EMBODIED LOVE IN JOHN OF THE CROSS

Richard P. Hardy, Ph.D.


From  Carmelite Studies VI: John Of The Cross  edited by Steven Payne, OCD

Richard P. Hardy is professor of spirituality at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the author of numerous articles and books, including Search for Nothing: The Life of John of the Cross (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1982).

The demands and the apparent harshness of the path which St. John of the Cross proposes simply overwhelm most of those who try to read his Ascent of Mount Carmel and or his Dark Night. If they seek to calm their fears and overcome their hesitation by consulting studies on St. John, they find that scholars have often interpreted him in a rather ethereal, disembodied fashion. Their anxiety about his relevance to the contemporary world is in creased. However, it is my contention that when we really understand St. John of the Cross's view of the Christian life , we discover a very human and indeed embodied path to God.

In the first part of this study, I wish to examine John's affirmation that in the union of love here in this life, human beings are so transformed that they become one with the will of God and actually love here and now with the love of God. In the second part, I wish to answer the question: "How does St. John of the Cross understand and present God's love for people, the world, indeed the whole of creation?" My thesis is that the fear many in the Christian churches have of body, passion and love has, in fact, led them to misinterpret St. John's view of love. They have made it something ethereal, "purely spiritual," and therefore disembodied or disincarnated. In fact, though, for St. John such a love is passionate, bodily and incarnated. I believe that seeing him in this way will enable us in the twentieth century to break through to a much more authentic Christian spirituality and indeed, a much more truthful presentation of St. John of the Cross's own teaching and hopes.

I. ONE WITH THE WILL OF GOD

THE PERSON LIVES THE LIFE OF GOD

In the Prologue of his Living Flame of Love, John of the Cross expresses the basic motif flowing throughout his works:

For [God] declared that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit would take up their abode in those who loved him by making them live the life of God and dwell in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [Jn 14:23], as the soul points out in these stanzas.1

St. John tell us that his poem speaks of the process whereby human beings come to live a new life, one that actually involves living the life of God, even within this earthly life. The interesting element here is the way this occurs. John speaks of the Trinity taking up its home in human beings by making them live the life of God here and now: seeing as God sees, loving as God loves, now in an incarnated way in the flesh and blood of those God transforms. The whole poem celebrates this, and the commentary explains it in greater detail. God's life, God's love (for the two are synonymous) are enfleshed in us as we fully live the life of human beings who have been transformed in this way. This transformation, John tells us, is accomplished " through love in this life" (emphasis mine see also F, 3, 5). The source of any life is love. To love makes one live in a fully human way. Furthermore, human beings live where they love, says John, and, once transformed, they love God radically and most naturally.2 Therefore, they live in God. God's life becomes their life but in the limited, historical, flesh-and-blood context of ordinary human existence.

The whole person is involved. According to St. John of the Cross, this is so totally an incarnated love and hence life in God that all the elements of human nature are brought into harmony, body and soul, sense and spirit. John sums up the entire first stanza of the Li ving Flame of Love by saying:

Now I am so fortified in love that not only do my sense and spirit no longer faint in you, but my heart and my flesh, reinforced in you, rejoice in the living God [Ps. 84:2], with great conformity between the sensory and spiritual parts. What you desire me to ask for, I ask for; and what you do not desire, I do not desire, nor can I, nor does it even enter my mind to desire it. My petitions are now more valuable and estimable in your sight, since they come from you, and you move me to make them, and I make them in the delight and joy of the Holy Spirit, my judgment now issuing from your countenance [Ps 16:2], that is, when you esteem and hear my prayer. (F, 1, 36)

Before the transformation that takes place in love, one's situation is quite different. Previously, the person suffered on both the physical and spiritual (which includes the psychological) levels. The individual's desire to be one with God increased his or her impatience to the point where there was an almost frantic yearning to escape from the present situation, "the conditions of this life" (F, 1, 36). The individual experienced a disharmony between what is and what is desired; he or she constantly sought to overcome the dichotomy by getting out of this historical, flesh-and-blood existence. However, transformed now in love, the person finds himself or herself in a totally different situation. The self is no longer split, suffering, and anxious to be other than it is. The whole person is in harmony and lives in God. The will of the person and of God are one. So true is this that what God wants, the person wants, and what God does not desire, the person does not desire. Though God is the source of all, nonetheless the person is no automaton, but makes genuine acts of the will: " You move me to make them and I make them." The conformity between the person and God is total, yet the human person is the subject of all the actions performed and all the thoughts entertained. No longer does the individual's sensory part pursue one thing while the spiritual part is pursuing something else. The anguish and impatience such division causes is brought to an end by the one incarnated divine movement flowing evenly in and through the person, in this present bodily condition of life.

According to John of the Cross the Holy Spirit accomplishes this transformation by love itself, which produces a suffering that does not destroy, but delights and divinizes, the person (see F, 2, 3). Yet John clearly reminds his readers that within this process there is an emptying that is painful despite the positive work being accomplished (see F, 3, 18 & 32).3

TRANSFORMATION OF THE PERSON

The positive result of what seems to be a totally negative process is a transformation of the person into someone completely focused on the living

God:

In that sweet drink of God, in which the soul is imbibed in him, she most willingly and with intense delight surrenders herself wholly to him, in the desire to be totally his and never to possess in herself anything other than him. God causes in this union the purity and perfection necessary for such a surrender. And since he transforms her in himself, he makes her entirely his own and empties her of all she possesses other than him. (C, 27, 6)

John says this as a commentary upon the verse from stanza 27 of the Spiritual Canticle: "And I gave myself to him, keeping nothing back." The transformation requires a surrender given most freely, for it is in accord with what the person wants : " she most willingly and with intense delight surrenders." This surrender keeps nothing back from God, and clings to nothing other than God. It involves giving up all the securities and desires to which the person used to cling so strongly. However, to truly accomplish such a surrender requires incredible strength, and an integration of the human whole human person and personality. To want God totally and to be willing to trust God completely is the "purity and perfection" of which John speaks in this paragraph. No one can produce this total integration by his or her own unaided efforts. John clearly informs us that God causes this personal wholeness, so that persons can indeed give all they are unreservedly to God. Such a surrender is a graced human act. In that surrendering process, God makes us into God "by participation," so that we belong entirely to God and desire and hold nothing but God as our all. To be transformed into God means then to be centered entirely upon God and therefore to live the life of God. This is the divinization that God accomplishes in the human person.

However, it must be repeated that although God is the source and cause of this transformation, it is not accomplished without the personal involvement of the human being who enters the surrendering process. In his commentary on stanza 30 of the Spiritual Canticle, which speaks of God and the soul "weaving garlands" and deepening their love for each other, John writes:

And she does not say I alone shall weave the garlands, or you alone will, but we shall weave them together. The soul cannot practice or acquire the virtues without the help of God, nor does God effect them alone in the soul without her help. (C, 30, 6)

The imagery used here of being adorned with garlands of flowers and emeralds symbolizes being adorned, beautified and made whole by the virtues and gifts God imparts. God so loves us that over time and within each person's unique life story, God gives all those qualities that make us whole and indeed beautiful, to God and to others. These gifts have their source in God's love and flow freely to the human being, with whom God desires to become one even as we live this earthly, historical life. Yet, God respects the human person so much that in order for these gifts to be effectively interwoven i.e., brought to completion, harmonized and fixed in us we too must love God in return. It is the human person's love for God that enables one to receive and keep these gifts in all their harmony and beauty (C 30, 9).4

There is no doubt that for John of the Cross God does everything, but this does not mean that the person remains passive, merely sitting back and waiting. God challenges us to enter the process and love actively. There is no question here of a purely passive surrender that declares: "I give up. What else can I do?" Rather, we become as active as the flames of love by which the Spirit of God transforms us (see F, 3, 8-9). We learn to love and act as God loves and acts (N, 2, 4, 2).5

This transformation produces a definite feeling of being changed, of being taken into the divine life while yet continuing to fully live this human, historical life. St. John of the Cross expresses it poignantly:

The soul feels its ardor strengthen and increase and its love become so refined in this ardor that seemingly there flow seas of loving fire within it, reaching to the heights and depths of the earthly and heavenly spheres, imbuing all with love. It seems to it that the entire universe is a sea of love in which it is engulfed, for, conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to catch sight of the boundaries of this love. (F, 2, 10)

Not only is everything in created reality seen in a new perspective, but it is also felt in a new way. John makes no attempt to "spiritualize" this love beyond the range of human experience. He clearly states that the person feels the development of this love within the very core of his or her being. There is a passion and sensuality expressed in John's writings that grow stronger when he attempts to describe the experience of the person brought into this final stage of union with God. One gathers from the passage just quoted that the delight John finds in the beauty of the universe as a result of this experience is overwhelming. That delight is felt precisely because of the infinite love with which the person now relates to all that exists. The love of God is now enfleshed in this particular, historical person who has been graced by the transcendent.

BECOMING GOD

One of the most consistent themes in John's writings is the divinization of the human person through a process initiated by God. In the Living Flame, John tells the reader how those transformed in God actually become God through participation.6 In a beautiful, ecstatic prayer that speaks of oneness with God and hence of this divinization, John underscores the profound unity between the person and God: " that I be so transformed in your beauty that we may be alike in beauty, and both behold ourselves in your beauty, possessing then your very beauty . Wherefore I shall be you in your beauty, and you will be me in your beauty "(C, 36, 5). Though this particular prayer speaks only of the divine beauty in which the person participates, it can be extended to all the other attributes of God. The transformation John describes involves a total loving union of humanity and divinity through this special graced process.

In the Spiritual Canticle John speaks of the role of the Holy Spirit in the transformation process:

By his divine breath-like spiration, the Holy Spirit elevates the soul sublimely and informs her and makes her capable of breathing in God the same spiration of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father. This spiration of love is the Holy Spirit himself . Even what comes to pass in the communication given in this temporal transformation is unspeakable, for the soul united and transformed in God breathes out in God to God the very divine spiration that God she being transformed in him breathes out in himself to her. (C, 39, 3)

Saint John of the Cross sees the person being taken into the very life and heart of the Trinity through the activity of the Holy Spirit. Yet John reminds us that this is something that can never be adequately conceived or explained, because it is so delicate and deep.

Elsewhere, John will return to this theme of transformation into divine life, with its Trinitarian dimensions: "The Blessed Trinity inhabits the soul by divinely illumining its intellect with the wisdom of the Son, delighting its will in the Holy Spirit, and absorbing it powerfully and mightily in the unfathomed embrace of the Father's sweetness" (F, 1, 15).7 Here the human being is taken entirely into the divine life, and all the faculties are so transformed that God's infinite wisdom and the love become the wisdom and love of the finite human person to the degree possible in this earthly life. We should note especially how John combines the qualities of power and strength with the experience of delight, sweetness, absorption and embrace. God, the Trinity, is almighty; yet the divinized person experiences this union as delightful and sweet. Though such a transformation in God is beyond what can be humanly understood or expressed, this does not keep John from affirming its reality. He speaks from experience, attempting to communicate some small part of what he knows to be true.

THE HUMAN WILL TRANSFORMED INTO THE WILL OF GOD

Though at times some readers may find John of the Cross too "scholastic," especially in his detailed discussion of the intellect, will and memory as powers of the soul, we should not be misled. John is a product of his time and uses a vocabulary familiar to his original audience. But when he speaks in terms of purifying the soul's faculties, contemporary readers should remember that he is really concerned with the total person who is being changed, made into the enfleshment of God.

This renovation illumines the human intellect with supernatural light so it becomes divine, united with the divine; informs the will with love of God so it is no longer less than divine and loves in no other way than divinely, united and made one with the divine will and love; and is also a divine conversion and changing of the memory, the affections, and the appetites according to God. And thus this soul will be a soul of heaven, heavenly and mo re divine than human.

As we have gradually seen, God accomplishes all this work in the soul by illumining it and firing it divinely with urgent longings for God alone. (N, 2, 13, 11)

In this commentary on the second verse of the first stanza of the Dark Night poem, John of the Cross is speaking about the process of transformation, in the context of St. Paul's contrast between the "old man" and the "new man" in Ephesians 4:22-24.8 It is God who gives the person all that is necessary to change and to focus fully on God, and who inaugurates the process of transformation. So once again, for John the process is pure gift, grace, undeserved. It is not something we can accomplish on our own, nor in an instant. Rather, the process occurs over a lifetime, within the concrete circumstances and events which make up our individual histories.

Little by little, those undergoing the process turn their attention increasingly to God. Every aspect of their human nature faculties, affections and appetites is directed Godward ever more intensely and completely. But there is more involved than just being turned totally to God. Souls actually find that as a result of this graced transformation, they have become divinized, loving "in no other way than divinely," with God's own love. Now they want only what God wants a totally positive experience, in which wholeness and goodness are all that is desired. In other words, they are "wholly converted into divine love" (F, 1, 26).9

For John of the Cross, being wholly converted into divine love means actually living God's own life:

[The soul] lives the life of God.

And the will, which previously loved in a base and deadly way with only its natural affection, is now changed into the life of divine love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit in which it now lives the life of love. By means of this union God's will and the soul's will are now one.

Finally all the movements, operations, and inclinations the soul had previously from the principle and strength of its natural life are now in this union dead to what they formerly were, changed into divine movements, and alive to God.

Although the substance of this soul is not the substance of God, since it cannot undergo a substantial conversion into him, it has become God through participation in God, being united to and absorbed in him, as it is in this state. (F, 2, 34)

Now that God has brought the person through purification into the state of spiritual marriage, the most complete stage of transformation possible in this life, the person lives the life of God.10 The Holy Spirit makes the acts in and through the person, who is thus "moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit." Therefore, at this stage everything one does in love, and indeed all one's acts, can be said to be divine, because according to John the Spirit is the one who does them all, in and through the love and activities of the transformed hu man person (see F, 1, 4). Love flows from the will, and since "God's will and the soul's will are now one," each time the person activates the will to love, the act is truly God's act, enfleshed in the total person who now loves in this way. Though John clearly reminds the reader that the human person is not substantially transformed into God (for it is impossible to hold this without falling into monism or pantheism), he nonetheless emphasizes that the person's actions are now really God's actions in history, even though they still remain fully human.

God has established a certain equality, in which the human lover and the divine Beloved are one (see C, 12, 7; 27, 6; 38, 3-4). Before this transformation, human lovers make themselves equal to (or even lower than) limited creatures by turning their wills, their love, toward such objects in a natural and exclusive way. This happens, according to John, because love creates a certain equality between lovers and what they love. However, the same principle holds true when one loves God; an attachment to God creates a certain equality with the God we love (see A 1, 4, 3). However, we must remember that the equality spoken of here is more than just the juxtaposition of two separate but equal parties. For John, the equality created by the human person's graced love of God is so powerful that the two love in one act and through one will. And so the transformed person comes to love according to what and how God loves, and vice versa. Let us turn, then, to an exami nation of this how and what of God's love.

II. HOW GOD RELATES TO CREATION

We have seen that according to Saint John of the Cross, God brings human beings through a process that is both purifying and transforming. Through the process leading to spiritual marriage, we come to live the life of God, and are so united with the divine that God's will becomes in some way ours. Hence, the transformed person's love is in fact God's love. How does John of the Cross see God's love acting? This is the question we must try to answer to determine whether John is espousing the goal of an ethereal, "purely spiritual" love, or rather an embodied love replete with sensuality and delight.

GOD IS PRESENT EVERYWHERE

In relation to the created world, it is already clear that John recognizes God present everywhere, and at all times. The intimacy that the act of creation has established means that God and creatures can never be separated. John of the Cross speaks of this presence in a fascinating passage from the Living Flame. John first indicates how the Holy Spirit transforms persons so that they become totally concentrated on God, noting that even within the limitations of this life, such experiences of love are so intense as to be almost incredible. Yet in response to those who would claim his descriptions are exaggerated, John says:

Yet I reply to all these persons that the Father of Lights [Jas 1:17], who is not closefisted, but diffuses himself abundantly, as the sun does its rays, without being a respecter of persons [Acts 10:34], wherever there is room always showing himself gladly along the highways and byways does not hesitate or consider it of little import to find his delights with the children of the earth at a common table in the world [Prv 8:31]. (F, 1, 15)

In this text John underscores the openness and infinite love of God, present to and is concerned about everyone, no matter who or where they may be. Through the image of the sun shining everywhere, John affirms God's omnipresence. He also uses the imagery of highways and byways for the same purpose. The highways are the most travelled routes, the roads others would expect a traveller to take. The byways are the short cuts that tend to be dangerous and that people avoid when they can. To say that God shows himself gladly in these places is to affirm that God is everywhere (though the phrase "wherever there is room" indicates that a certain openness is needed for that presence to be fully received).

Consequently, we can say that God welcomes and is with everyone no matter who they may be at every time and place. By finishing the text with the quotation from the Book of Proverbs, John underlines how utterly important this presence of God is not only to creation, but to God. For God finds utter pleasure in being with God's own creation. To be with the human community is at the heart of the God in whom John of the Cross believes.

GOD RELATES TENDERLY AND GENTLY

How is God with the human community, then, and what are the qualities of God's presence? John of the Cross answers this question within the first stanza of the Living Flame: "Since this flame is a flame of divine life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of God's life, and it wounds and stirs it so deeply as to make it dissolve in love" (F, 1, 7). This quotation implies that God's own life is tender, and that this tenderness is transmitted and incarnated within the community, through its incarnation in the person to whom God relates in this love. The flame mentioned here is the Holy Spirit, that flame of love flowing from the infinite depths of God, that is, from divine life. Although this flame may be said to afflict us and cause a painful purification as we are drawn toward wholeness, it is essentially tender despite the suffering we may concretely experience.11 God's whole being is tenderness and gentleness, and these become key characteristics in relating to humanity and creation as a whole. The term John of the Cross uses here is "ternura," which could be translated as sensitivity or tenderness. God's way of relating to humanity is always some thing constructive, flowing forth from the divine tenderness, even when it is perceived as painful and destructive.

However, it is in the following paragraph that John brings out in more detail the qualities of God's relationship to humanity:

since love is never idle, but in continual motion, it is always emitting flames everywhere like a blazing fire, and, since its duty is to wound in order to cause love and delight, and it is present in this soul as a living flame, it dispatches its wounds like most tender flares of delicate love. Joyfully and festively it practices the arts and games of love, as though in the palace of its nuptials, as Ahasuerus did with Esther [Est 2:16-18]. God shows his graces there, manifests his riches and the glory of his grandeur that in this soul might be fulfilled what he asserted in Proverbs: "I was delighted every day, playing before him all the time, playing in the world. And my delights were to be with the children of the earth" [Prv 8:30-31], that is by bestowing delights on them. (F, 1, 8 emphasis mine)

Three points are particularly worth noting in this text from the Living Flame: 1) the flame of love is ever active, moving and causing love and delight in the person touched by the Spirit; 2) the flame is an activity of God, filled with a generosity and happiness like that of lovers who have found their beloved; 3) God simply enjoys being with humanity. Let us briefly consider each of these elements.

First, God's love toward the person is continuously active. Once God's love in the Spirit has been engaged, there is a constant deepening movement whereby the Spirit transforms the person into that very same love. Through the action of divine love within, we find ourselves being challenged to let go of selfish relationships with others and God's creation. Because previously we were altogether focused on such things, letting go (under the inspiration of the Spirit's love) is experienced as painful; it can truly be called a "wound." Yet, the aim of the divine action (i.e., love itself) that causes the wound is ultimately to bring us love and delight. God's love continues its activity within the transformed person in a framework of tender, gentle stirrings.

Second, John compares this continuing activity of divine love to the story of King Ahasuerus and Esther in the Book of Esther. The king is so delighted at having found Esther as his beloved that he prepares her for union. According to the story, Ahasuerus gives a crown to Esther and celebrates their union by hosting a great banquet and proclaiming a holiday. By this pure self-giving Ahasuerus shows how delighted he is in Esther, wanting everyone to know about it. Furthermore, the delight is mutual between Esther and the king. By describing God and the person in terms of Ahasuerus and Esther, John of the Cross wishes to affirm that God is totally taken by the loveliness of each person whom the divine Lover crowns, hosts and proclaims to the world as God's beloved, loved in and by the divine love. God and the human person delight together in the sheer gift and grace of this relationship.

Third, God enjoys humanity. Remarkably, in his quotation above from the Book of Proverbs, John seems to be saying that God even plays with humanity. True, John indicates that "God shows his graces" so that "in this soul might be fulfilled what he asserted in Proverbs" about "playing in the world." One might suppose, then, that it is only creatures who are playing, because of the delight God causes them. Yet immediately afterward, John describes the flames of divine love as God's "games." Thus, John maintains that God delights in human beings by giving them delights and by wounding them with the flames of love. A further substantiation can be found in a later paragraph of the Living Flame (F, 1, 15), where John once again alludes to the same passage from Proverbs (i.e., "he does not hesitate or consider it of little import to find his delights with the children of the earth at a common table in the world"). Here John of the Cross quite clearly applies the scriptural text to God, who delights to be with humanity. In fact, everywhere else that John refers to Proverbs 8:30-31, he again affirms God's delight in humanity.12 So we may say that, for John of the Cross, God simply loves being with creation and especially with human beings. John portrays God and the human person as lovers who delight in each other and interact with real joy.

Thus, even taking into account John's often metaphorical mystical language, he clearly maintains that God is involved with humanity, that God truly enjoys human beings. Moreover, God relishes this relationship with human beings, even if John cannot adequately describe or define how we experience it. Perhaps a certain fear or hesitation of ascribing passion and delight to God has kept us from understanding and expressing the intimacy of the relationship God desires and in fact establishes with human beings. John is not afraid to celebrate it in prose and poetry, even though he lived in a time when it was sometimes dangerous to state such things under the suspicious eye of the Inquisition. Such courage is one more reason to take seriously what he says about the presence of joy, delight and pleasure in God.

GOD LOVES WITH DELIGHT IN ALL

However, John's comments on the line "O lamps of fire!" in the third stanza of the Living Flame give us an even clearer sense of how God relates to humanity:

When individuals love and do good to others, they love and do good to them in the measure of their own nature and properties. Thus your Bridegroom, dwelling within you, grants you favors according to his nature. Since he is omnipotent, he omnipotently loves and does good to you; since he is wise, you feel that he loves and does good to you with wisdom; since he is infinitely good, you feel that he loves you with goodness; since he is holy, you feel that with holiness he loves and favors you; since he is just, you feel that in justice he loves and favors you; since he is merciful, mild, and clement, you feel his mer cy, mildness and clemency; since he is a strong, sublime, and delicate being, you feel that his love for you is strong, sublime, and delicate; since he is pure and undefiled, you feel that he loves you in a pure and undefiled way; since he is truth, you feel that he loves you in truthfulness; since he is liberal, you feel that he liberally loves and favors you, without any personal profit, only in order to do good to you; since he is the virtue of supreme humility, he loves you with supreme humility and esteem and makes you his equal, gladly revealing himself to you in these ways of knowledge, in this his countenance filled with graces, and telling you in this his union, not without great rejoicing: "I am yours and for you and delighted to be what I am so as to be yours and give myself to you." (F, 3, 6)13

In the context, John speaks of the various ways one experiences happiness and delight in this union of love; for John, the whole process follows his basic principle that love (and doing good for the beloved) is actualized according to the nature of the lover. This means that our human love flows from the limited, historical, contingent and relative creatures that we are.

John attempts to answer the question "How and in what particular way does God love?" more concretely. The quotation above gives us his answer, and thus we see that, for John, God loves human persons powerfully, wisely, justly, mercifully, mildly, strongly, sublimely, delicately, freely, truly, liberally, humbly and with gladness, goodness, holiness, clemency and rejoicing. The text notes not only how God loves, but also that the person experiences the characteristics of this love. The whole description ends with the affirmation that God makes the human person God's equal, and that as a result, God greatly rejoices to be all that God is, for the sake of the one who is loved. There is an intimate relationship of harmony and self-giving established between God and the person. Hence, the love God exercises is not some kind of ethereal, abstract, non-incarnated love, but one which directly affects the historical, enfleshed being who is loved.

Furthermore, in speaking of transformed persons, who receive all kinds of new spiritual joys and delights, John notes that none is as great as what they already possess in the union of love. Consequently, the new joyful experiences, sublime as they are, simply move these persons back to the enjoyment of the greater and more substantial beauty and delight already established within. Each new transitory delight simply helps to deepen the delightful union of love. And so John continues:

Hence, every time joyous and happy things are offered to this soul, whether they are exterior or interior and spiritual, she immediately turns to the enjoyment of the riches she already has within herself, and experiences much greater gladness and delight in them than in those new joys. She in some way resembles God who, even though he has delight in all things, does not delight in them as much as he does in himself, for he possesses within himself a good eminently above all others. (C 20 & 21, 12)

John is clearly affirming that God delights in all things. Nothing escapes that delight, for nothing escapes the creative beauty God has originally placed there. We should note that, when he speaks of the transformed person delighting more in the already possessed interior gift (i.e., union with God), and of God enjoying more self-delight than delight in creatures, John is not denying the beauty, wonder and delightfulness of created things, but is simply saying that the delight is greater in what is more fundamental. John affirms both that God loves all created reality and that human beings brought to union with God share God's delight in all things.

GOD LOVES IN AN ORDERED WAY

One of the John's most interesting statements on the way God deals with humanity can be found in book 2, chapter 17 of The Ascent of Mount Carmel.

In speaking of supernatural visions, John asks why God bothers to communicate them at all when they can endanger the process of Christian growth. In his answer, he gives three principles governing God's interaction with human beings: 1) God acts in a well-ordered fashion; 2) God acts gently; 3) God acts according to the mode of the human person. This means that God deals with human beings in the way best designed (i.e., well-ordered) to accomplish what God desires to do. Furthermore, God acts gently, without forcing anything or anyone. But most important, God respects our normal human patterns of growth and learning, and deals with us according to our incarnated mode of existence. In other words, God deals with us as we are: not angels but embodied persons. Everything that makes us human enters into the process, and God not only respects but loves us within that context. Thus, God intends Christian growth and ultimately the transformation of the person to take place within our embodied reality.

It is important to emphasize, as John does, the embodied way God deals with humanity. God desires that the whole person be filled and fulfilled. Once the human person has been brought to the state of union in love, everything he or she has suffered and undergone in the purification process is more than compensated. Now, God graces the person the total person, body and soul with surpassing gifts.

For God repays the interior and exterior trials very well with divine goods for the soul and body, so there is not a trial that does not have a corresponding and considerable reward.

One day, just as with Mordecai, the soul is repaid for all its trials and services [Est. 6:10- 11], and not only made to enter the palace and stand, clothed in royal garments, before the king, but also accorded the royal crown, scepter, and throne, and possession of the royal ring, so it might do anything it likes and omit anything it does not like in the kingdom of its Bridegroom [Est. 8:1-2, 15]. (F, 2, 31 emphasis mine)

Here (as my italics indicate) John speaks of how everything one undergoes on the journey to union will recompensed both in soul and body. It is not, then, merely a question receiving spiritual rewards; the whole person is involved and whole person will be gifted. But in the second part of this quotation John goes beyond our wildest expectations. He compares the person brought union with Mordecai and Esther, who received the power of the king to do anything they wished in the kingdom. The person brought to union will be like them because he or she will receive God's own authority and power of love. When we combine this teaching with what John has already said about becoming one with God's will, loving with God's love, and knowing creatures through and in God, we see that the human appetites that by their previous disorder caused enslavement and hindered the spiritual journey, now become part of the very means of living in God (see F, 2, 31). The whole person now lives day to day life with a redeemed sensuality and passion that is freed and freeing, rather than enslaving and enslaved. But it is our same faculties and appetites that are transformed into fully human (and "divinized") realities, for grace builds on and perfects nature. Later, in the Living Flame of Love, John sings ecstatically of how transformed persons become "living waters," giving life to all the world (see F, 3, 7).

For John of the Cross, then, there is no such thing as a soul (in the sense of "pure spirit") being transformed and brought into complete union with God without the body fully entering into this process according to its capacity. God graces the whole human person and gives the whole person joy not just a "purely spiritual" joy, but a joy that overflows into all our senses, into the very joints and marrow of our bodies. This in turn provides joy and life to the whole world in which we live.

Commenting on the verse "How gently and lovingly you wake in my heart" in the fourth stanza of the Living Flame of Love, John of the Cross observes how God's action in the very substance of the soul produces certain effects he calls an "awakening," which involves a profound experience of the beauty and harmony of creation (F, 4, 4-6).14 This movement of God within makes everything take on a marvelous glow (see F, 4, 4). Since everything exists in God, and creatures are now known through God and not God through creatures, the person comes to see and experience creation as God does, through grace (see F 4, 5-6). Again, because creatures are known through God, their full value and beauty are recognized and affirmed. John does not view creatures as simply a stopping-off point or distraction on the way to union; rather, they have great importance all along the journey to the God already present within them as creator and sustainer. They are a necessary part of any relationship with God. This section of the Living Flame commentary is a marvelous affirmation of creation. Because of our transformation into God, everything is now perceived as a harmonious unity, and one sees and discovers for the first time the immense beauty and wonder of all that exists, because it is only in this transformed relation to God that human beings can truly see the world as God sees it.

According to John of the Cross, God made all things in creation beautiful and endowed them a variety of gifts. In speaking of Genesis 1:31 he tells us us, "To look and behold that they were very good was to make them very good in the Word, his Son" (C, 5, 4). But for John there is more: God communicates not only natural but supernatural being and beauty, through the Incarnation of the Word (ibid.) There is, therefore, nothing in the world not clothed in this marvelous beauty and wonder both natural and supernatural. And thus everything is created (and recreated) good. The whole world is good because of the relationship God has established with it in creation, and in the incarnation and resurrection of the Son.

Consequently, it is only natural that God be attracted to and concerned with all that is. To love as God loves is to be creative, drawn and attracted to all that is, concerned with it. Nothing falls outside the beauty and wonder of God's self-communication to the the created world. So, too, the human person is caught up in this same relation to creation.

GOD DESIRES ONLY THE EXALTATION OF THE PERSON

Although some think that the teaching of John of the Cross emphasizes only the path of suffering, this is not the case. In the Spiritual Canticle he clearly states that in themselves all our sufferings on the journey are "nothing in the sight of God," since through them the human person cannot essentially give God anything, nor does God need suffering (C, 28, 1). God desires only the exaltation of the human person in a love through which God and the soul possess all things in common (ibid.). God's love becomes our love; God's creation is ours; God's compassion, power and authority are ours, exercised in and with God without greed, oppression, hatred or possessiveness.

According to John, then, God's search for us is more constant than our own search for God (see F, 3, 28). Those brought into the life of peaceful and quiet union should remember that it is God who is carrying them more deeply into their mutual love (see F, 3, 67). God embraces us so fully and yet so lightly that one is captured by nothing except God alone. At this stage, the human being no longer desires selfishly, but desires as God desires, in a full, freeing love (see F, 4, 14).

In the very process of being loved by God, one learns how to love in turn. Though we know it is only in "the clear transformation of glory" after death that we will finally learn to love God as much as God loves us (see C, 38, 3), nonetheless a foreshadowing of that degree of love can be found here already:

in the perfect transformation of this state of spiritual marriage, which the soul reaches in this life, she superabounds with grace and loves in some way through the Holy Spirit who is given to her [Rom. 5:5] in this transformation of love. (C, 38, 3)

Although he cannot fully explain it, John clearly maintains that something of that "equality of love," accomplished in and through the Holy Spirit, occurs already for those brought to spiritual marriage. In some way they learn even here and now to love as God loves, though less perfectly than in the total union of glory.

CONCLUSION

Only when we read John of the Cross in the light of the importance he attaches to incarnation and embodiment can we truly understand the marvelous teaching of this great Spanish mystic. There is a sensuality in the writings of this rather shy but strong little Carmelite friar that often embarrasses his readers, who sometimes prefer to accent the apparent negativity of the Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night. The grim and alienating demands of detachment they seem to find there fit a spirituality owing more to the wars and plagues of the Middle Ages than to the Gospel. St. John of the Cross was familiar with the negative spirituality of his day, but wrote so that a whole new view of the world could arise like the phoenix from its ashes. He could not reject his own passionate, sensual nature. John could see the self-destructive potential of unredeemed passion, and so spoke of the need to be detached from things and attached only to God; but he also recognized that this same passion, purified, is an essential driving force toward union with God, and could be intensely experienced (as it was meant to be) within a positive framework of the exaltation of the whole human person in divine love. His life and his writing are a demonstration of this.

St. John of the Cross saw that humanity is called to live the life of God. Yet, this life, which is love, is to be lived not in some heavenly, ethereal homeland, but in our historical, bodily life here and now. In John's view that life of God rests on the foundation of the Incarnation, the final affirmation of the creative goodness of a world that belongs to God and in which God passionately delights.

Our call to be transformed into God is a call to enter into a God-loving life. But, to repeat once more, John does not see this love of God as something "purely spiritual," entirely divorced from material creation. Rather, this love is embodied in the same human nature graced in the transformation process. So true is this that in and through God, the transformed person comes to love all creation, the whole of reality, as God does. According to John, God loves all reality with delight, passion, concern, gentleness and power. God loves to be there for (and even to play with) the children of humanity. So many of John's images of God are relational, expressive of the mutual love between the divine and human: mother-child, Bridegroom-Bride, Lover-Beloved. They are filled with the passion and sensuality arising out of the love God places within the human person.

The whole process of purification and dark nights whereby we are brought into union with God is meant to free us to be fully and perfectly sensual and passionate in relating to creation. When we let go of "creation-for-me," God brings us into a transformational union that frees and completes our human nature. Since grace does not destroy but builds on nature, this humanity and all its characteristics are perfected. Instead of being destructive as they often were before, passion and sensuality now become fully engaged in a delightfully constructive way. The love which fills the transformed person is "erotic" in the best and fullest sense, since it shares in the divine eros.15

Reading St. John of the Cross in the light of this erotic love challenges today's Christian to embrace a lifestyle that risks all for the sake of all everything and everyone encompassed by God's unbounded love as Christ and his disciple, St. John of the Cross, did.

NOTES

1. See also Richard P. Hardy, "Liberation Theology and Saint John of the Cross: A Meeting," Eglise et Th*ologie 20 (1989): 265-66.

2. See C, 8, 3. John develops this idea of living where you love in the context of the fear of death in C, 11, 10.

3. John also describes the very painful initial part of the process in quite poignant terms in F, 1, 19-21.

4. See also C, 37, 6 & 8; 38, 4.

5. For a basic overview of this transformation and divinization process see Eulogio Pacho, S. Juan de la Cruz: Temas Fundamentales 1, Coleccion Karmel, 16 (Burgos: Editorial Monte Carmelo, 1984), 120-22.; and John Welch, When Gods Die: An Introduction to John of The Cross (New York, NY: Paulist Press.

1990), 62-64.

6. F, 3, 8; see also F 3, 78. Elsewhere John of the Cross also speaks of the divinization of the human person but without using the phrase "by participation" (which may have been added in certain places to avoid difficulties with the Inquisition). See, for example, N, 6, 1; 22, 1; C, 27, 7.

7. See also F, Prologue, 2; C, 39, 4-6.

8. See David B. Perrin, "John of The Cross's Attitude Toward Creation" (unpublished re search seminar paper, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 1991). In this fine paper of nearly 100 pages, Perrin provides an excellent presentation of St. John of the Cross's treatment of the "old man" and the "new man."

9. And indeed all the operations of the person become divine as well, as John of the Cross underscores in F, 2, 33.

10. See C, 12, 8, where St. John of the Cross tells us that the life of God lived here below is but a sketch (dibujo) in comparison with that life of God to be lived hereafter. Yet it is truly God's life, lived even now; indeed, God lives in us. This means that God already loves and acts in and through the person transformed into God at this stage of the journey.

11. See Constance FitzGerald, "Impasse and Dark Night," in Women's Spirituality: Re sources for Christian Development, ed. Joann Wolski Conn (New York, NY: Paulist Press. 1986), 291: "What is important to realize is that it is in the very experience of darkness and joylessness, in the suffering and withdrawal of accustomed pleasure, that this trans formation is taking place."

12. See C, 17, 10; 24, 3; Letter 6, to the nuns of Beas, from Malaga (November 18, 1586).

13. Compare F, 4, 12-13. See also Alain Cugno, Saint John of the Cross: Reflections on Mystical Experience (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1982), 34-34; Lucien-Marie, L'Exp*rience de Dieu: Actualit* du message de saint Jean de la Croix (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1968), 138-141.

14. For further development of the notion of "awakening" see Alain Delaye, La foi selon Jean de la Croix, Sentiers pour l'Esprit #5 (Avrille: Editions du Carmel, 1975), 30-34.

15. For a more complete presentation of this theme, see Eugene Maio, St. John of the Cross: The Imagery of Eros (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1973).

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