A Book Review… A Journey Of Faith
By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Donal Anthony Foley reviews Union with God According to St. John of the Cross, by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, Sophia Institute Press, 192 pages, paperback and Kindle. Visit sophiainstitute.com or call 800-888-9344.
Union with God According to St. John of the Cross is for all those who are sincerely seeking God, and it aims to give its readers an idea of what this union actually means so they will have a sufficient incentive to set out on the journey of faith which will lead to that union.
This book is, then, a guide to living the life of detachment, renunciation, and openness to the Holy Spirit which is required in order to reach such a sublime spiritual goal.
St. John of the Cross lived in sixteenth-century Spain and worked with St. Teresa of Avila to reform the Carmelite Order. His teachings have been very influential, and Pope Pius XI made him a doctor of the Church in 1926.
The author, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, was a Belgian Carmelite priest who held important positions in the order in the first half of the twentieth century. He laid stress on the fact that the teaching of St. John of the Cross can be applied to all Christians, and not just religious or priests. This is because it does not require a special state of life, but only a correct disposition of will, that is, a refusal to accept spiritual mediocrity and seek rather to live a life of generous renunciation.
And in fact all Catholics are called to sanctity — it is not meant to be something just for a select few. All are called to live a contemplative life which seeks intimacy with God — and this was also the teaching of St. Teresa.
Fr. Gabriel points to the two traditional means to this goal as being prayer and mortification or self-renunciation. The latter has the goal of detaching the soul from created things, thus allowing the individual to come closer to God in prayer and be filled with His gifts and graces. As the author says, “It is divine grace that makes us saints: It unites us to God, and with its growth, it tends to make us live in God and God in us.”
The author acknowledges that the idea of living such a mortified life can be off-putting, but counters by saying that if we look at St. John’s teaching in his work the Spiritual Canticle, we can see that his concern there is to focus on the glorious goal of true intimacy with God. Through Baptism, we already have an inbuilt tendency toward this union, and it is essentially a case of clearing away the obstacles to such a union which will lead us toward true holiness.
When we are in a state of grace, God lives in our souls, in what is known as the divine indwelling. But this is a hidden presence, and it is only by avoiding superficial concerns and living a truly interior life that we can enter into a genuine state of communication with Him. For lay people, this means living in a state of detachment from created things.
But the author cautions that we need to be careful about this point: “It is not that God does not want us to love creatures, on the contrary, He positively commands us to love them, but to love them in Him — namely, in conformity with His most holy will, in the measure established by Him.”
Unfortunately, however, if we are too attached to things, even quite trivial things, then it is impossible to be united to God in the way He wants, as St. John pointed out using the example of a tethered bird: “Whether the bird is tied with a rope or a thread, it cannot fly; obviously the thread is broken more easily that the rope, but as long as it be not effectively broken, the bird truly cannot fly.”
In other words, if your will is in conflict with the will of God even in a minor matter, then divine union is impeded. But the good news is that God will work with the person of good will, who genuinely wants to achieve holiness to smooth his path toward this goal. It will still be hard work, but with God’s help all things are possible.
According to St. John, ideally we should perform all our actions for the glory of God rather than for our own satisfaction, in line with St. Paul’s admonition, “Whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). But if that is not always possible, then at least we should try to not stop to enjoy the pleasure of those sensible perceptions we experience.
Fr. Gabriel comments on this point as follows: “Learn to pass over [these experiences], without stopping to enjoy them, raising the heart to God, rectifying the intention; and thus, the action will truly be directed to the glory of God.”
As regards prayer, St. John of the Cross was primarily thinking of mental prayer or meditation, with a view to that becoming contemplative prayer, in line with St. Teresa’s adage, “Prayer does not consist in thinking much, but in loving much,” such that prayer becomes a “loving conversation with the Lord.”
For the author, mental prayer is not meant to be a practice isolated from the rest of life — it should have an impact on the way we live, “introducing good, generous habits of practicing virtues and abnegation,” such that the real center of prayer becomes, “the exercise of the loving knowledge of God and conversation with Him, sustained by the affectionate gaze of the soul penetrated by love.”
The book also has chapters on aridity, the Prayer of Faith, hope and pure love, Jesus as our guide, the Dark Night, and finally, Transforming Union. These chapters essentially deal with the way in which the life of prayer deepens, and describe the various pitfalls to avoid if genuine progress is to be made. These include the danger of desiring visions and revelations which give an opening to the Devil to cause trouble.
Demanding But Rewarding
Despite the apparent simplicity of her “Little Way,” the most famous Carmelite of modern times, St. Therese of Lisieux, was a great devotee of the work of St. John of the Cross, and particularly cherished this maxim of his: “We obtain from God as much as we hope from Him.”
Fr. Gabriel stresses, too, that anyone who desires to reach perfect love must strive to do all their works well, and thus overcome any natural inertia and pettiness, and in particular focus on obtaining the love of Jesus by means of prayer, meditation, pious reading, and sacrifice.
He acknowledges, though, that it is more difficult for a layperson to do this than a religious because of all the distractions of life, and therefore the secular person “who wants to live an interior life must organize his life of mortification and prayer, constructing for himself a method, a norm of life, a daily routine,” while also imposing on himself definite renunciations and seeking to find a good spiritual director.
But it is necessary to realize that the way will be hard and that it is only when the person has passed through the “passive night of the spirit” — a type of purgatory that purges the soul of all imperfection — that it becomes capable of union with the divine.
This is not a difficult book in itself, and if it has a demanding message it is also a rewarding and uplifting one. It is an excellent guide for anyone seriously desiring to make spiritual progress.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people, and the third in the series is due to be published next year — details can be seen at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk.)