READING ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS WITH JOHN PAUL II

Notes of a lunchtime talk given at the City Branch on October 3, 2001 by Dr Tracey Rowland
Dean, John Paul II Institute, Archdiocese of Melbourne

Prior to his joining the seminary, John Paul II was a member of a lay Carmelite spirituality group led by a tailor called Jan Tyranowski. It was in this group that he first studied the works of St. John of the Cross. Later, as a doctorate student at the Angelicum, he chose to investigate the topic of: "Faith according to St. John of the Cross". This dissertation was supervised by the legendary Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. The work has been published in English translation by Ignatius Press, but is now out of print and not readily available outside of Carmelite libraries.

In his works St. John of the Cross assigns 3 theological virtues - faith, hope and charity - to three faculties of the soul: intellect, memory and will. For example, he says:

"The livery which the soul wears is of three principal colours - white, green and purple - signifying the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity ... Faith is an inner tunic of a whiteness so pure that 1 blinds the vision of the intellect. And thus, when the soul journeys in its vestment of faith, the devil can neither see it nor succeed in harming it, since it is well protected by faith - more so than by all the other virtues - against the devil, who is the most powerful and cunning of enemies."

St. John seems to have adopted this idea from an English Carmelite called John Baconthorpe. The classification of the three faculties comes from St. Augustine. In De Trinitate Augustine spoke of the three powers of the soul as: memoria, intellectus and voluntas. St. Bonaventure tied these faculties to the processions of the Trinity: "the generating mind, the word and Love are in the soul as memory , understanding and will, which are consubstantial,coequal and interpenetrate each other. (The Journey of the Mind to God). Faith is assigned to the intellect, memory to the will and charity to the intellect. According to St. John of the Cross, the effect of hope on the memory is to "fill it with presentiments of eternal glory". The Transfiguration provides an excellent example of this notion of a "presentiment of eternal glory".

In his doctoral thesis John Paul II focused on the relationship between faith and the intellect. He begins with the distinction drawn by St. John of the Cross between the two ways in which the intellect can receive knowledge: one natural, one supernatural.

• "Natural Knowledge" is that which depends directly or indirectly on the senses
• "Supernatural knowledge" is that which exceeds the natural powers of the intellect.

There is a further sub-division of the supernatural:

• CORPOREAL SUPERNATURAL KNOWLEDGE - that which is received through the external or internal senses.
• SPIRITUAL SUPERNATURAL KNOWLEDGE - that which is received directly into the intellect without the intervention of the senses.

There is a further sub-division of spiritual supernatural knowledge:

• (i) Distinct, Particular knowledge
• (ii) Confused, general and dark knowledge

Re: (i) 4 kinds - visions, revelations, locutions, spiritual feelings.
Re: (ii) contemplation - that which is given in faith.

NB: The intellect of its own cannot reach the heights of supernatural knowledge - this is a gift of grace.
By the illumination of the virtue of faith the soul becomes transformed and is more and more capable of participating in the life of the Trinity. John Paul II observes that this relationship between God and the soul is at once felial and spousal. John of the Cross emphasises that the function of faith depends ultimately on the will - the intellect and other faculties cannot admit or reject anything unless the will intervenes." The process of ascent to the level of contemplation is called by John of the Cross the Ascent of Mt. Carmel, and requires, as most people know, a process of spiritual purification known as the "Dark Night of the Soul." St. John of the Cross describes the process thus:

"The Holy Spirit illumines the recollected intellect and enlightens it according to its manner of recollection, and... the intellect cannot find any other and greater recollection than in faith; and therefore the Holy Spirit will not illumine it in anything else more than in faith. For the purer and more refined the soul is in faith, the more it has of the charity infused by God; and the more charity it has, the more is it illumined and the more Gifts of the Holy Spirit are communicated to it, for charity is the cause and the means by which they are communicated to it. And although it is true that, in the other illumination of truths, the Holy Spirit communicates a certain light to the soul, the light given in faith, where there is no clear understanding, is as different as is the most precious gold from the basest metal, and quantitatively, as the sea exceeds a drop of water. For in the first way wisdom concerning one or two or three truths is communicated, but in the other all God's wisdom in general is communicated, which is the Son of God, who is communicated to the soul in faith."

In his commentary John Paul II highlights the dependence of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the existence of charity. In his Lenten homilies published under the title "The Sign of Contradiction" John Paul II reflects upon what he calls "the way of purification". He begins his reflection with the observation that there is a qualitative difference between the sin of Satan and the sins of mankind. This is because Satan had a greater degree of knowledge of God. Satan had knowledge but he did not love so he would not serve. For this reason St. Thomas Aquinas observed that "sin of this gravity presupposes another level of perfection in that same being, a level of intellect and will different from that of man”. John Paul II then makes the following observations:

• Human sin - in contrast - consists of turning away from God principally because of disorder in man's attitude to created things.
• God's justice embraces not only the inevitability of punishment for crime but also the law of purification of sinful man. This law has roots deep in human existence. The conscience has a purifying function.
• Part of the law of suffering is that it entails loneliness. It is here on the road leading to man's fulfilment that we find the mystery of purgatory.
• The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium 49 - affirms the doctrine on purgatory. "While some of the disciples of Christ are pilgrims on earth, others who have passed from this life are being purified". This doctrine on purgatory gives formal expression to the law of purification.
• There is a "temporal punishment" which must be endured either in this life or the world to come in order for the soul to be purified.
• The mystery of purgatory is explained not only by the order of justice and the need for expiation through temporal punishment but also perhaps primarily by the order of charity and union with God.

John Paul II then quotes St. John of the Cross:

“With such punishment God greatly humbles the soul in order greatly to uplift it later; if God did not arrange for these feelings, once experienced, to subside quickly, the soul would die within a few days ... These feelings are sometimes so intense that the soul seem to perceive hell and its own perdition wide open to its gaze, for they endure in this life the purgatory due to be endured in the next. And so the soul may pass through this state, or it may not, or it may remain in it only a short time; for one hour of it in this life is of more avail than many in the next."

NB: Objectivity cannot be dealt with in exclusively cognitional terms - that is, in terms of the intellect alone. The human person is a very complex animal.

John Paul II: "There is a superimposing and mutual compenetration of the ontological dimension (the flesh and the spirit), the ethical dimension (moral good and evil) and the pneumatological dimension (the action of the Holy Spirit in the order of grace, including the work of the theological virtues)."

One may add there is also a further order of the person's relations with other persons, some of whom may be instruments of grace or instruments of the devil.

Catholic Liturgy and the Language of Worship

Paper given by Paul Mankowski, S.J. , at the Caroline Chisholm Library

I remember being taken, as a child of three years, to the local parish church during the Holy Week Triduum, and being deeply moved in seeing that the crucifix above the altar and the other images of the saints were covered in dark cloth. I recall the feeling of loss and of a peculiarly sombre emptiness which the veiling provoked: something important, and benevolent, was gone.

I remember too that, at the same age, I was fascinated by my father’s 1949 Nash-Rambler, interested in what made it go. At one point I opened a large red can in our garage and sniffed the fluid inside. The fumes stung my nostrils, and I deduced from the burning sensation in my nose that the motive power in gasoline was nothing other than this capacity to sting. The engine under the hood mysteriously extracted the vital essence, the sting factor, from the fuel, and that made the car move.

As I grew older I learned how an internal combustion engine really works, and my earlier imaginings were recognised for what they were - wrong guesses - and discarded. Once my error was exposed, the infantile picture simply disappeared without remainder. It had no further effect on my thinking or on my attitude toward piston engines.

I also came to learn my catechism in time, and found out the reason for the veiling of the crucifix and statues during the triduum. And yet it isn’t true to say that later understanding obliterated the work of my childish imagination here. Although my early apprehension of the veiling was ‘pre-discursive’, catechetical knowledge only confirmed and deepened what I had already grasped before I had words to express it.

There was nothing I need to let go, nothing I believed that I had to cease believing. When I heard the account of Jesus’ crucifixion, death, deposition, and burial, I didn’t need to be ‘coached’ into the proper emotional responses, for these were already in place long before I understood what I was responding to.

Much later, when I encountered the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who erected a comprehensive Theology of Holt Saturday with the empty tabernacle as its keystone. I recognised in his insights a consummation or union of discursive reason, intelligibility, with much deeper promptings that were as old as my oldest memories. The fact of the matter is that the Church taught me about God before I was teachable.
What I wish to propose this afternoon is that the difference between these two naive and juvenile experiences points to something more than a lucky guess in one instance and a bad guess in another.

The Catholic faithful are rightly urged to deepen their capacity for sentire cum ecclesia - an expression which means both ‘to think with the Church’, to believe what she teaches, to take her side in dispute, but also to respond as the Church responds, to love and mourn what the Church loves and mourns, to have as our own the heart of the Church as well as her mind. Our worship of God is, or should be, the pre-eminent occasion of sentire cum ecclesia, when our human faculties are engaged in such a way that intellect, will and emotion are not at war with each other but make a single, simple gesture of adoration.

The Church’s liturgical worship is the school of ortho-pathy. I use this pedantry by way of contrast to ortho-doxy, i.e., having the right opinions. By ‘ortho-pathy’ I mean the right responses, even the right receptivity. The liturgy teaches us about God not (primarily) as a catechist does, by drilling us in true propositions, but rather by inviting us to react as the Church reacts to Calvary, to respond as the Church responds to Easter, to be receptive to Isaiah, or to St. Luke, the way the Church is receptive to them.

I am not arguing, nor do I believe, that right feelings must precede right doctrine or that liturgy is a kind of kindergarten for dinning in the former. It doesn’t always work like that. Most of us had a sound doctrinal grasp of the sixth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ long before we possessed the emotional equipment in virtue of which it becomes important. By the same token, perhaps a simple phrase in the Eucharistic Prayer, which we have heard and understood perfectly well for twenty or thirty years, may go off inside us like a forgotten landmine, at a time we least expect it, filling us with a radiance of profound spiritual satisfaction. Not all worshippers are taught the same lessons in the same order. A second grader might be given an orthopathic grasp of the lavabo, the priest’s ceremonial washing of hands, which eludes the systematic theologian for much of his life.

Moreover, what St. Gregory the Great said about the monastic Rule of St. Benedict is even truer of the Liturgy, that ‘lambs can wade in it and elephants can swin in it’ : that is, beginners in the Christian life are never drowned, but can participate in the Church’s worship with total confidence that the authentic teaching of Christ is the flooring beneath the entire enterprise; while the very greatest theologians and mystics can sport in the liturgy, throwing themselves into it entirely, and never touch bottom, never plumb the full depths of the mysteries it contains.

The linchpin of orthopathy is the nature of Christian worship itself. Our worship is God’s initiative. He prepares us to receive him, much like the gardener tends the soil. When we worship with the Church we are prepared to make us receptive, so that we can accept what God wants to give us, and yield the right fruit in due season. And here it is worth remembering that the ‘audience’ of the liturgy, the one to whom it is addressed, is pre-eminently God the Father and only secondarily the members of the assembly. This is plain from the structure of the liturgy itself and from the vocative reference of individual prayers that make it up.

Hence the prime purpose of liturgical language is not ‘communication of information’ to the assembly; rather, liturgical offering should be ‘a pleasing offering’ to God ritually lifted up from the midst of the worshippers.

In principle, there is no aspect of our experience of worship that does not, or cannot, have some meaning pertinent to life in Christ. The architecture of our place of worship, the music that accompanies the liturgy, the shape and colour of priestly vesture, the progress of the eucharistic action, and of course the words spoken by the celebrant and the people can all contribute to the act of worship. Most elements of worship are the way they are for a reason; most ‘do their work’ even when, as in the case of children, the reason is not explicitly known. And they should be left to do their work. The overwhelming majority of celebrants must strive for this and not adapt, not depart from the text or the rubrics. C.S. Lewis once wrote of Christian liturgy that even if the celebrant’s vestments are not heavy, they should look heavy. That is, they should make it clear to the worshipers that his part in the service is not an extension of his own personality but is a munus, a responsibility laid on his shoulders the way a chain-of-office was laid around the shoulders of a mayor. The priest as celebrant should appear obedient to the Lord’s eucharistic command, ‘Do this’ in vitue of which he is the presider. To disturb the form of the ritual is to disturb the worshipers who cannot perform two tasks at once: either they are worshipping or they are being distracted by adaptations, by pointless innovations in the rubrics, chatty intros of the readings, the tendentious alteration of collects or eucharistic prayers, and, unless one is especially blessed, the music. Some find this exhausting.

A friend who attends a fairly middle-of-the-road church told me recently: ‘It would be great if parish liturgy were done as it should be, but the fact is that it’s not. And for my own spiritual health I just can’t keep going to mass every time with my dukes up’. Point taken. How can we speak of cultivating right receptivity when one is forced to choose between ‘going with the flow’, which means complicity in silliness, or fighting against the current, which excludes receptivity to court? It would seem that the model of the Church’s worship as a school of orthopathy is a pipe-dream, or at best a favour reserved to the happy few.

Though tempting, this view neglects one vital theological consideration: every mass which has ever been said, with the barest minimum validity, is an entirely perfect mass. It is perfect for two reasons: because the victim that is offered is perfect, and because the priest who performs the sacrifice is perfect. It is Jesus Christ who is both victim and priest: and this means that every mass is an offering no less effective, no less pleasing to the Father, no less redemptive of us sinners, than the sacrifice made on Calvary, because every mass is the sacrifice of Calvary. This is true when the celebrant is in mortal sin or has lost his faith. This is true when the rubrics are slovenly, the readings inaudible, the homily purest heresy. This is true when mass is said on the hood of a jeep, in a Quonset hut or in the kind of hyper-illuminated warehouse in which architecture and liturgist have conspired to ensure that no stray thought fly heavenward.

Still, God is there, nurturing and tending. At each mass we pray to the Lord. ‘Look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church.' Surely, it is not too much to believe that God grants this petition; that in our worship he sees not the putting and stubbornness of men, but his Bride, the Church, at prayer; that contemplative nuns, and theologians, and steelworkers and even three-year olds face-to-face with an empty tabernacle are formed by this consummate priesthood into a single, acceptable Body: without spot, without wrinkle, without apricot Dacron polyester.

Talk on Carthusian Spirituality

A lunchtime talk given at the Library back in 2001 by Dr. Peter Birrell

"Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis"
One of the most precious fruits of the extraordinary cultural, monastic and spiritual renascence of the period from the late 11th century to the beginnings of the 13th century (circa 1050-1220) was the foundation of the Order of Chartreuse, the Carthusians, by St Bruno (circa 1032-1101). The notional date is usually given as 1084.
In its immediate impact on the life of the Church of the 12th century, the other major foundation, that of the Order of Citeaux, the Cistercians, in 1098 overshadowed the Carthusians. By the death of St Bernard of Clairvaux in 1153 there were already 345 foundations, whereas 100 years after St Bruno's death, there were still only 33 Carthusian foundations (circa 12200).
However, during the past nine centuries, the Carthusian Order of monks and nuns has continuously represented a unique integration of the hermit life and the monasticism of the cenobium - the monastic life in common. It is the hermit life of the desert combined with the safeguards of a fundamentally Benedictine cenobitic balance. [Houses of Carthusians are called Charterhouses (a medieval English modification of Chartreuse Houses).
Much of the life of a Carthusian choir monk is spent in the solitude of his "cell" - really a hermitage with a walled garden. He leaves his cell principally for the long night-office of Vigils, which the Carthusians take several hours to chant slowly, and for the sung conventual Mass and for Vespers. The rest of the Divine Office is usually celebrated "in cell". Carthusian Priests, (and all choir monks normally are called to the priesthood), have no external visible ministry whatsoever, under any circumstances.
Historically, the Carthusians have not shown the compromises and mitigations of their exclusively contemplative orientation that have been characteristic of other monastic orders. Thus, after the golden age of the Bernardine 12th century, the history of the Cistercian monks has been one of subtle or obvious corruption of their simplicity, partially corrected by a constant series of providential reforms, such as the De Rance reform of La Trappe in the late 17th century which gave rise to the Trappist Cistercians (OCSO).
The phrase "Numquam reformatam, numquam deformatam" often applied to the Carthusians is an oversimplification - nonetheless, they have serenely stayed true to their vocation of "being alone with God". They have always been relatively few in numbers - the vocation is a rare one. But the study of Western Catholic Spirituality over the last 8 to 9 centuries reveals the leavening effect of the Carthusians. This spiritual elite has had an effect out of all proportion to their numbers.
A few examples:

• The strange relationship between the Carthusians and the Imitation of Christ. The Augustinian Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) was undoubtedly the final redactor of the Imitatio Christi (he signed the MS of 1441). But Gerard Groote, (1340-1384), the founder of the community to which Thomas belonged, the "Brethren of the Common Life", wrote the prototype as a spiritual diary mainly during his sojourn with the Carthusians (circa 1375-1378). After his death, the Carthusians circulated the work widely, as they later did the redaction of Thomas a Kempis.
• The transmission of the treasures of 14th century English mysticism. The writings of: (a) the anonymous priest author of the Cloud of Unknowing; (b) the Scale of Perfection of Walter Hilton; (c) The Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich; and the less important Furnace of Love etc. of Richard Rolle of Hampole were all copied and transmitted by Carthusian monks in England. Indeed a good case can be made that the Cloud's author was a Carthusian Monk.
• The interaction between St Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) and the Carthusians. The Carthusian Order exercised a lifelong influence on the founder of the great apostolic Order of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius was converted in 1521 while recovering from his Pamplona battle wounds. He read the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony's (circa 13001378) Life of Christ. The Jesuits enjoyed intimate relations with the Carthusians - permitting their members to transfer to the Carthusian order and even return to the Society without loss of position (altogether extraordinary permissions).

Bibliography on the Carthusians

• Compact Disc: In the Silence of the Word, a Carthusian Meditation, by the monks of Parkminster, D.L.T., 1998
• Books about Carthusians: P. Van der Meer de Walcheren, The White Paradise, David McKay, N.Y., 1952. Andre Ravier S.J., Saint Bruno, the Carthusian. Pub. Ignatius Press, 1996. John Skinner, Hear Our Silence, Pub. Fount Collins, 1995.
• Carthusian books: A Carthuslan, The Spirit of Place, with photos of Parkininster, D.L.T., 1998. A Carthuslan, The Way of Silent Love, noviciate conferences (1), D.L.T., 1993 A Carthuslan. The Call of Silent Love. noviciate conferences (II), D.L.T., 1995. A Carthuslan. Interior Prayer. Carthuslan Novice Conferences (1111), D.L.T.' 1996. A Carthuslan. The Freedom of Obedience, Carthuslan Novice Conferences (IV), D.L.T., 1998. Carthuslan priors and novice masters, The Wound of Love, D.L.T., 1994. A Carthusian, Where Silence is Praise, D.L.T., new edition, 1997. A Carthuslan, The Prayer of Love and Silence, D.L.T., new edition, 1998. Dom Augustin Guillerand. They Speak by Silences, D.L.T.. new edition, 1996. Dom Augustin Guillerand, The Prayer of The Presence of God, Dimension Books, 1966. Guigo I, The Meditations, tr. A. G. Mursell, Kalamazoo, 1995. Guigo II. The Ladder of Monks and Twelve Meditations, tr. J. Walsh S.J., Mowbray, 1978. William, of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle. tr. W. Shewring, Sheed and Ward, new edition 1980

Book Club Meeting

The Caroline Chisholm Library's book club meets again this Friday, 27 July in the Caroline Chisholm Library at 7 p.m to discuss Julien Green, Each Man in His Darkness. 

 

All are welcome. 

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog for the Caroline Chisholm Library Melbourne. We will be regularly posting news about Library events, plus reviews of books in the Library's collection.