter deeply into the process to allow God to be God in one’s life. In other words, the darkening of the knowledge of God is the refusal to pull God exclusively into the ontological language of Western philosophy and theology.11 John does not know what lies beyond the darkness but pushes forward driven by faith and desire, both his and God’s. John’s journey of human-spiritual development has as its core God’s desire to make human nature proportionate to God’s divine nature (LF 3.28-29) for he says ‘[only] the things of God in themselves produce good in the soul’ (DN 2.16.4). John describes this transformation as a log of wood being transformed by fire (A 2.8.2). The remarkable result of this transformation is that ‘the soul knows creatures through God and not God through creatures’ (LF 4.5). Ultimately, it is the Trinitarian God who is discovered as a secret mystery hidden in the heart of the pilgrim’s soul and through this mystery the world is known.12 Encounter with the Trinitarian Nature of God It is remarkable that through John’s ‘dark night of the soul’, the pilgrim encounters the fullness of the Godhead: the Trinitarian nature of God (see, for example, LF 2.1). In darkness, the soul does not experience less but experiences more: the fullness of the Trinity. This discovery of John is paramount in the Western mystical tradition and is often overlooked as a result of the journey of ‘the dark night of the soul’. It is the answer to the quest for God beyond being because it is constituted solely on the basis of the relational qualities embedded in the heart of the human actualized in the encounter of Trinitarian love (CB 1.6; LF 2). God is realized in a community of persons like the Trinity realizes the fullness of the Godhead in its dynamic exchange of Divine leitourgiā (‘public service’), that is, Being-for-the-Other. In this emptiness, in this nothing (John’s famous nada depicted in the sketch of Mount Carmel, Figure 0.2), is the secret mystery of God encountered (see Kavanaugh and Rodriguez 1991:111). For John of the Cross, the journey of faith is a dark one lit only by the light of the Trinitarian Spirit of God fashioning human-being slowly into the nada

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 221 of God: God’s way of being in the world (see Perrin 1997:97–112). God is not named; God is performed as God performed for us in Trinitarian Love (LF 2.1; LF 3.14; DN 2.17.2–8). By being open to God’s creative grace in life, John says the individual ‘has become God through participation in God’ (LF 2.34). In this way, God endows human beings with the non-being of God: God’s attributes of Self-giving sacrificial love. God in Emmanuel Lévinas Lévinas inherited a concept of God that is well instilled in Western philosophical and theological thought. Many thinkers contributed to this concept of God. We will engage a primary one referred to throughout this section of the present volume: the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas attempted to provide a rational foundation for theology which, in turn, would provide a unified discourse about God. This temptation gripped the minds of scholastic philosophers and theologians and eventually would become known as onto-theology. In brief, onto-theology is all about ascribing to God some form of being by which humans can come to name and know God by way of analogical attribution (Ricoeur 1977:273, 303–309). However, according to Lévinas, problems arise because analogical attribution is based on an ontology of participation in Divine Being using known human categories to describe the nature of Divine Being. God, albeit by analogy, was at the top of the heap of these analogical attributes, but on the heap, nonetheless. Thus, Lévinas has a similar problem in naming God as John of the Cross does.13 This ontological move separated the poetic witness of historical biblical revelation that portrays God as ‘event’ (the biblical God who Self-reveals, inspires and empowers) in order to establish a framework for speculative theological discourse that establishes God’s existence or Being per se as the Christian foundation for all existence and belief. Following this approach, what we can ‘know’ is a God adequate to reason alone. In the language of Lévinas, this leads to the ‘totalizing of experience’ to incorporating the ‘other’ into the ‘same’ and thus conquering ‘otherness’ (Lévinas 1969:35–40). Lévinas is wary of all relationships being reduced to a network of functionality. The use of reason to thematize the Other (Divine or human), according to Lévinas, thus exposes the violent nature of reason itself. But he will not trade in these markets (see Peperzak et al. 1996:130–131). Lévinas does not believe in the necessity of conceptual precision in order to endow Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible with relevancy or meaning in our lives (see Peperzak et al. 1996:146–147). God is not to be portrayed from the perspective of being since it makes God in accordance with the measurements of human beings, which is idolatry. Lévinas’ task, therefore, is to find a way of talking about God without using specific names or attributes to avoid simply putting God at the hierarchal top of whatever list is contrived (see Peperzak et al. 1996:135). What Lévinas

222  David B. Perrin is attempting to do is move the needle beyond the limiting framework of an onto-theological discussion of God. Like John of the Cross, Lévinas begins by describing the fundamental characteristic of what it means to be human: the potential of ‘desire’. Lévinas’ Concept of ‘Desire’ Lévinas describes the reality of the Infinite or God (see Peperzak et al. 1996:140) in terms of human desire. Desire is the relation which attaches the I to the Other and from which is born the Idea of the Infinite (Lévinas 1966:42). Before the Other, one senses the mystery and transcendence of their Being, which summons a response which is a desire for the good of the Other. Desire leads to a deepening of desire in its self-transcendent, ‘perfectly disinterested’ movement for the unconditional well-being of the Other, which Lévinas describes as metaphysical desire for the Good (Lévinas 1969:50): ‘To be for the Other is to be good’ (Lévinas 1969:261). Desire does not turn in on itself for satisfaction (as does need).14 Thus Lévinas, like John, speaks of the subject who becomes ever more desirous of the desire of the Good, which is the desire of the Infinite or God: ‘In the accomplishment of the Good, God is drawn out of objectivity, presence, and being…[God’s] transcendence turns into my responsibility… for the other’ (Peperzak et al. 1996:141).15 Desire, therefore, is at the foundation of self-transcendence and the idea of the Infinite or God which has been first placed within the human (Peperzak et al. 1996:139). Thinking Totality and Transcendence Beyond the dynamics of desire already sketched, how does Lévinas frame our understanding of the God-beyond-Being? Let’s go back to the dynamics of the interpersonal. We know that the other person’s otherness (illeity – their individuality expressed in desire, suffering, hope, thinking and so on) cannot be left ‘present’ in being-available – and never could be. Lévinas extends our comprehension of his God-talk by leveraging the transcendence of the Other who stands before me and summons my-desire-to-be for the Other (see Peperzak et al. 1996:142–143). With the arrival of another person in my life, I encounter her ‘face’ – her high Otherness or indelibility of being. The ‘trace’ of the ‘face’ of the Other brings her own limitless subjectivity (transcendence), and in this speaks to me and commands me, ‘Do not obliviate me in your quest for mastery’: that is, do not reduce me to your conceptions of me (see Lévinas 1969:84–85, 213, 276–277; Lévinas 1998:121–126). Confronted with the ‘face’ of the Other, we always turn our heads too late to discover what Lévinas calls the ‘trace’ of the Other – wondering if ever

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 223 the Other was encountered or present at all.16 The ‘trace’ is the ‘third person’ which leads us not to the identity of God but to the absolute otherness of the Other,17 which Lévinas then identifies as the Infinite or God who, again, is always the absent non-phenomenal ‘third’ person. For Lévinas, God is the most radical example of alterity whose alterity is the foundation of the desire of desire presented above. In the presence of the Other, an absence/desire grows which is the very opposite of satisfaction and contentment. That which is absent is the presence of the Infinite which creates an unquenchable desire or hunger (Lévinas 1966:39,1969: 34) of one-for-the-Other, which is meaning itself and is more primordial than being (Peperzak et al. 1996:102).18 In other words, the encounter with the Other creates transcendence, because the Other summons me to their infinite particularity, and in this highness I discover God. Such is the terrifying absence experienced in the ‘trace’ of the ‘face’ of the Other. The encounter of the ‘face’ is to sit on the edge of nothingness, beyond which there is no-thing but void or darkness because ‘nothing was ever there’. For Lévinas, this is the ‘trace’ of God. God is not phenomenal but is traced in the infinity of the Other, who summons my desire that reveals itself as goodness and moves me to the Good. For Lévinas, the ‘trace’ of the ‘face’ is the classical conception of the imago Dei. To be in the image of God is to find oneself in God’s trace – in the presence of the absence of the God-beyond-Being. To go towards God ‘is to go toward the Others who are in the trace [of God]’ (Lévinas 1966:46). God, understood thus, is the other of the Other person and remains unnameable, infinitely absent, but is present in the justice – the good – rendered to persons (Lévinas 1969:78). For Lévinas, to know God is to know what must be done (Lévinas 1969:17; 78–79). God is thus ‘known’ through the desire for the Good, a desire which directs itself to just relationship (Lévinas 1969:50, 1998:122–123).19 I am touched or moved not by another’s beauty, talent or cleverness, but by the Other’s human otherness – a radical otherness (illeity) – which calls me out of my natural egocentrism. For Lévinas, ontology is thus not the pathway to ‘know’ God. The pathway to know God is the spirituality of relationships formed in justice, goodness and hospitality. As he states: ‘Being qua being is a function of justice’ (1998: 162) for, ‘the Other is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed’ (Lévinas 1969:79). John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas: God-Beyond-Being It is remarkable that both John and Lévinas leverage Exodus 33:19–23 as a core biblical passage to make their case about God.20 In this passage, Moses is seeking confirmation of the Lord’s presence and commitment so as to calm

224  David B. Perrin the anxiety of the Israelites on their way to the land the Lord promised them. Moses demands of the Lord, ‘show me your glory’. But the Lord says: I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you … but you cannot see my face … when my glory passes by I … will cover you with my hand … but my face must not be seen. The divine Other’s ‘face’ is never seen, never phenomenally present. God only shows Godself through the ‘trace’ left behind which is always God in the ‘third person’. Thus originates the refusal by Lévinas to attribute in language either positive or negative traits to God. John’s position is somewhat more qualified. John gives God both positive and negative traits. For John, on the positive side, ‘the soul … enjoys the grandeurs of God’s wisdom and excellence’ (LF 3.69) and denies them in the manner of negative theology. John’s position originates in his profound mystical experience which both emanates from and builds his faith. Lévinas’ refusal originates from within the reason of philosophy, and thus he could rightly be called a ‘natural theologian’ as some commentators have done (see Wyschogrod 1972:33). Lévinas sees the transcendence of the human Other as the nonsubstitutional source of the extrinsic value of human life. Human beings are invited to become the trace, the face, of the transcendent divine Other such that the subjectivity of the human Other is displayed in its full depth and freedom. Ethical relationships reveal the always-present, always-vanishing and hidden dwelling place of God. John of the Cross, however, identifies ultimate transcendence with the personhood of God in the Trinity. The persons of the Trinity share a passive gaze of the face of the Others which overflow into human life, leaving their trace and thus transforming the heart of the human soul. Both John and Lévinas tell us that genuine alterity results in expiation of the self, a selfless self-giving to the point of non-being where God is encountered. Charged with the fullness of transcendence, one becomes the ‘hostage’ of the Other for the sake of the Other, and the Other becomes the Self (see Peperzak 1996:142–144; Lévinas 1966:39; Lévinas 1998:158). The Christian God made such a journey, becoming literally the hostage of humanity’s totalizing ego: in the Incarnation (historical Jesus), God put Godself in our place, substituting Godself for our state on every level. The alterity of human subjectivity follows these same tracks. In genuine alterity, totalizing ontology is disrupted: one loses one’s self-being (totalizing egoistic self) and finds a new other-centred-being in the displaced Selffor-the-Other. This new Self-for-the-Other is not swayed by consequences or context. It lives as a predisposed unified-self-for-the-other regardless of the situation and consequences. Again, here we see a similarity between John and Lévinas. John speaks of the new self in tune with God’s way of being in the world (see Perrin 2014:31–42), and Lévinas of the one obsessed

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 225 with the Other (see Peperzak et al. 1996:142–144; Lévinas 1966:39). Such is the framework for unconditional love. In short, both follow the via negativa, but understood in a new way. Both follow the call to the via negativa as a negation of oneself to live something more beyond oneself: the primeval relationship with self, God, others and creation. For John, God is at the centre of this self-emptying-self; for Lévinas it is the movement of the genuinely human connected to the depths of the primordial self. The Night of God in John of the Cross and Lévinas Both John and Lévinas speak of an empty space, a God-beyond-being, that compels the pilgrim to return over and over again to this nada where, paradoxically, All is given. It is this very emptiness which creates an infinite cauldron of encounter. Neither John nor Lévinas holds that God is ‘something’. The philosopher’s language does not allow anything to be said about God; and John’s language is both positive and negative as we have seen. However, for both, God ‘appears’ in a way of life. Literally, human beings have a capacity for God that ‘shows’ God in the marketplace of life and leads the pilgrim into darkness. John ends up in the darkness of night, as Lévinas does.21 For Lévinas, like John, ‘desire’ is insatiable. Think here of John’s three infinite caverns of desire, named the intellect (seat of faith), memory (seat of hope) and will (seat of love). Each cavern is infinite, because it is the Infinite which fills them with Infinite absence, thereby filling them with the desire and capacity for Infinite faith, hope, and love (see LF 3.17–22). However, any images of the Divine which emerge from the profound and sublime encounters with the three infinite caverns of the soul must eventually be abandoned. What is left after God’s Being is ‘dispatched’? The renunciation of expression and speech ‘sinks into the equivocation of silence’ (Lévinas 1969:263). For Lévinas, the silence of God allows the ‘voice’ of the human to breakthrough in ‘the hyperbolic passivity of giving’ (Peperzak et al. 1996:145) and, ironically, to reveal the presence of the Divine in personal testimony (see Peperzak et al. 1996:97–107): The Infinite [thus] transcends itself in the finite, it passes the finite, in that it directs the neighbor to me without exposing itself to me. This order steals into me like a thief, despite the outstretched nets of consciousness. (Peperzak et al. 1996:103) Similarly for John, only God can Self-reveal or give God, and Goddoes this in silent absence (A 2.4.5; LF 3.67). For John, it is the individual who becomes the testimony of the glory of the Infinite as Being-for-the-Other displayed in goodness (DN 2.16.4).

226  David B. Perrin Both John of the Cross and Lévinas insist on the refusal of the prioritization of ontology over human relationships. For too long, theological anthropology and theology have been anchored in ontology rather than the dynamics of the interpersonal. In other words abstractions about God have been prioritized over fundamental human relationships. Authentic selftranscendence is anchored to life with one’s neighbour. For the Christian, this relationship is modelled after the self-giving life of the Trinity; for the non-Christian, or non-believer, it may be modelled in a self-becoming that is grounded in ethical terms. For the Christian, the category of witness to this self-giving God thus rises to the fore as the ultimate category of faith: the witness to something or someone who has passed this way and left a trace taken up by the believing subject in a life of goodness and faith (A 2.6.2; A 2.9.1). The fundamental relationship with God is lived in the living discourse of goodness between persons. ‘Language’ humans must use; concomitantly humans must be aware of the limitations of their ‘babble’ and behave accordingly. Interpretation through language must be accepted for what it is: a limited attempt to bring into conceptual clarity what is mysterious and indeterminate. ‘Meaning’ is to ‘show oneself’ and it is this ‘appearing’ that ultimately is the guide in life (Peperzak et al. 1996:130). Both John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas ‘know’ God not through active pursuit, conceptual knowledge or precise language, but when God is ‘practiced’. For John of the Cross, it is in the doing of loving wisdom (see DN 2.17.7) while for Lévinas, it is in the doing of the ethical relationship (Lévinas 1969:77–81). Both know, in the end, that it is better to ‘not understand’. Understanding the Other will inevitably lead to violence. Ironically we are free only when we do not understand the Other, even when it is thoughtful categorization of the Other. This is the only path to freedom, that is, to avoid narcissism. The Other must remain radical Other – even God. John, like Lévinas, urges the subject to trust and be summoned forward in an act of faith. Faith, for John, becomes a way of loving justly and giving oneself in the community of the world. Both teach that we will never know whether God exists, but we can take a step of faith and trust in the imago Dei encountered in our neighbour. Interestingly, both also envision the foundation of the relationship with the transcendent Other as the equivocal par excellence of the erotic. Lévinas describes the dynamics of the transcendent ‘caress’ which transcends the sensible but appears in the relationship to the ‘formless real’ as ‘erotic nudity’ (Lévinas 1969:255–266). He describes a suffering in the relationship which transforms into existential joy: ‘The caress does not act [but is] a pleasure, a suffering transformed into happiness’ (Lévinas 1969:259). Lévinas, similar to John of the Cross, uses the language of ‘the Beloved’ struggling to word the intimate yet transcendent wholly Other (Lévinas 1969:258).

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 227 John, for his part, describes a ‘touch’ which is a ‘sweet cautery’, a ‘delightful wound’ which ‘divinizes and delights it’ [the soul] (LF 2.1–11); the image of the bride and groom enjoying their nuptial banquet as the kind of relationship the human subject enjoys with God (LF 4.15) and God’s presence in the heart of the human as a ‘delicate flame of love’, sensual and heartfelt (LF 1.1). Conclusion The relationship with God for both our authors is dependent on the transcendence of the human Other: being created as imago Dei. The relationship is defined by absence, nada, the beyond of the beyond of the Other which is the absolute transcendence of God. What one discovers in the caress of the Other is an emptiness filled with an excessive presence. This is what Lévinas defines as ‘religion’: Being-for-the-Other in an utter state of not-knowing, yet ever ready to be-for-the-Other in a self-emptying dynamic of non-mutuality. This is leitourgiā defined from a secular perspective. Religion, for Lévinas, is a metaphysical desire-for-the-Other that never turns back on itself in selfsufficient satisfaction. God is revealed in the face of the Other – one’s neighbour – for John, a revelation which speaks in the works of justice, hospitality and love. It is in the trace of the interpersonal that God has a ‘place’ and can be known in absolute absence. The meaning of my life, which emerges in the space of that mystery, is the happiness, hope and love that fill life with transcendent joy. Meaning is the place of the appearance of being and the appearance of God beyond Being for both John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas. The search for God beyond Being for both revolves around three key words: desire, night and erotic passion, that is:

• Desire: both frame desire as insatiable and thus compelling the search for God to ever new heights;

• Night: for John it is the ‘dark night of the soul’, for Lévinas it is the ‘dark night of God’;

• Erotic passion: both frame God-Beyond-Being as the divine Other who

draws the predisposed unified-self-for-the-Other into the unconditional well-being of all through hospitality, social engagement and care of God’s creation.

John’s story about God corroborates that of Lévinas. Or, perhaps, it is the other way around? Either way, the Christian mystic and the Jewish philosopher share common concerns even if they are understood in different ways: God is beyond Being, a finding which presents multiple challenges to the way we understand imago Dei and the Christian way of life (spirituality), of worship, of theological anthropology, language and doctrine.

228  David B. Perrin Notes 1 All references to John’s works are from Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991). The complete reference is given in the Bibliography. When John refers to God as ‘he’, the text is modified to be inclusive by substituting ‘[God]’. References to the Living Flame are from Redaction B unless stated. 2 The medieval application of ‘being’ to God includes a measure of contrast which does not ignore the ontological gap: the disproportionate nature of human beings to the nature of God as we will explore later in this chapter. See A 2.8.2. 3 For the meaning of ‘beyond being’, see Peperzak et al. (1996:100). 4 See the sketch of Mount Carmel in Fig 0.2 in Christopher Cook’s chapter above and discussion in Pavel Pola’s chapter. Also, for example, A 1.13.6-12. 5 The critical analysis of the radical negation of the Being of God undertaken in this chapter could have included other major thinkers on this topic. Space limited the engagement of these thinkers. For example, Martin Heidegger in Being and Time (2010) celebrates the end of metaphysics and the onto-theological God. JeanLuc Marion in God Without Being (1995) wants to go further than Heidegger. Marion believes that the end of metaphysics and onto-theology opens the door to a God outside of Being. Marion prioritizes a God of love or charity. Richard Kearney in The God Who May Be (2001) seeks, as well, to encounter the God beyond metaphysics. 6 See Peperzak et al. (1996:148): ‘Immanence always triumphs over transcendence’ and LF 1.15: God ‘delights with the children of the earth at a common table in the world’. 7 See A 1.2.1 where John likens the entire journey towards God a ‘night’. 8 This is a reference to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.1, as well as Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1–2.96. 1; 1–2. 1; 1–2. 114. 2. 102, as indicated in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991:174, fn. 1). 9 A 2.8.3. This reflects the teaching of Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae 1.4.3, as indicated in Kavanaugh and Rodriguez (1991:174, fn. 2). See also A 2.8.3 and A 2.8.4. 10 For a fuller account of John’s anthropology, see Perrin (1997:21–33). 11 As we have seen already, John’s God is a God of the Incarnation. John does not eliminate ontological language in his God-talk but uses it in a way which makes a strong contrast (using negative theology) between finite being and divine being: the disproportionate nature of human beings to the nature of divine being. 12 See also CB 1.10: ‘The substance of the secrets is God himself, for God is the substance and concept of faith, and faith is the secret and the mystery. And when that which faith covers and hides from us is revealed … then the substance and mysteries of the secrets will be uncovered in the soul’. 13 As we have seen, John is happy to apply attributes or ‘being’ to God, but in a way that is strongly qualified. 14 ‘Metaphysical desire has another intention; it desires beyond everything that can simply complete it. It is like goodness – the Desired does not fulfill it, but deepens it’ (Lévinas 1969:34). 15 ‘That is Desire: to burn with a fire other than need, a fire which saturation would put out; to think beyond what you think. Because of this unassimilable overgrowth, because of this beyond, we have called the relation which attached the Self to the Other – the Idea of the Infinite. The idea of the Infinite – is Desire’ (Lévinas 1966:42). See also Peperzak et al. (1996:138–141). 16 An interesting parallel suggests itself here with John’s ‘gaze’ in the Spiritual Canticle examined by Colin Thompson earlier. 17 ‘Beyond Being is a third person who does not define himself by the Self-same, by Ipseity’ (Lévinas 1966:44).

John of the Cross and Emmanuel Lévinas 229 18 Lévinas goes on to describe this dynamic as ‘the soul’ of the other within me, ‘a sickness of identity’ (Peperzak et al. 1996:102). See also the discussion of ‘soul’ by Edith Stein in the previous chapter. 19 ‘The Good is before being’ (Lévinas1998:122); ‘Illeity is that direction of the “I know not whence,” of that which comes without showing itself, of the nonphenomenon … of an order to which I am subjected before hearing it’ (Peperzak et al. 1996:106). 20 For John of the Cross, see, for example, A 2.8.4; A 2.24.2; A 3.12.1 and CB 11.5, and yet God is ‘hidden in the soul’ (CB I.3). For Lévinas, see, for example, Lévinas (1966:46). 21 John’s talk of ‘night’ is well known. For Lévinas, less so, but he does reveal thinking along these same lines: ‘The transcendence of God cannot be stated or conceived in terms of being, the element of philosophy, behind which philosophy sees only night’ (Peperzak et al. 1996:147; emphasis mine).

17 Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross The Problem of Modern Experientialism and the Dark Night of COVID Mark Murphy Introduction This chapter reviews the reception of John of the Cross within the milieu of 20th-century French intellectual life, especially in the work of the professor of religions Jean Baruzi (1881–1953) and his student, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). I shall concentrate in particular on how that reception has the possibility of tackling the problem of what I call positive experientialism today. In the first section, I track what I call the problem of toxic positivity and its place during our COVID crisis; I then move to trace Lacan’s nonexperientialist conception of analysis and how it was influenced by John of the Cross as transmitted through his teacher, Baruzi. I then give an exposition of Lacan’s famous mystical seminar Encore, where I believe that there is further evidence of non-experientialist analytic intervention drawn from mystical discourse. Finally, I talk about the Dark Night in a Lacanian register, arguing that it is not another object to be consumed in an isolated digital era but a critique of the very logic of experience in our experience-driven economy; moreover, the ethics of the Dark Night is a call to open up the space of desire and speech again whereby interruption can appear once more. The Problem of Toxic Positivity, Its Experientialist Roots during COVID Historically speaking, a significant trauma occurred in world events in 2020: a disease (COVID-19) that spread quickly and virulently from continent to continent. This was a complete disruption of life, love, desire, and the ability to engage in things that had been taken for granted. As such, during the extensive quarantine measures in each country, there grew a collective desire to find affective relief – an experience of the good – a way out. Whether from frantically scanning the news to subscribing to a self-care network through an advert on Facebook, many people needed a cathartic moment of release from the loneliness, isolation and anxiety that came with being abruptly cut off from the world but cursed to be permanently online. But where did this commodified drive towards experientialism come from? DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-21

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 231 Experientialism in spirituality has a long history. It starts in the 16th century and finds its culmination in the work of late 19th-century commentators such as William James (1842–1910), who saw religious experience as being the central core of religious life (James 1902). In our time, this drive towards experientialism has transformed into what I call ‘positive experientialism’ (Murphy 2019). This, I argue, is what we see in much self-help today (Waldman 2021). But unfortunately, this has transformed again – during our crisis – into something much more desperate. Indeed, there is a sense of it already in what people call ‘toxic positivity’ (Reshe 2020).1 This relentless drive towards a truncated understanding of happiness is at the expense of recognising one’s plight and suffering. As Reshe states: Types of positive illusions include, among others, unrealistic optimism, the illusion of control, and illusory superiority that makes us overestimate our abilities and qualities in relation to others. Study after study indicates that such illusions are rife. (Reshe 2020: 4) However, positive experientialism is not just found in theology. Its logic is part and parcel of Western material conditions. Christopher Lasch, for example, has remarked on the positive therapeutic transition writing: The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security. (Lasch 1991: 7) During the 20th century, we have seen the transition from an economy based on usefulness to one based on experientialism itself (Pine and Gilmore 2011). What takes focus is an economy not based on the flow of commodities as objects but as the culmination of positive therapeutic experiences in and of themselves as provided through the proliferation of services not as objects but as experiences – experience itself becomes paramount. However, in the contemporary world, we have now transitioned into what we can call ‘the screen economy’. This is where attention and experience themselves are monetised, where we become the product (Staff 2020). Our attention itself becomes a commodity. So, if a synthetic sublime experience was sutured to a given tangible product in the past, it has now become detached. Instead, this positive experientialism is directly attached to myriad digital services, programmes and subscriptions (Seymour 2019), and of course, it goes without saying that during our crisis, this screen economy has flourished. These new traumatic conditions have merely instigated capital to alter its plasticity.2 And as we can see, the intense proliferation of conspiracy theories and self-help culture now saturates these digital contours (Dickson 2020),

232  Mark Murphy and these two twin facets are defined – I argue – by the aforementioned logic of experientialism. Conspiracy theories operate by way of an experiential promise; they work by promising that a momentary eruption of truth and justice will appear. Moreover, self-help culture creates a mythological subject who can experience happiness without hindrance. To be sure, the need for a way out of our horror was/is monetised. Look at the febrile chains of signifiers in digital space, linking, connecting and fastening disparate phenomena and communities, ranging from anti-mask COVID denialism to the raid on Capitol Hill. As Zizek states, sometimes the light we head towards is really a train coming at us (Žižek 2018: 9). The search for our personal, private utopia, our desperate search for an alleviating experience, never arrives – it just leads us deeper into the quagmire of our predicament. So, how long will it be before we realise our imagination is no longer our own, that it may be being co-opted by market forces? As such, John of the Cross’ ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ has now become more pertinent than ever precisely because of COVID politics and its continuous impact on our subjectivity and bodies. As we have heard, John himself was held in captivity. He also worked and lived amongst the sick. Moreover, John’s Dark Night of the Soul has become an important heuristic device to explain our relation to the imposed trauma(s) of COVID, our inability to cope with it, and also the limitations of current conceptions of the spiritual and its relationship to neo-liberal self-help solutions and digitality (see Pearson 2020). John’s formulation of spirituality is predicated on the pre-modern movements of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (see Brown 1998 and Tyler 2014). In essence, he created an interior map of the divine movement that mirrored the physicality of the praxis of Desert Mothers and Fathers’ work. And this is part of the problem of making the spirituality of John relevant to our era. Part of it has to do with the incompatibility of pre-modern scholastic and Augustinian spiritual framings to contemporary, especially post-modern and digital, issues. There are the monastic overtones of notions like the Dark Night of the Soul which will lack appeal to contemporary audiences. Thus, perhaps inevitably, recent work has tended to interpret John’s work from the perspective of more contemporary psychologised notions that focus on attaining spiritual experiences. I argue here, however, that such a focus on experientialism sometimes misses the point of John’s work. Moreover, I argue that the crisis we are in means that we need less focus on experientialism, which drives experiencedriven capitalism. Indeed, in many ways, his work is precisely the opposite. And this is something that certain scholars such as Denys Turner and Alois M. Haas have reflected ‘the hidden character of mystical experience is also that it is an experience of a not-experience’ (Haas in McGinn 2017: 263; Turner 1995: 251); I argue that he is a spiritual non-experientialist.3 This is not to say that John is anti-experience in his apophasis, but rather, he critiques and offers a critique of what can be called ‘experientialism’ in modern

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 233 terms. John struggles – both in his poetry and in prose – to do two crucial things: one is to speak fervently of the role of desire. Secondly, he wishes to speak about this desire in non-experientialist terms. This brings us to a central question: what value is a paradoxical iteration of desire that focuses on darkness and deprivation? Or, moreover, what is the point in speaking about a desire to be freed from an object? That is, what is the value of a desire we cannot, in the end, fully experience – a desire that violates the framework of experience itself? Thus, in the collective postCOVID trauma, it is evident that the rolling-back of lived experience and a commodified drive for the experiential in the thrust online has significantly shaped anxieties. To elaborate on these questions, I will begin by introducing Lacan’s analysis and how he himself was a non-experientialist who, like John, wanted to talk about desire in these terms. I also want to speak about how he was influenced by the famous John of the Cross scholar Jean Baruzi. I will argue that Lacan took Baruzi’s experientialist interpretation of John and ultimately inverted it. I will also comment on how I think he interpreted John’s Dark Night of the Soul and integrated it into his clinical practice via his Seminar XX. Finally, the chapter will end with a short reflection on the possibility of this Juanist-Lacanian dialogue creating a kind of intellectual resource to challenge the prevalence of experientialism in our digital era. Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was born on April 13, 1901, the eldest of two children of a well-off Catholic middle-class family that made its wealth dealing in soap and oils. He was a precocious child and initially studied at the Collège Stanislas, a Jesuit establishment, where he was taught philosophy by the famous John of the Cross scholar, Jean Baruzi (Roudinesco 1997: 11–12).4 Lacan was a bright pupil excelling at religious studies and Latin translations. He and Baruzi went on to become good friends in his later years. Lacan, like his mother, was devoutly Catholic in his early years, but as a teenager, he came to question his faith and took an interest in the writings of Spinoza (Roudinesco 1997: 10–12). Baruzi thus introduced Lacan to a type of Catholicism that differed from the provincialism of his family as it was intellectual and scholarly but also more focused on the mystical tradition (Roudinesco 1997: 10–12). Lacan was an adamant Freudian. He essentially introduced the Austrian thinker to a sceptical French audience. He also turned Freud upside down, emptied him of biological content and argued that what he was describing was how our desires, sense of self, and ability to relate are shaped by language in the most general sense (Fink 1997). Hence, when Lacan talks of the unconscious in his middle period, he speaks about its formation in language (Fink 1997). He believed that this formation in language creates illusory identities that we latch on to, and the analyst’s work is to shatter these egoistic

234  Mark Murphy semblants. Through breaking semblants, he showed a transition from the imaginary to the symbolic – to desire. He believed that the analyst’s job is to reflect unconscious formations back on themselves and let the patient do the interpreting rather than the analyst. In short, it’s the analysand’s job to carefully read the broken, stammering poetry of the unconscious, which exists within our speech as we speak. The unconscious is not just an aspect of desire but also desire itself. Therefore, our desire is mostly un-experienced and unknown because it is unconscious (Fink 2011). Therefore, what we experience consciously as wanting or yearning is not properly desire, as true desire only appears as a kind of unconscious interruption into our conscious wants, and it is this very interruption that Lacan says is the thing we need to be true to. Baruzi, the Juanist Who Taught Lacan Baruzi’s thesis on John of the Cross is titled Saint Jean de La Croix et le Problème de l’ Experience Mystique (John of the Cross and the Problem of Religious Experience) (Baruzi, 1924). In it, he utilised William James’ methodology of placing religious experience at the heart of religious discourse but applied this directly to Juanist spiritual direction and mystical theology (Hollywood 2002: 319).5 His work is noted for the rigour in which he sets about discarding all those aspects of John’s work that are foreign and sets about finding the core of originality in his oeuvre. In this respect he opted for an ahistorical understanding of how the Spanish mystics utilised symbols within their work. He argued, in an almost Jungian fashion, that they created the symbols in their work independently of historical conditions: Perhaps thanks to an analysis of its symbols and images, and a direct vision of poetic themes and theoretical notions, we might retrieve this thought, always the same, which is the deepest secret of the philosopher or the poet and which conceals itself in multiform expressions. (Baruzi 1924: 105)6 Many Catholic theologians rejected his work because of the central focus given to religious experience as the focus of John of the Cross’ work (Hollywood 2002: 319). In a 1925 review, Zimmerman, for example, felt that although Baruzi dealt very beautifully (up to a certain point) in his exposition of the Dark Night, he accused him, however, of reducing the mystical theology of the Spaniard to pantheistic experientialism (Zimmerman 1925: 547–549). The excess of experiential divine darkness divorced from the importance of community in Baruzi’s reading is telling. In more detail, Zimmerman states that Baruzi is more interested in the more extraordinary experiential aspects of John’s work in contrast to its more ordinary elements. Zimmerman contends that mystical contemplation only took up part of John’s day and that

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 235 daily experiences such as the celebration of Mass played an essential role in John’s spirituality (1925: 547–549). We can see this tendency in Baruzi’s writing when, for example, he states the following in giving a reading of John of the Cross’ significance of the Dark Night of the Soul: The purification of being is essentially metaphysical: we must reach the very root of our life, that is, the spirit. (Baruzi 1924: 643)7 Here, Baruzi is talking about the Dark Night and understands it as being a process of purification of being. Through this process of spiritual purification, one reaches the emotive essence or root of being. We can also see the indebtedness to William James, where he mentions him earlier in a chapter entitled The Synthesis of Doctrine. This is a chapter that aims to get to the experiential core of John’s work: The example given by William James shows at the least that a feeling of presence can be suggested by ‘something’ that is neither an ‘individual being’ nor a ‘person’ and that there can be an emotional adaption and drive comparable to that which would determine an hallucination of presence produced by a being less foreign to the forms of individuality. (Baruzi 1924: 570)8 This is about a passage in William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience where he speaks of a friend who, during a supernatural hallucination, felt something of a presence extend beyond its apparent manifestation to a deeper reality. This strange presence went beyond anything his faculties of perception could accurately convey. He describes it as ‘stirring the roots of his being more than any ordinary perception could’ (James 1902: 51). Baruzi suggests here that a presence can be ‘produced by a being less foreign to the forms of individuality’. So, although the external faculties can convey a sense of presence when we are hallucinating, the last part of the sentence (‘less foreign’) implies that certain hallucinatory experiences of presence are foreign to the external senses. According to Baruzi, these ineffable experiences can excite the roots of our being beyond that which our faculties can present to us. So, one can feel something, but not sense it, in a manner of speaking. He describes this amorphous presence, which goes beyond the senses, as applying to John of the Cross and his Dark Night of the Soul. Ultimately, Baruzi’s exposition of John’s confrontation with this divine presence beyond the darkness leads Baruzi to an intense solitary form of mystical knowing grounded in experimentalism (Baruzi 1924: 741). In his later work, L’intelligence Mystique, Baruzi reflects on the singularity of mystic thought by stating, ‘Mystic thought satisfies itself in a silence, itself creative, to which the mystic in the depths of contemplation, is the lone witness’ (Baruzi 1991: 56).

236  Mark Murphy How Lacan Subverted the Experientialist Tendencies of His Teacher Lacan directly takes to task the experientialist interpretation of Baruzi’s Juanism in Seminar III (Lacan 1993). He turns Baruzi on his head, just as he does with Freud, when he demonstrates the difference between the famous Freudian Case of Judge Schreber and John of the Cross in this seminar. Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911) was a judge from Germany who had paranoid schizophrenia. He described the symptoms of his mental state in his Memoirs from which Freud gave an extensive interpretation of his work in PsychoAnalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (2014), which Lacan also commented on in this seminar (Dalzell 2011). Lacan argues here that Schreber is psychotic, while John is not. Lacan’s critique of the Schreber case in this specific seminar can be seen as a continuation of the work of Baruzi, who dedicated an entire chapter of his major work, from an experientialist angle, to argue that John was not psychotic and, instead, his experience should be considered theopathic (Baruzi 1924: 308; Nelstrop and Onishi 2016: 24). Moreover, Baruzi locates evidence for this theopathic state in the content of John’s experience, while Lacan locates it in the linguistic structure of his subjectivity. Lacan suggests that non-psychotic subjects can create a new psychological lifeworld by disrupting their old self through the introduction of poetry. Through a metaphorical process, poetry represents a new symbolic transition in the subject. It is the subject of shedding an old signifying set and adopting a ‘new order of symbolic relations to the world’ (Lacan 1993: 78). Lacan claims here that because of this disruption and re-invention, John is an authentic mystic. It seems as though Lacan argues that John is a mystic precisely because he is not psychotic. A psychotic cannot engage with or create metaphor since their relation to the primary metaphor (the paternal signifier) has not taken place via symbolic castration. Thus, John, being a neurotic, can – through metaphor – reshape the shared field of semantic relations, which allows him to view the world and others differently, as opposed to having a locked-in imaginary experientialist quality that would come with psychotic subjectivity. For Lacan, psychotics have a tenuous relationship with the linguistic-social bond. The priority of the imaginary defines their experience, and stabilisation comes from bolstering this register rather than disrupting it. They can use language, but unlike the neurotic, it is flattened and aims at certainty and wholeness. For Lacan, Judge Schreber’s experience is not mystical due to being closed off to symbolic intersubjectivity that comes with neurotic subjectivity. Lacan seems to be saying that all the referents in the Judge’s writings are an experientialist extension of himself and nothing more (Lacan 1993: 78). We can see then that although the influence of Baruzi is apparent in Lacan’s work, he subverts his interpretation to empty it of these experientialist connotations, which are not appropriate to the discussion of John. The

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 237 mystical is of value because it disrupts our linguistic lifeworld rather than experientially bolstering it. As I will show, these Juanist non-experientialist themes are taken up in a revised manner in Lacan’s Seminar XX. John of the Cross in Seminar XX Many commentators see Seminar XX (Lacan 1999) as Lacan’s most mystical theological engagement. The text is littered with references to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Étienne Gilson, Anders Nygren, Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Charles Peguy, Hadewijch of Antwerp and Angelus Silesius amongst others. Here, he discusses mystical discourse during this seminar next to his concept of jouissance and sexuation stating clearly that the works of mystics have long influenced his psychoanalytic texts. He also locates his own work in the same genre of writing: ‘Add to that list Jacques Lacan Écrits, because it is of the same order’ (Lacan 1999: 76). He also states that: ‘Mysticism isn’t everything that isn’t politics. It is something serious’. The implication is that the experientialist reduction of mystical theology is unserious and that John of the Cross has a lot to teach us about this serious business (Lacan 1999: 76). Seminar XX is known for the famous statement: ‘there is no such thing as a sexual relationship’ (Lacan 1999: 9). The relevance of this odd statement for my argument comes in its re-interpretation as ‘there is no such thing as a religious experience of the whole’. He calls this speech that aims at experientialism of the All since those who pronounce it aim at a false object of imaginary wholeness (Lacan 1999: 79–80). However, he also suggests in this seminar and later teachings that one can transition from this mode of speech to a non-experientialist mystical speech, which he called the not-all (Lacan 1999: 76, 80). Amy Hollywood argues that these two modes of the mystical, the all and the not-all, are two opposing models of religious experience. One aims at wholeness, fullness and a sense of satisfaction, while the other aims at fragmentation and dissolution (Hollywood 2002). Thus, the mystical (or truth) is found in the very failing and disruption of epistemological categories rather than a single given sublime experience (Lacan 1999: 83). The basis for this argument is located within a quote in Seminar XX. Here, Lacan declares that mystical writings are sacred insofar as they never stop repeating failure (Lacan 1999: 115). The mystical theologian and Lacanian psychoanalyst Michel de Certeau highlights this repetition of failure, when commenting on this passage he explains that the discourse of St. John of the Cross constitutes an indefinite series of not it, not it, not it (de Certeau 1986: 44). Therefore, the signifier ‘God’ is present not as a teleological, experiential object but as an indefinite impossible source that always introduces more and more ‘dissatisfaction’ in the subject’s position. And this very failure is the condition of the unconscious itself. Lacan reflects this elsewhere by saying

238  Mark Murphy that this truth of the unconscious can only be ‘half-spoken’ insofar as the not-all is found in the ‘saying’ as opposed to the ‘said’ (Lacan 1999: 80). For Lacan, there is no desire without failure and impossibility. And the unconscious is a kind of failure in and of itself, as he explains in Seminar XXIV. So, what is it specifically that the mystics like John of the Cross teach us through this manner of speech, according to Lacan? I will suggest that we link this to Peter Tyler’s formulation of the mystical speech. To frame his ideas in Lacanian parlance, he argues that it would be incorrect to understand mystical speech as aiming at an experiential All beyond language, nor is it correct to reduce mystical speech to pure deconstruction. Instead, there is an interplay of emptiness – darkness if you will – in its relation to speech, and this emptiness causes it to stammer: By necessity, this ‘mystic speech’ will be broken, stammering, untheoretical, and contingent. There is an incompleteness to the ‘mystic speech act’, which is a necessary part of its existence […] I have suggested that this ‘broken down nature’ is intrinsic to the very nature of mystic speech. In examining Christian mystical writings in this way, I hope to have demonstrated that we should not look for perfection and smoothness in those writings. The very coarseness and inconsistency is what makes them alive. (Tyler 2011: 232–233) Tyler describes how this discourse as a mystical strategy of unknowing changes our ‘worldview’ rather than offering us a metaphysical explanation of that worldview. Mystical speech operates not by giving a metaphysical object (the-all) of what lies outside the world. Instead, it operates by allowing different perspectives of our world to appear through this performative speech. Moreover, this idea of a pre-discursive experientialist substance as being the experientialist ‘presence’ of the mystical ‘Other jouissance’ in Seminar XX is taken directly to task by Miller in his The One and Is the Letter, where he states: The dividing line passes through this term I have used of prediscursive being. [The Real] arises from language working on language, it presupposes the logical apparatus seizing what is said […] in order to make [it] emerge. This real at the level of existence is a signifier – nothing to do with the presence that palpitates. (Miller 2021)9 The Real – as Other jouissance – is never a confrontation with some prediscursive vitalist substance. No, the not-all is the failure of the paternal metaphor to fully capture us and thus gives us access to what is at stake in the failure of the non-rapport: the one of the letter – the nonsensical letter all alone is our confrontation with the Real.10 This is reflected by Lacanian

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 239 Kenneth Reinhard, who writes that the analyst’s knowledge of the not-all has direct implications in the direction of treatment. Instead of propositional language based on the dialectic of sense and nonsense, the analyst uses ‘apophantic’ language. This is a language that directly shows and intervenes rather than telling or proposing. It starts without meaning (Badiou and Cassin 2017: xx). Reinhard correctly states that the word apophantic means to ‘show’. The definition has its roots in Aristotle’s philosophy and has connotations of coming to conclusions through what is shown or made manifest in declarative statements (Badiou and Cassin 2017: xx). However, one can further argue that by itself, this does not capture the mystical nuance and disrupting power of the not-all. In this case, the analyst shows the analysand’s repressed nonsensical points, which fragments their lifeworld by opening up and showing impossibility. In this sense, the not-all is ‘apophatic-apophansis’: disruptiveshowing. The point is that through intervening strategies, the analyst mystically changes the field of shared relations that forms the unconscious. This is a disturbance in the field of our world-making; that is, it disrupts the framework where objects of the intellect and the affect appear. Considering this seminar, Lacan’s whole point of the analytic cure is about moving people to this subjective position where they can engage in this form of mystical, stammering speech. For Lacan, the Juanist-mystical is another relation to the signifier and not a relation beyond the signifier, in contradistinction, I would argue, to Baruzi’s interpretation of John (Lacan 1999: 81). Experiencing Death: Keeping the Impossible at Bay One of the manifestations of the COVID crisis has been a general inability to cope with the mass experience of suffering, which has given rise to the ubiquity of conspiracy theories in the form of COVID denialism. The adage that one death is a tragedy, while many is a statistic, comes to mind. As bodies are transferred to the register of number, people can simply deny it. Indeed, when people see the imposition of death happening on a large scale, the inability to stare directly into this abyss means a retreat into digitality. Because of this drawing-back from the world, to not confront the nothing, there has been a proliferation of what can be termed ‘a fetishisation of healing experience’ offered through the digital (see Tlalka 2016: 4). As of writing, more gaming consoles, pc components and, most importantly, virtual reality have been sold than ever before. In turn, this has led to a global shortage of semiconductors. As a result, Facebook’s Virtual Reality headset has dominated the market (see Seitz 2022: 5). Unlike traditional consoles, the device does not focus on selling games but on selling ‘experiences’ (Ohannessian 2015: 1–3). Applications on the device are distinctly ‘spiritual’ aiming to alleviate anxiety and suffering (Sandra 2022). These ‘apps’ range from Virtual Reality Tai Chi, to guided meditation, to psychedelic emulation environments

240  Mark Murphy (Seabrook et al. 2019). All these operate on the impetus to monetise our need to keep anxiety at bay through a logic of spiritual distraction. The COVID crisis has strengthened the screen economy (Smith 2019). As a result, screen time has been multiplied and amplified. Indeed, the drive to find alleviating experiences via the screen has also increased, and yes, spirituality and certain spiritual practices have been co-opted into this logic of what Isabel Millar calls the logic of the lathouse (Millar 2018).11 Alenka Zupančič makes an astute point in her article The Apocalypse Is Still Not Enough about how the prevalent psychologised healing language of trauma discourse distracts us from trauma itself. She argues that what this therapeutic technique teaches us to do is to actually stop us from examining the world that we have lost: This is why we are advised not to think in this way, but rather to try to survive through one day first, and then take it one day at a time, focus on the tasks at hand … We start with the survival strategies, we take the losses one at a time, and only at “the end” will we find out what exactly it was that we lost, in total. Today we get used to this, tomorrow to something else; we’ll manage somehow, as long as we don’t see the whole picture, which is actually being created in this way. (Zupanĉiĉ 2018: p.25) What she is speaking about is our tendency to try and hold on to the world through a process of distraction, which is precisely what our self-help industry and experientialist spiritual healing discourse offer. But she goes on to say what is important is that we need to confront the Real to change our worldview. Our worldview has something added to it that disrupts it and takes it off balance: ‘[The] “not-all” is “all” to which something more gets added, it is “all” plus the point of view from which this all appears as “all”’ (Zupanĉiĉ 2018: 28). To see the ‘all’ from this internalised point of view is to do two things: it is first to see the impotence of such totalising systems. Secondly, it is to introduce into the logic the antagonistic point that is foreign to its systems and so challenges it, and finally, it is incarnational. The idea of the external becoming internalised is redolent with a Christological logic that it cannot but be mystical. It is a dark mysticism because we appear opaque from the perspective of totalising systems. And from the standpoint of the not-all, the totalising system is seen as something that is failing. Therefore, I think this is what a mystical discourse of fragmentation – something which I believe Lacan touched upon – can offer itself as a counternarrative to the misuse of the mystical today as a toxic commodified experientialist discourse of distraction and ‘wholeness’. If the modern crisesstricken subject is caught up in a type of endless consumption of digitally mediated myths, then the darkness mysticism of Lacan, derived as I have argued here from John of the Cross by way of subverting Baruzi, is about shattering

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 241 these myths, punching holes in them by offering a difference in perspective. It’s to remind ourselves to not just question the content of what is offered, but also the experience it provides, or as Lacan would say, the jouissance attached to it. Conclusion: Our Dark Night I have then argued in this chapter that the Dark Night of the Soul is not just another experience in this digital field. The point, I think, is that these expressions of spirituality can lead to the monetisation of experience. It results in our attention being gripped by what Charlie Brooker calls the black mirror of the smartphone (Millar 2018). And we must ask, should the Dark Night of the Soul be interpolated into the all-encompassing logic of the black mirror? Rather, I argue that the Dark Night is that which disrupts the field of experience itself, our digital experience in this case. To begin with, it throws a blanket of doubt over a sea of digital certainty, a certainty that is merely an illusion. Then, it is to realise that the very sense of lack, nothingness and deprivation that lies at the heart of experience itself can be a source of transformation if we can learn to speak from it rather than trying to plug it up. In this respect, Richard Seymour argues that we can perhaps break free of our addictive experientialist paradigm by learning to capture our writing again (Seymour 2019).12 However, I think a more important way to understand the value of the Dark Night and that of Lacanian psychoanalysis is how it thwarts the tendency towards the experiential precisely by working not as writing but as a mode of speech that involves the meeting of bodies and new interruptive points to appear in actual speech. Indeed, if the unconscious and desire only appear in speech, then the horror of our COVID world of enforced isolation and digital mediation is precisely how endless writing has reduced us to silence in thrall to myriad digital mythological objects on offer. Like John of the Cross, who understood that spirituality was about speaking and listening and the need to question experience,13 we need to recover a place where we can speak to each other again. Without the ability to speak to each other, we lock ourselves into a place where commodified experientialistdriven writing replaces the empty space where the unconscious, as interruption and surprise, can and should appear. And this is precisely what Lacan talks about when he speaks about the danger of the Capitalist Discourse in Seminar XVIII. Here, he argues that in the Capitalist Discourse, which is representative of our paradigm today, there is no space for impossibility, equivocation, or uncertainty. In short, there is no space for the unconscious, no space for desire, and no space for love because it closes down impossibility. Hence, while other discourses can be understood as discourses as neurotic, the capitalist discourse is a discourse that presupposes psychosis, and Lacan argued that the defining feature of psychosis is certainty (Leader 2011).

242  Mark Murphy The horror we face is found in the perpetual objects that this discourse produces, and in this age, the objects it produces are precisely ourselves via writing (Seymour 2019). It thus closes down the space for speech by filling up the necessary space needed for it to operate. There is no space for desire; therefore, there is only the fullness of a psychotic enjoyment that saturates everything by foreclosing the space we need for speech. As Fred Baitinger says: The capitalist discourse is plugged directly onto our [spiritual] fantasy. And it is through its attempts to fulfil them with gadgets, the capitalist discourse is actually turning each of us as consumers into enslaved workers. To put it in a formula, the harder we are trying to gain satisfaction through the acquisition of new gadgets, the more we are enslaving ourselves to the very phantasmatic structure that creates and sustain in the first place our insatiable appetite for satisfaction. (Baitinger 2019: 1) From this perspective, the Dark Night is not another experientialist object in the field of discourse but – from my interpretation here – a call to open up the space for speaking and listening again to let desire flow once more by throwing into question the drive towards experience. As Denys Turner writes, John was not so much talking about a sublime dark experience of satisfaction when speaking of the Dark Night; he was speaking about the very darkness of prosaic experience itself (Turner 1995). He is talking about how our very experience of the world becomes uncertain, equivocal, and transparent in speech, and it is in that very uncertainty that we gain freedom of creativity through our confrontation with impossibility. This surprise of a new world arising – or a new form of subjectivity – is what we see in John’s work as poetic expressions of ‘impossible emergence’, that is, words which appear impossible but which are creative, as, for example, in The Spiritual Canticle: ‘the tranquil night at the time of the rising dawn, silent music, sounding solitude, the supper that refreshes, and deepens love’ (CB 1.15). The use of contradiction – as we see in ‘silent music’ – destabilises the reader and spurs them into creativity as later stated: ‘No one looked at her, nor did Aminadab appear; the siege was still; and the cavalry, at the sight of the waters, descended’ (CB 40). John tells us that stanza 40 speaks to us of the destitution of the soul, free from its passions so that it is essentially all alone. But it is a positive solitude – as opposed to isolation – as the enemy does not assail it in the form of Aminadab. Moreover, in this solitude, the soul is transformed in the love of the spiritual marriage. For as Lacan argued, that space of impossibility, the impossibility of us being ever truly able to relate, is precisely the space where love can appear as a fiction that is more ‘Real’ than reality, and the field of love is precisely where we can create a new social bond.

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 243 Notes 1 Cherry (2022) also defines toxic positivity as follows: ‘Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset’. She also states that ‘toxic positivity takes positive thinking to an overgeneralised extreme. This attitude doesn't just stress the importance of optimism—it also minimises and even denies any trace of human emotions not strictly happy or positive’. 2 The plasticity of capital references the intense change and flux that typifies the stage we are in. It is about ‘the neo-liberal formatting of change under the imperatives of flexibility, adaptability, and employability’ (Toscano 2015: 91). 3 Experientialism is a philosophical and psychological perspective that emphasises the importance of personal experience as the primary source of knowledge and understanding. Experientialism stresses the importance of personal spiritual experiences, such as feelings of connection to the divine, intuition, mystical states or profound insights, as the primary means of understanding spirituality and the spiritual path. Its roots can be traced back to William James, Bergson and others, but concerning Juanist studies, it is found in the work of Jean Baruzi. Some scholars, such as McGinn, argue that Baruzi offers a critique of experience itself; he quotes a 1924 essay saying, ‘Je nous apporte une logique de la mystique et même une critique de l'Experience mystique … Négation de out ce qui apparait. Rien de ce qui m'apparaît n'est Dieu?’ ‘I bring us a logic of mysticism and even a critique of mystic experience. Negation of all that appears. Nothing that appears to me is God?’ (Baruzi in McGinn 2017: 263n). Indeed, there are many notes to this kind of experience of the nothing that appears in Baruzi's work, but what is important is that it takes place within a Bergsonian experientialist framework (see Brassier 2011 for a critique of Bergson’s intuitionism) and one that is about developing a kind of mysticism of John that sees it as fundamentally different from ‘dogmatic faith’ as Leonard and Geisman say: ‘Furthermore, Baruzi has never thought of denying the Christian quality of the mysticism of St. John of the Cross, but it appears in subtle formulae as if it were a secondary aspect which it is necessary to pass beyond. The essential thing is the discovery of a method of purification of thought, located outside of all dogmatism in a “creation of the self by the self”’ (Leonard and Geissman 1953: 238). 4 Baruzi was part of a French intellectual tradition in Paris that included Étienne Gilson, Alexandre Koyre and Henry Corbin. This was an intellectual movement priding itself on approaching religious phenomena in a manner which was interdisciplinary and scientific. These thinkers all had a lasting effect on Lacan’s thought (see Roudinesco 1997). 5 Pattison states that: ‘In a 1925 presentation to the French Philosophical society, entitled Saint John of the Cross and the Problem of Religious Experience, Baruzi described what he was doing as a phenomenology of mystical experience. Jean-Louis Viellard-Baron writes that what would later be called the phenomenological approach in French philosophy’ (Pattison and Kirkpatrick 2018: 111). The argument here is that Baruzi introduced via his engagement with experiential sources such as William James, the foundational ideas that led to the later French engagement with German phenomenology. However, unlike James who reduced mystical experience to an object of nature, Baruzi argued that mystical experience needed to be understood in reference to its own specific internal logic. Like phenomenology, which argued that the phenomena need to be understood qua the logic of phenomena, Baruzi argued that mystical experience needs to be articulated qua experience itself. This is probably what he meant by his dictum that it is not possible to understand a mystic without living with him in the world of Grace. The latter being religious experience, or rather the root of it.

244  Mark Murphy 6 ‘Peut-être grâce à une analyse des symboles et des images, grâce à la directe vision de thèmes poétiques et de notions théoriques confondus, pourrons-nous retrouver cette pensée, toujours la même, qui est le plus profond secret du philosophe ou du poète et qui se dissimule sous des expressions multiformes’ (my translation, unless stated all further translations from Baruzi are my own). In this quotation, we can see Baruzi use the word grâce which in French can mean ‘in movement’, ‘dignity’ or ‘thanks’ along with its obvious theological connotations we associate with the English term ‘grace’. Obviously, these different meanings depend on semantic context, but Baruzi is engaging in French word-play that implies that grace is operative in the background. 7 ‘La purification de l'être est d’essence métaphysique : il faut atteindre la racine même de notre vie, ç'est-à-dire l’esprit’. It is noteworthy that the word esprit can also mean ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’ in French. In this context, however, the word most likely means spirit qua spirit. 8 ‘L’exemple, allégué par William James suffit du moins à montrer qu'un sentiment de présence peut être suggère par «quelque chose» qui n'est ni un «être individuel» ni une «personne» et que peut y correspondre une adaptation émotionnelle et motrice comparable à celle que déterminerait une hallucination de présence produite par un être moins étranger aux formes de l'individualité’. 9 ‘Other jouissance’ comes from Seminar XX and is to be contrasted with masculine jouissance. The latter concerns universalist systems, categorisation, cleancut ideas, rationalism and delimited areas of action. It would be akin to Kantian epistemological categories and the limits of reason, along with its exception, the noumenon. It would also apply to the sweeping totalising trajectory of the Summa Theologica.  This is what Lacan calls the logic of the ‘All’. Other jouissance is related to what Lacan calls the ‘not-all’. And this is related to areas of action that are limitless (there is no delimiting boundary; no constitutive exception) but also – because of this lack of boundary – it is non-totalisable and, therefore, the logic of the not-all approaches things as singular instances (the one-by-one), as opposed to the application of universal rules. In each case, Lacan sees jouissance as relating not to an experience but to different modalities of subjectivity. Lacan thinks that mystical writers – like John of the Cross – operate within this specific modality of subjectivity. In Lacanian terminology, the Other jouissance of John disrupts and challenges the masculine jouissance of high scholastic theology. In the end, it is why the mystical language of these writers is so subversive to those instantiated in the logic of the ‘all’. 10 The non-rapport is Lacan’s depiction of intersubjective antagonism at the heart of what it means to be a speaking being. I can never fully relate to myself with language, nor can I possibly relate to the other. The subject will always say more than they mean, and less than what they want to say to other. Lacan tells us that the only thing that we can relate to is one of the letter: the letter is a nonsensical point that marks the fabric of our linguistic subjectivity. In a word, the letter is synonymous with the failure of language and on the side of the Real, the density of the symptom. 11 ‘Lathouse’ here means ‘gadget’ but it has the connotation of ventouse for Lacan. This was a device for extracting a baby from the womb. For Lacan, his play on language entails that it is a device that stands in for the Real, a gadget that can offer us liberation, etc. As Isabel Millar states: ‘as Lacan explains, the lathouse is a machine, an artificial object for siphoning off enjoyment, a neologism combining the French “vent” for wind, alluding to the breath from the lungs; “ventouse” suction cap; and the Greek word ousia for Being’ (Millar 2018: 3). 12 That is, we are subjects who write but are also written. Seymour calls us scripturient (Seymour 2019: 15). As it stands, our desires – how we are written and

Jacques Lacan, Jean Baruzi and John of the Cross 245 how we ‘write’ – are captured in this new digital age by obscure algorithms that keep us locked in the attention economy. To free ourselves from such digital predetermination, we need to re-capture our writing ability. That is, to learn again for whom we are writing and to what end. 13 For example, this example quoted by Iain Matthew: ‘Francisca, a sister in the Beas community, says that “as he was so holy” … one expects [her to say] something like, “all he said set us on fire”; but instead, she says, “as he was so holy, it seemed as if every word we spoke to him opened a door for him …” When John asked Francisca how she prayed, her answer opened for him such a door: “By gazing on God’s beauty,” she said, “and rejoicing that he has it.” This resonated with something in John’s spirit, and from it he composed more verses {for the Spiritual Canticle]- “Rejoicing, let us go, beloved, our eyes meeting in your beauty …” (CA: 3–9). John could create because he could learn; he was a co-pupil, not simply master’ (Matthew 1995: 14).

Part IV

John of the Cross for Today

18 The Dark Night in Psychiatry Christopher C. H. Cook

Introduction John of the Cross is perhaps best known for his writings on the dark night. The concept of a dark night arises, literally, out of his biographical experience of escape from prison, on one particular dark night in 1578. However, he almost never mentions this directly in his writings, and the image is largely a metaphorical (or allegorical) one which he uses to explore the spiritual experiences of the soul in relation to God amidst the darkness of faith. Having a clearly grounded Christian theological and spiritual context, as we have seen, the concept has been taken up widely in literature, in other spiritual traditions and in pastoral and clinical practice. The aim of the present chapter is to explore one particular context of reception, in the field of psychiatry. Psychiatry is both a clinical speciality within the wider field of medicine and an inter-disciplinary domain of research involving the neurosciences and social sciences. More widely, psychiatry has found benefit in drawing upon the humanities, but the interface with spirituality and theology has been more controversial (Cook 2013). Etymologically, psychiatry is concerned with the cure of souls but its emergence in the context of the European history of the Enlightenment has left it with a very scientific perspective on human nature – biological on the one hand, and psychological on the other – within which the concept of ‘soul’ is rarely mentioned. Furthermore, psychiatry has often been perceived as being in conflict with religion. There is therefore every reason to see this as particularly unpromising soil within which to plant such a distinctively spiritual concept. However, interest in spirituality in psychiatry has grown over the last four or five decades (Cook and Powell 2023) and, with this, interest in how psychological and spiritual well-being mutually inter-relate. In particular, questions arise as to the relationship between depression and the dark night. John of the Cross John’s life experiences were clearly formative in terms of his spiritual writing. Whilst much has been written about scholarly influences upon his writing (see, for example, Bruno of Jesus-Mary 1936: 28–43, Crisógono De Jesús 1958: DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-23

250  Christopher C. H. Cook 225–227 and Kavanaugh and Larkin 1987: 27–28), little has been written about the psychological influences. John had experienced the deaths of his father and his brother by the age of five years. His mother struggled to make ends meet and life was precarious for the family. In his late teens, John was vicariously exposed to illness and suffering in the course of his hospital work. Well before his imprisonment in Toledo, John was thus closely familiar with the harsh realities of death, suffering and deprivation. Whilst, for some, such experiences might have led to what psychologists would now call spiritual struggles (Pargament and Exline 2022), for John, it seems to have led to a compassionate concern for others and a deep sense of vocational calling to religious life. John’s experience of imprisonment in Toledo was harsh by any standard and left him close to death. On top of the extremes of temperature, poor diet, lack of opportunity to wash or change his clothes, and the physical punishments to which he was subjected, John appears to have struggled psychologically with doubts as to whether or not his captors were not right in their accusations against him. One can imagine also questions about whether or not God had abandoned him. However, we learn of none of this directly in John’s major works. It is all dealt with through metaphor and allegory in his poetry, and at one remove in his prose writings. He addresses spiritual struggles more usually in the third person than in the first person, and through his theology rather than through an historical or autobiographical account. There is no evidence that John suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, although we might wonder whether it is possible to experience what he endured without sustaining some degree of psychological woundedness. Neither is there any evidence that John was angry with those who treated him so badly. His humility, graciousness and willingness to forgive seem to be beyond measure. This may, to some degree, reflect the hagiographical agenda of those who wrote and gave evidence about him after his death, but there seems to be no reason to cast doubt on their assessment. In contemporary psychological jargon, we might therefore conclude that John dealt with any struggles that he did have in the course of his experiences through ‘benevolent reappraisal’. That is, rather than blaming God, or his captors, he reinterpreted events in terms of God’s love and human weakness. That he was able to do this in such extreme circumstances is indeed a testament to his love for God, his compassion towards others and his courage in reflecting upon the darkest moments of life without animosity or despair. Theological Anthropology John was well read, even if we do not know precisely what he had and hadn’t read. It is clear that he was familiar with the works of Thomas Aquinas (see Sam Hole’s chapter above), in turn, influenced by Aristotle, and probably also Augustine. In the course of his studies at Salamanca he acquired a well worked out understanding of theological anthropology. He never elaborates this systematically but it clearly involved an understanding of the soul as the

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 251 unity of the human person. (For a more detailed account of John’s theological anthropology, see Howells 2002: 15–39.) In a hierarchical fashion, John talks of the lower part of the soul as including the bodily senses, appetites, fantasy and imagination. The higher part of the soul includes the spiritual faculties (‘caverns’ of intellect, memory and will) and the passions (sorrow, hope, joy and fear). Alongside this hierarchical model, there is a more concentric understanding (reminiscent of Teresa’s Interior Castle) in which God is to be encountered in the deepest centre of the soul. It is the spirit that relates to God, and so – in a sense – the ‘higher’ part of the soul is really the innermost part of the soul. John uses terms that are familiar to us, but with a different emphasis or meaning. Intellect, in John’s vocabulary, is concerned with rational processes of knowing which draw on memory and require an act of will, but there is also a ‘passive intellect’ (based on the distinction made by Thomas Aquinas) with which God may communicate directly. Memory is a power of recall, but not a storage facility in the way that we like to imagine. The will is the voluntary part of the soul, which can direct the attention of the intellect to particular objects of interest and concern. It has the power to direct the faculties, passions and appetites of the soul towards God (or not). The faculties of the soul function as a unity, within which intellect has a certain degree of priority (see the helpful and in-depth discussion in Howells 2002: 15–39 and also the very accessible account in Kavanaugh 1999: 128–140). When John distinguishes between nights of the senses and of the spirit, this anthropology is helpful to bear in mind. There has been a debate as to the ways in which John’s theological anthropology deviates from that of Thomas Aquinas, but John’s treatises are practical more than theoretical and (to this reader, at least) his anthropology simply provides a convenient framework and vocabulary for his writing. The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night are not exercises in theoretical theology; they are commentaries on poetry and the poetry, in turn, is an account of John’s experiences. Sources What we know about John’s understanding of the dark night we know from three main sources: A poem: En una noche oscura (The Dark Night) A sketch: The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Figure 0.2) Commentaries on the Dark Night poem: The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night (originally conceived as one work) Reading the poetry – beautiful as it is – one can well imagine why the sisters and friars asked John for explanation and elaboration, and thus why the commentaries were written. However, even then, there is so much that we are not told about the connections between John’s experiences and his theology.

252  Christopher C. H. Cook We are provided with a fully worked out theological account (albeit The Ascent was never finished) and not an autobiography. Even this is not easy reading, and one can well imagine why the sketch (of which John produced many copies) was eagerly welcomed as a summary of the topography of the dark night. We might also imagine that there must have been many conversations with the nuns and friars that supplemented these resources, but we do not have this further level of clarification and explanation that John’s contemporaries enjoyed. John’s Teaching on the Dark Night We learn in the prologue to The Ascent that it is through the dark night that a soul journeys towards union with God. At the very outset, we are confronted with a paradox, for John refers to the ‘darknesses and trials’ as that which ‘fortunate souls’ undergo (A Prol).1 How can a soul be fortunate when tortured, starved and demeaned, as John was when in prison in Toledo? Ultimately, as shown in the sketch of Mount Carmel, good fortune is defined according to a destination of the journey in God. John tells us that dark nights are purgations of those things that keep us apart from God. In Book 1, Chapter 3, of The Ascent, John defines his use of this all-important symbol and metaphor: ‘We are using the expression “night” to signify a deprival of the gratification of the soul’s appetites in all things’ (A 1.3). John’s spirituality is not one of self-gratification, it is quite the opposite, and yet – paradoxically – itis one of seeking all that can most be desired. As John explains in his annotations of the sketch, the more that we desire to possess things, the less we have. At the summit of this mount are ‘Only the honour and glory of God’. Only through letting go can this summit be reached. In Book 1, Chapter 1, of The Ascent, John explains that there are two kinds of night, sensory and spiritual, and two ways of entering a night, active and passive. The active path is concerned with ‘what one can do and does by oneself’. The passive is where ‘God accomplishes the work in the soul’. There are thus four kinds of night: an active night of the senses, an active night of the spirit, a passive night of the senses, and a passive night of the spirit. The active nights of the senses and the spirit are dealt with, respectively, in Book 1 and in Books 2 and 3 of The Ascent. The passive nights are dealt within The Dark Night (the passive night of the senses in Book 1, and the passive night of the spirit in Book 2). John can be very confusing. After elaborating this clear framework, he talks in Book 2, Chapter 2 of The Ascent of three ‘parts’ of the night: Twilight (the night of the senses), Midnight (the night of the spirit) and Before Dawn (the approach of daylight – which is darkness – of God in the passive night). Whilst there is no rigid rule that the various nights are encountered in any particular sequence, there is nonetheless a sense in which the passive night of the spirit (which not all souls will experience) is the dawning of a day which has the potential to bring the soul to union with God.

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 253 The active night of the senses is relatively straightforward, albeit also very challenging. It is concerned with ‘privation and purgation of all sensible appetites for the external things of the world, the delights of the flesh, and the gratifications of the will’ (A 1.1.4). The soul is urged to seek not ‘the best of temporal things, but the worst’ (A 1.13.6). It is about letting go of material things in a very traditionally ascetic Christian way. One might imagine that the passive night of the senses will be like this – but simply engineered by God. In fact, when John moves to talking about this passive night, in Book 1 of The Dark Night, it is addressed in terms of spiritual versions of what we have inherited as ‘the seven deadly sins’, which – even more confusingly – are based upon the eight thoughts of Evagrius, also known as passions – but not at all the same list of passions that John refers to (see Cook 2011: 23–30). Thus, this night addresses spiritual pride, spiritual avarice, spiritual lust, spiritual anger, spiritual gluttony, spiritual envy and spiritual sloth. The active night of the spirit is concerned with a darkening of (what John understood to be) the three faculties of the soul: intellect, memory and will. These three faculties John respectively pairs with the three theological virtues: faith, hope and love. Faith is crucial in this night. Indeed, John is able to write that ‘faith is a dark night for the soul’ (A 2.4.1). This is the darkest part of the night – midnight – which comes after the asceticism of the active night of the senses, and before the passive nights addressed in The Dark Night. It is concerned more with inner experience, and with a deprivation of the ‘light’ for, or a ‘blinding’ of, the rational faculties of the soul. John spends two whole books of The Ascent discussing this night, and a full exposition is beyond the scope of this chapter (however, see Ronald Rolheiser’s chapter later and Cummins 1991: 93–125). Helpfully (in Book 1, Chapter 9 of The Dark Night), John offers three signs that show that the soul might be entering a passive night of the senses: 1 not only is there a loss of enjoyment of ‘the things of God’, but also from material things 2 aware of its loss of enjoyment of divine things, the soul thinks that it is not serving God 3 meditation on divine things is no longer possible, as it had been previously; God communicates with the soul through contemplation, devoid of discursive thought. As indicated above, the passive night of the senses provides God’s means of drawing souls away from the self-indulgence – pride, avarice, lust, etc. – that forms a part of the spiritual practices of those beginning the spiritual journey. It is a letting go, or unlearning, of things that previously seemed good and helpful. The person immersed in this night is forced to ask themselves difficult questions about what really matters, and to let go of things that they may have grown attached to in favour of the things that are of

254  Christopher C. H. Cook ultimate importance. For John, the ultimate goal is union with God, and all that gets in the way of this must be laid aside. In the passive night of the spirit, the contemplative experience of God becomes the central focus: This dark night is an inflow of God into the soul, which purges itself of its habitual ignorances and imperfections, natural and spiritual, and which the contemplatives call infused contemplation or mystical theology. Through this contemplation, God teaches the soul secretly and instructs it in the perfection of love without its doing anything or understanding how this happens. (DN 2.5.1) The passive night of the spirit is thus a place of ‘dark contemplation’, in which the soul is stripped of its ‘old self’ (DN 2.4.1–2.5.1), divine wisdom appears as darkness to the soul (2.5.2), and the soul becomes aware of its imperfections (2.6.4), memories of past evils and past prosperity (2.7.1) and experiences difficulties in prayer (2.8.1). The central paradox of the dark night is thus that: Even though this happy night darkens the spirit, it does so only to impart light concerning all things; and even though it humbles individuals and reveals their miseries, it does so only to exalt them; and even though it impoverishes and empties them of all possessions and natural affection, it does so only that they may reach out divinely to the enjoyment of all earthly and heavenly things, with a general freedom of spirit in them all. (DN 2.9.1) John uses a variety of images to communicate his teaching about this night – including light through a window (DN Book 2, Chapter 8), a log in a fire (Book 2, Chapter 10) and a traditional symbol of a ladder (Book 2, Chapter 18) whereby the night facilitates the ascent to God. John, like us, was aware that people can suffer from depression – or (as he would call it) melancholia – and that this could sometimes look very similar to an experience of the dark night. In particular, both are associated with a loss of interest in things. According to John, the key difference is that, in the dark night, the soul retains its loving awareness of God (A 2.13.6), and a desire to serve God (DN 1.9.2-3). John further suggests that the ‘impure thoughts’ sometimes due to melancholia may actually be cured by an experience of the dark night (DN 1.4.3). However, John’s discourse is centrally concerned with the spiritual journey, and these matters only arise in passing. In 16th-century Spain, psychology and theology were not separated in the way that they are today. Indeed, psychology and the mental health sciences were not even conceived of in the sense in which we understand them. Where

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 255 does this leave John’s teaching on the dark night in relation to psychiatry and mental health today? The Dark Night in Psychiatry It would be an exaggeration to suggest that the concept of the dark night has historically been a frequent source of interest to psychiatrists. However, it is not infrequently mentioned and when it is, it is rarely engaged with in any depth or detail. The different kinds of night are almost entirely ignored. Psychiatry has a very different anthropology than John (with some significant internal tensions between a more biological, brain based, approach and a more psychological, mind based, approach, but an almost total lack of theological engagement). It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that there is a dearth of empirical research. However, three main approaches may be identified. The first, and perhaps earliest, approach was to notice the similarity between the dark night and certain mental disorders, and to emphasise the overlap in concepts. Generally speaking, these similarities include experiences of sadness, discouragement, despair, unworthiness and abandonment. The similarities of the dark night with depression and cyclothymia have been observed since at least the 1930s (De L’enfant-Jésus 1955: 355). More recently, Dan Blazer, an American psychiatrist and Christian, has suggested that the dark night is a state of melancholy, desolation and fatigue which ‘reflects a disharmony between the self and the world as one grows spiritually’ (Blazer 2007). Taylor Williams, another American psychiatrist, has suggested that the dark night of Teresa of Calcutta might have been diagnosable as a depressive disorder: In an effort to put the suffering of Mother Teresa into spiritual (and possibly Sainthood’s) context, a biological consideration may have been overlooked—Mother Teresa’s Dark Night was a mental illness, and her confessions were an illness narrative. If this was indeed the case, Mother Teresa may have suffered needlessly when psychiatric treatment could have restored her mood. (Williams 2014: 294–295) Others have observed that mystical experiences of a dark night variety show similarities to trauma induced experiences (Ataria 2016). Both groups of subjects employ a vocabulary of ‘nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’, but actually find their experiences more or less ineffable. Both report a noetic quality to the experience,both report experiences of passivity and both experience a changed sense of self. Somewhat more controversially, connections have been drawn between the dark night and LSD induced experiences (Bache 1991) or, again, the experiences of spiritual awakening described in Assagioli’s psychotherapeutic model of psychosynthesis (Assagioli 2006). In emphasising overlap, this approach might easily be understood as conceptualising the dark night as a phenomenon within the wider sphere of

256  Christopher C. H. Cook depression (or other mental disorders). The dark night might thus be identified as a particular, perhaps unusual, kind of depression (or trauma induced disorder). A second approach, in contrast, emphasises difference. According to this approach, depression and the dark night may look similar but actually are fundamentally different states. There is thus a need to make a differential diagnosis in order to ensure that mistakes are not made – misdiagnosing the dark night as depression, or depression as a dark night. According to this model, there are features that particularly distinguish the dark night from depression, including, for example, love, a wish to recover, preserved social functioning, the finding of meaning in the experience and a preservation of hope. This approach also dates back to at least the 1930s, when Roberto Assagioli (1888–1974), an Italian psychiatrist who developed a model of psychotherapy known as psychosynthesis, identified the dark night as the final stage of spiritual development. Recognising the similarities between some aspects of a dark night experience and a depressive illness, Assagioli (2006) emphasised that the underlying aetiology was nonetheless very different and that a correspondingly different approach to treatment was therefore needed. For Assagioli, the proper treatment for the dark night was to provide assurance that the state is transitory and ultimately beneficial, and to encourage perseverance, patience and acceptance. Whilst Assagioli quotes directly from John of the Cross, he also broadens his horizons to other religions and mystical traditions, adopting a somewhat syncretistic approach to his understanding of the dark night which, we might speculate, John would probably not have recognised. In his earlier writings on the dark night, Gerald May (1940–2005, see below), an American psychiatrist, proposed that whilst the dark night shares with clinical depression features such as hopelessness, emptiness and loss of motivation, it also differs in important ways (May 1992: 109–110). The person immersed in a dark night experience continues to function well at work and home, retains a sense of humour, shows compassion to others and would not have things other than as they are. They do not seek help in quite the same way, and are not resentful or annoyed. Drawing on the work of Font i Rodon, a Jesuit psychiatrist, Durà-Vilà and Dein (2009) take a similar approach, albeit differing in detail. For them, the dark night is associated with ‘healthy guiltiness’, a wish to recover, preserved social interactions and ‘apostolic’ activity, a finding of meaning in the experience, and continuing hopefulness. They emphasise the unhelpfulness of a diagnosis of depression for such people, but also propose a model of understanding in which ‘illness’ is resolved in the dark night through an attribution of meaning. This leaves a degree of ambiguity as to whether the dark night is just another kind of depressive illness – albeit self-resolving – or actually something different. A third possible approach to understanding the relationship between the dark night and psychiatry emerges from the later work of Gerald May and will be discussed further, below.

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 257 Delving Deeper Relatively few psychiatrists have written in any detail about the dark night, and very little empirical research has been undertaken in relation to mental disorders. Two exceptions are Glòria Durà-Vilà and Gerald May. Durà-Vilà is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, currently practising in the UK, who has undertaken in-depth empirical research on the dark night as experienced by Roman Catholic nuns in Spain. May was an American psychiatrist who died in 2005. Before his death, he became a respected spiritual director and writer on the spiritual life in the Christian tradition. Glòria Durà-Vilà – Sadness, Depression and the Dark Night of the Soul Glòria Durà-Vilà undertook fieldwork in Spain in 2010–2011, personally interviewing ten Cistercian monks, ten Augustinian nuns, 20 lay theological students and 17 diocesan priests. Her findings are reported in detail in her book, Sadness, Depression, and the Dark Night of the Soul, and in a series of journal articles (Durà-Vilà and Dein 2009; Durà-Vilà et al. 2010, 2013). In summary, all participants in Durà-Vilà’s research agreed that the dark night was a normal and valuable spiritual experience, not a mental illness, and that it provided a means of bringing about growth and perfection in the spiritual life. The monks, nuns and priests further recognised that:

• • • • • •

there is a danger of developing depression whilst in the dark night both the dark night and depression are associated with sadness depression – but not the dark night – is associated with hopelessness it would be easy to misdiagnose the dark night as depression the dark night represents something of a ‘test’ the dark night represents an advanced state of spiritual development

Sister Teresa provides an interesting case study, drawn from Durà-Vilà’s research. Since entering the monastery at the age of 21 years, Teresa gave a ten-year history of low mood, dissatisfaction, confusion, inability to concentrate, loss of interest, low self-esteem and tearfulness. She attributed her suffering to her longing to experience a ‘total union with God’ and to her own spiritual imperfections. She said: I did not know what was the matter with me, I did not know where I was going or why I was feeling so miserable and sad. I felt unsatisfied, uncomfortable within myself. I broke into tears without a cause, I felt scared without a cause. At times, when I longed for Him so much, He seemed unattainable … it was as if the sky had become all at once dark leaving me in agony, in darkness. (Durà-Vilà et al. 2010: 556)

258  Christopher C. H. Cook Durà-Vilà proposes, based on her research, that ‘spiritual experiences can be problem-solving processes triggered by existential crises’ (Durà-Vilà et al. 2010: 566). The dark night is transformative of psychological suffering and ‘Once the dark night is defined in existential terms, it ceases to be an illness’ (Durà-Vilà et al. 2010: 567). She concludes with affirming the importance of addressing existential issues in clinical practice. In order to do this well, she proposes that assessment should take into account the context in which symptoms occur, the impact of symptoms on functioning, and the level of risk presented. She argues strongly that the clinician should resist diagnosing a dark night experience as depression, and that it is not appropriate to prescribe antidepressants. Durà-Vilà’s work is unique, to my knowledge, in basing her analysis upon empirical data. She takes into account not only her own views, as a clinician, but those of two groups of religious, and a group of priests, as well as lay students. However, her sample included Augustinians and Cistercians, not Carmelites, and we may speculate that she might have obtained different results had she sampled the latter. There is no distinction made by Durà-Vilà’s respondents in relation to different kinds of dark night experience. Nor does her study design permit us to draw any conclusions as to what might have happened had antidepressants actually been prescribed. Teresa, whose account of her experience was quoted above, might have been spared ten years of suffering. However, such a prescription might have affirmed a pathological narrative of her experience in such a way as to increase her distress and deprive her of a life-giving sense of meaning and purpose. Gerald May – Darkness and Spiritual Growth Gerald May was the half-brother of Rollo May, a noted existential psychologist and influential author. Their father died when Gerald was age nine years. Gerald trained as a psychiatrist and served in this capacity with the US Air Force in Vietnam. In 1973, he joined the Salem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, USA. He gave up clinical practice in 1988 to focus on his interests in spirituality. He published widely on spiritual growth, perhaps being best known for his book Addiction and Grace (May 1988). In one of his earlier books, Care of Mind, Care of Spirit, first published in 1982, May wrote of the need to make a differential diagnosis between depression and the dark night (see above). In his later book, The Dark Night of the Soul, he revised this approach, and focussed more on what he observed to be the frequent co-existence of the dark night with a depressive illness (May 2003). In this book, May also explored the relationship of the dark night to other diagnoses and conditions, talking about a ‘dark night of recovery’ from addiction, ‘liberation from attachment’, and the possibility of dark night like experiences in social systems such as marriage, family, organisations and wider culture. May’s main advice to spiritual directors is not to ‘meddle with God’s work’ (May 2003: 170). However, his advice to psychiatrists is somewhat different.

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 259 May’s understanding of the frequent co-existence of a dark night and depression allows for causation in both directions. Thus, a dark night might give rise to a depressive illness, and a depressive illness might give birth to a dark night. May’s understanding of the role of the psychiatrist was to ‘identify depression where it exists and… treat it appropriately, regardless of whether it is associated with a dark-night experience’ (May 2003: 157). Such treatment could well include antidepressants and May argued against the notion that this might in some way interfere with spiritual growth. He quotes from the Dark Night (1.9.3) in the course of his argument to this effect. May’s nuanced account of the relationship between the dark night and depression is thus that they may sometimes be different things but, more often, they co-exist. The spiritual director’s main concern should be not to interfere with God’s work – so ‘less is more’. The psychiatrist’s responsibility, however, is to relieve psychological distress where this is possible, using medication if necessary. Is this an unhelpful separation of the spiritual and psychological domains, or an internal contradiction – on the one hand ‘don’t interfere’, on the other hand ‘don’t fail to treat’? Whatever view one might reach, May’s approach was clearly based on extensive experience with spiritual and retreat direction, and it is a great pity that he never undertook systematic research. For a psychiatrist, he showed an unusually deep familiarity with John’s writings and his theological anthropology. The Dark Night in Contemporary Psychiatry As spirituality is increasingly recognised as an important concern within psychiatry, and as the debate continues as to whether and how spiritual issues might best be addressed in clinical practice, where does the dark night fit in? There are a number of significant concerns and obstacles to overcome. The dark night, as conceived by John, has a specifically Christian theological context. Is it reasonable – or helpful – to see the concept of the dark night extracted from this context and applied more widely in the pluralistic, secular, and scientific, contexts of modern mental health service delivery? Something not dissimilar has happened with mindfulness practice, extracted from its Buddhist context, and now incorporated into the array of secular psychological treatments on offer in Western medicine. The dark night is, however, somewhat different. Having active and passive elements, it is an experience of faith, not a psychological practice which can be divested of its transcendent context. The darkness of this faith has distinctively Christian roots and a dark night in other religious contexts, or in the context of spirituality untethered from faith tradition, would not look at all the same. Few psychiatrists have grappled with the depth, darkness and complexity of John’s psychology, even those who have arguably focussed on narrow aspects of the broader concept that John elaborated. There has been a psychiatric concern with differential diagnosis which, as Gerald May showed, does not do justice to the possibilities for spiritual growth and psychopathology

260  Christopher C. H. Cook to exist side by side. There have been differing conclusions as to whether or not prescription of antidepressant medication is appropriate in the context of a dark night. The admittedly limited literature on the spiritual impact of psychotropic medication offers support for both views and we know little about how to make such decisions in any particular case (Vanderpot 2017). Few psychiatrists have the spiritual literacy of Durà-Vilà or May, and one may well wonder whether it is not better that they simply leave issues of spiritual growth to clergy, chaplains and spiritual directors, and get on with what they know best – the making of psychiatric diagnoses and planning of biopsychosocial forms of treatment. Perhaps psychiatric ignorance – at least sometimes – is bliss? Finally (in relation to concerns and obstacles), the scientific anthropology of modern psychiatry is very different from the theological anthropology of John’s understanding. This is partly to do with the Enlightenment separation of science and theology, by way of which mind and brain have become objects of scientific investigation, which may be understood independently of theology. However, it is also concerned with the way in which understandings of soul and self have evolved over the last four centuries (Martin and Barresi 2006), the tensions within psychiatry between study of mind and brain, and the lack of any universally agreed account of exactly how the two should be understood to interact causally. Insofar as terms such as intellect, memory and will are still employed, they are understood very differently by psychiatrists today, with a much greater awareness of how events in mind and brain are intercorrelated, much less theological contextualisation, and a scientific tendency towards reductionism. Over and against all of these very real concerns, there is, I think, reason to believe that a better awareness of the concept of the dark night amongst psychiatrists would be a good thing. The move of psychiatry towards some kind of acceptance of the importance of spirituality makes the profession more receptive to such ideas now than ever before (see Cook and Powell 2023). The concept of a dark night has already been taken up within other faith traditions (Kang 2010; Lutkajtis 2019: 592), in transpersonal psychiatry (Read and Crowley 2009: 228), and in wider literature. Recognising the potential difficulties of taking into account the spiritual impact of the prescription of psychotropic medication would seem to be a good thing, even if it is not going to be an easy decision for clinicians to make. Simply pretending that there is not a problem is not good clinical practice and, as far as patients are concerned, is in itself a very big problem. Similarly, recognising that patients may need spiritual direction in addition to, or alongside, treatment for their mental health condition is something that psychiatrists need to be informed about, not ignorant of. Notwithstanding the good arguments put forward by Durà-Vilà and Dein, and even perhaps John of the Cross himself, I do not think that it is helpful to make a differential diagnosis between the dark night and depression. Similar arguments have been made more widely in psychiatry, on the basis that spiritual experiences can be confused with the symptoms of mental disorder and that the former need to be affirmed and normalised, whereas the latter

The Dark Night in Psychiatry 261 need treatment (De Menezes and Moreira-Almeida 2009). However, it is not clear that this is a good idea, or even possible. Psychopathology and spiritual experience can and do comfortably co-exist. Patients with bipolar disorder, having recovered from acute episodes of illness, report that they recognise their experiences during the illness as being both authentically spiritual/ religious and related to the disorder (Ouwehand et al.2018). The experiences in this study were not specifically ‘dark night’ experiences, but the broader principle seems to be an important one. To deny this represents a form of epistemic injustice (Swinton 2020: 145–147) whereby those who suffer from mental disorders are deemed by others (especially psychiatrists) not to be having genuinely spiritual/religious experiences. What is needed, then, is greater awareness by all concerned. Psychiatrists need to be aware of the potentially positive and spiritually life-enhancing potential of what might sometimes appear to be depressive conditions with religious psychopathology. They need to be aware, as Durà-Vilà has so helpfully argued, that pathologising such conditions may sometimes be unhelpful and counter-productive. However, as May has argued, they also need to be aware that sometimes treatment is needful whilst simultaneously recognising the importance of good spiritual direction. Similarly, clergy, chaplains and spiritual directors need to recognise that spiritual growth is not incompatible with psychiatric treatment. Greater awareness is also facilitated by research. Further studies, following on from those of Durà-Vilà, are needed to better understand the relationship between the dark night and mental disorder in different religious groups, in different contexts, and in different diagnostic categories. Such research should ideally be informed by inter-disciplinary collaboration involving theology and the humanities as well as the social and mental health sciences. John identifies possible confusion with melancholy in the course of discussing the active night of the spirit and the passive night of the senses, but does this mean that confusion is less likely to occur in other parts of the night? Durà-Vilà’s research did not discriminate between different kinds of dark night, nor is it clear whether and how scientific research might be able to do this, but the development of more discriminating research instruments would undoubtedly be of value. It is tempting to maintain a separation between the spiritual and the scientific, and to argue that the ways of the spirit are not amenable to the scientific method. However, such a gulf is maintained at the expense of the spiritual well-being of patients who do not feel understood either by their mental health professionals, or their spiritual guides, or both. The building of such bridges is an important step both towards ending epistemic injustice and affirming the importance of spiritual growth. Conclusions John’s concept of the dark night is not of merely historical or theological interest and a brief study of its reception within the world of psychiatry shows that there it has been variously understood and applied in clinical and pastoral

262  Christopher C. H. Cook work. Understandings of the dark night are contextualised. Not all psychiatrists will understand the dark night in the same way, just as religious, priests and others may all reach different understandings according to their life context and experiences. However, there does seem to be a widespread recognition that the dark night is a valuable experience, that a misunderstanding of the relationship with depression can be harmful and that a critical spirituality of depression should be concerned with both darkness and light. It is to be regretted that most psychiatrists apparently don’t do theology. In different ways, Durà-Vilà and May show that a theological perspective can change understanding of experiences of sadness, conferring meaning and purpose upon them, in a way that a psychiatry devoid of theology cannot. However, the anthropological understandings of most contemporary psychiatrists are very different than those of John of the Cross and psychiatry might do well to consider new and non-reductive ways of bringing the spiritual domain into its understandings of mind and brain. Differential diagnosis is very attractive to most physicians, and psychiatrists are no exception. This is what they are trained to do, on the premise that diagnosis provides a guide to treatment and prognosis. Psychiatry has thus engaged with a temptation on the one hand to reduce the dark night to a mere subset of the diagnosis of depression or, on the other hand, to diagnose it as something non-pathological and different. However, our brief exploration of the relationship between the two suggests that this might not always be a helpful thing to do. There is spiritual meaning within pathological experiences, and perhaps psychopathology may sometimes arise within otherwise healthy spiritual experiences. All of this points to the need for more collaborative working between professionals (especially clergy and psychiatrists) and more inter-disciplinary dialogue between theology and psychiatry. Finally, Durà-Vilà’s work shows the enormous potential for empirical research to shed light upon the ways in which experiences of a dark night are understood, interpreted and managed in living experience today. It is striking that whilst there are myriad books on the theology and spirituality of the dark night, there are so very few scientific studies. Theologians need to draw more boldly upon the possibilities offered by scientific methodologies, and psychiatrists need to overcome their reluctance to cross the inter-disciplinary boundary with theology. We have so much to learn about the dark night by breaking down these traditional silos and asking creative and critical questions about contemporary spiritual experience as understood within the light of John’s profound and insightful writings. Note 1 All quotations from John’s works are from the Collected Works edited by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991) unless otherwise stated.

19 Directing Desire Diagnosing Acedia and Dark Night in Spiritual Direction Chloe Lynch

Introduction Weary in her faith. A sadness that pervades the whole of her spiritual life. Growing passivity in relation to prayer. Feeling far from God and even wondering whether she believes in him enough to warrant further continuing in relationship with God. These could be the case notes that perhaps a spiritual director might make regarding a certain directee. What they might mean, however, is debatable. Christian tradition offers at least two interpretations of this passivity in prayer.1 First, this may be acedia’s early stages, recognised by the historical church as a sin and also, sometimes, as a demonic affliction. Alternatively, the sanjuanist ‘dark night’ may speak powerfully, interpreting such symptoms as indicative not of sin but of growth in the spiritual life, a growth orchestrated in a particularly active way by God and yet which the soul may experience predominantly passively. Whilst one is an inclination towards sin, the other is transformative movement of the Spirit. The spiritual director’s task is to interpret rightly: without this, the appropriate encouragement, or perhaps remedy, cannot be applied. Here, for example, to diagnose as acedia what is actually an experience of dark night is, as we shall see, potentially destructive for a directee who may in fact be suffering deeply and who may already wrongly have diagnosed herself thus. In fact, believing oneself to be in sin is one of the wrong beliefs typically held by those who undergo the dark night (DN 2.5.5). Equally, to misdiagnose in the other direction is a serious failure to see the tendency towards sin for what it is and therefore failure in calling the directee to return to the obedience of faith. Whilst I present the following reflections in my work as academic theologian, I am also a spiritual director. As a practitioner, I am convinced that rigorous academic study of traditions of spirituality is important: spiritual directors must be equipped with theoretical insight if we hope to be doctors of the soul. Indeed, the hermeneutical and practical questions arising from these case notes themselves underline this point. Nevertheless, many directors may be limited regarding the attention they can give to the nuances of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-24

264  Chloe Lynch spiritual-theological tradition and, thus, my task as academic is to make this learning and its practical implications more easily accessible to practitioners.2 In hope of supporting directors in their work of interpretation, then, I outline both acedia and dark night and their respective patterns of passivity in prayer, framed by the theme of desire. In differentiating these two experiences, I will cast the passivity inherent to one as faithlessness whilst suggesting that passivity in the second constitutes a faithful receptivity to God. Suggesting ‘desire’ as the appropriate diagnostic, I will then offer suggestions for the work of directing towards desire. Passivity: Acedia’s Faithlessness or Dark Night’s Faithfulness? Acedia is often known as sloth, a function of its varied and somewhat complicated history as one of the seven deadly sins. In Evagrius of Pontus (2006: 99), it is a weariness in relation to both time and place; for John Cassian, it is avoidance not only of solitary prayer but also of a community life centred on seeking God (Cassian 2000: Institutes 10.2; DeYoung 2004: 175–176). Subsequently, Thomas Aquinas defines acedia as the sin of sorrowing over the divine good which is friendship with God.3 So, though an acedic person longs for God and ‘yearn[s] for … glorification … [yet they] turn … away from it because the very act of yearning is wearisome’, the battle of spirit against flesh is distasteful to them (Vogel 2009: 64). As flesh prevails, so the person fails to continue in friendship with God. No longer delighting in him, the believer ceases responding to God’s grace with acts of love and a growing affective inclination towards God (Lynch 2020: 129). Acedia’s symptoms comprise passivity (sleepiness and even physical illhealth, as well as the lack of desire for prayer and spiritual reading and a general sense of boredom; Crislip 2005: 146–150) and also, paradoxically, restlessness, the attempt to escape the difficulties and mundanities of a life of faith (Aquinas 1964–73: II-II 35.4; Crislip 2005: 150–155). Historically, attention has focused on the former category of symptoms, which explains the modern collapse of the category of acedia into sloth. Whilst the breadth of both sets of symptoms is important, the case of the directee with whom I began dictates a focus on this sin’s more passive manifestations. Another theologian to describe acedia is John of the Cross. He also highlights passivity in his description of acidia espiritual, which he presents as a withdrawal from the work of prayer (DN 1.7.2) – once again, a failure to continue in the acts and affections of loving relationship with God.4 There is weariness in spiritual exercises and so the acedic believer interrupts their prayer because their efforts yield no consolation (DN 1.7.2).5 This focus on satisfaction reveals that the believer’s joy, itself the movement opposed to acedia’s sadness, is initially not in God but in the consolation he gives. And when God withdraws this consolation, as John is clear that he does, a believer’s response to this loss will usually prove their delight is not yet in God himself. Furthermore, that sorrow may now flow over into the relationship

Directing Desire 265 with God. As John puts it, the soul may ‘become sad if they have to desire God’s will’ and this sadness may even progress towards an aversion to submission to God (DN 1.7.2–3).6 Acedia’s passivity, then, is a kind of faithlessness, a refusal to continue waiting for God in the tension of a presence that feels like absence. Yet, paradoxically, this initial withdrawal of consolation, which itself reveals acedia’s existence in the soul, is, John affirms, also the means by which God will work a passive purgation of sin in what he calls the night of the senses (DN 1.7.5). During this night, acedia may appear to persist as a ‘tedium’ or ‘wearisomeness’ but, crucially, will, John says, no longer be ‘vicious as before’ (DN 1.13.9). Presumably, John’s implication is that the apparently persisting ‘acedia’ – the tedium which will, interestingly, continue to be felt in relation to spiritual things – is, in this first passive night, not technically acedia anymore. Now instead of being the result of an unfulfilled fixation on spiritual gratification, it is perhaps simply the dryness typical of the purgative desolations of dark night. John slightly blurs the lines here. In blurring these lines, suggesting that acedia is ‘vicious save when it is not’, he invites us, I think, to see a directee’s tedium and even passivity in prayer (DN 1.13.1) as symptomatic either of acedia or of something else – namely, the passive purgation of this so-called night, which is to be embraced by the soul as a means of spiritual growth and transformation. That is, the symptom of passivity in prayer is itself ambiguous such that a fuller understanding of John’s theology of dark night is necessary to enable directors to be confident to make this distinction in practice. What looks like acedia may not truly be acedia. This is fundamental because whilst acedia’s passivity is faithlessness, a choice no longer to wait for God, no longer to persevere in desiring him, the alternative possibility – that is, dark night – is not sin but, rather, a holy, transformative movement of God. John frames his alternative explanation of passivity in prayer in very full terms, describing this dark night in which God deepens the believer’s surrender to himself as comprising two aspects, both passive and active. My concern is with the former: prayer that is apparently passive may be associated not only with acidia espiritual but with the passive night, whether the passive night of the senses already mentioned or the (later) passive night of the spirit. In the passive night of the senses, consolation in prayer is largely superseded by aridity. God appears now absent and the soul’s experience becomes bitter (DN 1.8.3), even as she fears having failed God through sin (DN 1.10.1–2). Spiritual things feel tedious; prayer becomes more difficult, perhaps even more sporadic, as old patterns and ways of praying, especially meditation, begin to falter. What begins as overwhelming in the first passive night, however, becomes disproportionately more devastating in the passive night of spirit. The divine inflow is, in this second night, actually gentle, kindling a deeper and fuller love for God (DN 2.9.10–11; 2.11.2, 4, 7). Yet, this divine brightness is experienced as blinding darkness and the believer’s weaknesses and sin cause her

266  Chloe Lynch to suffer greatly. In this ‘terrible undoing’ (DN 2.6.1, 5), God strips faculties, affections and senses, bringing the intellect to darkness, the will to aridity, the memory to emptiness and the affections to ‘supreme affliction, bitterness, and anguish’ (DN 2.3.3). The believer finds herself as though bound and in prison, unable to ‘move nor see nor feel any favor from heaven or earth’, and, though the clouds may occasionally break, essentially this suffering must last for years if it is to effect all that God intends (DN 2.7.1, 3, 4–7). This is the ultimate in passivity: all capacity for prayer is compromised, the person unable to turn to God. Yet in this dark contemplation, nothing more is asked of the soul in prayer than to surrender to the Spirit’s purifying work: a receptivity that is faithfulness. And, here, we see clearly the fundamental difference between acedia and dark night. One is a passivity that is faithlessness; the other passivity is the very essence of trusting faithfulness. The question for the director, though, remains. For definition and differentiation, in formal terms only, of acedia and dark night does not suffice. Practitioners also must move towards diagnosis. Thus, the director asks: how might we discern accurately the passivity here presented in the case notes? Differentiating by Desire Whilst John does not explicitly compare acedia and dark night, his ‘signs’ are helpful diagnostics.7 They differentiate our two types of passivity, in the end, by desire. The first two signs in the Dark Night list are definitive for our purposes, the third sign merely noting the developing passivity in prayer already noted as characteristic of the onset of the passive night (DN 1.9). The first sign is an absence of satisfaction derived from either the things of God or creatures. This is important because whilst a person in sin might experience such distaste in relation to God, rarely in the case of sin will such a lack of satisfaction extend to created things also. Thus, this indicator begins to differentiate experiences of dark night from the effects of sins and imperfections, acedia amongst them. That is, an acedic person may find pleasure in life generally even if her delight in God is virtually non-existent. The second sign develops this. Dissatisfaction in spiritual things typifies both dark night and sin. But this sign makes clear that in the onset of night, the believer is deeply concerned that her distaste for the things of God represents a turning away from God and failure to serve him. Being so troubled, she – crucially – turns to God. This turn, I suggest, is indicative of desire for God, a desire deeper and truer than the surface experience of passivity and even laxity in prayer.8 Importantly, this desire to serve God, this turn towards him, does not accompany acedia. The acedic person, rather, turns further away, indicating that desire for God has succumbed to sadness and despair about the possibility of movement towards him. Finally, this waning of desire will, in the absence of intervention, mean that merely venial acedia (sadness) will become mortal. And in acedia’s mortal form, desire becomes fully inverted. Now instead of

Directing Desire 267 desire, there is its Thomistic opposite: an aversion for God to which the will has consented. Directing Desire It is, therefore, desire that differentiates the faithless passivity of acedia from the faithful passivity of dark night. This is the theoretical diagnostic with which I return to the presenting case study, offering some concluding reflections regarding the direction of desire. Yet, I do so recognising that the diagnosis and direction of desire in the context of prayer can never be just academic science. The director’s work – of reading a soul and its desire, first, before then directing that desire wisely – is, fundamentally, an art honed by practice. Accordingly, these suggestions for practice must be read as ‘rules of art’, open-ended principles that ‘presuppose creativity and good judgment’ in their enactment (Osmer 2005: xvi). First, then, there is the question of diagnosing desire: the place to begin in practice is the nature of this directee’s weariness, sadness and passivity. Whilst the case notes are explicit that these symptoms are experienced in connection with the directee’s relationship with God, the astute director will reach behind this assertion to ask about the rest of life, aspects which may somehow seem less spiritual yet which are nonetheless implicated in any relationship with God. For someone falling prey to acedia, the things of God may be problematic but the things of the world usually retain their attraction or even increase in attraction9 (in a way that we have seen is not true for those undergoing dark night). Thus, to ask questions around matters of leisure activities and work, friendship and family relationships, may well shed further light on whether this directee is succumbing to acedia or is undergoing a dark night. The first directee may be throwing herself into these things of the world which, though in many cases are good things, nevertheless operate as distractions from the One who is the source of their goodness. The second directee, however, is unlikely to be so easily distracted: for her, much of the attraction of created things has evaporated, at least for now. After exploring this wider experience, it is appropriate to refocus on desire in prayer. The director must ascertain whether the directee’s disclosure of ‘weariness’ means that prayer is now harder and less satisfying than before or whether the directee is, in fact, barely praying at all. Again, is the self-described ‘passivity’ reference to having given up on specific times and rhythms of prayer or does it rather indicate that prayer continues but is simply less active than before? As we have seen, the acedic person tends to slip quietly away from prayer’s discipline,10 finding it easier to seek out new distractions than to persevere in the work of waiting before God. Her sad weariness produces, literally, a-cedia – that is, ‘care-lessness’ (Vogel 2009: 53). The benighted directee, however, is more likely to be seeking to continue faithfully in prayer, turning to God in what John calls solicitude and ‘painful care’ – even though,

268  Chloe Lynch in accordance with the third of John’s signs as listed in The Dark Night, her prayer is becoming progressively drier, less satisfying and harder to understand as the capacity for discursive prayer wanes. Thus, contrary to the acedic directee, who turns away from the quiet and largely uneventful work of desiring God, the directee experiencing dark night perseveres in her place of prayer, intolerable though the aridity of her desire for God may feel and questionable though the value of her prayer may now seem in the face of her inability to sustain meditation. Indeed, though the prayer of a directee in dark night may be essentially passive, it is best understood as a willed posture of receptivity towards God. It is a holy idleness and, as a kind of spacemaking for divine action, this passivity is faithfulness. Thus far, I have considered the diagnosing of desire. The second question is how to direct towards desire. Whether faced with an acedic directee or one undergoing dark night, the same basic advice pertains. In directing towards desire, practitioners must encourage directees towards concrete signs of perseverance in prayer. For perseverance is the hard currency of desire: it alone reveals either the presence of solicitude for God (typical of dark night) or the absence of that desire (even to the extent of acedia’s eventual aversion towards God). Both types of directee must therefore be given one fundamental instruction: wait on the Lord. For the acedic directee, this is the remedy always presented by the tradition, echoing the biblical injunction of the Psalms, Prophets and elsewhere. Such waiting means ending one’s own resistance, choosing instead prayerful contemplation of Jesus (Aquinas 1964–73: I-II 38-4; II-II 35. 1). Even where such a gaze upon God is impeded, the directee must be enjoined to ‘continue an active waiting in hope for the darkness to be made light again’ (Lynch 2020: 132). This willed turn of one’s desire towards the Lord takes repetitive practice: it must become sufficiently habitual to counter the acedic pull of flesh over spirit and the director may need to educate the directee regarding the practices by which contemplation may be made concrete. Conversation may need to ensue concerning those signature patterns and means by which she avoids God,11 as well as what to do about them. The directee will also need guidance regarding the ecclesial nature of contemplation’s practices. The person who has fallen any distance at all into acedia needs strengthening by the church as body corporate in bearing the costliness of waiting, in silence and hope, for God (Lynch 2020: 133–139). Without this commitment to waiting, undergirded by the faithfulness of other saints, there is the gradual possibility by which merely venial acedia may become mortal, a conscious alignment of self away from God in which God may eventually confirm the directee. Yet for as long as this believer remains in direction, there is hope for a better outcome and it is this that grounds the director’s continuing perseverance with this directee. In the case of diagnosis of dark night, the director’s task remains just as weighty. The content of their instruction also does not change. This time, however, the instruction to wait is not so much a corrective as an affirmation,

Directing Desire 269 the tender encouragement to press on, for passivity in this case is not faithlessness but faithfulness. The directee is already waiting upon God, though everything she has known of consolation and of stability in her spiritual life is now gone. Thus, this directee must be helped to understand that God’s apparent absence is simply presence experienced differently and that loss of consolation is not loss of God himself but, paradoxically, signals growth in both divine intimacy and virtue. In the first night, passivity in prayer will likely be new experience: the directee may need much reassurance not to count herself guilty of sins that she has not in fact committed. She will need to hear that simply waiting in desire is enough, even if this means withdrawal from much of her previous activity in prayer. In the second night, the director’s reassurance must be all the stronger. For, though not new, the intensification of passivity and the overwhelming sense of one’s separation from God exacerbate the need for support. Though the ferocity of this experience may abate for brief times, the directee essentially cannot ‘rescue’ herself and, though John is clear that spiritual directors can offer only limited (if any) comfort, this directee will nevertheless need the committed faithfulness of another alongside them. Supreme gentleness and compassion in the context of repeated encouragement to persevere in desire is what is required from directors in this situation. Central, in fact, in diagnosis and direction of passivity that is faithless and, on the other hand, passivity that is faithful are the director’s gentleness and wisdom. Indeed, where the director finds themselves beyond their experience and knowledge, John opines – without subtlety! – that it is better to ‘leave the soul alone and not bother it’ (LF: 3.46). Where, however, a director is grounded in both experience and learning, gently and creatively giving space to the quiet leadings of the Spirit within the directee, there is hope that those whom they serve may be directed ‘in harmony with the path … along which God leads’ them (LF 3.46). These directees may, indeed, be directed towards desire. Notes 1 As we saw in the previous chapter, further possibilities might include some form of depression. However, as a contemporary medical and psychological category, depression is best discussed by those with relevant expertise such as Prof. Cook. Spiritual directors are not psychologically trained as a rule, although some may be: suffice to say that if depression is suspected, then no matter the other loci around which discussion may centre in direction sessions, that director should perhaps better refer the directee to the appropriate professional. 2 In this respect, an earlier version of this chapter was published for practitioners in Lynch (2022). 3 Aquinas (1964–73: II-II 23.1–2, 35.2–3). In distinction from Evagrius, who presents acedia as a demonic oppression as well as sin, Thomas recognises acedia’s beginning in venial sin and potential progression to mortal sin. For a discussion of culpability in acedia’s venial form, see Lynch (2020: 129–130).

270  Chloe Lynch 4 All quotations of St John are from the Spanish Obras Completas edited by Vicente Rodriguez (2009) and from the English translation of Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, Collected Works (1991). 5 Cf. A 1.10.4. There is a laxity in the hard work of relationship with God because of boredom by him and by ‘the narrow way of life … which … is saddening and repugnant to them’ (DN 1.7.4). All quotations are from the Collected Works translated by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991) unless otherwise stated. 6 Aversion is another key term in the Thomistic presentation, the latter representing the full-flowering of acedia as mortal sin (Aquinas 1964–73: II-II 35.3). 7 In addition to the instances cited below, see also brief mentions in LF 3.32 and D 119. 8 The Ascent offers a second set of diagnostic ‘signs’: the third of these parallels this focus on attending to God, noting a longing only to ‘remain alone in loving awareness of God … without any particular knowledge or understanding’ and in deep interior peace (A 2.13). This echoes the centrality of desire in dark night’s passivity, albeit from the perspective of a slightly more advanced stage in which the believer has learned to embrace her loving awareness of God without needing to struggle against this inner and outer quietening. Instead of being ‘grasped’, the contemplation is peacefully received and a holy passivity, or ‘idleness’, prevails (DN 1.9.6). 9 That is, as a means of escaping the dull and frustrating boredom felt in relation to God. 10 This is true at least in the case of acedia that manifests as passivity, as in view in the relevant case notes. For contemporary examples of other, more ‘hyperactive’, manifestations of acedia, see Lynch (2021). 11 For example, perhaps, social media, gaming, sex or entertainment culture, see Wadell (2013) and Hütter (2012).

20 A Transformative View of Christian Suffering John of the Cross’ Interpretation and Analysis of Mark 8:34–35 Robert D. Flanagan Introduction Several years ago, I read chapter seven of the second book of The Ascent of Mount Carmel and was surprised by John of the Cross’ interpretation of Mark 8:34–35. In the Ascent, the biblical verse reads, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake … will save it’.1 It is one of Jesus’ classic statements regarding discipleship and is repeated in other synoptic gospel verses (i.e., Mt 16:24–27, Lk 9:23–26). However, John of the Cross’ exegesis changes Christian understanding of self-denial, suffering, and the cross. John’s view is not static or historical but leaps across the centuries, providing today’s readers valuable guidance for contemporary life and Christian discipleship. Reading Mark 8:34–35, most Christians have imagined hoisting the cross over their shoulder. Thus, it is imagined, Christians best follow Jesus by emulating his path of suffering to Calvary and Golgotha—it’s acceptable to be in pain and seeking it is appropriate for some. However, the biblical text does not mention how Jesus carried the cross. Interpreters presume that Jesus must have placed it on his shoulder, which is a reasonable conclusion, given the size necessary to hold a man. John of the Cross seemed aware of the scriptural ambiguity when reading and interpreting the verse. Instead of calling Christians to heave the hardwood over their shoulders, John sees the cross as a ‘supporting staff’ (A 2.7.7). This elegant nuance from John’s mystical insight radically freed Christian discipleship from solipsistic suffering or scrupulousness and created an empowered understanding of the cross. He suggests that discipleship can be denial and negation but is not a preferential sense of suffering. John of the Cross has long been poorly analyzed. In his St. John of the Cross, Tyler states, ‘John of the Cross has been perhaps one of the most misquoted and misunderstood of all the writers in the Christian spiritual canon’ (2010: 2). With modern translations, John’s understanding of negation and denial can be seen in a clearer light. Tyler observes that John’s theology is ‘anything but staid and predictable’ (2010: 39) but instead is ‘innovative’. DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-25

272  Robert D. Flanagan This, I think, has been illustrated by the many excellent contributions to the present volume. Broadly speaking, Tyler adds, ‘His theology begins with a wound, the sense somehow that God has left us, a sense of dissatisfaction or failure. Somehow, we are imperfect and what we seek cannot be found. This is a “holy wound” that lies at the heart of all humanity’ (2010: 41). Importantly, when Christians realize that this wound must be healed with God’s assistance and balm, the cross of Christ becomes essential (Tyler 2010: 44). In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Christians journey upon God’s holy mountain to reach divine union. They can only ascend and reach the apex by a narrow path that starts through ‘the gate of Christ’ (A 2.7.2). The gate’s narrow entrance causes both ‘a void of sense objects’ and self-constriction ‘through dispossession and the removal of obstacles in matters relating to the spiritual part of the soul’ (A 2.7.2). In The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross, Iain Matthew notes that progress through the gate and on the narrow path ‘will be measured less by ground covered, more by the amount of room God is given to manoeuvre’ (2010: 37), as Tyler agrees, ‘John is constantly encouraging [Christians] to practise emptiness in [their] dealings with God’ (2010: 46). However, while emptiness is essential and derived from self-denial, it is not without a partner. John writes, ‘For on this road there is room only for self-denial (as our Savior asserts) and the cross’ (A 2.7.7). The emptying Christians seek cannot and should not be pursued without the cross, helping and assisting them on their journey. Historical Interpretations Until modern times, the interpretations of take up the cross and follow me fell into two categories: self-denial and the imitation of Christ. For instance, John Calvin gives a typical interpretation of taking up the cross using the Matthean 16 text. He notes that suffering is a fact of life and emphasizes that carrying the cross is a burden that Christians should do with patience as he writes: Though God lays both on good and bad men the burden of the cross, yet unless they willingly bend their shoulders to it, they are not said to bear the cross … The patience of the saints, therefore, consists in bearing willingly the cross which has been laid on them. (Calvin 2011: para 10) Randall Zachman explains Calvin’s position as: ‘Self-denial is inseparably linked to the bearing of the cross for Calvin, for we only demonstrate that we have truly denied ourselves and resigned ourselves to God’s will when we bear our afflictions with patience. Moreover, we only truly become conformed to the image of God in Christ when we patiently bear the same cross that he took on himself before us’ (2009: 474). John Leith suggests that for Calvin ‘the cross is one of the means God uses to prepare us for the life of

A Transformative View of Christian Suffering 273 fellowship with him for which we were created’ (2010: 79). Thus, for Calvin, the cross is a self-denial tool linked to suffering and helps Christians deepen and broaden their Christian life. Another historical interpretation is that of imitation. Thomas à Kempis is the likely author of the devotional book The Imitation of Christ. In its chapter titled ‘The Royal Road of the Holy Cross’, the author asks, ‘Why, then, do you fear to take up the cross when through it you can win a kingdom?’ to which he answers by stating: There is no salvation of soul nor hope of everlasting life but in the cross … Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you shall enter eternal life. He Himself opened the way before you in carrying His cross, and upon it. He died for you, that you, too, might take up your cross and long to die upon it. If you die with Him, you shall also live with Him, and if you share His suffering, you shall also share His glory. Behold, in the cross is everything, and upon your dying on the cross everything depends. (à Kempis 1940: 77) While Calvin associates self-denial with taking up the cross, Thomas à Kempis ties it to imitation by which Christians can gain eternal life. Both views accept suffering as a reality of life, not akin to seeking martyrdom, but when it happens, Christians must embrace it for what it is and the good it can provide. The views of Calvin and à Kempis highlight the main historical interpretations of the verse, which still influence today’s understanding of Mark 8:34. Self-denial and Acceptance of Suffering Contemporary religious writers and scholars have added their interpretations. Some follow the historical pattern of self-denial and the good of suffering, while others see it as a means toward self-improvement. For example, a U.S. online non-denominational ministry (neverthirsty.org, para 5) states, ‘Then Jesus said the person must take up their cross. In Christ’s time everyone understood the meaning of the word cross … To carry your cross meant that you were dragging it along and eventually you reached the place where the soldiers would crucify you. Therefore, Jesus’ point is that you must be so committed to denying yourself that you are willing to die for Christ’. However, James Martin explained the suffering in 2014 in these terms: ‘We are invited by God, as Jesus was, to accept our crosses, [which eventually come to us all]’, adding, ‘What does it mean, then, to accept our crosses? To begin with, it means understanding that suffering is part of everyone’s life. Accepting our cross means that at some point—after the shock, frustration, sadness and even rage—we must accept that some things cannot be changed’ (Martin 2014: paras 4, 5, and 12).

274  Robert D. Flanagan Social Justice Interpretations Other scholars tie the action of take up your cross and follow me with social justice. For example, the biblical scholar Joanna Dewey concludes, ‘In summary then, when read in the context of the first-century cultural world and the larger narrative of Mark, Mark 8:34 is not an exhortation to suffering and victimage in general. It is an exhortation to remain faithful to Jesus and the rule of God in face of persecution, even execution, by political authorities’ (2004: 101). In her opinion, the verse has a strong political bent and should not be used in any other context. While Roger Gench concludes that, It [taking up the cross] entails naming the crosses bearing down upon our lives and upon those around us and resisting those savage forces. As I understand it, Jesus’ teaching on taking up the cross is agitational— calling us to name and resist the many crosses in our landscapes that defy God’s will for us all … When Jesus calls us to take up our cross, he is calling us to face into the tension and agitation of naming and resisting them, fully aware that consequences may come our way as a result. (2021: para 7) Gench’s view holds a robust social justice attitude and sees take up your cross as a call to agitation to inspire social change. Inward Spiritual Calling Not all recent writers see the verse in social justice terms, others seeing it as an inward spiritual calling, such as Janet Hunt, for example: ‘It is never too late to lift the cross to our shoulders and take the first step or the next step in being and doing as Jesus did’ (2018: para 15). She views take up your cross as a means of personal spiritual redemption and transformation. Finally, in a Catholic Herald article, Ronald Rolheiser suggests, ‘The challenge to enjoy our lives … As we see from the life of Jesus, self-renunciation and the capacity to thoroughly enjoy the gift of life, love and creation are integrally connected. They depend on each other … Genuine enjoyment, as Jesus taught and embodied, is integrally tied to renunciation and self-sacrifice’ (2017: para 11). Rolheiser looks to balance the Christian call to self-denial with Jesus’s enjoyment of people and life. John of the Cross’ Journey of the Soul Book 2, chapter 7, sections 1–7 of the Ascent of Mount Carmel brings John of the Cross’ transformative view of self-denial and suffering to light. His interpretation of take up your cross being a supporting staff is quite different and stands in contrast to the historical and contemporary interpretations outlined above. John’s view emerges from his explanation of the narrowness of the path to life and God found in Matthew 7:14, which he translates as:

A Transformative View of Christian Suffering 275 ‘How narrow is the gate and constricting the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it’ (A 2.7.2). The path’s narrowness is the central aspect of his thinking, while the path’s journey begins at the gate of Christ. The trek up the trail—an inward or spiritual journey—leads to life, eternal life, and God. John writes that the path ‘on the high mount of perfection is narrow and steep, it demands travelers who are neither weighed down by the lower part of their nature nor burdened in the higher part’ (A 2.7.3). Only spiritually and materialistically unencumbered Christians can pass through the narrow gate to climb the spiritual mountain, following the narrow trail to its summit. Two essential activities must happen to commence the journey. First is ‘the divestment and narrowing of the will in relationship to all sensible and temporal objects by loving God more than all of them’ (A 2.7.2). Christians also journey by constricting themselves ‘through the dispossession and the removal of obstacles in matters relating to the spiritual [or rational] part of the soul’ (A 2.7.2). The journey must also exclude ‘the hindrances of creatures’ and ‘embody dispossession and annihilation in the spiritual part of one’s nature’ (A 2.7.4). To that end, John of the Cross sees Mark 8:34–35 as the example par excellence of dispossession and annihilation adding ‘For on this road there is room only for self-denial (as our Savior asserts) and the cross’ (A 2.7.6–7). The Spiritual Sweet Tooth Critically, John of the Cross states that many confuse a good method with ‘the one that ought to be used in traveling this road’ (A 2.7.5). They think ‘any kind of withdrawal from the world or reformation of life suffices’ (A 2.7.5). Moreover, some feel a ‘certain degree of virtue, perseverance in prayer and mortification’ will be enough. John adamantly disagrees, stating that they ‘never achieve the nakedness, poverty, selflessness, or spiritual purity’ that Jesus counsels in Mark 8:34–35 (A 2.7.5). A self-centered solipsistic spiritual quest is abhorrent to John’s thinking. He argues that, ‘When some of this solid, perfect food (the annihilation of all sweetness in God—the pure spiritual cross and nakedness of Christ’s poverty of spirit) is offered them in dryness, distaste, and trial, they run from it’ (A 2.7.5). They only desire sweetness and delightful communication from God which he calls the ‘spiritual sweet tooth’ (golosina de espíritu) (A 2.7.5). Instead, a genuine spirit ‘leans more toward suffering than consolation, more toward going without everything for God than possession, toward dryness and affliction than sweet consolation’ (A 2.7.5) as he concludes that ‘seeking oneself in God is the same as looking for the caresses and consolation of God’ (A 2.7.5). In short, John’s view is simple: Wrong: Seeking of the self in God. Correct: Following Christ and denying self.

276  Robert D. Flanagan John explains that the breadth of self-denial and negation is ‘similar to a temporal, natural, and spiritual death in all things; that is, with regard to the esteem the will has for them’ (A 2.7.5). The proper approach to achieve spiritual annihilation is to renounce what the will ‘both desires and enjoys by choosing what bears closer resemblance to the cross’. Here, he looks to John 12:25 to support his argument: ‘Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life’. Thus, to successfully ascend the mountain, the only things Christians can take on their journey are self-denial, negation, and the cross. The Cross John’s views of self-denial, the imitation of Christ, sacrifice, and asceticism are different from the other commentaries on Mark 8:34–35 we have reviewed so far. His interpretation would have been the same if he had stopped at selfdenial and negation. His views would align with much of the tradition previously described in this chapter. The difference, however, is in the placement of the cross, its usage, and its purpose. John of the Cross writes, ‘The cross is a supporting staff and greatly lightens and eases the journey’ (A 2.7.7). Why does John make this bold claim? He first looks to Matthew, writing, ‘Our Lord proclaimed through St. Matthew: My yoke is sweet and my burden light (Matt 11:30), the burden being the cross’ (A 2.7.7). He does not view the cross in horror or disgust. John has a lovely, heartfelt passion for the cross. Any trials Christians may face on the narrow, steep path become ‘a great relief and sweetness’. Once freed of attachment, Christians find the uphill course easy, for he notes, ‘They will be traveling the road denuded of all and with no desire for anything’ (A 2.7.7). Only one thing is necessary on the road leading to God: ‘true self-denial, exterior, and interior, through a surrender of self both to suffering for Christ and annihilation in all things’ (A 2.7.7). The Christian way, with the cross in hand, for John is not dark, desperate, or devoid of love. The Christian life is beauty, discovered through the selfdenial of all but God. The cross allows the weary traveler rest and comfort. The cross prevents Christians from tumbling into hopeless chasms or down screes of sin when the path is strewn with boulders of despair and trauma. Interpretative Implications The cross as a supporting staff has distinct consequences for preaching, biblical teaching, pastoral counseling, and psychotherapy. The Christian life of self-denial is not one of austere loneliness found by those who sling the cross over their shoulders. The cross is not a method or tool that weighs one down. There is no heaviness or grimness to the Christian journey of faith. Such sweetness or lightness does not obfuscate the difficult path Christians must take to obtain union with God. John of the Cross is not ‘pollyanna-ish’. Instead, he acknowledges that the difficulty of life does not require the additional burden of the hard, heavy wood of the cross.

A Transformative View of Christian Suffering 277 Therefore, the preacher is called to proclaim hope, not guilt and shame. The pastor teaches that life can be tough, but the church’s intention is not to worsen it. However, the journey is not about Christians checking off boxes of modest denial (e.g., no fish on Fridays). The Christian way is not saccharine but serious and includes times when God’s presence seems remote. Christians can feel abandoned and even forsaken by God, but such divine withdrawal requires maturity of faith. The cross is ever-present. Importantly, pastors and preachers can encourage Christians to carry the cross as they climb toward the goal of unity with God. John’s view assists biblical studies and exegesis. Commentators should not highlight the failings of biblical figures but embrace their successes in encountering God. For instance, it’s not Peter’s failures (i.e., his denial of Jesus) that are notable but what matters most are his encounters with Jesus and God (i.e., his rooftop ecstatic vision) and his gentile mission. Peter is most successful when he uses the cross to help him connect with others and leans on it to free him from his guilty denial. Peter does not become another sacrificial lamb in a line of church leaders but one who builds the church with the assistance of the cross of Christ. From pastoral counseling and psychotherapeutic viewpoints, take up your cross is not a burden or even a call to suffering. Instead, the cross facilitates movement. John urges Christians not to remain in a never-ending circle of suffering, abuse, or faux denial. He encourages Christians to a life of self-examination and assessment in both ‘the sensitive part of the soul (i.e., the will’s desires) and the spiritual part (i.e., one’s understanding, joy, and feeling)’ (A 2.7.7). The cross strengthens Christians with courage and fortitude to leave sparkling spiritual attachments and glittering pious pleasures behind. Moreover, Christians must not tolerate abuse in a misguided imitation of Christ. Those suffering from trauma no longer clutch the heavy load on their shoulder in an attempt to walk their own via dolorosa but hold firm the staff-cross that frees them from darkness and despair. In the therapeutic relationship, John’s view calls for second-order change, where the client or patient shows a difference that produces a visible shift. Scott Fraser and Solovey state, for example: ‘second-order solution involves acknowledging the problem and taking necessary problem-solving action’ (Fraser and Solovey 2007: 272). For John of the Cross, the Christian life is about a real movement to free the spirit from what hinders or keeps people stuck. John is about change for the better to reach the good. The journey to God requires Christians to free themselves from what prevents them from moving higher up the mountain (as described so well by Pavel Pola earlier). Theological Perspectives Theologically, John’s view of the cross symbolizes not human failure, but a means to reach God. Since John often directed female monastics (see Sr Shelagh Banks’ chapter earlier), we must not be surprised that his view does

278  Robert D. Flanagan not celebrate suffering and remaining in oppressive situations. He had been imprisoned and knew its pain and suffering. He thus calls for moving beyond suffering to union with God. He celebrates self-denial, not human suffering, as a Christian good. As followers of Jesus, Christians must free their wills from pursuing worldly objects. And importantly for our time, spirituality is not self-serving, self-seeking, or solipsistic. Christians do not find themselves or their image in God. That is hubristic. Instead, John affirms that God is separate and to approach God requires spiritual nakedness, poverty, and selflessness. We call it that humility—that evasive twenty-first-century human trait. We can also conclude that asceticism does not include self-flagellation, whether physical or spiritual. To take up the cross involves openness and commitment, trusting that the cross of Christ is an aid and comfort when Christians are tired, lonely, or lost. Note 1 John edited the verse slightly removing ‘for the sake of the gospel’. All quotations are from the Collected Works translated by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991) unless otherwise stated.

21 Recontextualising St John Constance FitzGerald’s Concept of Impasse and Its Appropriation in Contemporary Spirituality Ian Shelton Introduction Sister Constance FitzGerald has emerged as a leading interpreter of St John of the Cross (hereafter John) in the last 40 years. Her reputation is firmly established in the United States, as a religious sister at the Carmelite Monastery at Dulaney in Baltimore, and the first woman contemplative to address the American Catholic Theological Society (in 2009). Outside of the States, her thinking has received less attention: one Carmelite sister I interviewed in the United Kingdom described her as someone more ‘…known about, rather than read’.1 That may well change, due to the recent publication of seven key texts of FitzGerald’s thinking, together with critical scholarly engagement with the issues they raise (Cassidy and Copeland 2021). I consider FitzGerald’s thinking to be prescient: a prayerful development of John’s classic symbols and insights so well described in the present volume, democratised for conditions of post-modernity. Themes such as a persistent sense of powerlessness and loss of agency, hopelessness and even abandonment have a new life to address situations John may never have envisaged: from the current plight of refugees, societal and cultural injustices, as well as the angst of the individual soul. FitzGerald, I suggest, allows John’s voice to speak afresh to the spiritual needs of today. The concept most closely associated with FitzGerald’s hermeneutic is ‘impasse’: not found in John’s lexicon, but describing present situations of standstill and despair, seemingly resistant to change.2 Steven Payne has pointed out that John’s concept of Night does not possess a univocal meaning, and the contemporary Carmelite charism itself (of which FitzGerald is a leading witness) has, he suggests, a track record of universalising the teachings of medieval religious contemplatives to the present concerns of social theology (Payne 2011: xxxii). The notion of impasse FitzGerald employs is derived from the American spiritual writer Belden Lane, who argues that a contemplative stance might yield intuitive, possibly unexplored and unconventional solutions to complex and intractable problems (Lane 1981:197). A critical issue arises of validity: how far can hermeneutics develop a surplus meaning from classic texts? FitzGerald’s theoretical solution is largely reliant upon DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-26

280  Ian Shelton Paul Ricoeur: overcoming the distanciation from author to contemporary reader by a recognition of a text’s pluri-vocal meaning, so enabling the reader to appropriate for herself a new understanding of a symbol for their own perspective.3 FitzGerald’s writings lay considerable weight on the prophetic vocation of women contemplatives. To explore the impact of how this has been received in the United Kingdom, I undertook in the Summer of 2020 four separate conversations with Carmelite Sisters – Roman Catholic and Anglican – to understand how they had received and appropriated the hermeneutic of impasse. Their evidence and my reflections provide some thoughts about the implications of what FitzGerald has termed ‘an education for contemplation’ for contemporary spirituality. Night Revisited As maintained throughout the present volume, the purification of desire – initiated by the Divine – leading to the soul’s transformation, is fundamental to John’s understanding of Night.4 It is beyond our human capacity to achieve this: for creature cannot ascend to the height of Creator. The path of ascent will necessarily involve the dismantling of past memories, even previous images and understandings of the Beloved who calls. In a paper (2016), FitzGerald positions the concept of a sense of impasse securely within a context of prayer. A spiritual journey is involved in which egoism must die, desire will be purified and – ultimately – the soul surrendered (FitzGerald 2016: 338–341). There will be attendant psychological distress, both in sense and in spirit.5 A past identity is being surrendered, so that re-ordered desire, fresh vision and ultimately ‘prophetic hope’ might grow in its place. Our consciousness is being radically transformed: it is as if a new sketch is being drawn in us by a new hand (in this respect, see Colin Thompson’s chapter earlier). The journey to union will meet seemingly insurmountable obstacles. These negatives FitzGerald terms as impasse (FitzGerald 1984:94). We are confronted by the painful recognition that neither our previous epistemologies, nor intended strategies, have traction to enable us to overcome them. Alternatively, we might consider them through John’s perspective: as potential signifiers of spiritual growth, rather than reasons for despair. The supreme requirement will be for a dark faith that perseveres, despite seeming failure, frustration and abandonment.6 FitzGerald’s creative extension of Night – extracting a surplus meaning – is in recognising its perception of times of impasse not simply in the souljourneys of the individual but expressed in contemporary cultural, social and political experiences. A re-ordering of desire, a transformation of consciousness (and a rekindling of compassion) that John observes, now has an incarnational potential. They allow us to interrogate post-modernity, as well as the particular mind of a male, 16th-century Spanish mystic. The

Recontextualising St John 281 symbols of a contemplative text now have a potential basis for a social theology. A Strange and Distant Text? How might John’s text speak to post-modernity? Paul Ricoeur argues that symbols might be liberated from the psychological intentions of their original authors, and – through their semantic autonomy – may enable multiple readings (Ricoeur1976:33). Through careful reading and analysis, a respectful engagement to understand, an alien world might be appropriated to address a contemporary reader’s context and concerns (Ricoeur 1981: 158). The text is then understood afresh; it is never possessed by the reader but interrogates and expands our consciousness (Ghasemi 2011:1626). FitzGerald is careful to emphasise humility in the hermeneutical task. Care is required not to fall into a trap of eisegesis (forcing an interpreter’s own ideology upon a text). There must always be vigilance: a persistent danger lurks of a ‘possessive selfhood’ (Turner 1995:244). Given this cautionary note, a text may yield new, pluri-vocal interpretations (Ricoeur 1981:212). We must respect the text: it is independent both of its author and of the contemporary reader too (Schwarz 1983:295). As we have seen, John’s is a strange text, with its paradoxes, biblical tropes and also the influence of an affective/embodied Dionysianism.7 There is a hint of an ‘elsewhere’, seemingly distant, hidden, yet accessible. Context may have played a part: the disintegration of medieval certainties and the sense of alienation felt by conversos have a distinctly post-modern resonance (de Certeau 1992:14ff). This spiritual topography possesses a sense of alterity: a ‘there’ where love remains a possibility, provided we can step apart from our self-interest and preoccupations (Blommestijn et al. 2000:123).8 The power of the symbolic in John has been recognised particularly in North America to match lived present experience with his text (Lescher et al. 2006:20). Pertinent questions of contemporary society (especially relating to issues of justice) are placed in dialogue with a ‘revelatory text’ (Schneiders 1999:113–119). Where human optimism has failed to yield a breakthrough, a receptive attention to the latent symbolic power of a text might yield an unexpected horizon of hope (Schneiders 2000:180). The recovery of a prophetic vision of how society ought to be (rather than how it is in contingent reality) might be a significant contribution of the mystical tradition, in a climate where religion has sometimes been regarded as privatised, and ‘the way things are’ is reified into an accepted and unchallenged norm (Ruffing 2001: 10–12).9 The recognition of actual experience through a phenomenological approach does not reduce the spiritual understanding and application of John’s symbol of Night but gives due recognition to its affective, psychological appropriation. As John might remark, it is through a letting go of our faculties,

282  Ian Shelton and a journey through darkness, that the soul ‘walks securely’ (DN 2.16.1). A surrender to ‘managerial’ approaches in the presence of apparent impasse is, to FitzGerald, neither an adequate nor necessary strategy. Rather, a sense of human powerlessness, helplessness and rejection calls instead for a contemplative turn. The Belly of the Whale FitzGerald contends that concrete experience provides a sufficient starting point for embarking on the passage to somewhere else. What appears as initially negative is, paradoxically, raw material laden with possibility: We need to be truly contemplative people who recognise that in darkness and obscurity God can put together all the materials we have accumulated for new dreams and a new future, if we hold a receptive posture that will allow this integration to take place. (FitzGerald 2015: 17) Note the Juanist theme of a ‘dark faith’, whose initiative is independent of human capacity.10 Without embracing darkness, transformation is impossible. The cultivation of a contemplative mindset (which FitzGerald acknowledges is culturally challenged) enables the gradual processing of frustration into hope: a mirroring of the purification achieved through Night in John’s text. I’m intrigued that John references the Jonah motif (DN 2.6.1) as a symbolic topography of seeming spiritual death. This incarceration becomes the means of journeying to an unfamiliar land, where new possibilities might exist (E 1). The distancing by loss from norms and expectations liberates John’s spiritual imagination to a fresh vision, replacing those of the past. In that atopia, space is made to embrace a new environment of hope, unfettered by the familiar, the status quo. Jonah is delivered to recognise new possibilities, not of his making or choosing. This sense of a new future emerging from constraint is sensitive to alternatives: a prophetic sense of the ‘what if…’, borne through patient hope.11 An early iteration of the experience of impasse in North American theological exploration concerned issues of gender. A feminist perspective drew attention to a perception of the thwarting of desire by dominant patriarchal attitudes present in church, society and individual behaviours. Beverly Lanzetta expressed this as the ‘Night of the Feminine’ (Lanzetta 2005:134). Night provides a lens to understand and address such experiences: contemplation may succeed where activism has yet to deliver change. The hope is for liberation from culturally imposed concepts, and socially approved behaviours, with the recognition that women’s particular experience of this darkness might even embody a distinctive understanding of Night (Lanzetta 2005:13). FitzGerald’s present position is that the feminist experience of impasse so pressing in the 1980s ‘…was/is one [underlined] example of the

Recontextualising St John 283 democratisation of the dark night…’.12 There are other experiences of impasse: white supremacy (particularly in North America), migration issues, political aggression, that impede union with the divine, the ultimate goal which lies ‘…beyond present purification/impasse’ (ibid). One of my own United Kingdom witnesses (Sister D) points out that, as a Doctor of the Church, with a universal message, there must be caution in trying to colonise the concept of Night to a single issue. A critical issue raised by Bryan Massingale is how we are to recognise and attribute the effect of contemplative contribution to societal transformation, and the implication this may have for a contemplative vocation (Massingale 2021:345). He asks what evidence exists for an enlargement of a more compassionate consciousness, particularly in communities threatened by change? This resistant audience is very much in mind in the opening sentence of Iain Matthew’s masterly exposition of John (Matthew 2010:1). FitzGerald is also optimistic and my own conversations with Carmelite Sisters in the United Kingdom, through a small project of qualitative research, suggest both an unusually informed and passionate concern for social justice and transformation.13 Appropriations of Impasse in the United Kingdom During the late Summer of 2020, I engaged in four conversations with practitioners: Carmelite sisters in the United Kingdom familiar with the ideas of FitzGerald. An interpretive exercise, I attempted to access some insight into their understandings of impasse by listening to their stories and reflections. These conversations yielded several important emerging themes, which I owe entirely to the sisters’ generosity and candour, in exploring their responses to FitzGerald’s reading of John. First, there was a clear participative hermeneutic in addressing impasse: the attentive reader inhabits, even becomes, the text, appropriating its deeper meanings and implications. In the Prologue to the Spiritual Canticle, John hints at the part the hearer’s own experience plays in making real the inexplicable. What Sandra Schneiders terms a ‘text of the self’ becomes reality when one sister remarked, ‘…we are the hermeneutic’ (Sister A). It is participative: it is through engagement with quotidian reality that impasse is identified, appropriated, embodied and addressed through silent prayer. From repurposing a building to vocational crises, from perceived ecclesial indifference to societal injustice, concrete settings of impasse provide the context for prayer. Secondly, there is acceptance of surrender to the divine work of grace, involving both pain and liberation. It is the capacity to let go and admit to an ‘unknowing’. Sister B’s initial despair at a dearth in vocations was transformed through an utterly unexpected up-tick of profound ecumenical interest in lay contemplative prayer, involving reconfiguration of the convent’s resources. The truism ‘…impasse makes you let go of what the final stage is going to look like’ (Sister A), expresses the recognition that dark faith is a high-risk activity.

284  Ian Shelton Thirdly, Sister D helpfully pointed to an anthropological dimension referred to earlier: the seeming epistemological fragility of meta-narratives and sense of the self in post-modernity resonated with the shifting tectonic plates in John’s perilous age. Marginal voices may have a significance and agency to highlight hidden truth and to effect change. Finally, the place of the via crucis in a hermeneutic of impasse was given attention. This was also psychological: a sense recognised by Sister Ana Maria de Jesus, when Sister C remarked, it is ‘…when we are reduced to nothing, we are giving God permission’. The Cross is also exemplary: several sisters were engaged and inspired by Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), whom FitzGerald also finds affinity with. The true cost of apophatic dispossession, humility and effacement is then an appropriation of a sketch of the Cross. Impasse is not simply about individual or ecclesial satisfaction: its healing scope is urgent, demanding: evident in Calvary experiences, wherever they exist. Implications What interruptive power has impasse on theological and spiritual discourse? I believe that it urges an apophatic sensibility recognising the tentative and provisional in Christian discourse; and not only a rhetoric of triumphalist confidence which is sometimes observed. A kenotic perspective, an acceptance of initial bewilderment and uncertainty in reality might actually point to the potential for growth and ecumenical progress. Allied with a tenor of unknowing is a sense of what Sarah Coakley calls the acceptance of ‘unmastery’: a recognition of our failure to provide the tools of flourishing, our blindness to folly and an over-optimistic assumption of technological solutions (Coakley 2009:53). Impasse requires a sense of humility: although we have agency, we concede sovereignty not to our own efforts but to a God who cannot be managed. It is a hard counter-cultural lesson of learning humility. An apophatic, humble and kenotic modality (what Carmelites term a vacare Deo, or a making of room for the Divine) may be expressed in a posture of recognition: … Our knowledge comes through prayer … [it’s] the only way through for anybody when it comes down to it, because everything has been deconstructed. (Sister A) A contemplative turn is an encounter with alterity: through attentive listening to the ‘silent music’ of the Other. It is the space where hidden wisdom may emerge, where truth may be spoken through voices suppressed or marginalised. Currently in some religious orders in the United States, the process of synodality launched (2021) by Pope Francis has

Recontextualising St John 285 brought about a recovered awareness of the voices of Black Christians. In the United Kingdom, a ‘receptive’ attention to the exploration of difference within dispersed Christian experience has been piloted by women’s listening groups, holding possibilities for a seemingly arrested ecumenical landscape. Patiently attuned to the emergence of difference, and alert to the recovery of hidden vision articulated through recontextualisation, contemplatives may play an innovative role in the discernment of transformation.14 Impasse carries an implication of bearing a prophetic edge, or of what one Sister put it to me as saying to power ‘…this is what should be’ (Sister A). This edge comes out of contemplative attention, rather than ideology, but it unsettles the status quo, wherever it exists: in society, church or personal life. The contemplative vocation is to be a sentinel whilst others sleep: those awake to new ecologies and possibilities. FitzGerald develops this prophetic theme in a later work (FitzGerald 2009). Her call is to recognise the possibility of a new future, a divergent narrative from that based on the past with its memories. Suggesting that the Passion stretches beyond suffering to embrace transformation, there are possibilities where wounds of experience might be deconstructed through the contemplative gaze to enable new possibilities instigated by grace. Such purification is neither easy nor achieved with the signature of our own achievements but discerned in the silent, seemingly empty, space of prayer. What FitzGerald terms the prayer of ‘no-experience’ is redemptive: a precursor to a new identity, a new vision, liberated from the possessive past (2009:46). FitzGerald senses that prophecy today should draw attention to the signs of a new narrative of hope: for individuals, the church, society and political life. Conclusion Using impasse as a lens to interrogate experiences of frustrated desire, Constance FitzGerald privileges the primacy of John’s text. Recontextualising his symbols to register social experiences of an inability to provide solutions, her democratisation of Night is essentially a spiritual process, understanding it to be a necessary part of purification on a road to eventual union. From a background in North America (initially addressing experiences of feminine impasse), a study of contemporary women Carmelite sisters in the United Kingdom revealed a broadened understanding of the concept. Impasse had assisted their addressing of many situations where progress appeared unattainable. Instead, a recognition of a letting go, a waiting in prayer without prescribing expected outcomes, had yielded creative possibilities. The impact of impasse calls for a paradigm shift in perspective: a theological acceptance of emptying, humility and listening. Embracing this education for contemplation is a costly endeavour: it is a prophetic vocation, offering a divergent narrative of hope.

286  Ian Shelton Notes 1 I shall describe the interview process shortly. 2 Originally published as ‘Impasse and Dark Night’, in Edwards (1984) and subsequently reprinted. 3 FitzGerald rarely directly references Ricoeur but his impact is noted by Brian McDermott (in Cassidy et al 2021: x), a tribute to Kieran Kavanaugh by FitzGerald in Baltimore Carmel News, Spring 2019:2 (Untitled Obituary, https://www. baltimorecarmel.org/wp-content/newsletters/2019spring.pdf, p.1) and in my own correspondence with her. 4 For example, in John’s First Commentary on the Dark Night (DN 1.8.3). All quotations from John’s works will be from the Collected Works edited by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1991) unless otherwise stated. 5 A helpful survey and analysis of the spiritual/psychological balance of ‘darkness’ in John’s thought is given by Edward Howells in Howells (2017). 6 For example, John’s conception of dark faith in The Dark Night, Book 2.2.5. 7 For the latter, see Tyler (2010:64–70) on this development in mystical theology. 8 In this volume, Hein Blommestijn (2000:195–201) has a reflection, ‘The Memory of Love’, on John’s lyric poem Super flumina Babylonis. The author suggests that the mystic perceives the possibility of hope in exile and deprivation, where even the consolation of music seems an impossibility. There is also a political dimension: the return of justice, as well as the persistence of a music of love, whilst in a strange place. 9 In this respect, David Newheiser (2020:10) suggests the value of negative theology in political contexts: holding discussion open by a hesitancy to accept ideology at face value. Allowing future revision, permitting experimentation, he argues that it safeguards the tentative/provisional aspect of human endeavour. 10 This does not countenance passive quietism: in this respect, Peter Tyler has pointed out to me the agency and responsibility of the soul in The Living Flame, LF 3.46. 11 This perspective is developed as a strategy in relation to addressing impasse issues of asylum-seekers and migrants by Susanna Snyder (2012:211), suggesting that theologians especially might re-imagine new, alternative social possibilities (as yet unexpressed) alongside practical responses by churches. 12 Email from Sister Constance FitzGerald (25.02.2021), shared with permission of author. 13 For more on the background and results of these conversations, see Shelton (2020). 14 The Synodality process was conducted on Zoom by Baltimore Carmel (during Lent, 2022) and can be accessed now at https://www.baltimorecarmel.org/synodality2023/. The process of ‘receptive ecumenism’ is described by Gabrielle Thomas (2021:11–32).

Epilogue Sam Hole

‘One at a banquet enjoys the taste of a variety of foods and the sweetness of many melodies’, writes John, as he portrays the soul that has entered the state of spiritual marriage (CB 20-21.15).1 In a similar fashion, the preceding chapters have indeed offered a diverse and nourishing banquet of responses to John’s efforts to lay out the path of the soul’s ascent to God. In what follows I cannot pretend to engage with all of what has been written, and certainly do not seek to harmonize the many different voices that have – to pull the metaphor as far as it can go – sung so sweetly. Rather, in this brief Epilogue, I choose to take on the more restricted task of highlighting some of the ways I see these essays engaging with the three themes named in the title of this book: Carmel, desire and transformation. Carmel In relation to the first theme of Carmel: this volume, in particular in its opening chapters, rightly ensures that our appreciation of John is rooted in an understanding of his Discalced Carmelite context. Terence O’Reilly lays out (Chapter 1) the Carmelite life into which John entered, and offers various suggestions for how this rule may have shaped John’s thought. Shelagh Banks highlights (Chapter 4) the importance of John’s ongoing engagement – throughout his ministry – with communities of Discalced Carmelite nuns. And in between these chapters, Bernard McGinn (Chapter 2) and Jodi Bilinkoff (Chapter 3) provide invaluable studies of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century reception of John of the Cross, not least within the Discalced Carmelites. Such accessible introductions to John’s reception admirably fill a gap in English-language scholarship on John. The Carmelite context of John’s writing is essential to keep in mind because it reminds us of much that John does not mention in his writings. We must not forget the ascetics conditions in which John lived, and which were also lived in by those nuns (though perhaps not lay women) for whom he wrote. Any concern about the relative absence of mention of Christ, or of the Eucharist, in John’s writings must surely be put aside when we consider the life of prayer which he assumed for his readers. And while John’s writings DOI: 10.4324/9781003308713-27

288  Sam Hole are littered with helpful pieces of practical advice for those on the spiritual ascent, we do well to remember that he was not writing a more formalized manual in the manner of some writers before and after him. John assumes a context in which personalized pastoral advice is coming from elsewhere – not least from a good spiritual director, however hard these may be to find. He is, rather, particularly concerned to depict the spiritual ascent in its entirety, drawing on his evident poetic and imaginative gifts, in order to aid the reader on their ascent. Desire What is it that must be stilled, purified and purged for the ascent to occur, and yet is also that which propels the ascent, and that which John depicts in full force once the soul is united with God? It is the second of the three themes that is foregrounded by this book – desire. John’s account of the required stilling of the soul’s desires, especially as offered in the Ascent (and Pavel Pola reminds us in Chapter 10 of the importance of John’s metaphor of the ascent), is broadly in line with much other writing in ascetic traditions. But his depiction of the soul’s sufferings during the passive night, the ‘dark night of the soul’, is a distinctive contribution to the Christian tradition. In a careful and considered manner, Christopher Cook (Chapter 19) considers this moment through the lens of modern psychiatric understandings of the self. Chloe Lynch (Chapter 20) considers how the concept of desire may help spiritual directors to recognize this moment and accordingly to direct individuals through the dark night. And in Tessa Holland’s study of the abyss (Chapter 8), Louise Nelstrop’s reflections on Job (Chapter 11), and Emma Mavin’s examination of suffering (Chapter 14) we are further reminded of the challenges that the soul may face in the course of the spiritual ascent. Yet this is, at root, an ascent that is sustained by desire – specifically, the desire of the soul for God. ‘Where have you hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?’, asks the Bride in the opening lines of the Spiritual Canticle poem, beginning a narrative of longing desire which is central in slightly different form to the Dark Night poem. Developing this theme, Colin Thompson (Chapter 7) evocatively explores the significance of the lovers’ gaze in the Spiritual Canticle poem. But, as this volume recognizes, this portrayal of searching structures not just John’s poetry but also his depiction in prose of the whole spiritual ascent. As Iain Matthew (Chapter 6) puts it, ‘pure love’ is what John longs for each soul to develop. I have valued these diverse contributions as I recall my own recent research on the role of desire in John’s writings.2 The focus of much of this volume remains particularly on John’s own thought. It is, however, through drawing John’s work into dialogue with modern thought that John’s own distinctive take on desire is likely to emerge more clearly. Two chapters in this volume attend particularly to this challenge. David Perrin offers some illuminating

Epilogue 289 comparisons with the role of desire in Emmanuel Lévinas (Chapter 17). Thinking of my own research, however, I particularly valued Christoph Betschart’s comparison of desire in John and Henri de Lubac (Chapter 15). De Lubac’s understanding of a ‘natural desire for the vision of God’ dominated Catholic thought in the second half of the twentieth century, making ‘desire’ a very prominent concept, but in a far more restricted way than its ordinary usage. Developing a connection I did not pursue in my research, Betschart helpfully lays out the similarities and differences in the two thinkers’ understandings of desire. There is, it should be said, plenty more that could be said in drawing John into dialogue with recent theological approaches to desire. However prominent a theme it has been in recent writing, desire has often been approached through a narrowly sexual lens, or with little sense of how it is possible to speak of both problematic and good desires, and of the movement for the individual between the two. John’s account of desire, I have suggested (notably in Chapters 1 and 6 of my book), offers resources which may contribute to the development of a fruitful modern theology of desire. Transformation Finally, what John lays out is a process of transformation, a concept that is the subject of particular examination by Steven Payne (Chapter 5). I remember being pressed by an enquirer on why I had adopted ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transfiguration’ to describe what John envisaged over the course of the ascent. It was a question that I pondered for some time, but am now content – with Payne providing a fuller justification than I offer in my research – that transformation is indeed the appropriate term. For one thing, it is the word that John chooses to use, while he speaks only once (CB 11.12) of the transfiguración of the soul. But most importantly, John is laying out a change at all layers of the individual. At Christ’s transfiguration, he appeared in glory to Peter, James and John; his outward appearance changed to reveal his truest reality, but as Christ’s ordinary appearance returned that deepest reality did not change. By contrast, John’s account of the spiritual ascent describes what are real changes to the soul – a total reorientation of its desires from earthly to heavenly. John goes into a great deal of detail about these changes – for instance, their agency, their extent, their speed and precisely what is transformed in the spiritual ascent. But overall, it can hardly be denied that this is indeed a great transformation in the soul. Writing in response to a friar’s request for spiritual guidance, John opened in reply: ‘Your holy Charity with few words asked me for a great deal. An answer would require much time and paper’ (AV 1). John’s own writings may be relatively limited in length. Yet, as the length of this volume reflects, even John’s own ‘few words’ require ‘much time and paper’ for his readers to begin to digest his spiritual wisdom. What John offers is not always easy to absorb: his diagnoses of the soul’s problems are stark and unremitting, his

290  Sam Hole medicine striking, his plan of treatment life-long. And yet, John would insist that what he lays out is nutrition and healing that has the potential to transform the soul, transforming its desires. Both this volume, and John’s own writings, offer a feast indeed. Notes 1 All quotations of St John of the Cross from the Collected Works of St John of the Cross, ed. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (1979) unless otherwise stated, full details in Bibliography. 2 See Hole (2020).

Abbreviations

AGOCD Archivio Generale Ordine dei Carmelitani Scalzi, Rome AHM-Ubeda Archivo Histórico Municipal, Ubeda ASV CR Archivium Secretum Vaticanum, Congregazione dei Riti, Rome BAC Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos BMC Biblioteca Mística Carmelitana CUP Cambridge University Press CWES  The Collected Works of Edith Stein. 12 Volumes, ed, L. Gelber and M. Linssen, 1987–present, Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies DNB Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press DS Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique Doctrine et Histoire. Eds. M. Viller, F. Cavallera, J. de Guibert, A. Rayez, A. Derville, P. Lamarche, A. Solignac. 1937–present. Paris: Beauchesne ESGA Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe. 28 Volumes, ed, H-B. Gerl-Falkovitz, 2000–2020, Freiburg: Herder ESW Edith Steins Werke.18 Volumes, ed, L. Gelber, R. Leuven and M. Lissen, 1950–present, Louvain/Freiburg: Nauwelaerts/ Herder/Druten ICS Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington MHCT Monumenta Historica Carmeli Teresiani, ed, Institutum Historicum Teresianum. Rome: Teresianum, 1973–present OED Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: OUP) OUP Oxford University Press PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina. Ed, J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1844–64 ST Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas (see bibliography for details) Works of John of the Cross A AV

Subida del monte Carmelo/Ascent of Mount Carmel Avisos a un Religioso/Counsels to a Religious

292 Abbreviations CA CB D DN E LF PR R

Cántico Espiritual/Spiritual Canticle – Redaction A Cántico Espiritual/Spiritual Canticle – Redaction B Dichos de luz y amor/Sayings of Light and Love Noche Oscura/Dark Night of the Soul Epistolario/The Letters Llama de Amor Viva/The Living Flame of Love Cautelas/The Precautions Romances/The Romances

Poems are referenced by their first lines or individual titles, e.g., Romances. In references to both The Ascent and The Dark Night, the first number indicates the book, the second number refers to the chapter, and the third number refers to the paragraph. For example, ‘A: 2.3.4’ refers to book two, Chapter 3, paragraph 4 of The Ascent. Similarly, for The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love, the first number refers to the stanza and the second number to the paragraph. Thus, ‘LF: 3.4’ is a reference to stanza 3, paragraph 4 of The Living Flame of Love commentary.1 Works of Teresa of Avila F LL M

El Libro de las Fundaciones/The Book of the Foundations Epistolario/The Letters Moradas del Castillo Interior/The Interior Castle

Note 1 With thanks to Steven Payne for this explanatory note.

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Index

abandonment: greatest 106, 108; permanent 194; utter 121 abisal 131–32, 135–38, 140, 142–43 abismo secreto 142, 216 Abraham 153 abyss 131–41, 143, 239, 288; fiery 141 abyssal delight 134 abyss of darkness 138, 140 abyss of delights 138–40 abyss of faith 134, 140 abyss of grace 140–41 abyss of light 140 Acarie, Barbe 33 acedia 263–70 acedia and dark night 264, 266 acquired contemplation 30–33, 35–36, 41, 211; distinct 42 addiction 258 admiration 58, 72 aesthetics 34 affections 89, 166, 264, 266; natural affection 254 affective knowledge 31 affective will 103 affective/embodied Dionysianism 281 affective engagement186 affective inclination 264 affectivity 148–49, 184 affliction 20, 272, 275; demonic 263 Africa 85 Ahlgren, Gillian 64, 192, 196 Alcántara 58 Allison Peers, Edgar 4, 42–43, 65–66, 78, 132, 134, 143, 174 altars 15, 54–55, 58–59; high 55 Alumbrados 3, 27–29, 35, 50–51, 66 Alvarez, Tomás 58, 59, 61, 65 ambassador 59, 70 ambiguity 113, 193, 217, 256; scriptural 271

Aminadab 128, 242 Andalusia 4, 10, 16–17, 74, 103 Angelic Doctor 177, 221 Angelus Silesius 35, 237 annihilation 28, 36, 37, 39, 40, 88, 141, 160, 170, 275, 276 anthropology 150, 155, 171, 172, 173, 178, 182–84, 197, 201, 207, 208, 210, 212–14, 226, 227, 228, 250–51, 255, 259, 260 antidepressants 258–59 Antwerp 69, 78, 237 Apocalypse 240 apophasis 131, 232 apophasis of desire 141, 301 apophatic 37, 41, 131, 133, 284 apophatic sensibility 284 appetites 90, 134, 138, 183–84, 251; soul’s 252 Archangel Michael 70 Arévalo 2, 9 aridity 265, 266, 268 Aristotle 2, 179, 228, 250 Aristotelian conception of nature 198 Arraj, James 26 ascent 9, 27–28, 30, 34, 36–37, 42–46, 155, 157, 159, 165, 184–86, 252–54, 270–71, 288–89, 292 ascent and union 184–86 Ascent of Mount Carmel, The 6–9, 28, 30, 75, 77, 132–34, 138, 140, 142, 155, 157, 159, 251, 271–72, 274 ascent to God 254 Aspektswechsels 215 Assagioli, Roberto 255–56 Assisi 154, 156 attachments 17, 89, 193–95, 277 Augustinian anthropology 183, 210 Augustinian heritage 199

Index  313 Augustinian nuns 257 Augustinian terminology 202 Auschwitz 77 Austria 60, 70 Austrian Catholics 63 Austrian Habsburgs 55, 59–60 authenticity 70, 129 Avila 2–3, 5, 7, 9–10, 13–16, 22, 33–34, 36–37, 52–53, 69–71, 180, 192–96 Baker, Augustine 35 Bañez, Domingo 179 Banks, Sr Shelagh 277 Baruzi, Jean 209, 215, 230, 233–36, 243–44 Battle of the Olympians 38 beatification 47, 49, 53, 55, 58, 60–65, 67, 69 beatification hearings 48–49, 51, 54, 56, 63, 68 beauty 73, 75, 87, 92–95, 104, 117, 119–20, 123–29, 131, 149, 223; infinite 139 beauty and innocence 149 beauty of creation 73 beauty of God 74, 139 being 17, 219–24, 227–32, 235–36, 238, 240, 242–43, 258, 261, 265, 270, 274, 280 Beloved 72, 75, 79–80, 87, 98, 101, 103–4, 110, 114, 117–29, 135–36, 139 Bilinkoff, Jodi 41, 287 birth 9, 60, 209, 259 Bologna 307 Bonaventure St 29, 31, 37, 51 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 38 bridegroom 9, 17–19, 39, 80, 93–95, 98, 101–2, 110–11, 116, 126 Bull of Canonization 62 Burrows, Sr Ruth 78 Cáceres 68 Calcutta 154, 255 Calvin, John 95, 272 canonization 41, 47, 51, 53–54, 56–57, 59, 61–64, 67, 70, 156 canonization campaign 60 canonization celebrations 64 canonization proceedings 56 capitalism 232 Capitol Hill 232 Carmelite Rule 3, 22; primitive 20, 22

Carmelites 10, 13–14, 16, 21–22, 28, 30–32, 36–37, 39–40, 97, 103, 179–80 Carmelites in Andalusia 103 Carmelite Vicar-General 67 Carthusians 14, 21–22 Cassian, John 39, 162 Catholic Europe 35, 64 Catholic Germany 35 charity 152, 171, 200, 228, 289 Charterhouse 21–22 childbirth 61, 93 Christian discipleship 148, 271 Christian life of self-denial 276 Christians 57, 88, 163, 202, 226, 255, 259, 271–73, 275–78 Christian Spirituality 145, 192 Christology, low 9 Christ’s humanity 163 Christ’s mysteries 111 Christ’s Passion 16, 285 Christ’s poverty of spirit 275 Christus 87 Cistercians 257, 258 Clement IX, Pope 58 Clement X, Pope 10, 60, 61, 69 Coimbra 70 Comboni Fathers 85 community, monastic 49 community and spiritual direction 4 community dynamics 79 competence and strength 158 consciousness 225, 280–81 consciousness of Christ 115 consolation 9, 106–7, 110, 264–65, 269, 275, 286 consolation in prayer 265 consummation 95, 145–46, 148, 153 consumption 240 contemplation 18, 20, 28, 30, 32–33, 36, 42–43, 45, 135, 137, 184–85, 253–54 contemplative life 18, 54, 98, 105 contemplative methodology 132 contemplative mindset 282 Corbin, Henry 243 Córdoba 62, 70 Cornaro Chapel 67 COVID 230, 232 COVID denialism 239; anti-mask 232 COVID politics 232 creation 27, 29, 80, 92, 94–95, 119–20, 124, 126–29, 140, 202, 205, 207, 225, 227

314 Index Cyprian, St 43, 95 Czech language 55 darkness 32, 133–34, 138, 140, 153, 159–60, 201, 219–20, 223, 225, 233–35, 259, 282 darkness and complexity of John’s psychology 259 darkness and light 13, 32, 140, 153, 211, 253, 262, 268 darkness and nothingness 159 darkness mysticism 240 dark night and depression 257, 259–60 dark night and LSD 255 dark night and mental disorder 261 dark night and psychiatry 256 dark night and sin 266 dark night experiences 261, 266 dark night in Psychiatry 249–61 dark night of contemplation 212 dark night of COVID 230 dark night of faith 30, 45, 156 dark night of sense 134 Dark Night of the Soul, The 17, 20, 145, 147–49, 153–4, 220, 232–33, 235, 241, 257–8, 288, 292 dark nights 145, 147–48, 150, 152, 154, 168, 210, 212–13, 215 death 3, 5, 9–10, 47–49, 52–53, 56, 58, 63–64, 106, 117, 119, 138, 153, 239, 250 Dávila, Sánchez 50 de Certeau, Michel 27–29, 34, 41–42, 44, 237 de Covarrubias, Sebastián 120, 125, 128–30 deification 31, 43, 163, 170–74, 204 deification in John’s account 173 deity 91; demonic 161 de Jesús, Diego 41 de León, Basilio Ponce 27–28, 42, 51–53, 57 delight 87, 94, 98, 101, 110, 132–34, 137–39, 141, 163, 166, 194–95, 218, 264, 266 de Lubac, Cardinal Henri 197–207, 289 depression 249, 254–60, 262, 269; diagnosis of 256, 262 dereliction 106, 107, 109, 110 Desert Fathers 146, 232 Desert Spirituality 146 desire 20, 79–80, 93, 120–21, 128, 135–41, 154–55, 187–89, 197, 199–203, 205, 219–20, 222–23,

225, 227–30, 233–34, 241–42, 264, 266–70, 287–89 desire and darkness 219 desire in non-experientialist terms 233 desire of God 93, 138, 141 despair 158–59, 165, 173, 250, 255, 266, 276–77, 279–80 detachment 18, 72, 134, 166 diagnosis of dark night 268 dialogue 34, 175, 190–92, 195, 197, 199, 205, 281, 288–89, 295–96 Diez, Miguel Angel 43 Dionysius the Areopagite 27–29, 37, 39, 45, 51, 58, 178, 181, 186–87, 209 directing desire 263, 265, 267, 269 Discalced Carmelite Fathers 28, 52 Discalced Carmelites 25, 30, 47–55, 57–63, 65–68, 70, 72–73, 75, 287 disintegration 281 dispossession 202, 272, 275, 284 divine abyss 136, 140–41 Divine Names, The 186, 188 Doria, Nicolás 26, 65; divisive Vicar-General 49 Doyle, Dominic 183 dryness 18, 106, 110, 153, 265, 275 Durà-Vilà, Glòria 258, 262 Duruelo 3, 9, 14, 16, 20, 73 ecstasy 67, 125, 153, 168; frozen 96 Egido, Teófanes 48, 65 Eliphaz 164, 168 embrace 133, 134, 137–38, 141, 143, 150 emotions 107, 115, 167 emptiness xiii, 18, 38, 45, 134, 136, 141, 160, 220, 225, 227, 238, 255, 256, 266, 272 Encarnación, Convento de 64, 73 England 35, 78, 170 enlightenment 157, 210, 249 Enlightenment separation of science and theology 260 eros 146 erotic love and desire 187 erotic nudity 226 errors, theological 50 ethics 230 Eucharist 287 Eugenius IV, Pope 22 exchange of hearts 190 Exodus 117, 145, 147, 159 experience: contemplative 254; hallucinatory 235; lived 127,

Index  315 233; mystic 243; pathological 262; positive therapeutic 231 experience of nothingness 159 experiential core of John’s work 235 experientialism 230–33, 237, 243; positive 230–31 eyes, the Beloved’s 120–21 faculties: external 235; physical 169; rational 253; sensitive 219; spiritual 89, 93, 183, 186, 219, 251 failure: human 277; repeating 237 faith 89, 106, 134, 138, 140, 152–53, 160, 180, 185–56, 202, 211, 217, 219–20, 224–26, 228, 233, 253, 259, 263–64, 276, 280–83, 286; genuine 154; naked 34, 39, 44; obscure 32 faithfulness 178, 264, 266, 268–69 feast, liturgical 62 feeling 167, 169, 173; and empathy 162; of loneliness 74 Fénelon, Archbishop François de Salignac de la Mothe 32, 38–40, 45–46 Ferdinand II, Emperor 54, 55, 59, 60, 63 fetishization 239 FitzGerald, Constance 85, 86, 96, 279–86 flesh 47, 79, 206, 219, 253, 264, 268 Fontiveros 2, 9, 62 fountain 120–21; crystalline 125; living 118 fragrance 137, 172 France 25–27, 33, 38, 44, 59, 62, 75–76, 78 Francis, Pope 284 Fraser, Scott 277 French mystics 34, 38 French philosophy 243 Freud, Sigmund 213–14, 236 garden paradise 121 García, María Luisa Herrera 65 Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald 177 gate of Christ 275 Gaultier, René 26, 33 gaze: absent 128; amorous 123; bride’s 102; contemplative 285; dangerous 117; excellent 123; mutual 122– 23, 126; powerful 119 Geist 210–11, 215–16

Gench, Roger 274 gentleness 73 gifts: habitual 40; imaginative 288; mutual 197, 203; pure 199; spiritual 34 Ginetti, Cardinal Marzio 57 Girón-Negrón, Luis 186, 188 Gnosticism 39 God: absence of 219; all-loving 110; biblical 221; encounter 194; the mystery of 214; naming 221; obscurity 282; secret knowledge of 72; seeing 145, 147, 150; the things of 253 Golgotha 271 Gómez, María 61 Gonzaga family 63 grace 43, 93, 105–106, 169, 171–72, 211 grace, mystical 40 grace and beauty 117, 123–26, 128–29 grace and sin 201 Granada 4, 7, 10, 21, 54, 74–75, 100, 113 Gregory the Great, Pope St 28, 161–65, 168, 173, 181, 187 Gregory XV, Pope 47, 55 gustos 70, 116, 143, 212 Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte 32, 38–40, 45 habit 5, 15, 21, 69 habitus in Thomas Aquinas 172 Hadewijch 237 Hardy, Richard P. 67 healing 20, 80, 290 health 4, 22, 52, 62, 166, 231; physical 3 heart, purity of 146–48, 153 Heidegger, Martin 217, 228 Helms, Chad 46 hermeneutics 279, 283; internal 105 hermit life 14, 16–17, 19–20 hermit vocation 15, 17 hiddenness 117, 119, 121, 126, 127, 133 hidden thought 97 Holland, Tessa 141, 209 Hollywood, Amy 237 holy idleness 268 Holy Inquisition 53 Holy Spirit 43, 77, 91–92, 96, 137, 171–72, 186 hope 9, 17, 38, 79, 89, 109, 138, 152, 160, 166, 168, 183, 202, 219,

316 Index 222, 225, 227, 251, 252, 256, 268, 273, 277, 280–82, 285, 286 Hosea 19 hospital 4 Howells, Edward 172, 251, 286 Humanistic Psychology 295 humanity 20, 93, 163, 172, 212, 249, 261, 272 human violence 47 human weakness 250 humility: absolute 106; breath-taking 73; radical 160 Husserl, Edmund 217 ignorance 38; wise 45 illness, depressive 256, 258–59 illness and pain 162 Illuminati 29 image of Christ 42 image of Christ in contemplation 42 imagination 76, 129, 134, 183, 232, 251; poetic 129 imaginative devotions 167 imitatio Christi 163–64, 173 imitation of Christ 190, 272–73, 276 Immaculate Conception 81, 215 impasse 85–86, 279–80, 282–85 incarnation of God 223 Index of forbidden books 32 individuality 222, 235 infinite caverns of desire 225 infinity 223 inflow 90, 254 infusion 185 Innocent X, Pope 57, 59 Innocent XI, Pope 37, 61 Innocent XII, Pope 38 Inquisition 3, 28, 32, 50, 52–53 Inquisitor General 27 intellect 38, 89–90, 93, 137–39, 141, 150, 183, 185–86, 210, 213, 215, 219, 225, 239, 244, 251, 253, 260, 266 intelligence 151 interior peace 36; deep 270 interiority 40 interpretation: allegorical 165; pluri-vocal 281; superimposed dualistic 88 intuition 243 Isaiah 19, 118, 163–64 Italian friars 57 Italy 27, 35, 63, 71, 189 James, William 231, 234, 235, 243–44 Jeremiah 165

Jesuits 34, 36 Jesus 15–16, 26, 28, 30, 33, 53–54, 74–76, 97, 105–7, 109–11, 115, 271, 273–74, 277–78 Jews 162; converted 52 Job 98, 161–74, 288; prophet 166 Job and Eliphaz 164 Job’s companionship 173 Job’s dunghill 165 Job’s role 173 John Paul II, Pope St 85, 188 John of the Cross: anthropology 182, 184, 228; beatification and canonization 70; biography 1–10, 178; body 5, 47–49, 56, 61; cause for canonization 53; experience of imprisonment in Toledo 250; language 109, 132, 225; marginalization 35; Mystical Doctor 81, 87, 91, 177; name 31, 33, 76; Orthodoxy 27; Platonic roots of his thought 177; psychology 259; reputation 25, 48, 76; sepulcher in Segovia 68; spirituality 173, 235, 252; studies in theology 180; studies of Aquinas 181; thaumaturgical specialty 61; theology 124, 271; thinking on deification 172; treatment of Job 162 joy 98, 101, 104, 110, 149, 253–54; believer’s 264; existential 226; great 73; pure 104 Jung, Carl Gustav 214 Katz, Steven T. 96 Kavanaugh, Kieran and Rodriguez, Otilio 132, 142–43, 188, 207, 220, 228, 270 Keats, John 124 Kenya 85 King James Bible 129 knowledge: conceptual 226; dark 186, 211; deeper 93, 116; indirect 119, 129; obscure 36, 220; of God 36, 72, 185, 220 Krakow 60 Lacan, Jacques 230, 233–34, 236–42, 244 language and doctrine 227 language of abyss 131–35, 137–39, 141 language of mystical theology 215

Index  317 language of night 133, 141 Laredo 28, 157 lathouse 240, 244 Latin 26, 31, 35, 42, 56, 62, 179 leadership 48, 67, 85 Le Brun, Jacques 44–45 Lecuit, Jean-Baptiste 200 lens, sexual 289 Lévinas, Emmanuel 217–29, 289 Lewis, David 78 liberation 244, 282–83 Lima 58 lips 163; unclean 118 liturgy 15–16 Living Flame of Love, The 34, 76–78, 86–87, 91, 96, 99, 112, 118, 165, 169–70, 172 logic: all-encompassing 241; internal 243; poetic 129 Lombard, Peter 171–72, 174 London 45 longing 117, 145, 146, 184, 194, 202, 219, 257, 270, 288; great 98, 157; hungry 153; intense 140; urgent 92, 96 López-Baralt, Luce 120 Los Mártires, Convent of 4, 9–10, 21 Louis XIV, King 38, 40, 59 love 6–7, 9, 19–21, 72–73, 75–77, 79–80, 87–95, 97–105, 109– 10, 113–16, 119–20, 125–26, 135–36, 138, 149–51, 165–66, 170–71, 185–86, 203–4, 241–42; perfect 102, 109, 111; transformation in 80, 93, 95– 96; union of 21, 87, 98, 102 LSD 255 Ludovicus Blosius 29–30 Machielsen, Jan 64, 68 Madrid 26–27, 32, 51, 60, 69 Málaga 7, 54 Mantua 59, 63–64, 70–71 Marie Thérèse, Queen 59 Marion, Jean-Luc 228 market forces 232 martyrs 68, 191 Massingale, Bryan 283 Matthew, Iain 142–43, 160, 207–8, 245, 283, 288 maturity 145, 150, 152, 154, 277; deeper 152; initial 150, 152 May, Gerald 256–59 May, Rollo 258

McDermott, Brian 286 McGinn, Bernard 25, 33, 42–45, 64–66, 70, 81, 103, 141, 164, 188, 232, 243, 287 McKillop, Iain 6 McManus, Stuart 64 medication: antidepressant 260; psychotropic 260 Medina del Campo 2, 9, 13, 179–80, 199 meditation 28, 33, 35–36, 43, 51, 97, 167, 184, 239, 253, 265, 268; guided 239; neglected 35 melancholia 254 memory 89, 139, 155, 183, 225, 251, 260 me-person 213 me-perspective 215 Merton, Thomas 168 Messiah 174 metaphor: dominant 131; erotic 117; evocative 131; paternal 238; primary 236; sexual 153; vivid 185 Mexico 4, 63–64 Mexico City 70 Milbank, John 199 miracles: authentic 61; final required 62; post-mortem 48 modern experientialism 230 modern thought 288 modes of discourse 27 Molinos, Miguel de 35–38, 44–45 Moses 117, 145, 147, 223 mountains 4, 56, 121, 127–29, 157–59, 276–77 Mount Sion 157 movement 35, 90, 119, 121, 124, 141, 159, 210, 214, 264, 266 Mullins, Patrick 15–16, 22 Munich 54–55, 81, 215 music 286; silent 242, 284 Myers-Briggs personality charts 152 mysteries of Christ 111, 116 mystery 77–78, 93–94, 116, 122, 128, 201, 207–8, 214, 217–20, 222, 227–28; deep 93; paschal 19, 201 mystical body 104 mystical contemplation 234; acquired 36 mystical heresy 35 mystical journey 117–29 mystical marriage 78, 190, 212 mystical speech 29, 238 mystical states 243 mystical strategies 133, 238

318 Index mystical theology 2, 26, 29, 49–50, 53, 72, 75, 177, 181, 210–12, 215, 234, 237 mystical union 28, 34, 45, 88, 162, 170, 189, 208 mystical ways of speaking 28 mystical writers 189, 244 mysticism 25, 29–32, 34–35, 40–42, 88, 237, 243 myths 125, 241; ancient 120 Napoleonic invasion 65 Nativity 26, 33, 43, 54 nature 90–93, 95, 104, 106, 163, 169– 70, 187, 198–202, 204, 206–7, 219, 221, 228, 275 nature and grace 178, 182, 184–85, 197–205 Nazi regime 77 Nazis 209 neck 55, 122 negation 107, 111, 113, 116, 195, 201– 2, 204, 225, 243, 271, 276 negative theology 224, 228, 286 Nelstrop, Louise 288 neo-Platonism 123 neo-Thomism 177 neo-Thomist dominance 187 Netherlands 77, 209 Newheiser, David 286 night: active 186, 252–53, 261; passive 252–54, 261, 265, 266, 288 night of faith 134, 140 night of senses 251 night of spirit 115, 186, 265 North America 78, 281, 283, 285 Northern Castile 14 nothingness 37, 106, 134, 136, 143, 159–60, 173, 218, 223, 241, 255 Notting Hill 78 nox obscura 30 nuncio, papal 3 Nygren, Anders 237 nymph Galatea 129 nymphs 121, 128 obedience 21, 35 obedience of faith 263 objects: false 237; infinite 202; material 49; metaphysical 238; religious 56; temporal 275 Olier, Jean-Jacques 33, 44 Old Testament 145–48 ontology 221, 223, 226

onto-theology 221, 228 O’Reilly, Terence 22, 24, 80, 287 Orsini, Cardinal Virginio 69 orthodoxy, radical 199 otherness 104, 221 Pacheco, Andrés 51 pain: human 145, 189; non-corporal 189; positive 189; purifying 150 pain and death 119 pain and grief 128 Paris 34, 65–66, 76, 81, 205, 243, 291 paschal mystery of Christ 201 passions 120, 136, 182, 242, 251, 253, 285; erotic 227 passivity 105, 199, 255, 263–70; developing 266; faithless 267 passivity in prayer 263–65, 269 pastoral counseling 276–77 Pastrana 3 Patriarch of Jerusalem 13 Paul V, Pope 54 Payne, Steven 101, 104, 114, 177, 279, 289, 292 Peguy, Charles 237 Peñalosa, Ana de 49, 100, 137 perfection 116, 126, 158–60, 165, 168– 70, 172, 185, 238, 254, 257, 275 perichoresis 92 Perrin, David 221, 224, 228 personalities 152, 214; conscious 154 personas 68 personhood 210, 224 Petrucci, Cardinal Pier Matteo 35, 37, 44–45 phenomena 243, 255 phenomenology 210, 243 Philip II, King 53, 66 Philip III, King 49, 54 Philip IV, King 59 philosophical anthropology 150 physics 179 Picard, Michel-Jean 42 Pilat-Zuzankiewicz, Marta 64 Pius XI, Pope 10, 177 Pola, Pavel 157–58, 160, 228, 277, 288 Poland 59–60 Porete, Marguerite 170 Portugal 70 possession xiii, 9, 78, 90, 138, 139, 141, 198, 203–4, 254, 275 possession in nothing 154 possession of nothing 154 possessiveness 152–53

Index  319 Post-Teresian Mysticism 43 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 250 poverty 21, 72, 165, 275, 278; radical 18 power 49, 90, 95, 99, 101–2, 104, 211, 219, 251, 281, 285 practising detachment and self-denial 72 Prague 54–55, 67 prayer 3–5, 13–15, 18, 20, 29–30, 32, 40, 43, 61–62, 72, 99, 154, 263–69, 283–85; advanced 32; continuous 13–14; interior 35, 39–41; mystical 31; prolonged 16; silent 51, 283; solitary 16, 264 praying 56, 73, 88, 265, 267 prestige 53, 55, 66 prison xi, xii, 5, 10, 37, 51, 52, 72, 74, 249, 252, 266 Prologue of St John’s Gospel 118 promiscuity, sexual 149 pseudo-Thomistic works 178, 186 psychiatrists 255, 257–62 psychiatry 249–62; transpersonal 260 psychology 254 psychosis 241 psycho-spiritual structure 210 psychosynthesis 255–56 Puebla in New Spain 64 punishment 150 pure love 39–41, 76, 79, 97–98, 100–5, 108–10, 114, 288 purgative desolations 265 purgatory 150, 165, 190–91 purification 85, 89, 154, 183, 185–86, 210, 213, 235, 243–44, 282, 285; final 153; initial 150 purification of being 235 Quietism 25, 32, 35, 44, 76, 105, 110; passive 286 Quiroga, Jésus María 41 Rahner, Karl 93 Ramos, Francisco 57 reconciliation 199 Reconquest 70 Redeemer 63 redemption 205 Reinhard, Kenneth 239 Reize 213 relationship: bridal 80; fundamental 226; healthy 183; primeval 225; significant 200; special 42; spousal 80; therapeutic 277

relics, personal 49 religion 227, 249, 256, 281 religious experience 231, 234–35, 237, 243 Renaissance 120 Ricoeur, Paul 221, 280–81 Rodríguez, José Vicente 64, 66, 111, 207, 270 Rodriguez, Otilio 78, 207 Rodríguez-San Pedro Bezares, Luis Enrique 179 Rohr, Richard 157, 167 Rojas, Antonio 32 Rolheiser, Ronald 253, 274 Rome 26, 53–55, 57, 62, 65, 68, 70, 291 Rospigliosi, Cardinal Giulio 58 Ruiz, Federico 16 Ruusbroec, Jan van 29–30, 37, 40 sadness 257, 263, 265–67, 273 Saint Samson, Jean de 37 Salamanca 2, 5, 9, 14, 20, 22, 51–52, 58, 178–81, 187 Sanderlin, David 170 Santidrían, Saturnino López 43 satisfaction 138, 141, 154, 168, 222, 223, 227, 237, 242, 264, 266 Sayings of Light and Love 292 Schefler, Johannes 35 secrets: deepest 234; hidden 19; profound 244 Segovia 4, 10, 54, 56–58, 62–63, 65, 67–68, 73 Segovia friars 49, 56, 62, 64 self 102, 105, 107, 202–5, 207, 210, 212–15, 224–25, 229, 233, 236, 255, 275–76; inner 17, 109; innermost 213 self-abnegation 20 self-centeredness 150 self-denial 5, 15, 72 self-denial and acceptance 273 self-denial and negation 276 self-emptying 225, 227 self-esteem, low 257 self-experience 167 selfishness 105, 149–50 selflessness 275, 278 sense and language 174 senses: bodily 172, 251; ordinary 170 Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism 33, 43 Seville 27, 51, 66, 81 sexual relationship 237

320 Index shepherds 119, 128 Siena 189–93, 195 silence 13, 16–20, 104, 119, 121–22, 134–35, 225, 235, 241, 268 sin 20, 32, 59, 92, 191, 194, 201–2, 205, 263–66, 269, 276; particular 161; venial 269 skin 126, 168 sleep 137–38, 163, 168, 285 sloth 264 solitude 13–14, 17–21, 133, 212, 242 Solomon 45 Song of Songs 9, 32, 38, 45, 50, 65, 98, 105, 121, 125–26, 128 Son of God 19 soul 17–21, 30–33, 76–80, 86–96, 98–99, 101–3, 105–6, 123–27, 133–41, 147–49, 165–74, 181– 86, 193–95, 211–14, 219–20, 232–33, 249–54, 265–67, 272– 75, 286–90; abandoned 109; individual 279; soul’s ascent 187, 287; soul in union 127, 141; spiritual 36 soul-person 213–14 Southwood, Katherine 162 space: digital 232; empty 225, 241 space and time 133 space of prayer 285 Spain 16, 27, 32, 42, 50–51, 53–54, 58–59, 70, 257 Spanish Habsburgs 53, 69 Spanish Netherlands 31, 76 Spain’s Golden Age 52, 58 Spain’s National Library 66 spiritual ascent 178, 182–87, 288–89 Spiritual Canticle, The 4–7, 9–10, 17, 20–21, 65, 72, 74–78, 91, 94–97, 131–32, 135, 203–4, 228–29, 242, 288, 292 spiritual dereliction 107 spiritual direction 4, 13, 16–17, 177, 234, 260, 263; good 261 spiritual directors 3, 31, 33, 35, 73, 115, 137, 178, 258–61, 263, 269 spiritual distraction 240 spiritual espousal 98 spiritual experiences: contemporary 262; healthy 262; personal 243 spiritual feelings 107, 110, 218, 220 spiritual gluttony 253 spiritual growth 88, 145, 189, 195, 258–61, 265, 280 spiritual imperfections 257

spirituality, medieval 191 spiritual journey 86, 88, 91, 95, 107, 145–47, 158–59, 166, 172–73, 193, 253–54, 273, 280 spiritual life 19, 146, 166, 169, 177, 202, 257, 263, 269 spiritual literacy 260 spiritual marriage 19, 34, 87, 90–92, 95–96, 104, 242, 287 spiritual peace 174 spiritual practices 160, 195, 240, 253 spiritual seeker 213 spiritual sense 164 spiritual sweet tooth 275 spiritual welfare 16 Stace, Walter 88 St Albert 3, 14–15 state of transformation 91, 93–95 states: mental 174, 236; theopathic 236; prayer 40 St Augustine 119, 207 St Bartholomew 76 Stein, Edith (St Teresia Benedicta a Cruce) 19, 77–78, 80, 209–16, 229, 284, 291 St Elizabeth 76 stillness 133–35, 137 St Clement 39 St Mary Magdalen 86, 98, 105, 115 St Joseph 70 St Matthew 276 St Matthias 2 St Paul 20, 67, 77, 87, 146, 148, 170 St Peter 62, 69 St Peter’s Basilica 61 Straw, Carole 161 St Teresa of Avila 2–5, 9–10, 13–15, 25– 26, 28–40, 42–45, 47, 52–54, 69, 73–74, 159, 180, 192–96, 257–58 St Teresa of Calcutta 154, 156, 255 St Thérèse of Lisieux 76, 97, 143, 159 St. Thierry, William of 171 St Thomas Aquinas 28–29, 37, 171–72, 174, 177–88, 199, 206, 217, 221, 228, 237, 250–51, 264, 268–70, 291 St. Victor 37 Suarez, Francisco 28 sublime realities 100 substance, union of 185 substantial union 96 substitution 88 subterranean 56

Index  321 Sulpicians 33 Summa Contra Gentiles 206 Summa Theologicae 174, 181, 183, 188, 228, 291 Super Flumina Babylonis 286 superiority, illusory 231 supernatural gifts of grace 211 supernatural hallucination 235 supernatural knowledge 168, 185 suppression 33 Surin, Jean-Joseph 34, 44 surplus meaning 279–80 surrender 135, 211, 265–66, 276, 282–83; believer’s 265; complete 72; inner 40; mutual 78, 80; reciprocal 78 Suso, Henry 58, 115 Switzerland 205, 209 Symbol 234; all-important 252; classic 279; dynamic 117; significant 117; traditional 254 symbolic castration 236 symbolic relations 236 symbol of patience 165 synergy 102 Tagus River 3 Tauler, Johannes 29–30, 40, 58, 115, 173, 174 Teilhard du Chardin, Pierre 237 temperature 250 temple 17, 118 terminology 89, 155, 185 testimonies: classical 206; collected 54; involved oral 56 thanksgiving 62 Thaumaturgic Healer 47 Thomistic reception 177 Thomistic Ressourcement 311 Thomist thought 178, 188 time and space 62, 218 todo y nada 37 Toledo 3–5, 7, 9–10, 61, 65, 70, 72, 74, 250, 252, 293 Toledo friary 68 tombs 49; ornate 56, 65 topography 252; symbolic 282 touch, substantial 31 Touraine Reform 34 trace of God 219 tradition: ascetic 288; biblical 118–19; hagiographical 195; particular 187; poetic 119; scholastic 219 tranquility 114

transcendence and immanence of God 137 transfiguration 289 transformation 31, 85–95, 102, 139–40, 145–59, 193–95, 200–5, 207, 210–11, 213, 220, 282–83, 285, 289; complete 150; inner 159; moral 150; personal 143, 190; spiritual 145, 167 transformation and continuity 88 transformation and Incarnation 91 transformation in wisdom 95 transformation language 89, 95 transformation of consciousness 280 transformation of desire 200–1 transformation of lovers 89, 203 transformation process 148, 289 translations of scripture 155 trauma: collective post-COVID 233; significant 230 travelling 73, 119, 191 treasures 18, 78, 111, 155 trials 52, 159, 165–66, 170, 275 tribulations 170; great 137 tribunal 51, 66 tribute 25, 286 Triebe 213 Trinitarian God 220 triumphalist confidence 284 truest reality 289 trust: intimate 58; radical 160 truth: hidden 168, 284; historical 198; seek the 213 Tübingen 68 Turner, Denys 232, 242, 281 turtle-dove 127 Tyler, Peter 64, 81, 232, 238, 271–72, 286 Ubeda 10, 47–49, 56, 62–63, 67, 70 Über-Ich 214 ultimate destiny 86 ultimate goal 254, 283 ultimate importance 254 ultimate joy 110 ultimate purpose 187 unconscious formations 234 understanding: ahistorical 234; anthropological 262; concentric 251; scholarly 182; scholastic 182; spiritual 281 union: interior 113; of love xiii, 21, 87, 98, 102, 109, 138; with God 5, 20, 27, 38, 80, 87, 88, 89, 106, 124, 136, 137, 140, 158, 159, 160, 162, 164, 171, 172, 173,

322 Index 178, 182, 184, 186, 189, 195, 197, 205, 211, 252, 254, 257, 276, 278 union and transformation of love 204 unión hipostática 116 union of transformation 86 uniqueness 198, 200 United Kingdom 279–80, 283, 285 unity: infinite 138; organic 200; pure undifferentiated 88 universalist systems 244 University of Baeza 4 univocal meaning 279 unknowing 134, 139, 212, 215, 216, 283, 284; strategy of 238 Urban VIII, Pope 54, 56, 58, 66, 68 US Air Force 258 validity 150, 199, 279 Valladolid 9, 31, 54, 69, 73, 180 value of pain 193 Vasa, Maria Anna 69 Vatican City 208 veils: last 153; second 150 Vejamen 5 veneration 59, 64; collective 64 venthouse suction 244 Versailles 59 vicar, diocesan 57 Victorines 31 victory 37, 55, 59, 63 Viellard-Baron, Jean-Louis 243 Villanova 28 vinegar, pure 165 Virgin Mary 26, 37, 43, 44, 54, 55, 59, 69 virtud 67, 70, 112, 143 virtues, theological 88, 89, 90, 138, 171, 183, 201, 253 vision: dream 168; fresh 127, 280, 282; hidden 285; new 285; perfect 153; prophetic 281; prophet’s 118; renewed 128; rooftop ecstatic 277 vocal expression 166 vocation 76–77, 97, 118, 283; prophetic 280, 285; special 77 vow 55, 149, 204; collective 63 Vulgate, Latin 118, 121, 129 Waaijman, Kees 96, 207 Wales 78

Walker, Caroline 190 warmth and light 136, 139 wars 128, 174 Warsaw 69 Washington D.C. 8 water 93, 99, 110, 128, 154, 166, 242; drowning 135; flowing 127; a glass of perfect 103; living 110–11; pure 103 way of stillness and silence 134 weaknesses, believer’s 265 wearisomeness 265 Weber, Alison 64 Wesensmöglichkeit 214 West, Morris 149 Western mystical tradition 217, 220 White Mountain, Battle of 54–55, 59–60, 63 wilderness 135, 159 Williams, Taylor 255 winds, cold 121 wine-cellar 72, 101, 113 wings 64, 121 winter 3, 180 wisdom: foolish 164; human 38; infinite 19; uncreated 93 witnesses, testimonies of 48, 61 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 214–15 womb 162, 244 women 16, 48, 50, 62, 146, 148, 192, 282 Wood, Jacob W. 199 worldview 238, 240 woundedness, psychological 250 wounded stag 121, 127 wounding 90, 141 wounds, delightful 136, 227 Wùrzburg 67 Wyschogrod, Edith 224 yearning 133, 135, 139, 183, 184, 185, 234, 264 Yepes 2, 9 yoke 276 youths 13, 149 Zachman, Randall 272 Zaragoza 70 Zentrumpunkt 216 Zimmerman, Benedict 234 Žižek, Slavoj 232 Zusammenhang 216