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NEGATION IN THE DOCTRINE
OF JOHN OF THE CROSS, Daniel Chowning, O.C.D.
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SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IN JOHN OF THE CROSS'S LETTERS,
Kevin Culligan, O.C.D.
When John of the Cross escaped from his prison in Toledo in 1579, he was near death. For over a month he convalesced secretly in a hospital in that same city. Eager to get on with his life, he then insisted, against the advice of others, on leaving the hospital. His superiors, concerned for his safety, sent him south to the ebullient Andalusia where he could live without fear of being recaptured. There, John began another phase of his Car melite life. He soon found himself in positions where he had to make greater use of his many gifts, those of mystic, poet, and spiritual director; theologian as well, and superior and builder of monasteries.
ASCETICISM
Assigned to El Calvario, a small, poor monastery in the wonderful, solitary mountains of Jaén, he discovered that the friars there, led by their previous superior, were identify ing religious life with a life of physical penance. They seemed to be vying with one other on how much bodily deprivation and misery they could inflict upon themselves and endu re. They took seriously St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 9:27: "I punish my body and bring it into subjection."
St. Teresa's vivid descriptions of the asceticism of St. Peter of Alcántara provide a good example of this approach: "He told me that for forty years he slept only an hour and a half during the night and that in the beginning this was his greatest penitential trial, to conquer sleep, and that to do this he was always on his knees or standing. When he did sleep, he did so sitting up, with his head resting on a little log nailed to the wall" (L, 27, 17). She goes on to tell that he used to try to see how long he could go without eating. Her concluding remark neatly sums it all up: "it seemed he was made of nothing but tree roots" (L, 27, 18).
John of the Cross surely suffered severe bodily deprivation in his prison experience, more than any of the tough ascetics of those days inflicted on themselves. To help himself endu re he fell back on his earlier education in the humanities and turned to poetry, composing his great poem, the Cántico Espiritual or "Spiritual Canticle." The verses sing about the way to seek God. "All your good and hope is so close to you as to be within you," John later wrote in his commentary of the same name. "You must seek him as hidden in faith and love. Faith and love will lead you along a path unknown to you, to the place where God is hidden" (C, 1, 7 & 11). His theory was developing that bodily penances could ne ver come near achieving the sanctity that only faith and love could bring about in purify ing and uniting the soul with God.
John concluded quickly that these friars in the solitude of El Calvario were looking for salvation by an asceticism of dogged bodily penance. They were, perhaps implicitly, see king a feeling of superiority and control through their penances. Only faith and love, through the poverty of spirit they create, can give a person the freedom necessary to fol low the promptings of God's Spirit. But before discussing further John's understanding of this faith and love, some historical background is helpful.
SALAMANCA
A few months after John arrived in El Calvario, his superiors stepped in again and appoin ted him to found a monastery in the university town of Baeza, so that young Carmelites entering the new communities in the south of Spain could have a suitable place to underta ke the studies required for ordination.
Entering Baeza must have brought back memories to John. Some fourteen years before, as a young Carmelite, he beheld for the first time the splendid university town of Salamanca in Castile. He had come to that city in its moment of glory to study philosophy and theo logy. The university of Salamanca had inherited the best qualities of the great medieval tradition. Bologna, Oxford, Paris, and Salamanca were centers of learning that inspired respect, even awe, throughout Europe.1
For almost a century the Carmelites had maintained in Salamanca a house of studies for philosophy and theology to take advantage of the classes and facilities of the university. Their house was situated in the lower part of the city, outside the walls, adjacent to the Dominican college of San Esteban. What a contrast there was between the small, rickety building of the Carmelites and the splendid Dominican monastery!
Salamanca was rich in culture and art, with magnificent examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture bringing out the growth and dominance of Renaissance and Plateresque art. In fact there is an old saying, "In Salamanca, the museum is on the street." One of the marvels of this "museum" is the facade of San Esteban's, the Dominican monastery church, in classic Plateresque style. Its luster was a fitting accompaniment to the theologi cal brilliance that the sons of St. Dominic brought to Salamanca. In John's time the Domi nican monastery housed 200 students.
By contrast, the Carmelite monastery was so fragile that it collapsed in the St. Polycarp flood of 1626. There were no prominent Carmelite theologians at Salamanca, and there were only about twenty friars in the monastery, a mere eleven of them being students. Among this insignificant group, amid the 6,000 students attending the university, was the small and in many ways almost unnoticeable Fray Juan de Santo Matia, as John of the Cross was then called.
JOHN'S CRISIS
It did not take long, however, for John's superiors to recognize the sharp mind of this little friar, and perhaps to conjecture on the renown he could bring them as a university profes sor at Salamanca. Some said that in intellectual acumen he could have easily outshone the best at Salamanca. But this "little Seneca," as St. Teresa used to refer to him, was silently undergoing a vocation crisis.
In the past, historians have implied, if not actually stated, that the crisis stemmed from the laxity of the Carmelites he lived with, and that it was for this reason that John wanted to join the Carthusians. The problem with this explanation is that the Carmelites in Castile were not lax; this is evident from the latest research.2
John's crisis may well have sprung instead from the academic world, a crisis many have had to deal with. Perhaps he suffered a severe conflict between the task of theological spe culation, for which he had a talent, and the mystical tendency that was inwardly pressing him to respond with total commitment to his contemplative vocation.
In his surroundings, there was the usual competitiveness, and many students set titles, pro motions, offices, and professorships as their primary goal in life. Doctorates, contention over university chairs and promotion to them everything had a public feature about it, ce lebrated with ornate parades, regional folklore, and bull runs on the main square. This competition for titles and professorships revealed the misguided priorities of many of his contemporaries. In his Ascent of Mount Carmel, John was later to write that when we give first place to such values as titles and positions, our relationship with God becomes darke ned and our intellects clouded. This in turn leads to pride and a scornful attitude toward others; to flattery and vain praise, which conceal deception and vanity; to rivalries and quarrels (see A, 3, 19, 3; 22, 2-3). In his well-known chapter 7 in book 2 of the Ascent, he reveals his feelings when he complains that people of extensive learning and high repute, anxious about their rank, too often do not even know Christ (A 2, 7, 12).
St. Teresa, too, who certainly never hid her esteem for people of learning, had some com plaints along the same line as John. Even monasteries did not escape the struggle for ho nors. "People," she noted, "ascend and descend in rank just as in the world." A professor of theology would consider it an affront if asked to teach philosophy. "And there will al ways be someone standing by to defend him and tell him that it's an insult" (W, 36, 4).
Of course, these human failings are found in most settings, and John's desire for more recollection, to go off and concentrate on the contemplative life in the quiet of the Char terhouse, may suggest his own inexperience and lack of integration at the time.3
The clash between spirituality and theological discourse shows its face in some poignant words from the Castilian Franciscan reformer Pedro de Villacreces: "St Francis often as serted that knowledge would be the downfall of the Order. And I learned more in my cell weeping in darkness than studying by candlelight at Salamanca, Tolouse, or Paris."4
But St. Teresa, as is well known, suffered much from spiritual directors who had not in tegrated learning with their spiritual lives (see C, 5, 1, 8). She probably would have admi red Villacreces but not felt satisfied with him.5 When John met Teresa before he had com pleted his studies at Salamanca, he found in her a deep contemplative spirit, at the same time desirous and capable of embracing many outward struggles for the Lord. She offered him inspiration but also the opportunity to follow her contemplative ideals and escape from the atmosphere of Salamanca, without having to leave the Carmelite order.
BAEZA
To return now to Baeza, at the time of John's arrival there in 1579 (after his escape from Toledo and brief assignment in El Calvario), it was a town of nearly the same population as Salamanca, with about 25,000 inhabitants.6 Like the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet, two 15th century families, the Benavides and the Carvajales, forming two factions and backed by their respective followers, had converted the city into a violent battlefield. Only the preaching and efforts of St. John of Avila ("Juan de Avila" in Spa nish) were able to quell somewhat this social discord.
In addition to his many other activities, John of Avila founded the University of Baeza in 1538. In prestige it was certainly no Salamanca, but Baeza did have an interesting persona lity of its own, infused by its founder. With a pastoral orientation, it was integrated into society. This integration began at the lowest level, with a school for children. Nurtured by John of Avila, the children's school actually began operating before the university. Along with reading (in Latin as well as the vernacular), the children learned writing, arithmetic, and Christian doctrine.
The presence of these schools in the city was a spirited one. The children assisted in the churches and at burials, and they enlivened the processions, above all the most popular and splendid one on the feast of Corpus Christi. St. John of Avila had composed a catechism in rhyme so that it could be sung in the streets. At least every Sunday, the children went about the streets and squares singing Christian doctrine as a permanent catechesis and ser mon for others.
The faculty of arts (which included the humanities and philosophy) and the faculty of theology were the only two faculties that the university of Baeza had at the time; Salaman ca also had faculties in canon law, civil law, medicine, and languages. At the university in Baeza, no degrees in theology were conferred without previous practice by the candidates in preaching, catechesis, and giving missions.
An incident recorded in John of Avila's life reveals much about this pastoral orientation: Diego Pérez de Valdivia, who had the lecture at Prime, would interrupt his class wit hout the least problem when informed that there were many people in the marketplace shocking others by their bad example. Ordering the beadle to ring the bell, he and all the students would rush into the streets singing Christian doctrine until arriving in the market square. There the professor would mount the platform of the town criers and begin his fiery sermon. When the crowd was reduced to tears and sighs, the university people, sin ging their song, would march back to the campus.
Almost all of the professors at the university were cleric disciples of St. John of Avila; they all loved the pulpit, and in their teaching gave a prominent place to preparing for this ministry.
The fact is, then, that Baeza in John of the Cross's time was a city living in a permanent atmosphere of religious enthusiasm. Children shouting or singing the catechism through the streets, preachers declaiming their loud, ostentatious sermons anywhere and everyw here. Dominating the city were churches, monasteries, and shrines. In fact, one of John of the Cross's companions noted that all that was needed for Baeza to be a monastery was to keep the gates of the city closed.
RECOGIDOS AND BEATAS
Apart from the many priests, friars, and nuns were a host of recogidos. Recogidos were those who practiced the prayer of recollection. Women who lived in their houses and de voted themselves to this recollection were called "beatas." It was they in great numbers who nurtured this form of life.
Some historians have asserted that the number of beatas could have reached 2,000. Exag gerations aside, beatas were everywhere. The large number was perhaps due to the obliga tory celibacy imposed by the emigration of men to the Indies. It was due also to a certain economic independence made possible through the employment of many in the textile in dustry.
The beatas had their own entourage of devotees, confessors, and admirers. In the presence of such groups they made their vow of chastity and narrated their spiritual experiences. Confessors often urged them, at least indirectly, to think that the stranger and more flam boyant their austerities, graces in prayer, struggles with the demon, and diabolical posses sions, the better.
BILCHES'S DESCRIPTION
There is an interesting description of the beatas in Francisco Bilches's work on saints and shrines in the dioceses of Jaén and Baeza:
The women lived recollected in their own houses, in a room set apart, weighed down with hairshirts and garments of rough wool, without anything more satisfying than some bread and herbs earned through their own manual work, even though some of them were from rich backgrounds and the highest nobility in the city. They spoke seldom, and then only out of necessity; they prayed a great deal, almost without ceasing, day and night; they did not leave their houses except on feast days for the purpose of hearing Mass, confessing their sins, and receiving communion, without waiting to receive compliments or signs of courtesy, or to visit with others, as though they were dead to the world. In this way they spent their lives in voluntary poverty, obedience to their spiritual fathers, and in angelic purity. These were the beatas of those times, daughters of the Holy Master Avila. Many of them lived a life more admirable than imitable. Baeza at that time attained such perfec tion that its inhabitants seemed very much like the Christians of the early Church.7
VALDIVIA'S ADVICE
Professor Pérez de Valdivia, in a book of advice for people practicing recollection en titled Aviso de gente recogida (Barcelona, 1585), is a good source of information about the kind of spirituality in vogue among these groups. Undoubtedly he wrote the book with Baeza and its beatas in mind. In the following words he addresses and exhorts them:
I ask and warn these brides of Jesus Christ that they earnestly beg him not to give them visions, revelations, raptures, transports, or anything similar that would make them stand out among the others. And if nevertheless he should give them some of these extraordina ry experiences, they should hold them suspect and never feel safe about them but always think that some bad snare is or may be lurking there, and they should in no way make it known to anyone among the people. Ecstasy and other graces of the sort, even supposing they are authentically supernatural which is supposing very much can engender spiritual pride. The recipients can begin to think that others do not have any spirituality, or not as much as they themselves, and that the Spirit of God is governing them while others are being governed by their learning or pure human reason. Recollected people should under stand that sanctity consists mainly in self-denial, taking up one's cross, in being meek and humble and in serving one's neighbor and practicing the works of mercy and charity. I have come into contact with many people who have experiences of this sort.8
Valdivia then goes on to say that, even when these ecstasies, visions, and revelations are authentic, they make him wary because the person is rare who can deal with them prudent ly and humbly.
DOCTOR HUARTE
A doctor from Baeza (1529-1588), an esteemed physician named Juan Huarte, gives some interesting counsel in his book on discernment of spirits, El Examen de Ingenios. His advi ce is closer to the spirit of the Enlightenment than to the credulity of his times. With scientific criteria and biblical support, he sought to uncover the natural causes of spiritual phenomena, especially the many ecstasies and revelations that stirred the emotions of the people in those years.
With regard to preachers Huarte notes:
The preacher by the force of his imagination, allied with the memory, is capable of spea king for one and even two hours in succession, enchanting and holding his listeners in suspense. They do not use their intellects, which is the faculty by which one verifies whether a spirit is Catholic or depraved. Through an excess of imagination and rhetoric, and a lack of scholastic theology, those in Northern Europe fell into error and corrupted the people.9
Huarte's golden rule was that we should not seek from God or attribute to him what can be done through secondary causes. He insisted that God rules the world, but that his doing so doesn't imply a miraculous or preternatural intervention; God ordinarily lets secondary causes do their work. He complained about the growing interest in raptures and revela tions, and attributed the public raptures and revelations of the beatas to their empty sto machs. At times he sounds so much like St. John of the Cross that one would be inclined to think that he influenced John with passages like the following:
The common people do not know that God does natural and prodigious works to show those who are unaware of it that he is omnipotent, and that he uses these as an argument to confirm his teaching and that when this is not needed, he never performs them. This becomes manifest if we consider that he no longer performs those singular works that he did in the New and Old Testaments. And that is why he made every effort possible so that people could not claim ignorance as an excuse. And to think that he will turn to arguing again with new miracles so as to prove anew his doctrine is a great error. For God teaches what humanity needs to know once, and he proves it with miracles; and he does not repe at: Semel Deus loquitur, et secundo idipsum non repetit (God speaks once, and never repe ats it a second time).10
THE TEACHING OF JOHN OF THE CROSS
Though it is even possible that he knew Doctor Huarte personally, John of the Cross had more to offer the beatas than a warning about pride and empty stomachs. In fact, he stron gly encouraged them along the path of recollection they were following. But first, if God teaches once that which humanity needs to know, as Dr. Huarte affirmed, where do we find this teaching? John of the Cross would direct us to the Bible, where he searched for and found truth. He points out in his prologues that Scripture is his guide and that the Ho ly Spirit speaks to us through it. So familiar had he become with the Bible that some of those who knew him claimed he knew it by heart. Whatever we may think of that, he was a contemplative by vocation and was taught in the Carmelite Rule to meditate on God's word and to love it in contrast to much post-Tridentine Catholic spirituality and to use it in lectio divina as the way into God's mystery. In the Bible, John discovered the true face of God, and he discovered as well his own destiny as a human being.
Now when John wrote the Ascent of Mount Carmel, he was drawing upon his experience in Baeza. He recognized the bad results of contemplative living without sound theological grounding, as did St. Teresa previously.11 Using his theological, philosophical, and literary background, he started to explain the process of divinization, pointing out the mistakes being made by many of the practitioners of recollection. In book 2, chapter 22 of the As cent, in a vein similar to Dr. Huarte's, John writes: "In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), [the Father] spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word and he has no more to say." Or again, a few sentences later, he says: "Hear him because I have no more faith to reveal or truths to manifest" (A, 2, 22, 3 & 5).
How can John, speaking for the Father, say "I have no more faith to reveal?" This is to equate faith with Christ the Word. When John speaks this way he is identifying faith with its content, and so speaking of faith's object, what the scholastics called the material ob ject.
Christ and Faith
In this same chapter (A, 2, 22), we also find, relative to faith's object, the key to John's interpretation of Scripture. God spoke to us definitively, says John, when he spoke Christ, his Word. Everything that he spoke before Christ "through words, visions, and revelations, sometimes through many types and figures, at other times through many other kinds of signs" was for the sake of the promise, who is Christ. By turning to Christ, we find what was incomplete now complete.
Looking at this another way, we can say that Christ is also the personal, active Subject of the revelation, before being the passive object of our search. It is he who first looks at us, loves us, and speaks, offering us his friendship.
If faith is Christ, and he is the answer to all the longings and petitions of the people in the Old Law and in him we obtain every good, then there must be something about faith that would draw us. But Christ, our risen Lord, is not seen by us. How can we be drawn by him? This brings us to the believer, or the subject of faith.
The aspect John heavily underscores in speaking of the subject of faith is "darkness." The reason behind his insistence on darkness lies in his experience of contemplation, which he also calls faith. Faith is a "dark night" for a human being, and so is contemplation.
Why is this so? Because their content, who is Christ the Light, shines like the blinding sun, and, in John's words, "so obscures all other lights that they do not seem to be lights at all when it is shining" (A, 2, 3, 1). The comparison of faith to a light was taken from the analogy the scholastics and others used in speaking of human knowledge, in which understanding was like seeing by means of light, and this light was the intellect.
The Symbols of Faith
The symbols John selects in speaking of faith usually suggest his fascination with its obs cure character. Faith is a "dark night," a "dark cloud," "dark water," a "blind person's gui de." He leans toward the quotation from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans (Rom 10:17) that faith comes through hearing, and so not by sight (see A, 2, 3, 3). In the Old Testament, John noticed, whenever God communicated at length with someone, he appeared in dar kness: after Solomon finished the temple, God filled it with darkness; appearing to to Mo ses on Mount Sinai, God was covered with darkness; he spoke to Job from the dark air (A, 2, 9, 3).
There is paradox here: the dark cloud illumines. "How wonderful it was: A cloud, dark in itself, could illumine the night! This was related to illustrate how faith, a dark and obscure cloud to souls illumines and pours light into their darkness by means of its own darkness" (A, 2, 3, 5).
Faith involves communication between God and the human person. The object of faith, Christ the blinding light, is also a Subject who communicates a loving knowledge, pours light into the person, who is blinded by the reception of the light. In varying degrees, there is always this darkness in the receiver of God's communication.
This symbolism of light and darkness does not explain all the aspects of faith, but John of the Cross's main interest in speaking of faith was its capacity for uniting us immediately with God. To put it another way, faith is the proximate means to divine union. John's own mystical experience of faith and its dynamism was certainly a source for his teaching.
Faith and Love
The articles of faith, expressed in the Creed and coming to us through hearing in explicit propositions, are like veils covering the light, or like silver plating that covers the gold, according to John of the Cross. Our assent of faith does not arise out of any light of un derstanding that we have of the articles, but by bringing our intellects into submission. Submitting in faith, surrendering ourselves to what we hear, we are carried into God.
Faith, then, is never for John a matter of intellect alone, but an activity of the whole per son. Now since a person cannot submit in faith by reason of what is understood, many a theologian has raised the question of how we can defend this submission to God that takes place in darkness, without seeing.12 Why should anyone enter this dark night, this cloud, this dark water? For John the answer would lie in who God is. We know who he is through Christ, who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
When Christ, seeking our friendship, communicates the light of faith, which is himself, one is secretly and mysteriously drawn to him. When John speaks of faith, he is not ex cluding love. The theological virtues may be analyzed separately, but in the life of the believer they are so interconnected that where the one is present the others are also (see A, 2, 24, 8; 29, 5-6; 3, 1, 1).
Love is an indispensable factor in the life of faith. God's activity in Jesus Christ cannot be accepted first of all by the mind (in belief), in order to elicit then a corresponding return of love. Faith receives the mystery and becomes certain of it to the degree in which it af firms the mystery in love.
Dynamism of Faith
Faith is not static, an act we make now and then. As Walker Percy has tried to show in his novels, we human beings are best described as wayfarers or pilgrims. John of the Cross gave his teaching for the wayfarer. He envisioned this life of faith in us as a journey, a pilgrimage. One's loving belief in God's love enfleshed in Jesus Christ is not strictly spea king merely a repeated act. Loving belief is a way of progressing, as on a journey from one extreme to the opposite.
Comparing God's grace to a ray of light that penetrates into the deep caverns of our dar kness, John of the Cross observes that with the experience of this light comes the desire for more light. This faint light in the abyss of the soul calls to another abyss of light and is not satisfied until it is transformed into that light (see F, 3, 71).13
The journey is through a night into an abyss of light. One begins with a faint illumination, moving away from the world in which we live (A, 1, 2, 5). This does not mean physical separation from the physical world. The world John of the Cross was thinking of is the one found in 1 John 2:16: "the concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life" (see A, 1, 13, 8). The world, in this sense, is a darkness that merely seems like a light. Only God's self-communication can draw us out of this darkness. But grace itself is darkness for us by reason of faith, a light strong enough to blind.
Faith may be said to be a journey in darkness toward light. John uses Hebrews 11:6 as a starting point: "Whoever would draw near God must believe that he exists." But he inter prets this "drawing near" as moving toward union with God. He then explains:
Those who want to reach union with God, you should advance neither by understanding, nor by the support of their own experience, nor by feeling or imagination, but by belief in God's being. For God's being cannot be grasped by the intellect, appetite, imagination, or any other sense; nor can it be known in this life. The most that can be felt and tasted of God in this life is infinitely distant from God and the pure possession of him. (A, 2, 4, 4)
This was the mistake of the beatas of Baeza. They thought their ecstasies, visions, and revelations were the journey's end. They gauged the quality of their spiritual lives by these phenomena, and felt no need of reason as an instrument of right thinking and action. They could find their answers in their revelations.
John urged them to press on and not stop on their journey. They must adapt in faith to the mode of God, who is simple and speaks his only word in simplicity and silence (F, 3, 34). In pure contemplation there is neither the discourse of Salamanca nor the visions of Baeza.
In urging us to journey to God in faith, then, John is reminding us that the mystery of God cannot be identified with our ideas or experiences. Our ideas and experiences ought to direct us to the mystery that always lies further ahead and is welcomed by a faith steeped in confidence and love. We do not reach the fulfillment of faith by overtaking it, or lea ving it aside, or doing away with any of its characteristics, whether of object or subject.
Recollection in Faith
John's concern about the spiritual seekers in Baeza, despite their high religious ideals and their lifestyle centered in God, was that they were shortchanging themselves in their pur suit of particular lights from heaven. Even when authentic, as many of their experiences may have been, recollection in faith, John insists, is more fruitful. Particular lights may convey wisdom concerning a few truths; but through recollection in faith that does not stop in any particular idea or experience "all of God's Wisdom is communicated in ge neral, that is, the Son of God, who communicates himself to the soul in faith" (A, 2, 29, 6- 7). John does not urge them to go back to what some considered the safer ground of vocal or discursive prayer, but to go further into the recollection of faith. In the Living Flame, he has hard words for spiritual directors who opposed this quiet mode in prayer, errone ously thinking that contemplative prayer was the equivalent of illuminism, the "heresy" of the alumbrados (F, 3, 30-62).14
This illumination in faith has a transforming effect on its recipient, and in a mysterious way changes a person; after all, it is God's life in us. "In this faith," says John of the Cross, "God supernaturally and secretly teaches the soul and raises it up in virtues and gifts in a way unknown to it" (A, 2, 29, 7).
Rational Control and Reaction
It may well be true, also, that the atmosphere in Baeza was a reaction to the effort of aut horities to control religious experience by keeping it within well-defined limits. This was one of the tasks the theologians of the Inquisition set out for themselves. As we learn from St. Teresa's accounts, a number of them distrusted interior recollection.
Today, science, technology and mass culture can also make people feel controlled and ex ploited. In the New Age movement we sometimes find practices similar to those used by the recogidos in Spain. There are meditation techniques that make one both more suscepti ble to suggestion and more likely to undergo spiritual experiences.15 Furthermore, spiritual leaders can take advantage of people by using techniques that lead them into passive states and thereby make them more vulnerable to the leaders' suggestions.
John sees his way of faith as a protection against such deceptions for those practicing inte rior recollection. It frees them from the need to get involved in the complexities of discer ning the authenticity or inauthenticity of their experiences.
Faith and Community
One final point about faith: we do not journey alone. We need at least one other friend. This is another important aspect of John of the Cross's approach to faith. As loving faith grows, rugged individualism in one's dealings with God decreases. The person of faith cannot be completely satisfied without human counsel and direction. Surprisingly, after all that we have said about his teaching on faith, John exalts human reason. He explains that "to declare and strengthen truth on the basis of natural reason, God draws near those who come together in an endeavor to know it." When we seek truth with others, the light of reason must be our guide.
Christian mystics, in John's thought, never reach a stage in which they move beyond the community of the Church. His norm is that "God will not bring clarification and confirma tion of the truth to the heart of one who is alone" (A, 2, 22, 11). Trying to go it alone, we grow cold in faith. Two can communicate warmth to each other.
John demonstrates his thought here with different examples from Scripture. He marvels at how Paul after his exalted revelations of Christ felt he had to go and consult with Peter. And John becomes so moved by this that he forgets his readers and addresses Paul him self: "O Paul! Could not he who revealed the gospel to you also give security from any error you might make in preaching its truth?" (A, 2, 22, 12). Yet even when God does give an authentic revelation, John points out, there are still many aspects of it and related matters that we can know only within the community of the Church, and through the use of our own reasoning powers. John asserts firmly that all matters must be regulated by reason save those of faith, which transcend but are not contrary to reason (A, 2, 22, 13). We receive the faith from those who believed before us, and in faith we are supported by the whole community of believers. One always believes in and with the Church.16
Our wayfaring in faith is not without its difficulties, needs, and tests. Many times we get lost, or the community doesn't agree; things get muddled, and we don't know what to do. It would be nice in these cases to receive some direct revelation from above, or find so meone else who receives one. But John again exhorts us to the use of reason. We must not look for answers through personal revelations. What do we do when our minds can not find a satisfying answer? When we cannot agree and do not know not what to do, he says, our recourse within the bounds of faith are prayer and hope that God will provide by the means he desires (A, 2, 21, 5). We can see here how closely united are faith, reason, re collection, and poverty of spirit.
To sum up, then, John of the Cross brought Salamanca and Baeza together: Christ's com munication draws one to recollection in prayer, and this recollection is good when it is recollection in faith. Theology need not oppose this recollection, but should in fact lead to silent awe in this very recollection. The use of reason in theological discourse is a service to the community of faith, helping its members communicate Christ's mysteries with each other and make decisions in their wayfaring; the wayfaring is in faith and love toward God, who is always higher and deeper than anything we can reach. "Never pause to love and delight in your understanding and experience of God, but love and delight in what you cannot understand or experience of him. Such is the way of seeking him in faith" (C, 1, 12).
NOTES
1. For further details on Salamanca and John's university years there, see chapter 3 in Fe derico Ruiz, et al., God Speaks in the Night, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 61-92.
2. See Joachim Smet, The Carmelites (Darien, IL: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1976) 2:1- 22.
3. See God Speaks, 82.
4. See God Speaks, 121. In the houses of Villacreces's reform an anti-intellectual spiritua lity was imposed: external, affective, abounding in ceremonies, devotions to the saints, and many hours of vocal prayer in common. See Daniel de Pablo Maroto, "La oracion tere siana en su entorno historico," Teresa de Jesús (January, 1984): 17-28.
5. Teresa often speaks glowingly of letrados (learned men), and she thinks they can be a great help even when they don't have experience of prayer themselves; see, for example, her Life, 13, 18.
6. See God Speaks, chap. 7, for further information on Baeza in John's day, especially Teofanes Egido's "Baeza and Its Spiritual Milieu," 216-220.
7. Francisco de Bilches, Santos y Santuarios del obispado de Jaén y Baeza (Madrid: Garcia y Morrás, 1653), 170-171.
8. Valdivia, Aviso de gente recogida (Barcelona, 1585); published in Alvaro Huerga, Hi storia de los Alumbrados: los Alumbrados de la Alta Andalucia (1575-1590) (Madrid: Fun dacion Universitario Española, 1978), 383-384.
9. Huarte, El Examen de Ingenios (Madrid: Rodrigo Sanz, 1930), 220; see also Huerga, 356. John of the Cross likewise admits that a preacher's good style, gestures, and well- chosen words may be moving, that such sermons can please the senses and even the intel lect, and that they can have an effect similar to a musical concert or sounding bells. But he thinks that such effects will all be soon forgotten unless there is a living spirit behind them capable of enkindling fire (see A, 3, 45, 4-5).
10. Huerga, 356-369.
11. Regarding Teresa's unfortunate experiences with unlearned confessors, see her Life, 5, 3; 13, 19; 25, 22.
12. See Walter Kasper, Transcending All Understanding: The Meaning of Christian Faith Today (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1989), 7-76.
13. See also Ps 42:7 and Georg Muschalek, "Faith, Freedom and Certitude," in Avery Dul les, ed., Toward a Theology of Christian Faith (New York, NY: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1968), 199.
14. See Eulogio Pacho, "Escenario historico de Juan de la Cruz: su entorno religioso- cultural," El Monte Carmelo 98 (1990): 225-241.
15. Because of this, for example, Dr. Herbert Benson, in his research with meditation tech niques at Deaconess Hospital in Boston, tries to give people meditation techniques in kee ping with their own religious background, for the major religious traditions usually have a sound body of doctrine to protect people from delusions that may result from inner passi vity. See Herbert Benson, Beyond the Relaxation Response (New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1984), 5-6; Idem, Your Maximum Mind (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1987), 31- 59.
16. See George Morel, Le Sens de l'Existence selon St. Jean de la Croix, vol. 1, (Paris: Editions Aubier Montaigne, 1960), 198-205.