A Spiritual Director for All Time for All

by Joseph Kozlowski, Rockville, MD

In these days of severe trials and tribulations in our
national life, throughout the world, and within our own
Catholic Faith, there is a serious need within our own
Catholic Faith for competent spiritual directors. This
statement refers not just to the clergy within the Catholic
Church hierarchy at various levels, but also to outstanding
Catholic laymen who have the potential to act as or to
become good spiritual directors, ideally a competent
spiritual director should be both a devout and a learned
man. That is, above all, he should be both a prayerful man,
and one learned or trained and educated in such a way that
he can guide and competently advise in today's exceedingly
complex world--which is living at such a frenetic pace--
persons who come to him to seek solutions for either
spiritual or other problems. It is difficult to find many
spiritual directors who are both very devout and very
learned at the same time. There is much more assurance of
receiving competent spiritual direction from a person who,
although he may not be so learned, is devout or prayerful
therefore has the humility to answer those questions which
he has competence in, and to refer a person seeking
spiritual advice to one more learned than he when he
realizes he simply can not help certain persons as regards
specific concrete problems relating to the hard realities
encountered in striving to lead a good spiritual life.

Because of the serious lack of clergy and the very pressing
need for their services, the finding of spiritual directors
to whom one can go to for competent guidance is a difficult
task in the Catholic Church today. To meet this serious
problem, I would suggest that we have at our disposal for
guidance within the Catholic Church some of the most
excellent spiritual directors one could wish for oneself
personally. Because of the excellent translations available
to us, we now have at our fingertips materials of excellent
spiritual direction which are very pertinent to the
problems confronting persons in our fastpaced scientific
and technological age of today, despite the fact that they
were written many centuries ago.

Overview

St. John of the Cross drew essentially from three sources:
science, life experience, and above all the most holy Word
of God, Holy Scripture, the Bible. He makes it clear that
Holy Scripture, whose author is Almighty God Himself, was
the principal source of his inspiration together with
persevering prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the
Most Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ, all of which
were the very heart of his prayer life. At the outset it
can be said that three controlling themes are stressed
again and again throughout his works. These are: 1) The
achievement through the grace and love of God of the
highest stage of spiritual development humanly possible of
attainment in the world, that is, a "spiritual union of
marriage" between the human soul and God, or as he refers
to them the bride and the Bridegroom. 2) In this journey to
the apex of spiritual life in this world there are three
dangerous enemies encountered which have to be destroyed
before such a spiritual marriage can take place. These are:
the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world he states is
the most easily overcome. The flesh is the most tenacious
of the enemies because it fights against the soul until
death. The devil is the most difficult to defeat because he
is the most difficult to understand. 3) The journey to the
spiritual apex of life, that is, to the "spiritual
marriage" en route to destroying the enemies barring the
way to the spiritual marriage or union of love with God
progresses in three principal stages summarized briefly as:
a) the mortification of the appetites; b) the journey
through Faith; and c) the communication of God to the soul,
or of the love of God (the Bridegroom) to the soul (the
bride). St. John of the Cross in his brilliant exposition
of these themes uses poetic imagery to provide greater
clarity in the presentation of such richly, divinely
inspired themes. Because his poetry ranks him among the
greatest of the Castillian Spanish poets, the poetic
imagery he employs soars breathtakingly in elevating the
spirit as it strives to raise its soul closer and closer to
God. However, St. John of the Cross makes it abundantly
clear that the soul cannot arrive at the apex summit of the
spiritual life by its own natural powers, that is, "the
spiritual marriage" or "spiritual union of love with God."
To express it another way, it cannot do so under the
volition of its own natural powers or natural reasoning. It
is only by the aid of the supernatural powers of God that
it arrives there. Expressed simply, God does it all, and
yet without the soul's cooperation with His love and grace
nothing is done or achieved. The key element of the
achievement therefore is cooperation with God's love and
grace in the fulfillment of God's Will accompanied by
intense suffering of a kind which St. John of the Cross
candidly states is formidable and painfi~1 to behold and
endure. Thus, as the soul (the bride) advances toward God
(the Bridegroom) guided by the Divine Hands of love and
grace it goes through a dark night of spiritual trials
which can be considered as, in actuality, three nights of
varying darkness of suffering and spiritual trials. viz.:
1) the mortification of the senses--the twilight of the
soul, that phase in the time of day when the light of the
spiritual day is beginning to disappear and the darkness of
the night is descending; 2) the journey in Faith--the
midnight of the soul when the light has all faded away and
darkness has completely descended; 3) the communication of
God (the Bridegroom) to the soul (the bride). That is the
phase or time of day when the darkness of midnight is
beginning to dissipate and the light of day comes on, and
the break of day begins. St. John of the Cross indicates
clearly that God desires that more souls would enter this
spiritual union of love in this "spiritual marriage" with
Him, but that many whom He does invite do not wish to
endure the severe suffering of all types through which it
is necessary to pass before they depart from this earth
when the soul leaves the body.

Having now summed up the main themes of the "Collected
Works" of St. John of the Cross, I will now proceed to
explain, to the best of my ability, the specific details of
the main themes stressed throughout his masterful work of
spiritual direction.

The Twilight Period

In the first part of the dark night, that is, the
mortification of the appetites, the twilight period, the
soul begins the process of being stripped of all its
appetites, that is, of all the animal appetites which
originate in the senses and the imagination, and of all the
spiritual appetites which originate in the will, thereby
giving all of the strength of the heart, mind, body, and
the entire soul to God alone above all. The appetites
referred to here are the voluntary appetites and not the
involuntary appetites of the soul. The distinction between
these appetites is critical, for the involuntary appetites
of the soul are those which are used and necessary in our
daily living, such as the animal appetites of eating,
drinking, and so form, absolutely necessary to sustain our
daily lives. St. John of the Cross indicates explicitly
that the involuntary appetites need not necessarily be a
barrier to entering the spiritual union of love with God.
The voluntary appetites are those we voluntarily exercise,
but are not at all essential to our daily existence. Thus,
for example, an involuntary appetite such as the act of
eating, which is normal, can become a voluntary appetite
when we become gluttonous in our eating, drinking actions,
and so forth. These voluntary and involuntary appetites
originate in the soul. Thus, for example, they originate in
the will of the soul. At this point it becomes necessary to
explain the make-up of the human soul as described by St.
John of the Cross in his magnificent exposition. This
knowledge of St. John's understanding of the human soul
which is a pure spirit is absolutely essential to an
intelligent grasp of his spiritual direction.

The human soul, the incomprehensibly profound animating
force or life principle of our human existence, is known
perfectly only to God. It is a pure spirit with no parts,
and nobody occupies it except God. Under extremely
extraordinary conditions, and very rarely, God permits
angelic spirits to enter the human soul for reasons known
only to Him, as has occurred, for example, with certain
great Saints so graced by God. Although the soul has no
parts, it is in a mystical, profound way endowed by God
with what I will term here faculties of operation. These
faculties are found in the superior nature of the soul and
are termed the intellect, the memory, and the will. This
superior nature of the soul is the spiritual nature, as
opposed to the inferior nature of the soul which we have in
common with the animals, and where the sense appetites are
operative through the five senses of seeing, hearing,
smelling, touching, and tasting. These five senses are
considered as external senses since they are exposed to the
external reality of the world. It may be said that they are
the windows of the soul to the external reality of the
world. There are also four internal senses which supplement
these external senses. These are the memory (also a part of
the superior nature of the soul), common sense, the
imagination, and the evaluative sense which enables us to
pass judgment upon the goodness or the evil course of
action presented to us. With the first fall of our
ancestors Adam and Eve, imagination was one of the internal
senses of the soul most damagingly affected. This point is
critical, for the angelic spirits, the good spirits, or the
evil angelic spirits who fell completely from God's love
and grace work through the imagination or the sense, the
animal or lower, sensory faculties of the soul. The
intellect and will are inviolate to their attacks, although
they do coax and cajole them to sin from outside the soul
through the senses and the imagination. Thus, the intellect
(which is considered to be the noblest operative faculty of
the soul--it is called the eye of the soul with its pupil
being Faith) and the will are sacrosanct as regards the
influence of Angelic spirits (that is good or evil ones)
within the soul itself. The will nurtured by the
understanding transmitted to it is completely free as to
its selection of a course of action towards committing a
good or evil act. It is a most profound mystery, that
although the human soul has free will, yet in a way unknown
to us, God does move the will (always to the good) without
violating the freedom of the will to act.

Thus, in the biblical injunction of God, thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy
neighbor as thyself, the entire soul is emptied of all that
is not God, and the soul's full strength is directed to the
love of God above all. Thus, all of the senses of the
animal nature of the soul are detached from all that is not
God, or work for the glory of God solely; and all the lower
senses, and the operative faculties of the superior nature
of the soul are emptied of all that is not God, and are
directed solely to the love, honor, and greater glory of
God. Thus, the memory is emptied of all that is not God,
the intellect also, and the will, while at the same time
all these faculties are responsive to carrying out the
daily life activities required for normal living. I refer
the reader of this article at this point to the actual
"Collected Works" of St. John of the Cross where he
provides very detailed specific explanations of how all the
appetites and all the operative faculties of the soul are
completely detached from all that is not God, and the soul
(the bride) begins the journey towards the Bridegroom, its
God, in joy, hope, sorrow, and holy fear (relating to God
alone), to give herself to her Bridegroom, God ultimately,
hopefully in a "spiritual marriage" or "union of love"--as
St. John of the Cross expresses it so beautifully in both
prose and poetry.

A Caution

Before I proceed to discuss the second phase of the "dark
night of the soul," "The Journey in Faith," a few words of
St. John of the Cross are pertinent here. St. John of the
Cross points out that the "dark night of the soul" is
indeed filled with trials through which the soul must pass
for its purification, so that before it meets its God it
has what St. Thomas Aquinas describes in Latin as <nitor>--
a word not easily translated into English--which among
other possible translations means: a shining, lustrous
splendor of purity, beauty, and love which God would desire
to see in the soul as it appears before Him when it departs
from the body through death in this earthly life. St. John
of the Cross stresses that his spiritual direction,
although containing something valuable for spiritual advice
for all souls <is not for those who have merely a spiritual
sweet tooth.> He indicates in many places the horrors of
the sufferings the soul must endure throughout this
spiritual trial and testing encountered in the "dark
night," in order to enter a spiritual union of love with
God or the state of "spiritual marriage" with God--the
highest state or degree of love for God which is possible
for any person to achieve by the love and grace of God
before departing this earthly existence.

This brilliant spiritual so beautifully graced by God's
love points out that the soul can not arrive at the
spiritual marriage state of love with God of its own
volition, or efforts, and natural knowledge and spiritual
striving, no matter how hard it may attempt to do so, or
how hard it may work and pray at the effort, but that it is
only through the supernatural uplifting powers of God's
love and grace that this spiritual marriage or union of
love is achieved. He states candidly that God would desire
to bring more souls to the "spiritual marriage" between God
(the Bridegroom) and the soul (the bride), but that many
souls that he does invite do not accept the invitation
because of their spiritual disinclination to endure the
suffering necessary to achieve a pure heart filled with
God's love and grace--which as David, the great prophet-
king of God, states that a pure heart is--thus, loving God
with the full force of all its heart, mind (intellect), and
the full strength of the soul. He indicates, therefore,
that more souls who would be willing to carry but a sliver
of the Cross which our Saviour Jesus Christ carried in
suffering (throughout His entire life) could conquer the
world (the easiest to conquer through hope in Him); the
devil (the hardest to understand and therefore the most
formidable enemy conquered through unquestioning,
unflagging, unflinching Faith in God); and the flesh (the
most tenacious of the enemies of the soul for it wars
relentlessly against the spirit until our earthly
death).[1] St. John of the Cross explicitly states that
since souls differ from each other, the prayerful reader
and serious student, must exercise a prudent selection in
adapting to his own soul various forms of spiritual
direction explained and elaborated in great detail by this
eminently outstanding and remarkable Saint of God who was
also an excellent and superb spiritual director. He states
explicitly that there is something good as regards
spiritual direction in his works for all, but frankly
acknowledges that not everything in his works of spiritual
direction is applicable to all.

Midnight

I shall now proceed to a very brief discussion of the
midnight phase of the "dark night of the soul," the
"Journey of Faith," with the caution to the reader that in
this article I am merely focusing a spotlight upon the
highlights of the work of this remarkable spiritual
director.

The "Journey of Faith" of the soul, that is the midnight
phase of the entire spiritual dark night of the soul, is
one of complete darkness, and yet it is termed mystically
by St. John of the Cross to be a "Light Ray of Complete
Darkness." The soul in this stage becomes detached from all
things and progresses through pure Faith, that is, all its
appetites (except the involuntary normal appetites
necessary for daily living) are employed only for God and
His glory. The full strength of the very heart of the soul
is focused upon the invisible God, a hidden God, hidden
somewhere within the very deep recesses of the very heart
of the soul. He is hidden because there is nothing that
comes, or has come through our senses that tells us what
God is like. All that we observe throughout the universe
are mere traces which remind us of Him, mere faint
footprints left behind as evidence of His almighty creative
powers. Thus whatever we have perceived through our senses,
or will perceive, tells us only that God is their Creator.
Thus, our Faith tells us that He is our Creator, but it
does not tell us anything about what God is like in
reality, although through Faith we know that God is love.
All natural phenomena in the universe observed through the
senses are only a very pale reflection of God's creative
powers, mere traces or footprints, so to speak, which He
left behind of His creation in the inanimate world (rocks,
mountains, minerals, and so forth), the animate world of
plants and animal creatures, and His children, human
persons. Although we do not see them through Faith, we know
by His own Word in Holy Scripture of the existence of the
supra-human, not supernatural creatures, which he has
created such as our own Guardian Angel and various Angels
which act also as special Guardian Angels for certain
persons, nations, institutions, and so forth in this world.
The demonic spirits, that is, the fallen angels, the
devils, some of whom wander throughout the world seeking
the ruin of souls, are also supra-human and, of course,
invisible to us, attacking the soul through the senses and
the imagination, thereby attempting to entice the intellect
and the will of the soul to rebel against its Creator, our
Almighty God. Thus, the expression, God the Almighty,
indicates the reality of His supreme perfection. Among
these attributes of His perfection, to name but a few, are
perfect love, grace, beauty, simplicity, purity, truth,
wisdom, prudence, obedience, mercy, justice, goodness,
kindness, sweetness, generosity, fortitude, meekness,
power, perseverance, compassion, grandeur, glory, and His
ineffable or indescribably incomprehensible, eternal divine
essence. In regard to this last statement all that our
senses or our imagination can imagine is unlike Him, for
all of these observable phenomena have only a participatory
role in God's divine perfection. They contain only that
degree of perfection which God has assigned to their
specific natures, be they in the inanimate world, the
inanimate plant world, the world of his animal creatures,
the world of His children, human persons--or in the
invisible world of His supra-human Angelic spirits--
invisible to our senses except in those very rare and
extraordinary appearances ordained by God when they appear
in a form willed by Him alone. The appearance which they
assume is not related to any material substance or
composition whatever since they are pure spirits devoid of
all materiality. Although He is a hidden God, as stated
earlier, He is a hidden God to the soul, we know from Holy
Scripture and Revelations which followed that God is always
present in the soul by His grace and love, and is at the
same time omnipresent, that is, that there is nothing that
occurs anywhere that escapes His divine eye. God remains in
the soul <always>, no matter how hardened the soul may be
in sin. Thus, it is God alone Who knows in what state of
His grace and love each individual soul is in. No
individual soul has this knowledge, and therefore we work
out our salvation in fear and trembling by the grace and
love of God alone. To presume to have such knowledge would
be a contemptuous prideful insult of self-love or self-
esteem before God Who alone possesses such omniscience, or
perfect knowledge.

Thus, in the "Journey of Faith" the soul is suspended
literally between earth and heaven, for as it becomes
detached from all of the things that bind it to this earth
which appertain to the world, the flesh, or the devil, the
very heart of its soul is reaching out to God unattached to
all that is not of God. Because the greatest enemy of
Satan, or the devil, is Faith, the soul, by the grace and
love of God, wages a horrible, relentless war against the
world, the flesh, and the devil; the devil, Satan,
attacking the soul through the senses and the imagination
at the same time, coaxes and cajoles the intellect and the
will to rebel against God. While Satan is the most
difficult enemy of the soul to defeat because he is so
difficult to understand, it must also be understood very
clearly that our very own soul itself is our own worst
enemy, for much of our sinning and rebelling against our
God has nothing to do very frequently with the temptations
which Satan brings to us. Satan does employ the world and
the flesh in the war he wages against the soul which loves
God, for he hates God, and the soul which loves God, with
an indescribable hatred. These attacks which originate from
the sin in the very heart of our soul, and form the
temptations of Satan, cannot be warded off unless the soul
is, literally, enclosed in the fortress of Jesus Christ;
for by its own natural powers without the grace and love of
Jesus Christ the soul can not stand up against the fierce
assaults directed against it. The "Journey in Faith" is a
"Light Ray of Darkness," its God that it knows--and
inspired by His love and grace--relentlessly seeks is a
"Hidden God," despite the soul's knowledge that it believes
He is in the soul by His grace and love, and is present
actually by the power of His omnipresence here beside us;
while at the same time He is in His heaven completely
unknown to us as to His nature or essence, since His nature
or essence cannot be grasped by any natural or supernatural
powers which He our Creator has endowed us with. He is
complete darkness to the soul-and yet Ho is closer to us in
our soul than we are to ourselves--but He remains always a
hidden God. Thus, in the constant purification of the soul
by Jesus Christ, He remains hidden and elusive as the soul
suffers all kinds of indescribable trials, tests, and
tribulations as it longs to find Him and literally cries
out in agonizing pain, torment, and anguish: Where you are
hidden my God, the Bridegroom of my soul?

At this point, I must refer the reader to read prayerfully
and study under the guidance of God, the Holy Spirit, this
"Journey in Faith", the "Midnight" of the soul expressed by
St. John of the Cross so eloquently, clearly, and with such
beautiful lyrical poetry and soaring majestic prose. St.
John of the Cross, it can be seen--and in fact on occasions
of rare grandeur, so states himself--pleads with the Holy
Spirit to guide his hand as he attempts to sharpen the
clarity of some particularly soaring majestic thought which
he wishes to convey to the reader. It is clear that St.
John of the Cross described his soul's "Dark Night of the
Soul" which culminated in the "spiritual marriage" or the
"Spiritual union of love," after he by the grace and love
of God had already climbed to the apex of that mystical
theological state of love between his soul (the bride) and
God (the Bridegroom). It is from this spiritual height of
spiritual development that his observations and his keen
spiritual insights are presented. He warns again and again
of how many souls attempting to climb to this summit of
love with God backslide again and again for a variety of
reasons. He expounds on these reasons with eloquent
clarity, pointing out that among the chief obstacles are
the soul's rebellions itself in which the inferior natures
of the soul (the sensory) wages a relentless war against
the superior nature of the soul (the spiritual). It (the
inferior nature of the soul) seeks to covet the superior
nature of the soul, or possess it, and prevent it from
entering the spiritual union of love with God and
consummate the "spiritual marriage" with God here upon
earth before the soul departs from the body. In attempting
to understand the spiritual direction which St. John of the
Cross is so graciously providing as drawn from his own
life, it is very important to understand his exposition of
the soul as being a <suppositum,> that is a pure spiritual
entity with an inferior and superior nature possessed of
the different operative faculties specified earlier in this
article. In his consideration for the prayerful reader, he
states that at first there will be many difficulties in
understanding the spiritual directions he is presenting,
but with words of encouragement states that after several
readings the points of spiritual direction he is making
will become clear to the faithful reader of his works who
perseveres.

A second formidable enemy is the devil himself, and St.
John of the Cross explains why throughout his works in
extensive detail. Again in very extensive detail this
masterful, saintly spiritual director describes how another
formidable enemy, or enemies, are various spiritual
directors themselves that the poor beleaguered soul
consults as it passes through its "Dark Night of the Soul"
in quest of its "hidden God." This particular section of
the Saint's work in which he treats of the subject of
spiritual directors, good, bad, and indifferent, is a
classic work in itself, and should be must reading for all
clergy and laity who bear a responsibility for the
spiritual direction of others, be they in the Church, in
the home, or in the outside world community, and in other
areas of life.

Few Go The Distance

St. John of the Cross makes the very cogent observation
that God would desire with His Sacred Heart full of love
that more of His children would enter the "spiritual
marriage" or "spiritual union of love" with Him before they
depart from this earth, but for a variety of reasons they
do not do so. He points out as has been indicated earlier
in this article that many simply do not wish to undergo the
necessary suffering which will take place in the pursuance
of the achievement of this "spiritual marriage" of the
bride (the soul) with God (the Bridegroom). Also, that
many, many souls drawing so near to such a union of love
with God, do not succeed in completely detaching themselves
from all that is not God, that is anything relating to the
world, the flesh, or the devil. He explains in a graphic
analogy that they are like birds who could soar to the
heavens-just as the soul could to God--but they are held
back as if by a tiny thread from the flight, a thread, be
it ever so thin, which still is sufficient to keep them
from flying from their perch of attachment to anything
whatsoever that is not God. He also, as has been repeated,
earlier, indicates clearly that the involuntary appetites
in themselves are not necessarily an impediment to the
achievement by the grace and love of God of the "spiritual
marriage" with God. It is only when the involuntary
appetites become transformed into voluntary ones that they
become obstacles to such a "union of love" with God.

St. John points out in a statement fraught with profound
mystical meaning (it warrants repetition) that there are
souls who fervently desire to enter into the "spiritual
union of love" with God while they are still on this earth,
but for reasons known to God alone, as he states, God does
not bring them to his highest state of bliss in a love of
God possible here upon this earth before our soul departs
from it. He does not elaborate upon this point of spiritual
direction, and it apparently has nothing to do with those
whom God would welcome and embrace in a "spiritual
marriage" of love with Him, but, rather because such
persons do not wish to suffer in imitation of His
indescribable, incomprehensible suffering which He endured
throughout His entire life.

Before I proceed to explain briefly the third part of the
"Dark Night of the Soul" in its quest--through the grace
and love of God--of the "spiritual marriage" "union of
love" with God, I wish to present here St. John of the
Cross' dire warning to be taken <very seriously indeed by
each individual soul> of those who would wish to give the
full strength of their heart, mind, soul, and body, or
expressed in another way the very depths of the heart of
their soul, to God. His reference is to King Solomon whom
God in Holy Scripture refers to as the wisest of men that
ever lived or ever will live--his wisdom was so great. And
yet St. John of the Cross strongly implies that this wisest
of men in the final end may have abandoned God. He points
out that in his old age the wise King Solomon paid
adoration to mere silver and gold statuettes which were
brought to him by a number of his many wives. Of course, it
is only God who knows the final truth as to whose soul has
turned away from Him irrevocably. However, St. John of the
Cross, a profound interpreter of Holy Scripture adds two
observations regarding King Solomon which makes us tremble
in holy (not servile) fear as we strive, by the grace and
love of God, to work out our salvation in this vale of
tears upon this earthly globe of deadly spiritual warfare.
For those persons who scoff at the existence of the devil
and his powers for doing evil here upon this earth, St.
John of the Cross, a masterful, powerful scholar and
interpreter of Holy Scripture provides an extremely
extensive and detailed variety of profound insights into
the nefarious, diabolic wiles and evil stratagems directed
against each soul in the devil's indescribably violent
hatred of God, his Creator (before his fall) following
after his calamitous and cataclysmic lightning fall through
pride and envy into hell.

Toward Daybreak

Now I wish to address the third part of the "Dark Night of
the Soul," that is "The Communications of God to the Soul,"
that twilight period of night when the darkness is
dissipating and twilight begins to appear, the daybreak. In
this phase of the entire "Dark Night of the Soul" the soul
enters the highest degree of contemplation of God that will
be possible to it in this world. Thus, in such
contemplation--unlike in meditation--the soul becomes
passive in receiving communications from God, it becomes a
listener to God's communications, rather than raising the
very heart of its soul to God in a variety of ways and
prayers. The soul in this state of communications from God
appears to be doing nothing in prayer despite the fact that
it is actually praying to God in some form or another. It
hears nothing from God that it can perceive, it simply is
there in God's presence in a contemplation of silence, and
yet the soul knows without being able to describe this
contemplation--in fact, were it to call it by name it would
describe it as an "I don't know what it is." Thus, for
example, in contemplation of the sufferings of our Saviour,
Jesus Christ, not only during the horrible heart-rending
violent assaults upon Jesus Christ in the terrible "Agony
in the Garden," involving indescribably excruciating mental
torture when blood and perspiration poured out through the
pores of His body; or the "Scourging or Brutalization at
the Pillar" when no part of his body appeared to be spared
from the relentless flogging, or cutting even into the
bone; or the profound indescribable spiritual suffering of
soul endured during the "Crowning with Thorns" when the
Creator of all that is good throughout the universe, Whom
the universe can not hold, but which He holds in the palms
of His own incomprehensibly beautiful, perfect Divine Hands
was crowned in mockery and made sport of by His very own
children whom He had come to save; and the "Carrying of the
Cross" where His human endurance was tested beyond all
human endurance to which any other human being has ever
been, or will be subjected to--to such an extent that
Angels comforted Him to fortify Him on His way to the
Crucifixion, but without taking away from his savagely
brutalized body any of the full thrust of suffering He was
enduring; to the final agony of the Crucifixion when Jesus
Christ was literally torn apart in body and affixed to His
cross, a tree not made to fit his body against, but rather
to be stretched on to and nailed down upon crying out to
His Father for help as if his Father had abandoned Him, as
He was dying and giving up His spirit to His Father for all
of us His children. Thus, in such contemplation of the
sufferings of Jesus Christ, our Saviour in His "Passion," a
horrible climax to a life of 33 years, a life which was
actually one of suffering throughout--incomprehensible to
us from Holy Scripture itself--the soul passively receives
from God communications without knowing what it is
receiving, as it just passively listens while praying or
not actually engaging in any form of prayer. St. John of
the Cross explicitly indicates that the soul in such
contemplation does not in any way, of its own accord or
volition, enter upon this state of supreme contemplation of
God possible upon this earth; but that rather it is only
God that brings the soul into such a stage of
contemplation. Nor does the soul ask of God to be brought
to this high form of contemplation; instead it waits hoping
that God will do so. If God does bring it to this state of
contemplation, during the "Daybreak" or "Twilight" phase of
the "Dark Night of the Soul," the soul may still go back
and forth in meditative practices where it is prayerfully
speaking to God in a variety of forms of prayer throughout
the day, as opposed to the highest form of contemplation
where all the communications come to the soul from God, the
soul remaining passive throughout. It is thus that the soul
indicates that the communications of God to it are so
sublime, that while it is receiving these communications,
the soul can not describe to anyone what transformations
the soul is undergoing. It is only after undergoing this
profound spiritual experience, by the grace and love of God
alone, when a soul has ultimately reached the state of the
"spiritual marriage" with God, or the "spiritual union of
love" with God--that is, the state, when the world, the
flesh, and the devil have been defeated, and the full
strength of the soul with a heart filled with God's love
and grace to its full capacity is given to God, that the
soul can look back, as St. John of the Cross did, and
attempt to describe under the guiding Hand of the Holy
Spirit, what this "I don't know what experience" it went
through actually meant to it as it was going through such a
spiritual transformation. It is very soon after reaching
this state of "spiritual marriage" with God that the soul
departs from the body and goes to the glory God to see Him.

A Master

St. John of the Cross as a spiritual director, so amazingly
graced by God's love was, at the tender age of about 25
selected by another remarkably great Saint, Saint Teresa of
Avila, who was about 52 years of age when she took him to
be her spiritual director, and recommended him in laudatory
terms to other aspirants in the religious community who
aspired to lift their hearts up to God in love. He had an
amazingly profound knowledge of Holy Scripture, and
combined such knowledge to guide the soul in its terrible
war of ordeal of the "Dark Night of the Soul" against its
three greatest enemies: the world, the flesh, and the
devil. He provides masterful expositions on the diabolic
stratagems of the devil used to deceive and mislead the
soul on its journey to God. It must be admitted that St.
John of the Cross is not easy reading, but must be
prayerfully studied, read and reread under the constant
guidance of God, the Holy Spirit.

It needs to be pointed out again, as I have stated earlier,
that St. John of the Cross himself quite candidly, honestly
with great humility, stated that his work was not for those
who simply had a "mere spiritual sweet tooth"; but did not
wish to get down to the very "nitty-gritty" of the
essential fundamentals of growth in the spiritual life
aimed at the love of God alone above all. He points out as
stated earlier above also, that because souls are so
varied, and that one may differ from another by as much as
50 percent, that not everything in his collected works is
applicable to each individual soul, but that each soul will
find something in his works which it can profitably use as
a spiritual guide. He is, in my mind, truly a spiritual
director for all times, and one of especially inestimable
value in today's troubled times which permeate the entire
world. The Catholic Church itself in 1926, entitling St.
John of the Cross as a Mystical Doctor of Theology,
emphasized his being a profoundly wise spiritual director
for these our troubled times of today when good spiritual
direction is so badly needed.

ENDNOTE

1. Flesh: Overcome by the virtue of love.

Taken from the "Carmelite Digest" Autumn 1989. "Carmelite
Digest, P.O. Box 3180, San Jose, CA 95156.

             ************************

"Spiritual Direction and Spiritual Directors: St. Francis de Sales, St. Teresa of Avila, Thomas a Kempis, St. John of the Cross" by Joseph P. Kozlowski, is scheduled to be published in late 1996 or early Spring 1997 by: Queenship Publishing Company, P.O. Box 42028, Santa Barbara, CA 93140-2028.

Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN

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