Question: Why did God wait until the time of John of the Cross to reveal to us, to the Church, the fact that not to feel consolation could be an advancement in grace and not necessarily a sign of God’s disapproval? (see video n° I,26 of the Course on St. John of the Cross, from minute 27:15)

The short answer

“Yes and no. We can say that God waited”.

– On the one hand, we cannot say that He waited to give us an essential doctrine regarding our salvation. From day one He gave us the entire Doctrine needed for our salvation. Refer to the New Testament teaching on God as spirit, which shows that the only way to reach Him is by the theological acts of Faith, Hope, Love, and also refer to the early Living Spiritual Tradition. In this sense we cannot say that we were deprived of an essential teaching for our salvation.

– On the other hand, we can say that He gave us more of an explanation at a certain point in time, namely, an explanation of the fullness that was given to us implicitly from day one. In this sense, we can say that yes, God waited and gave us St. John of the Cross and inspired him to address the subject “ex professo” and teach us this important matter in a clearer (more explicit) way.

Note: “Revelation” ends with the death of the last Apostle. “Development” of Christian Doctrine starts from that moment onwards, and it is a development of the understanding of that same faith which is full from day one. Development is given because of a need that manifests itself in a stronger way at a certain point in history to discern a true from a false development occurring at a certain time in the history of the Church.

The long answer

First, I would like to distinguish many subsidiary questions inherent in the above question. I think that by answering these subsidiary questions individually, one will have a clearer understanding of the answer to the main question.

Possible subsidiary questions are as follows:

1- The first question is essentially about the act of faith and the life of faith: is receiving a perception or a consolation from God an intrinsic part of a fervent Christian life? Of a spiritual life? Do we, in other words, perceive the Grace of God at all times?

2- Is the working of the Grace of God the same at all stages of spiritual growth ?

3- Since discernment is given from day one, has it always been understood the way St. John of the Cross understood it? What about his contemporaries? What about last century?

4- What is the anthropology offered by St. John of the Cross to explain the action of the Grace of God in us?

5- Does our anthropology evolve under the purgative and transformative action of the Grace of God?

6- Regarding the advanced stages of spiritual life, what do practitioners “feel” like and why? Is what a beginner in spiritual life “feels” or experiences comparable to what a proficient “feels”?

7- Does one receive a consolation when he or she puts into practice Jesus’ Word, that is, like in Lectio Divina? Doesn’t the grace of God give a deep sense of peace, namely, something that can be perceived? Spiritual healing usually procures some consolation. So, what is the status of these consolations?

8- Because of the existence of the Development of Christian Doctrine, what are the new needs in society, in the Church, that manifested themselves during the 16th Century so that God had to send St. John of the Cross to offer us a greater explanation and clear discernment on issues such as: the status of consolation; the supernatural anthropology (the distinction between spirit and soul); the different ways the Grace of God works in us; the different phases; God’s apparently tough stance (absence of God, greater perception of our sinful condition,…) occurring at deeper spiritual levels?

9- Does the fact that God sent us a teaching like the one imparted by St. John of the Cross mean, that the Church has immediately integrated it into its teachings? Is it universally known and totally integrated today?

Answers to the subsidiary questions:

1- The first question is essentially about the act of faith and the life of faith: is receiving a perception or a consolation from God an intrinsic part of a fervent Christian life? Of a spiritual life? Do we in other words perceive the Grace of God at all times?

The answer is clearly no. Receiving the Grace of God does not imply feeling it. “God is spirit” says the Lord to the Samaritan woman (John 4). He also invites Mary Magdalen to stop touching Him (John 20). He finally exhorts Thomas the Apostle not to lean on perceived things but to make the act of faith (John 20). In other words, it is only on the grace of God that we can rely in order to reach God: “the flesh is of no use” says the Lord. St Paul explains that it is the Holy Spirit who comes and joins our spirit in order to pray and worship with ineffable yearnings (Rom 8:26): “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”

Hence, in 1 Cor. 14:1-25 St. Paul addresses the issue of praising the Lord with tongues. It is an opportunity for him to show us that what occurs in our spirit is one thing and what occurs in our mind is something else. It is a difficult passage, but clear enough for those who have a clear anthropology.

It follows, then, that we can say that God is spirit and therefore whoever wants to deal directly with Him needs the Holy Spirit and Christ the Truth. “God is Spirit, and it behoves those worshiping Him to worship in Spirit and Truth.” (John 4:24) And again, because “no one knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God.” (1 Cor 2:11) However, it is the Holy Spirit who works in us, and who works essentially in our spirit.  It is in our spirit, the eye of our soul, or the “noûs” (in Greek) that He works: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit” (Rm 8:16).

Consider, now, that the correct anthropology that emerges from the New Testament is one that includes: body, soul and spirit. But why not only body and soul? Significantly because this covers all the conscious part of our being. Yet there is still something in us that is deep enough to be directly dealt with by the Uncreated God, the Uncreated Holy Spirit, and being deep in us it is beyond our perception.

This is why Faith is the gateway to Christian Life. God being Spirit, not flesh, has the following as a consequence: “without faith, it is impossible to please Him”… “it behoves the one drawing near to God to believe that He exists”. This is why the Lord insisted that blessed be the one who, having seen all the signs, who having seen Jesus of Nazareth, believed in his divinity. And in doing so, they received God’s Life, the Holy Spirit. (John 20,29-31)

The faculties of our soul and of our body are too confined and can only receive created beings. However, God is spirit, and therefore it is not with the “flesh” that we worship Him and Love Him.

2- Is the working of the Grace of God the same at all stages of spiritual growth ?

The working of the Grace of God in us, the working of the Holy Spirit in us, follows a clear goal: to realise our Union with Christ. Since our spirit is “half dead” (Luke 10:30), it needs purification, restoration, vivification, transformation. Our spirit is re-formed into the likeness of God, lost with original sin and damaged after baptism because of our sins. Our soul is also re-formed by the action of the Holy Spirit. Our mind is purified, day after day, as are our will and our memory.

Initially, the spirit being “half dead” tends to lean on the soul, trying to find some life, while its life is God and God only. The spirit is seriously deformed by our love for creatures, shrinking back to creature form instead of growing in the Likeness of the Uncreated God. Slowly, grace upon grace, our spirit starts to come back to divine Life.

These changes draw him towards God more and more. Some powerful graces now have the ability to absorb and immerse him in God. But, since spirit and soul at this juncture are still in reformation stage (purification and transformation), they are as yet inextricably united. This makes the effects of many graces palpable to the soul, therefore perceived. However, more to the point, the fundamental law does not change: the deep action of the Uncreated Grace works directly in the depths of our spirit and is by definition not palpable.

One final point to help us understand what is meant by the distinction between soul and spirit, and as a consequence the distinction between the main action of the Uncreated Grace in our spirit and some possible repercussions, or created echoes of it in the soul, one can be clearly seen in what occurs during the reception of Communion at Mass. In Holy Communion one receives the Uncreated Nature of Christ, the very Nature of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, do we feel it? Often what we tend to feel is recollected and the intuition that a direct communication between us and the Lord has opened up and is possible. But, apart from this we do not perceive, feel or see the very Divinity of Christ received. This is a simple demonstration of the fact that there is a deep area in us (the spirit) capable of dealing directly with Jesus’ Divinity, and that this work is not perceived by the soul-body.

3- Since discernment is given from day one, has it always been understood the way St. John of the Cross understood it? What about his contemporaries? What about last century?

Unfortunately, because of human weakness we have the tendency to project the means of the flesh on to the means of the Spirit. God’s means, by contrast, are different. But we often will find people waiting for signs and consolations to continue their journey here on earth, which is supposed to be led by Faith.

Many even go further in this perverse twist of who God is and what his Grace is, and how we need to deal with Him, by incorrectly assuming that “consolations” mean that God is acting in us, that they are the proof of this, and that the absence of “consolations” means that we are failing to do God’s will, or even that we are doing something wrong, for example, like being lazy in spiritual life, or lukewarm in our behaviour. The harm done is incalculable especially when this opinion is attributed to the teaching of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. This is twisting his teaching regarding a very specific way of discerning the action of God in an equally particular case, namely, practising the “Exercises” in order to reach “election” as he puts it.

4- What is the anthropology offered by St. John of the Cross to explain the action of the Grace of God in us?

The anthropology followed by St. John of the Cross is not an invention of his. He is following that of St. Paul, used also by St. Thomas Aquinas, where the latter uses the Latin word “mens” instead of referring to it as our human “spirit”.

St. John of the Cross, then, is merely more incisive in his statements and in the discernments he makes.   But the core of what he says is present elsewhere as shown above. What is undeniable, though, is that the clear distinction between the capacity of our spirit and the one of the soul displays immeasurably more power and development in his writings. For him, our spirit only can participate directly in the Divine Life of God, in God’s workings. These workings encompass the two operations of the Trinity, that is, first, the Father begetting his Son, and secondly, the Father and the Son spirating the Holy Spirit by loving each other. For him the spirit is still rational, it is still part of the soul, it is mind, will, and memory, but the spirit leans towards being receptive to the direct action of God. For him the soul by definition is not capable of entering into direct contact with the Uncreated God in our depths. Therefore, if, on the one hand, what occurs in the spirit is a direct, immediate, personal dealing with the Uncreated very nature of God, what occurs in the soul, on the other hand is certainly a created grace, not the one received in the spirit. He even has the extreme audacity to state that even in the future life, after death, this does not change. Even if the soul will see God’s Glory, it is still not the uncreated nature of God, – that only the spirit can see or deal with directly. Thus, in this sense we can say that our spirit when formed, purified, transformed and adorned by the Holy Spirit, can be said to “see God”: “blessed the pure in heart for they will see God” (Mt. 5)

This immense insistence, clarification and development is a fundamental tool of discernment. He will use it during the changes that occur when God increases the power of his purification, that is, when one enters in deep contemplation, namely, in the Dark Night, to show that paradoxically what is felt is the opposite of what is really happening in our spirit. The splashes of dirt and sinfulness that the Holy Spirit throws in the “face” of the soul, give the soul a renewed, more radical perception of its weakness, sinfulness, utter nothingness. The paradox is here: in the spirit. In fact, there is a powerful increase in the direct action of the grace of God. Hence, if nobody explains this to the one undergoing this, the person goes into a very deep state of distress.

As we can see, his anthropology and his understanding of how the Holy Spirit (the Grace of God) works in us, allows him to explain with precision this apparent (only apparent) change in the way God deals with the human being.

5- Does our anthropology evolve under the purgative and transformative action of the Grace of God?

As mentioned above, yes, there are changes that occur since the spirit is being purified and trans-formed, namely, its form, its likeness is changing, conforming increasingly to the likeness of God. Who can understand what this means?! The spirit is undergoing a true growth and re-birth. There are changes. For the union of God, the spirit will be separated, so to speak, from its early closeness to the soul. However, a veil, so to speak, will continue to exist between the spirit and the soul. Experience-wise the change occurs but it is very difficult to describe. And if one does not have a clear anthropology of this new state, one will be unable to offer an adequate explanation of what is occurring. St. Teresa of Avila speaks for the first time about the spirit in the Seventh Mansion of her Interior Castle. She speaks from experience, unlike St. John of the Cross, and states that there is a difference between the spirit and the soul but that she cannot explain it to her readers. She then uses two images to help the reader understand but laughs at them because the reality is different and more subtle.

One has to add that this figurative veil between the soul and the spirit of the now united person with the Lord, is key to understanding at least two things:

i- how the Lord, in his human nature, endured his deepest sufferings during his Holy Passion while, in fact, perfectly contemplating in his spirit his own divinity. St. Thomas Aquinas explained this. However, today’s theologians, by contrast, fail to understand it. It is as if the great progress in psychology and psychoanalysis goes against it.

ii- how St. Therese of the Child Jesus suffered during her trial and it was not a purification as many state but rather a participation into the Lord’s Passion, undergone in the same manner He suffered it in his human nature.

6- Regarding the advanced stages of spiritual life what do practitioners “feel” like and why?  Is what a beginner in spiritual life “feels” or experiences comparable to what a proficient “feels”?

See answer to the previous questions.

7- Does one receive a consolation when he or she puts into practice Jesus’ Word, that is, like in Lectio Divina? Doesn’t the grace of God give a sense of deep peace, namely, something that can be perceived? Spiritual healing usually procures some consolation. So, what is the status of these consolations?

The specific contemplation of  Lectio Divina is different from the one of the Prayer of the Heart, just as the “Bread” of the Word in the Liturgy of the Word is different from the “Bread” of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

In order to listen to God’s Word and put it into practice, one needs to understand it, first with the mind with the general help of the grace of God, then with the power and light of the Holy Spirit, when one starts to meet the Living Word and perceive what He is telling us in our will and heart. Then by putting into practice the received word there is an amazing experience of divine knowledge coming from the incarnation of this word in us. This divine knowledge is intrinsic to the act of incarnation. Is it a separate consolation? No. In Lectio Divina, God communicates himself to our conscious part, otherwise how can we really listen and put into practice if God’s Word to us is not clear? It would be a guess or the result of a reflection of our mind.

In this sense, a “consolation” is intrinsic to the incarnation of a word in us (mind and will) caused by the fact that our will, under the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul, was enabled to put into practice, to incarnate a word given by Jesus.

When we eat the food is palpable and we savour it. But at the end of the day the senses of taste and touch are not the main criteria and certainly not the reason why we eat! On the contrary, we eat with our mind, that is, we know we are discerning beings who choose what to eat and what not to eat. The “pleasure” we take from eating is natural to the passage of the food in our body. But it is never a goal in itself – usually. It becomes gluttony if this happens. Something along these lines happens with the putting into practice God’s word. But we do not seek consolation, otherwise our intention would be contaminated and Lectio would not work. But the rest of the day, we continue to act “in faith”, not trying to feel or see, but following God’s Word.

A healing would have the same explanation. Consolation is not sought for itself, but rather for the healing that comes with it.

What is then the status of Consolations?

a- initially, it helps the spiritually very young person because its workings resemble the ones of the Old Man, by wanting to lean primarily on the consolation and not primarily on the act of faith. This is the most important point. The training of the beginner, a training that is supposed to procure spiritual growth, is to learn to activate the theological acts which are the only acts that can connect the human being to God. The new creature in us can grow only by using these theological acts, because they alone can connect us directly to God and allow us to receive his grace and growth.

God’s desire is not for the young person to lean on consolations but to learn as quickly as possible and as long-lasting as possible, to use the theological acts. So, in a way the consolations are caused by the initial weakness of the human being. Because of human weakness, very often, an alternation between consolations and the absence of the perception of God will occur and their goal is that during the apparent “absence of perception of God” by the Old Man in us, we should activate the acts of Faith, Hope and Love.

b- After this first stage, we enter the more stable “place” or plateau where the theological acts are practised with greater ease, having acquired in us solid roots and solid behaviour. This ease will offer a new freedom to the upper part (the rational part) of our being over the lower one (the sense). For some this state, if lived not in a very fervent and enlightened way, could last till the end of life. While for a few others, it will open the way for a drastic change in the behaviour on God’s part where He will powerfully increase his Grace, triggering the purification of the upper part of our being, as described above and the perception of God’s action, turning the experience from a peaceful victory, into a tragic spiritual falling apart. Here, the previous peaceful state is changed into a horrible state of destruction. Now, not only are there not consolations but also the clear perception coming from God is horribly negative. This is what St. John of the Cross talks about in his Prologue to the Ascent of Mount Carmel, and the topic he addresses in Dark Night II.

c- If the person perseveres, and bears the trial, purification will result. There will be the most amazing experience of liberation, where everything (even spiritually) is lost, and God only gained.

A new experience of God’s goodness may even filter from the spirit to the soul.

d- Then, later, this experience may disappear, and a participation in the Lord’s Passion may be offered. Not pleasant.

8- Because of the existence of the Development of Christian Doctrine, what are the new needs in society, in the Church, that manifested themselves during the 16th Century so that God had to send St. John of the Cross to offer us greater explanation and clear discernment on issues such as: the status of consolation; the supernatural anthropology (the distinction between spirit and soul); the different ways the Grace of God works in us; the different phases; the meaning of God’s apparently tough stance (absence of God, greater perception of our sinful condition,…) occurring at deeper spiritual levels?

I think that slowly but steadily, since the Middle Ages, there has been a growth and development of our attention to the human being, his interiority, through more developed ways of introspection. Increasingly, throughout the centuries, the “subject”, the “me”, the “I”, has become the object of our interest and studies. We are improving our means of introspection progressively. This tendency is visible in the late 15th early 16th centuries. Note how Martin Luther perceives himself, or how St. Teresa of Avila maps the human soul in a new and powerful way! Note also the great master, St. John of the Cross, and how he analyses the spiritual human being.

Note: The expression “consciousness” (or “perception” or “experience”) is rather recent in history. Even St. John of the Cross does not use it, but of course St. Thomas and St. John of the Cross do use the equivalent means to say the same thing (sensing, understanding).

The attentiveness to the human subject still continues to grow in different ways, through the enlightenment to the beginning of the discoveries of psychoanalysis, the unconscious mind.… All this is recent in the history of mankind. The first PhD in psychology in Italy only dates back to 1973! We are just waking up.

It is important, then, to understand St. John of the Cross’ motivation when he writes. He did not write because he found pleasure or leisure in writing, or because that was his mission as a monk. He was extremely busy, had plenty of obligations and writing was not his main task at all. He chose to do it because, as he states in the Prologue to Ascent of Mount Carmel, which should be read attentively, he felt the urge on two counts:

a- he met many who were fervent and in whom God had started to change their way of behaving, but who were not understood by their spiritual directors. They were thought to be going backwards, because of the apparent negative aspects they were feeling.

b- very little was written regarding this important doctrine. He considered that what he was writing were “grave words and instructions” (DN I,13,2).

Note: The Prologue to the Ascent of Mount Carmel should be read with great attention and care in order to understand the grace that God is giving him for us, and why He is doing so.

Note: One needs to know the historical context in which St. John of the Cross lived. There were the “Alumbrados”, the various currents and trends of spirituality in his time, the different “mystics” here and there in Spain. In his time, too, many people had a serious committed spiritual life and prayer life. Tens of books were published on Prayer itself. The Franciscans from the century before had started the “Recogimiento” (recollection) movement. So many spiritually perceived supernatural manifestations did occur, good and fake and half good.

9- Does the fact that God sent us a teaching like the one imparted by St. John of the Cross mean that the Church has immediately integrated it into its teachings? Is it universally known and totally integrated today?

Having had St. John of the Cross in the 16th century, having declared him “Saint” in the 17th, having declared him “Doctor of the Church” means an increased attention to his teaching and to his writings. Are they always understood properly? Far from it. The great argument over the nature of Contemplation that filled almost thirty years last century, and its failure to define it properly, even by great thinkers and theologians, and very orthodox ones, shows the challenge in hand. The imperative here is to read what he says and not what we want him to say.

This is why we are far from having integrated his teaching as it is. I would even rather say that he is pretty much still an unknown author despite the fact that his works have been translated and are selling well.

Maybe re-reading the entire answer will help in the understanding of how the different parts clarify the subject as a whole.

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