THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Mystical Prayer and Appetites

By Brother Joseph of Mary,

In our last conversation we learned that mystical prayer embraces the spiritual life and the parts of the soul involved in it. Today we continue with mystical prayer and its appetites.

Sensory Prayer is meditation upon sensory objects or ideas. Mystical Prayer occurs when one moves beyond sensory objects or ideas. It is difficult to improve on the words of St. John of the Cross in describing this subject. According to this saint, the aim of the spiritual life is the state of perfect union with God. This union is a “union of likeness”, not the essential union whereby God is always present in the soul. This spiritual union is produced by the soul’s habitual love of God, which makes the soul resemble God in all its activity – to the extent “the soul and God seem to be one”.

Fathers Rodriguez, OCD and Kavanaugh, OCD, illustrate very well the imagery St. John of the Cross uses to present this union which is the goal of mystical prayer: “to illustrate this union of likeness ( St. John of the Cross) adopts the example of the sun shining upon a window…

• God (compared to the sun) is ever present in the soul (compared to the window) communicating and preserving its natural being, just as the sun shines on the window.
• When the window is wholly smeared with dirt, the sun does not illumine it, as it does when the window is unstained. Likewise a soul utterly smeared with inordinate affection for creatures is unprepared to receive the communication of God’s supernatural being.
• In the measure that the window is clean, the sun illumines it; as the soul, through love, wipes away everything not conformed to the Divine Will, God communicates Himself supernaturally, or through grace.
• When the window is entirely clean, the sunlight so illumines it that it appears to be light. Yet regardless of its total resemblance to the light, the window in its nature remains distinct from the nature of the sunlight. Similarly, when the soul in its activity is completely purified of everything unlike God, when it is entirely conformed with God’s will through love, God will so communicate His supernatural being, that is, will be like God and seem to be God, yet in its nature it will be as distinct from God as before. A soul that has reached such perfect conformity and likeness has attained the high state of perfection, union with God, or transformation in God.

From the standpoint of the soul, the comparison is basically a negative: that the divine light may transform it, the soul must purify itself. ‘To love’, declares the saint, ‘is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God’.” (Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Fr. Rodriguez, OCD and Fr. Kavanaugh, OCD, pg. 26).

From the above it is easy to see that conformity to God’s will is the ultimate goal in the spiritual life. Nothing in this spiritual life should lead you away from God’s will. Therefore, family life, having its origin in the community of the Trinity and perfected within the Church through the sacraments, and particularly where available the sacrament of Matrimony, is totally compatible with perfection and union with God. Joseph and Mary are sterling examples of this.

Detachment and mortification of the appetites should never lead one to an abandonment of the duties of a particular state of life, particularly the duties of married life and family. Also, with maternal objects, the mere lack of things will not divest a soul of its appetites if it craves these things. It is love that will free the soul for God.

“When Charity is perfect, all the appetites of the sensory and spiritual part of the soul ‘move in and through love’… When all a man’s activity lies under the rule of charity, the use of creatures is not motivated by the search for personal satisfaction, but solely by this supernatural love which in its benevolence toward God seeks only His honor and glory in the use of things”… (Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Fr. Rodriguez, OCD and Fr. Kavanaugh, OCD, pg. 50).

The discussion we are having is a difficult one. Consider for a moment that all one need to do is simply develop an affection for God that rivals the soul’s deepest affection for that which is not God. This affection, once developed, will not permit a soul to abandon God’s will as it relates to its spouse or children or family or country, but indeed will perfect and rightly order these lesser subordinate affections. That is all that God is trying to accomplish in order to communicate Himself through mystical prayer.

Because in beginners this affection is absent, “the beginner, unable to be occupied in the obscure, general, loving knowledge which is communicated through faith, must employ the remote means to God, which is meditation. He must reflect upon particular ideas and images for the purpose of acquiring some knowledge and love of God. In the initial stages of the spiritual life, the soul is still attached to the senses and is unable to advance without their support. God respects this weakness; it is by means of the senses that He draws beginners to Himself. The holy images formed in meditation gradually replace worldly thoughts and assist the beginner in directing his affection to a spiritual object.” (Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Fr. Rodriguez, OCD and Fr. Kavanaugh, OCD, pg. 52).

Here in a general way we have discussed how a soul with appetites for that which is unlike God, must replace them with an appetite for God. That in achieving this, the soul need not abandon duties of life, particularly the duties each sacrament extends to the recipient, and with the sacrament of Matrimony, the duty to family is consistent with detachment and purification. The imagery of the sun and window is introduced to assist with understanding this process. The reference to meditation as the remote means to God will orient and assist the soul to not seek after sensory satisfaction in the spiritual life, such as visions and dreams. The lofty mystical doctor, St. John of the Cross, considers such mystical phenomena as secondary channels of communications forced upon God by our fallen nature, which without purification is unable to receive Him as He is, through pure faith. When we consider this teaching with the fact that God chose to communicate with Mary and Joseph through such remote means, as dreams and visions, how much more their humility stands out here, two perfect lovers of God were required, due to the imperfections of the human race, to communicate with God remotely when they by definition, having the summit of perfection, could communicate with God substantially through pure faith. It is similar to your spouse, in whose presence you stand, sending a messenger to kiss you, and to tell you that you are loved. What supreme act of humility for our holy parents to communicate with God in such unnecessarily lowly fashion, all for our sake.

This inversion of phenomena is not unknown to even Christ, their Son, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus for our sake. It is a Christ who is all-knowing and all-powerful that stands before the tomb and cries. Why would He cry? He weeps at a time He possesses the knowledge that He has the power to raise Lazarus and, in fact, will raise Lazarus from the dead, so He cannot by crying over the momentary absence of Lazarus. St. John of the Cross may say He weeps over the gravity of the situation, because He must appeal to the lowly senses in order to prepare these people for more substantial matters of faith, that being He is the Son of God. He must also do this in a manner that re-exposes Lazarus to the death of this world where his soul once again is exposed to dangers it had been isolated from beyond the grave.

There are three unions with God: the essential union of God in all that exists, the union of grace with the elect, and the union of affection for the perfect. Here we discussed this union of affection God can have with our soul through mystical prayer. “We are not writing on pleasing and delightful themes addressed to the kind of spiritual people who like to approach God along sweet and satisfying paths. We are presenting a substantial and solid doctrine for all those who desire to reach this nakedness of spirit” (Prologue of the Ascent, 8, St. John of the Cross).

Next time we will discuss these paths that lead to this nakedness of spirit where God can be found to communicate Himself to the soul in mystical prayer.