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The transitions from one stage to another in the spiritual life,
analogous to similar transitions in our bodily life, are marked by
a crisis in the soul; and none has described these crises so well
as St. John of the Cross. He shows that they correspond to the
nature of the human soul, and to the nature of the divine seed,
which is sanctifying grace. In the Dark Night, [129] after having
spoken of the spiritual imperfections of beginners, he writes:
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'The one night or purgation will be sensual, wherein the soul is
purged according to sense, which is subdued to the spirit.... The
night of sense is common, and comes to many; these are the
beginners.'
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Then he adds: [130]
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'When this house of sensuality was
now at rest -- that is, was mortified its passions being quenched
and its desires put to rest and lulled to sleep by means of this
blessed night of the purgation of sense, the soul went forth to
set out upon the road and way of the spirit, which is that of
progressives and proficients, and which by another name is called
the way of illumination or of infused contemplation, wherewith God
Himself feeds and refreshes the soul, without meditation, or the
soul's actual help. Such, as we have said, is the night and
purgation of sense in the soul.'
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The words that we have italicized in this passage are very
significant, and they reproduce the original Spanish exactly.
St. John of the Cross then proceeds [131] to treat of the
imperfections which are proper to progressives or proficients:
natural roughness, outward clinging of the spirit, presumption, a
remnant of spiritual pride -- and he thus shows the need of the
passive purgation of the spirit, another painful crisis, a third
conversion which is necessary before the soul can enter fully upon
the life of union which belongs to the perfect, to those who, as
St. Thomas says, wish above all things to cleave to God and to
enjoy Him, and yearn ardently for eternal life, to be with
Christ. [132]
This doctrine of the Dark Night is found also in the Spiritual
Canticle, especially in the division of the poem and in the
argument which precedes the first strophe. [133]
It is sometimes objected that this sublime conception of St. John
of the Cross far transcends the ordinary conception given by
spiritual writers, who speak less mystically of the illuminative
life of proficients and of the unitive life of the perfect. It
would seem therefore that the beginners of whom St. John speaks in
the Dark Night are not the beginners in the spiritual life, whom
writers generally have in mind, but rather those who are already
beginning the mystical states.
To this we may easily reply that the conception of St. John of the
Cross corresponds admirably with the nature of the soul (sensitive
and spiritual) and also with the nature of grace, and that
therefore the beginners of whom he speaks are actually those who
are usually so called. To prove this it is enough to note the
faults which he finds in them: spiritual gluttony, a tendency to
sensuality, to anger, to envy, to spiritual sloth, to that pride
which causes them to
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'seek another confessor to tell the wrongs
that they have done, so that their own confessor shall think that
they have done nothing wrong at all, but only good... desiring
that he may think them to be good.' [134]
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The souls thus described
are certainly beginners, not at all advanced in asceticism. But it
must be remembered that when St. John of the Cross speaks of the
three ways, purgative, illuminative and unitive, he takes them,
not in their attenuated sense, but in their normal and plenary
sense. And in this he follows the tradition of the Fathers, of
Clement of Alexandria, Cassian, St. Augustine, Dionysius, and the
great teachers of the Middle Ages: St. Anselm, Hugh of St. Victor,
St. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas.
This is particularly apparent in the traditional distinction of
the degrees of humility, [135] which, by reason of the connection
of the virtues among themselves, correspond to the degrees of
charity. This traditional gradation in humility leads to a
perfection
which is assuredly not inferior to that of which St. John of the
Cross speaks. St. Catherine of Siena, the author of the Imitation,
St. Francis of Sales and all the spiritual writers reproduce the
same doctrine on the degrees of humility, corresponding to the
degrees in the love of God. All books on ascetics likewise say
that we must rejoice in tribulations and in being calumniated;
but, as St. Teresa remarks, this presupposes great purgations, the
purgations of which St. John of the Cross speaks, and can result
only from faithful correspondence with the grace of the Holy
Spirit.
The same is apparent in the classic distinction, preserved for us
by St. Thomas, between political virtues (necessary for social
life), purging virtues (purgatoriae), and the virtues of the
purified soul. Describing the 'purging virtues,' [136] St. Thomas
says:
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'Prudence despises all the things of the world in favour of
the contemplation of divine things; it directs all thoughts to
God. Temperance gives up all that the body demands, so far as
nature can allow. Fortitude prevents us from fearing death and the
unknown element in higher things. Justice, finally, makes us enter
fully into the way of God.'
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The virtues of the purified soul are
more perfect still. All this, together with what the Angelic
Doctor says elsewhere of the immediate union of charity with God
dwelling in the soul, is certainly not less sublime than what St.
John of the Cross was to write later on.
Finally, the division of the three stages of the spiritual life
corresponds perfectly to the three movements of contemplation
described by St. Thomas after Dionysius. (I) The soul contemplates
the goodness of God in the mirror of material creatures, and rises
to Him by recalling the parables which Jesus preached to
beginners; (2) The soul contemplates the divine goodness in the
mirror of intelligible truths, or the mysteries of salvation, and
rises to Him by a spiral movement, from the Nativity of Christ to
His Ascension; (3) The soul contemplates sovereign Goodness in
itself, in the darkness of faith, circling round again and again,
to return always to the same infinite truth, to understand it
better and more fully to live by it.
It is certain that St. John of the Cross follows this traditional
path which so many great teachers had trodden before him; but he
describes the progress of the soul as it is found in
contemplatives, and in the most perfect among them, in order to
arrive, as directly as possible at God. [137] He thus shows what
are the higher laws of the life of grace and of the progress of
charity. But these same laws apply in an attenuated form to many
other souls as well, souls which do not reach so high a state of
perfection, but which nevertheless make generous progress without
turning back. In all things, similarly, we can distinguish two
'tempos.' For example, the medical books describe diseases as they
are in their acute stage, but they also point out that they may be
found in a modified or attenuated form.
In the light of what has been said it will be easier for us now to
describe the characteristics of the three ways, with special
reference to the purgations or conversions which precede each of
them -- purgations which are necessary even though the soul may
not have fallen again into mortal sin, but remained always in the
state of grace.
From this point of view we shall now study what exactly
constitutes the spiritual state of the beginner, the proficient,
and the perfect; and it will become apparent that this is not
merely a conventional scheme, but a truly vital process founded on
the very nature of the spiritual life, that is, on the nature of
the soul and on the nature of grace, that divine seed which is the
germ of eternal life: semen gloriae. [138]
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