JOHN OF THE CROSS FOR CARPENTERS:
THE ORDINARY WAY OF THE DARK NIGHT OF FAITH
Denis Read, OCD
From Carmelite Studies VI: John Of The Cross edited by Steven
Payne, OCD
Denis Read is a moral theologian and member of the Institute of Carmelite
Studies .In recent years he has devoted much of his efforts to Hispanic ministry
and to the Secular Carmelites.
In these pages I simply want to mediate that part of the Carmelite tradition first codified by John the great and ancient tradition of Carmelite mysticism. Karl Rahner has said that "the devout Christian of the future will either be a 'mystic,' one who has 'experienced' something, or he [or she] will be nothing."1 Either we live by theological faith, out of which true mysticism grows, or we diminish to nothing. But people today are afraid of mysticism and some of this fear is cultural.
From many years in the Hispanic ministry, I have discovered that when we translate the Hispanic idiom into English, we add something positive to our American culture: what Hispanics call la caridad de la vida, the environment of love that permeates all life; and a certain warmth (el calor) of the community of Hispanidad that chases out the frio, the coldness, that comes to people who are not living by love as the mystics do.
So let us look at John of the Cross, the theologian of a warm, loving, living faith.
One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
ah, the sheer grace!
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
In darkness and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
ah, the sheer grace!
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
him I knew so well
there in a place where no one appeared.
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover. (N, Prologue)
As St. Paul says, "The just man lives by faith" (Rom 1:17). It is the light and life of this simple Christian faith that John celebrates, and faith is the key to his spirituality, as it is to St. Paul's: pure faith, unadulterated and unsophisticated, such as Joseph the carpenter li ved, and Jesus the carpenter and John of the Cross, another carpenter. We risk misunder standing John's entire message if we misunderstand the centrality of this faith, and what it means to him. "Faith" he constantly repeats, "is the only adequate means to union to God" (see, e.g., A, 1, 2, 1; 2, 2, 1ff; 8, 1-7; 9, 1; 16, 12; 19, 14; 24, 8; 30, 5).
It is a resurrection faith, for John is celebrating the Paschal Mystery here, the Easter Vigil, a night "more lovely than the dawn." The cross is the instrument of resurrection.
It is the Catholic faith, not some new gnosticism; there is nothing in John's works about a "new age," or a "creation spirituality" or any popular pseudo-spirituality, but only a spiri tuality of Jesus, crucified and risen, living in his church.
INTRODUCTION: THE SEARCH FOR A LAY THEOLOGY
The title of this reflection may sound paradoxical. What could St. John of the Cross the Mystical Doctor, poet, theologian of the dark nights and spiritual marriage possibly have to do with carpenters, and with the nitty-gritty of manual labor, earning a paycheck, mee ting deadlines, dealing with the unions, and facing the rat-race of daily hard work? Surpri singly, a great deal, as we shall see. Let us look for a moment at the circumstances of his own life, and perhaps lay to rest certain myths about the Carmelite way that have made John himself seem unapproachable and unintelligible for the majority of Christians.
First, John was a carpenter, and a stone-mason. He spent more time building monasteries for the friars, and helping the nuns set up a wall here or a room there, than he did writing books. He spent more hours serving the poor souls who came to him than he did in the library. As a poor boy from a poor family with a widowed mother, he did his apprentices hip in carpentry, and perhaps helped add to the meager family income. He learned a great deal from work. I would offer him as a patron for the working man and woman. The car penter is a symbol of all working people.
Second, carpentry, and many other occupations, open people up to the movement of the Spirit. In carpentry, much quiet time is spent alone, time that can be spent in contempla tion and intimate interaction with God. The carpenter's work is much like the work of a spiritual director. The carpenter strips away the rough exterior bark of the tree, and lays bare the heart of the wood. He or she reveals whether the heart is decayed, whether termites and insects have weakened the sinews of the tree, whether the wood is sound, strong and beautiful, or weak, decayed and useless. The carpenter takes the wood as it is, and then transforms it into something new in the form of chairs, pianos, doors, houses, and such. Spiritual directors do similar work with people who seek their counsel, accepting them as they are, then assisting in their transformation.
Third, the Carmelite Order, which Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross called to rene wal, back to its roots, was originally a community of lay people who gathered together, after the Crusades, "to live in the service of Jesus Christ with pure hearts and a steadfast conscience"; this is their goal and purpose, as articulated in the original Carmelite Rule given by Albert of Jerusalem. Theirs was a life of perpetual prayer, work, and study in community. The Rule enjoins "work of some kind, so that the devil may always find you busy. Earn your own bread by silent toil. This is the way of holiness. Follow it." This whole "formula of living" is the silent presupposition of all Carmelite and Christian spirituality. It is a vocation to hard work, the work of sanctification. Mysticism, poetry and theology only make sense when built upon the foundation of daily hard work. The call to total generosity "in the service of Jesus Christ," and its concomitant call to total self-denial, is simply the practical working out of the Gospel call to conversion: "Repent and belie ve in the Good News" (Mk 1:15).
But we humans can get overinvolved in work as an end in itself. The successful worker can become blind to the world of the Spirit. We fail to "lift up our hearts to the Lord," because we often don't know how to live a spiritual, Christian life in this workaday world. John of the Cross shows us, step by step, how we all need a second conversion in adulthood, to foster our receptivity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He leads us through the purification of our souls from the spiritual vices, into the light of faith that unites us with Jesus, the Lord.
Jesus urged his followers to "see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, so they might be converted, and [he] might heal them" (Mt 13:15). This Gospel "understanding of the heart" is the fruit of contemplative prayer, to which John of the Cross is constantly inviting his disciples and directees. It is, essentially, the awakening of the Spirit, already within the Christian by baptism, to the living faith involved in following the Lord wherever he leads. John calls the fulfillment of such faith "transforming union" of the human will with and within the will of God.
My topic is the the ordinary way of the dark night of faith, because the situation of feeling marginalized, and the necessity of living by faith, have never been more widespread. Why?
1) We need such living faith because we are living in a church suffering the birthpangs of a new Christian culture a "renaissance" just as real as the spiritual renewal and reform that St. Teresa of Jesus began, and St. John of the Cross lived and helped to shape. They brought Spanish Catholicism and eventually European Catholicism out of the feudal culture of a Spain "more Catholic than Rome" into a worldwide missionary movement that be gan the thrust of the Roman Catholic Church to become catholic in fact, as well as in theory.2
Today we are witnessing the emergence of a global church. We have the potential at this moment to become truly "catholic" in the original sense, i.e., transcultural, ecumenical, and universal, "people of every race, language and way of life." But this new birth, after Vatican II, involves a crisis of transition to renewal and conversion. This is the "dark night" we are undergoing today. John of the Cross would say: On the road to communion with God and one another, the night of faith shall guide us. Faith tells us of things we have never seen, and cannot come to know by our natural senses. It is like the light of the sun which blinds our eyes, because its light is stronger than our powers of sight. So the light of faith (with hope and love) transcends our comprehension (see, e.g., A, 2, 3, 1-4).
John of the Cross also said, "We cannot come to a place we do not know except by journeying in a way we do not know" (cf. A, 1, 13, 11; 2, 4, 2-7), and on the way, we need someone to believe in the Lord Jesus.
And there are so many contrary lights that beckon us, saying, "Christ is here!' or "The Gospel is there!" Almost everyone is confused by the noisy voices of our mass media culture. John of the Cross is a sure guide for the working man and woman, a "Christian Classic" for the spiritual life.
2) We also need this spirituality of the ordinary way of living faith because ordinary working men and women have been forgotten. Today, I believe, the university typically does not see the need for a doctrine of living faith. Theology has become so specialized, so compartmentalized, that the simple knowledge of Jesus Christ is fragmented and divided up beyond recognition. Perhaps our Lord foresaw that this would be the case, when he praised his Father: "for although you have hidden these things [the knowledge of God and God's reign] from the wise and learned, you have revealed them to the childlike [including carpenters]. Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:25, 28). The knowledge of Jesus is not front page news; it has never been a best seller. Rather, it is mysterious, only available to those who work and suffer for it. Jesus has made it so.
The working man and woman need help finding a deeper meaning for their labors. We need to be working with God, and John of the Cross shows us how to do this, daily. He does not pamper us, does nothing to feed the fires of envy or resentment; instead, he shows us how all the ups and downs of ordinary living are purifications of an all-too-human faith, that must be transformed into pure, naked searching for the God who is our Ransom and our Reward. We need to learn not to envy the rich, nor to be beholden to the powers of this world, but to take charge of our own feelings so as to turn them towards the imitation of Christ. He is our only Lord; all the rest of us are brothers and sisters, in the same human condition.
3) We need St. John of the Cross's doctrine of faith because of the broken nature of our Catholic solidarity. The Roman Catholic Church in this country used to be the church of the immigrant poor. Now after Vatican II another reality has emerged. As Catholics have become wealthy, educated and upwardly mobile, we have lost a great deal of the earlier solidarity with the poor that used to characterize our religious life. John of the Cross speaks to this cultural growth process and progressive liberation because he himself was the Doctor of both a liberated intelligence and of the asceticism needed in order to use our liberty wisely. Wealth and capitalism are not our problems, but rather what do to with them. Education and technology are not our problems, but rather what we do with our added knowledge and scientific progress. John of the Cross was the most cultured of all the Spanish mystics, but that did not prevent him from engaging in pastoral ministry with the laity, including carpenters and other ordinary people.
We need intellectual humility, and the wisdom that begins with obedience to the one true God for the great mission God has entrusted to us workers in his vineyard. "You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just" (Mt 20:4), says the Lord to the layman and laywoman of today. This mission of the laity is to keep the church both simple and balanced, because today the health of the church is in the hands of the laity, in the hands of the carpenters, homemakers, nurses, other lay people who make up the church.
But our laity also need solidarity, instruction and direction from their pastors and spiritual directors. Spiritual direction is the art of arts. Especially in times of division and controversy, we have a greater need for the light of Catholic wisdom and spiritual theology to find our way to living faith, amid all the trouble and misunderstanding around us. John of the Cross is the church's acknowledged "Doctor of Spiritual Theology."
PART I: JOHN OF THE CROSS, PRACTITIONER OF SPIRITUALITY
The tradition of Teresian Carmelite spirituality, with its roots in Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross, was developed and systematized after John by spiritual theologians who emp hasized practicality as the aspect of Christian wisdom most needed in the direction of souls. Let us begin from this same insight and reconstruct several key theses of this "school" now so widely accepted that they can be rightly called fundamentals of Catholic spirituality.3 This Catholic science has several notes that commend it to contemporary lay men and laywomen:
1) It is Biblical, described as "wisdom" in the Book of Wisdom (Wis 7) and in the writings of St. Paul as the gospel of "Jesus Christ crucified" (1 Cor 2:2).
We speak wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather we speak God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory. As it is written: Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and it has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him. But this [wisdom] God has revealed to us through the Spirit." (1 Cor 2:6- 10)
2) It is short, concise, like the Gospels. Because this spirituality is not mere speculation, but a living, practical guide, it uses the conclusions of speculative theology but applies them. It is applied Christianity.
This shows the dependence of spirituality on the teaching of the church. John of the Cross uses the church's teaching to show his readers "a short way" to the perfection of the Christian life.
3) It is spiritual, a doctrine of "spirit speaking to spirit," or, in the words of Cardinal Newman, "heart speaking to heart."
4) It is progressive, involving a process beginning with the purgative way, continuing with the illuminative way, towards the fulfillment in the unitive way which are all included in John's expression, "the way of transforming union with God."
5) It is a science of human, psychological health. Holiness is true wholeness, of the human incarnate spirit. John of the Cross has become a sourcebook for the integration of spirituality and psychology, because he deals with the care and cure of the mind and spirit.
PART II: KEY THESES IN JOHN'S SPIRITUALITY
Among the fundamental principles of John's spirituality are the following:
First Principle: The grace of the Holy Spirit is the Christ-Life in us. John is rooted in the spirituality of St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist. From Paul he received the master-prin ciple: "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me" (Gal 2:19-20). John the Evangelist proclaimed the great promise of the indwelling Trinity: "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our dwelling with them" (Jn 14:23).
This indwelling of God engenders the dynamism of grace-life in all the baptized:
a) The life of God, knowing and loving us always, sanctifying and activating us;
b) Our response to the living God, in living faith, hope, love (a response that is the result of God activating us);
c) The gifts of the seven virtues of the Christian disciple (faith, hope, love, justice, tempe rance, fortitude and prudence);
d) Our response to these gifts, the struggle to grow in these virtues and to overcome their contrary vices. We are engaged in a spiritual combat against pride, greed, lust, anger, ad diction, envy and laziness. Thus, the Christian life is a journey through a "dark night of faith" towards "the light of contemplative insight and intuition." But, this contemplative peace and rest is prepared by the practice of the theological and moral virtues. Christian formation is the "science of the Cross," learned through work.
e) The gifts of the Holy Spirit, direct interventions of the Spirit of Jesus always active within us, working on our passivity, gently and sweetly, in our daily labors.
f) The fruits of the Holy Spirit, the joyful experiences of the acts of Christian living (many more than the traditional twelve).
g) the practice of the eight beatitudes, through which Jesus illuminates us with the gifts of His Spirit, and thus builds up our faith, hope and love for God and each other. (These works of love are the synthetic theme of the Christian life, and the proximate means to union with God.)
Second Principle: The Christian community the church is the social form of our life in grace. John of the Cross is a man of the church. For him, the concrete ecclesial communi ty in which he lives and works is the supreme validator of religious experience.
One of John's most famous shorter works is called the Precautions, in which he instructs novices on how to live community life in such a way that they can "attain in a short time holy recollection and spiritual silence, nakedness and poverty of spirit, where one enjoys the peaceful comfort of the Holy Spirit, reaches union with God, is freed of all the obstacles incurred from the creatures of this world, defended against the wiles and deceits of the devil, and liberated from one's own self" (Precautions, 1). He goes on to counsel his young religious to mind their own business, "for should you desire to pay heed to things, many will seem wrong, even were you to live among angels, because of your not understanding the substance of them" (ibid., 9). Pessimistic? No, utterly realistic about the necessity of letting go of judgmental inclinations, for these are the source of the vices of envy, self-aggrandizement, and misunderstanding all through the church. This advice is valuable for all church members, including carpenters, business people, and so on.
John of the Cross does not explicitly speak at great length about the church, because the doctrine of the church (i.e., ecclesiology) was still underdeveloped in his time. But he does show us how to be liberated from the habits of rash judgment that were the cause of so much destruction within the church, and among individuals in and outside of the church. He helps liberate our judgment from illusion, from patronizing and superior attitudes, so as to allow the Holy Spirit to be the guide of the Church, for us and for our salvation. It is the Holy Spirit who is "the principal guide, agent and mover of souls," not spiritual directors or self-appointed saviors. The Spirit is "never neglectful of souls"; humans can only be "instruments for directing these souls to perfection through faith and the law of God, according to the spirit given by God to each one" (F, 3, 46). The Spirit speaks directly to the heart of each individual.
John was a good community man. He taught his students how to "get along well in the community" and to "overcome your sensitiveness and feelings," "rejoicing in the good of others as if it were your own, thereby [to] possess a happy heart" (Precautions, 13 & 15). Lay people usually find their community in the workplace and in their families. The advice of John of the Cross is excellent counsel for carpenters and for any others working in groups where feelings and resentments often run high, due to the competition for the desired promotion, higher paycheck or more prestigious title. Being able to rejoice in the success of others is one key to a happy life.
Third Principle: The Christ-Life is given and nourished in our communities through the liturgy, sacraments and personal prayer. John of the Cross is a "liturgical mystic" and his spirituality is a liturgical spirituality, because the Carmelite community in which he was formed, and the Spanish Catholicism within which he was brought up, were liturgical communities in a liturgical church. One of his lesser known poems is "The Song in the Soul that Rejoices to Know God by Faith," especially faith in the Blessed Sacrament:
Aquesta eterna fonte está escondida
en este vivo pan por darnos vida,
aunque es de noche.
Aqui se está llamando a los criaturas,
y de esta agua se hartan, aunque a oscuras,
porques es de noche.
Aquesta viva fuente que deseo,
en este pan de vida yo la veo,
aunque es de noche.
Even though it is night, I know
That this eternal spring [of faith] is hidden
In this living Bread, to give us life.
And because it is night,
Here it is, in hiding, crying to all creatures,
And they are filled with this living water.
This living spring which I so desire,
I see now in this Bread of Life,
Even though it is night. (my translation)
a) For John of the Cross, the prayer of the church represents the faith of the church. He used to quote from the liturgical books of the church to illustrate his spiritual doctrine. The hymns, the antiphons of the Divine Office and the Roman Ritual are so many sourcebooks for him, along with Scripture, to explain the things of God. His conferences attest that he lived a thoroughly liturgical life, in tune with the different seasons of the church year, so much so that we may say he was socialized in the life of the liturgy.
He would have rejoiced to pray the renewed liturgy of Vatican II! And today, even some readings from his own works are included in that liturgy. The point is evident enough: He simply takes the liturgy as the starting point for growth in the contemplative life of prayer, a starting point that every carpenter, baker, investment banker and seamstress can relate to, because the liturgy is the place where we have easiest access to the experience of God and the church's spiritual tradition.
b) Liturgical prayer is a preparation for personal prayer. John of the Cross observed a practical principle that any working person can appreciate: Prayer is for union with God, and the very purpose even of the beautiful prayer of the liturgy is to foster personal "conversation alone with Christ, who we know loves us" (Teresa's definition). John had his priorities clear; while he, Teresa, and the others of her reform dedicated two hours daily to "mental prayer" (meditation and contemplation), he counseled his penitents and students to learn, first, meditation on the life of Christ, and second, passive or contemplative prayer responding to Christ himself within us. The carpenter of our title might find it easy, while spending hours silently sanding and painting a piece of furniture or the woodwork in a home, to meditate at the same time on the many hours the Lord must have spent in similar work. The carpenter might also meditate on the miracle of creation, on the beauty, strength and unique characteristics of each kind of wood that has been created by God. A carpenter becomes a ""spiritual director," bringing out the beauty of each individual piece of wood, just as the spiritual director of souls help bring out the spiritual beauty of each person.
All prayer is indispensable for transforming union with Christ, whether one is in the stage of beginners when meditation usually predominates, or in the stage of proficients when the contemplative inflowing of the Holy Spirit begins to take over. It is in his treatment of the arts of meditation and contemplation that John's most original contribution, on the "dark nights" of faith, of sense and of the spirit, can be found.
c) For John of the Cross, spiritual direction is a pastoral and sacramental ministry. His whole reason for writing his masterworks the Ascent of Mt. Carmel and the Dark Night was to educate spiritual directors about the ways of God with souls. We need to understand the meaning of spiritual direction in a sacramental church to understand John of the Cross's doctrine.
After the Council of Trent, the practice of confession in the confessional (also called "auricular confession") became standard. But confession did not displace guidance of souls by pastoral counseling, which had endured from the beginning of Christianity. Because it typically involves a private one-on-one encounter, spiritual direction has yet to find the historian who can fully document the development of guidelines for this pastoral ministry. Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule gives many examples of how to guide souls toward overcoming their vices and practicing Christian virtues, but not until John himself do we really have a doctrine of spiritual direction for the guidance of souls on the way to perfection and mystical union. He teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the principal agent in the spiritual life; spiritual directors are instrumental agents only. The spiritual life is a journey of the "spirit" (with a small "s") toward the great "Spirit" (with a capital "S"). The Spirit of God intervenes directly in the lives of God's people. Let God be God, and let directors be human, guiding souls according to the spirit God gives directly to each one.
John of the Cross's principles for developing the living faith in Jesus include:
1) The following of Jesus Christ, crucified, as the norm for all spirituality, "bringing our lives into conformity with his" (see A, 1, 13, 3).
2) Studying his life "in order to know how to imitate and behave in all events as he would" (ibid.; here we see the need for spiritual reading).
3) Undergoing the dark nights of sense and spirit "in order to be successful in this imitation" (see A, 1, 13, 4; note that the night of faith is a blessing, not a curse).
4) Experiencing these dark nights as a "second conversion," divinizing our own human thinking, expectations and affections, first by conforming our conduct to our consciences, and then by conforming our consciences to the Spirit of God. In practice, this means learning how to deny ourselves and take up our daily crosses, an energetic program of asceticism that subordinates our desires to our reason (as John eloquently demonstrates in the first seven chapters of the Dark Night, on the need for purification of the spiritual roots of the seven capital sins). This invitation into the purgative way consists in the development of the virtues of adult love and friendship, liberation from habitual sins, and humble self- knowledge, the beginning of humility (as St. Teresa explains in the Way of Perfection).
5) Living out the cross and resurrection of the Lord in a practical way. This means dying to our own desires, living by "faith alone, which is the only proximate and proportionate means to union with God" (A, 2, 9, 1).
6) Receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit as the necessary and sufficient interventions by God himself to provide his people with the light and love for a connatural growth into transforming union, "for the Holy Spirit enlightens us according to our recollection."4 One of these gifts is "right judgment" or "counsel." In the way of perfect love, proper to all Christians, the "evangelical counsels" of poverty, chastity and obedience, as well as the message of the eight beatitudes, are the "counsels," the practical guidelines, offered by Christ himself. He proposed them to the rich young man, if the latter wanted "to become perfect." They are lived out by Secular Carmelites and by religious communities. But they are also the ordinary way to perfection in every Christian life, i.e., for carpenters as well. They represent the very essence of what it means for a Christian to be a Christian, rather than something else.
To follow these counsels of the Lord, we need individual spiritual direction Christian doctrine, the guidance of moral theology, but also the applied Christianity represented by these six principles of St. John of the Cross. They coincide with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Introduction to the Devout Life of St. Francis de Sales, and the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.
They are all meant to bring us into what the church today, in the renewed "Rite of Christi an Initiation of Adults," calls the Mystagogia or spirituality of the Holy Spirit. The princi ples, and the practical application of them in self-direction, group direction and private direction comprise a spirituality for everyone to follow in the footsteps of the Lord, one which issues in the apostolic action of the working man and woman. May we follow our Lord, through his cross, to his (and our) resurrection.
CONCLUSIONS
What would John of the Cross say if he were living in the church today? Perhaps his doc trine could be summarized as follows: 1) Love one another, and work for unity, against polarizations, party spirit, and factions. John of the Cross had memorized Jesus' "high priestly" prayer for unity at the Last Supper, and prayed it often daily, some biographers say for the splits in the Carmelite Order. The church is always being crucified by her own members but love is a unitive force. 2) Learn the art and science of conflict resolution. Management and labor have found ways to make conflicts positive. Carpenters and their employers do this as a matter of course, but they struggled long and hard to develop ways to solve workplace disputes equitably, and are still grappling with new issues as they arise. Conflict resolution helps a working team to achieve a wider synthesis of two opposing views. The theological disputation of John's day and age taught this same kind of holy common sense, the reconciling of two apparently antithetical positions. And finally, as John wrote to one of his directees at the end of his life: 3) Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love (Letter 26 to Maria de la Encarnacion, July 6, 1591). This is the lesson of the cross. Love is more necessary than ever, and much more real when it is selfless and pure. "For a little of this pure love is more precious to God and the soul and more beneficial to the church, even though it seems one is doing nothing, than all these other works put together" (C, 29, 2).
NOTES
1. This famous statement is repeated in various forms throughout Karl Rahner's works. This particular version may be found in "Christian Living Formerly and Today," in Theo logical Investigations, vol. 7: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1977), 15.
2. Several of the "second-generation" Discalced Carmelites of the Italian Congregation, especially Thomas of Jesus, O.C.D., played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Propaganda Fidei. See Peter-Thomas Rohrbach, Journey to Carith: The Story of the Carmelite Order (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1966), 233ff.
3. I use the term "spirituality" here as a synonym for the technical term "spiritual theology," commonly used of this subdivision of moral theology.
4. Cf. for example, the outline of the growth process inside the front cover of Fr. Marie Eugene's I Want to See God (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1978).
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