The Presence of God in the Soul according to s. John of the Cross
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St. Teresa of Avila speaks of God’s presence within us and its vital significance for prayer and the spiritual life. Indeed, discovering that God dwelt within her transformed her life completely.
Way of Perfection chapter 28,1ff
“Consider now what your Master says next: “Who art in the Heavens.” Do you suppose it matters little what Heaven is and where you must seek your most holy Father? I assure you that for minds which wander it is of great importance not only to have a right belief about this but to try to learn it by experience, for it is one of the best ways of concentrating the mind and effecting recollection in the soul.
You know that God is everywhere; and this is a great truth, for, of course, wherever the king is, or so they say, the court is too: that is to say, wherever God is, there is Heaven. No doubt you can believe that, in any place where His Majesty is, there is fulness of glory. Remember how Saint Augustine tells us about his seeking God in many places and eventually finding Him within himself.
Do you suppose it is of little importance that a soul which is often distracted should come to understand this truth and to find that, in order to speak to its Eternal Father and to take its delight in Him, it has no need to go to Heaven or to speak in a loud voice? However quietly we speak, He is so near that He will hear us: we need no wings to go in search of Him but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us. Nor need we feel strange in the presence of so kind a Guest; we must talk to Him very humbly, as we should to our father, ask Him for things as we should ask a father, tell Him our troubles, beg Him to put them right, and yet realize that we are not worthy to be called His children.
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If one prays in this way, the prayer may be only vocal, but the mind will be recollected much sooner; and this is a prayer which brings with it many blessings. It is called recollection because the soul collects together all the faculties and enters within itself to be with its God. Its Divine Master comes more speedily to teach it, and to grant it the Prayer of Quiet, than in any other way. For, hidden there within itself, it can think about the Passion, and picture the Son, and offer Him to the Father, without wearying the mind by going to seek Him on Mount Calvary, or in the Garden, or at the Column.”
To ground this fundamental truth of God’s presence within us, we present here (see below) key passages from the works of St. John of the Cross. While it is true that in St. Luke the Lord says that ‘the Kingdom of God is within you’ (“Nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21)), having more developed reflections on the subject from St. John of the Cross helps to clarify and strengthen this essential, practical, and necessary truth. After this, one can return to St. Teresa of Avila and study the Prayer of the Heart, particularly in chapters 26 to 31 of the Way of Perfection.”
Spiritual Canticle 11,2-5
““Reveal Your presence.”
2. To understand this clearly we must remember that there are three ways in which God is present in the soul. The first is His presence in essence, not in holy souls only, but in wretched and sinful souls as well, and also in all created things; for it is by this presence that He gives life and being, and were it once withdrawn all things would return to nothing. This presence never fails in the soul.
3. The second is His presence by grace, whereby He dwells in the soul, pleased and satisfied with it. This presence is not in all souls; for those who fall into mortal sin lose it, and no soul can know in a natural way whether it has it or not.
The third is His presence by spiritual affection. God is wont to show His presence in many devout souls in diverse ways, in refreshment, joy, and gladness; yet this, like the others, is all secret, for He does not show Himself as He is, because the condition of our mortal life does not admit of it. Thus this prayer of the soul may be understood of any one of them.
“Reveal Your presence.”
4. Inasmuch as it is certain that God is ever present in the soul, at least in the first way, the soul does not say, “Be present”; but, “Reveal and manifest Your hidden presence, whether natural, spiritual, or affective, in such a way that I may behold You in Your divine essence and beauty.” The soul prays Him that as He by His essential presence gives it its natural being, and perfects it by His presence of grace, so also He would glorify it by the manifestation of His glory. But as the soul is now loving God with fervent affections, the presence, for the revelation of which it prays the Beloved to manifest, is to be understood chiefly of the affective presence of the Beloved. Such is the nature of this presence that the soul felt there was an
infinite being hidden there, out of which God communicated to it certain obscure visions of His own divine beauty. Such was the effect of these visions that the soul longed and fainted away with the desire of that which is hidden in that presence.
5. This is in harmony with the experience of David, when he said: “My soul longs and faints for the courts of our Lord.” (Ps. 83:3) The soul now faints with desire of being absorbed in the Sovereign Good which it feels to be present and hidden; for though it is hidden, the soul is most profoundly conscious of the good and delight which are there. The soul is therefore attracted to this good with more violence than matter is to its center, and is unable to contain itself, by reason of the force of this attraction, from saying: “Reveal Your presence.”” (Living Flame of Love I,12 and III,24)
Ascent of Mount Carmel II,5,3
Therefore, in order to understand what this union is of which we are treating, it must be known that God dwells in all souls, even in that of the greatest sinner in the world, and that He is present there in substance. And this manner of union is always effected between God and all creatures, by which He preserves them in their being; so that if it were to fail them, they would at once be annihilated and would no longer exist.
Thus, when we speak of the union of the soul with God, it will not be of this substantial presence of God which is always effected in all creatures, but of the union and transformation of the soul in God which is not always effected, but is brought about only when there is a likeness of love. And, therefore, this will be called the union of likeness, just as the other is called essential or substantial union. The latter is natural; the former supernatural. It occurs when the two wills, namely that of the soul and that of God, are conformed in one, there being nothing in the one that is repugnant to the other. Thus, when the soul entirely removes from itself that which is repugnant and not conformed to the divine will, it will remain transformed in God through love.
Spiritual Canticle 1,5-7
This banquet, then, in which the Father delights, and this flower-strewn bed of the divine Word where He reposes, hidden from every mortal creature, is what the soul, the Bride, asks for here when she says: where hast Thou hidden Thyself, Beloved?
Now, it must be understood, in order to know how to find this Bridegroom—as far as is possible in this life—that the Word, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is essentially hidden in the inmost centre of the soul. And therefore the soul which, through union of love, is to find Him, must withdraw and hide itself from all created things, according to the will, and enter into a very great interior recollection within itself, conversing there with God in loving and affectionate communion, making no more account of all that is in the world than if it did not exist at all. This is why Saint Augustine cries out in his Soliloquies: “Lord, I did not find Thee without, because I sought Thee ill without, Thou who wast within” (Soliloquies, Ch. 31, PL 40, 888). God, then, is hidden in the soul, where the good contemplative must seek Him, saying: Where hast Thou hidden Thyself, Beloved, Thou who hast left me in groanings?
Spiritual Canticle 8,3
Next follows the verse: But how canst thou survive, O my life, not living where thou livest?
To understand this, it must be known that the soul lives more in that which it loves than in the body which it animates; for it does not have its life in the body—on the contrary, it is the soul that gives life to the body—and it has its life in the object of its love. But besides this life of love, by which the soul lives in that which it loves, it has naturally and fundamentally its life in God, as have all other created things, according to what Saint Paul says: “In ipso vivimus, movemur et sumus”; which comes to say: “In God we have our life, our movement, and our being” (Acts 17:28). And Saint John says: “Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat”; which means: “All that was made was life in God” (Jn 1:4).
And as the soul sees that it has its natural life in God through the being it has in Him, and also its spiritual life through the love with which it loves Him, it laments still remaining in bodily life, since this hinders it from truly living where it truly has its life by essence and by love (as we have said). The soul weighs this deeply here, because it suffers from two contraries: the natural life in the body and the spiritual life in God, which are contrary in themselves. The soul, living in both, must necessarily experience great torment: natural life is to it as a death, since it deprives it of the spiritual life in which it employs all its being, its life, and its operations, through love and affection.
When already, thou shouldst have
Died beneath the stroke of the arrows
As though it were saying: Besides what has been said, how is it that thou still remainest in the body, since the touches of love (which she here understands by the arrows) that thou receivest in thy heart from thy Beloved are sufficient of themselves to deprive thee of life?
Living Flame of Love I,12
“Now, the centre of the soul is God; and when it has reached it according to the full capacity of its being and as far as the strength of its operation and inclination allows, it will have reached the deepest and final centre that it has in God — which will be when, according to all its strength and capacity, it knows God, loves Him, and enjoys Him. But as long as it has not reached that point, that is, as long as this life lasts — during which the soul cannot reach God according to all its powers — even though it is in its centre, which is God, through the grace and communication that He has with it, yet, because the soul is not satisfied and still has strength and movement to go further, though it is in its centre, it is not yet at the deepest, since it can deepen further in God.
Moreover, it must be noted that the inclination, the strength, and the virtue which are in the soul to go to God are nothing other than love, because through love the soul unites with God; and thus, the more degrees of love the soul has, the further it enters into God and concentrates in Him. So that we can say the soul can have in God as many centres — one deeper than another — as it can have degrees of love for God; because the stronger the love, the more closely it unites, and this is the way we must understand what the Son of God said, that there were ‘many dwelling-places in the house of His Father’ (Jn 14:2).
Therefore, so that (as we have said) the soul may be in its centre, which is God, it suffices that it have one degree of love, because it unites with Him by grace with a single degree of love; that if it has two degrees, it will have entered further into its centre, and be united with God more closely; if it has three, it concentrates as three; if it reaches the final degree, the love of God will wound it to the deepest and innermost centre — which will transform and enlighten it as much as the power, faculty, and capacity of its being can allow, until it is brought to such a state that it resembles God. We see this in a pure and clear crystal, which is assailed by light: for the more degrees of light it receives, the more the light concentrates in it, and the more it remains luminous — indeed, because of the abundance of light it receives, it may come to the point that it seems to be nothing but light and that there is no difference between it and the light, because it is illuminated by the light as much as it is capable of, and this makes it resemble the light.
Hence I conclude: when, in this place, the soul says that the flame of love wounds it to the deepest centre it has, it is as if it says that the Holy Spirit wounds and invests all that it has of substance, strength, and virtue; what it says, not to give the impression that this occurs substantially and with as much perfection as in the beatific vision of God, which will be in the other life. Indeed, although the soul in this mortal life may reach as high a degree of perfection as it reaches here, it does not yet and cannot reach the perfect state of glory — although perhaps it may happen that God grants some similar grace incidentally — but it says it to give a sense of the abundance and richness of delight and glory that it feels in the Holy Spirit through this sort of communication. Now, these delights are all the greater and more tender the more effectively and substantially the soul is transformed and concentrated in God, which, being with all the perfection that the soul can attain in this life (although, as we have said, not as perfectly as in the other), it calls its deepest centre. It is indeed true that, as regards love, the soul may have the habit of charity as perfect in this life as in the other, but not its operation nor its fruit; although the fruit and operation of love take such growth in this state that it is very similar to that of the other; so that, as it seems to the soul that this is so, it dares to say what should only be said of the other life, namely: at the deepest centre of my soul.”
Living Flame of Love III,24
In this matter, it is very appropriate to note the difference between having God in oneself by grace alone and having Him also by union; because one is to love well, the other, to communicate oneself; and this difference is as great as that between betrothal and marriage. For in betrothal, there is nothing but a mutual yes and a single will of both parties, and the jewels and ornaments of the bride which are graciously given to her by her fiancé; but in marriage, there is in addition the communication and union of the persons. And although sometimes during betrothal the fiancé visits his bride and gives her presents (as we have said), yet there is no union of the persons — which is the end purpose of betrothal.