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IN THE UNIVERSITY TOWN OF BAEZA,
Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D.
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THE ORDINARY WAY OF
THE DARK NIGHT OF FAITH,
Denis Read, O.C.D.
On February 4, 1987, the American psychologist Carl R. Rogers died after a long and di stinguished career as a psychotherapist, researcher, educator, and writer. He was 85. His professional interests ranged widely, but perhaps his most significant contribution to con temporary psychology was his work in understanding the psychotherapeutic relationship and determining the necessary and sufficient conditions under which people can be expec ted to change and grow in counseling and psychotherapy.
In this article, I review those qualities in a psychotherapist which Rogers maintained make for a good therapeutic relationship and promote positive personal growth in a client. Then I examine John of the Cross's letters of spiritual direction to demonstrate that these and other important personal qualities can be found in his spiritual direction ministry. Follo wing this review and examination, I conclude with a suggestion for spiritual directors to day.
THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP
On the basis of his extensive practice and research, Rogers maintained that three quali ties genuineness, caring, and understanding must be present in a therapeutic relationship if positive change is to occur in a client. Assuming a person truly desires to change and grow, positive change and growth are predictable for that person when these qualities are present in the therapeutic relationship, regardless of the method of psychotherapy followed in the relationship psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, client-centered counseling, rational- emotive therapy, or any of the other established therapies. On the other hand, if genuine ness, caring, and understanding are absent in a therapeutic relationship, enduring positive change is not likely to occur in a person, regardless of the therapeutic method used, the fame of the therapist, or the time and money spent in the treatment.
Genuineness, the first quality, describes a condition in which therapists are being themsel ves as fully as possible in the therapeutic relationship. This means that the therapist is con tinually aware of what is happening within his or her own organism, especially attitudes and feelings that arise in the course of the relationship with the client. It involves, further, the ability to communicate this awareness to the client when it is appropriate to do so, particularly if the same attitudes and feelings persist in the course of their relationship. Genuineness in a therapist means, quite simply, being real with oneself and one's client.
Some years ago, I found myself frequently drowsy in the early stages of my work with a priest client. I had to fight hard to stay awake as he told me about his problems. After this had persisted for some weeks I finally said to him: "When were together, I have difficulty staying awake when you're talking. Maybe it's just me, or the hour, but I wonder too whether you're telling me what really bothers you the most?"
Hesitatingly, but noticeably reassured, my client acknowledged his avoiding telling me about the increasing frequency and strength of his homosexual impulses. When I asked why, he said he was afraid of what I might think of him. After some discussion about his fear of my opinion, we began discussing the meaning of his sexual urges.
From that point on, our meetings changed significantly. He talked about himself in a lo wer, more personal tone, more slowly, often groping for the words to express his troubled feelings. For my part, I was wide awake. It is hard to fall asleep when others tell you their deepest concerns. He felt reassured that I could recognize his resistances and help him through them to get to his real problem; but that meant my willingness to be honest both with myself and with him. My genuineness at that moment in our relationship helped to move our dialogue from surface exchange to a more intimate and more therapeu tic interaction.
The second quality is caring. In his early work, Rogers called this "unconditional positive regard" and described it as an experience within the therapist of unqualified acceptance of the client as a person. Caring means prizing or valuing clients in all their uniqueness, with all their strengths and weaknesses, placing no conditions that they must fulfill to merit the therapist's esteem. Caring implies respectful, non-possessive, non-romantic love for per sons just as they are. Rogers believed that New Testament agape best expresses what he meant by caring.
Understanding, the third quality, is an experience by the therapist of the client's inner world of meaning as if it were the therapist's own, but without losing the "as if" character of the experience. Understanding is the therapist's ability to see life as the client sees it, from his or her own internal frame of reference, to understand accurately and sensitively the experiences and feelings of the client and the meanings he or she attaches to them. A therapist's response, like "It saddens you that your father never really lived up to your expectations for him," conveys to the client that the therapist understood both the client's feeling of sadness as well as the meaning he or she gives to the feeling. Empathic under standing enables the therapist "to get inside the skin" of a client and "to walk in his or her own shoes for a while." It is to understand the client's subjective world as though it were the therapist's own.
Rogers insisted that genuineness, caring, and understanding must be real experiences wit hin the therapist. You cannot fake them and hope thereby to be therapeutic. To pretend nonchalance when you are experiencing threat or discomfort with a client is not genuine; to pretend total acceptance when you are experiencing deep hostility toward a client is not caring; to formulate a diagnosis of a person based solely on psychological tests and intake interviews is not an experience of empathic understanding.
Moreover, the therapist must be able to communicate these experiences of genuineness, care, and understanding to the client, either verbally or nonverbally, and the client must be able to perceive them, at least to some minimal degree. Unless this experiencing, commu nicating, and perceiving are present in a therapeutic relationship, enduring positive change is not likely to occur in the client.
I once worked with a young physician who suffered from deep self-hatred. Very early in our relationship I was conscious of experiencing caring feelings for him; moreover, I belie ved I was accurately communicating to him my understanding of his inner world. Howe ver, his extreme low self-esteem blinded him to my experiences. Instead, he denied them, challenging them with statements like: "You care for me because I pay you to, not because you like me. And why should you? Why are you even interested in understanding me? No one else ever took the time to see how I really feel. Why are you any different, except that you get paid for it?"
Then one Saturday morning, after months of such struggle, he said: "I've been thinking a lot about us, and you know something? I think you really do care for me." Finally, he was beginning to perceive what I had been experiencing for months. As his ability to perceive my caring increased, his self-evaluation gradually become more positive, not dramatically so, but at least enough to provide hope for the continued strengthening of his self-concept.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
Although Rogers derived his conclusions from his practice and research in psychotherapy, he soon realized the significance of genuineness, care, and understanding for other inter personal relationships. These three qualities enhance human relationships everywhere in friendship, family life, business and industry, government and international relations. They especially foster other professional helping relationships, such as patient care in medicine, pastoral ministry in the church, and teacher-student relations in education. Wherever these qualities are found in interpersonal relationships, and to the degree they are present, one can predict positive change and growth for those involved; where they are lacking, and to the degree they are lacking, dysfunction and breakdown in human relations can be antici pated.1
Spiritual direction like psychotherapy, teaching, counseling, parenting, industrial relations and friendship is an interpersonal, helping relationship. Rogers's findings would suggest that genuineness, caring, and understanding ought also to characterize good spiritual direc tion. And indeed these very qualities do appear in the spiritual direction of Saint John of the Cross, one of the world's most reliable spiritual guides, as we can see in his letters.
JOHN OF THE CROSS'S LETTERS
We have today only 33 letters, either whole or in part, from the pen of John of the Cross, covering a mere 28 pages in his Collected Works.2 Ironically, the people who benefited the most from his spiritual guidance destroyed his other letters. St. Teresa of Jesus, for example, following a familiar practice, routinely destroyed letters after she answered them. That John wrote to Teresa may be seen in his July 6, 1581 letter to Catalina de Jesús, a discalced Carmelite nun in Palencia. This letter, the first in our present collection, was apparently included with another letter that John wrote to Teresa, for he says: "I write the se lines trusting that our Madre [Teresa] will send them on to you if you are not with her" (Letter 1, 736).
Teresa highly regarded John's skill as a director, stating that "our Lord has given him spe cial grace for that purpose." In fact, he guided her own soul during a crucial period in her spiritual journey when they were both in Avila from 1572 to 1574. Forever after, she re garded him as "the father of my soul."3 It is a lamentable loss to the history of spiritual direction that the correspondence between these great spiritual teachers has not survived.
More tragically still, the communities of Carmelite nuns in Granada, Málaga, and Se villa, for whom John was a spiritual guide, burned his letters to protect against their falling into the hands of one of his fellow discalced Carmelite friars, Fray Diego Evangelista. Die go, retaliating for reprimands received years earlier when John was his religious superior, was determined to drive him from the Order during the last year of John's life on the grounds of indiscreet relationships with the Carmelite nuns.4
Nevertheless, the letters we do have were written during the last ten years of his life when he was at the height of his effectiveness as a spiritual director; some twenty of these can be considered letters of spiritual direction, to Carmelite friars and nuns (both individuals and communities) and laity. These letters reveal John's genuineness, caring, and under standing.
LETTERS TO MADRE LEONOR AND JUANA DE PEDRAZA
These three qualities appear in a fragment of John's letter to Madre Leonor de San Ga briel, a Carmelite nun in the convent of Cordoba who felt deeply misunderstood by her Father Provincial. John writes to her in the summer of 1590 from Madrid in these words:
Jesus be in your soul, my daughter in Christ.
In reading your letter I felt sorry for you in your affliction, and I grieve over it because of the harm it can do your spirit and even your health. But you ought to know that I don't think you should be as afflicted as you are. For I do not see in Our Father [Provincial] any kind of dissatisfaction with you or even any recollection of such a thing. I certainly belie ve it is a temptation the devil brings to your mind so that what should be employed in God is taken up with this.
Be courageous, my daughter, and give yourself greatly to prayer, forgetting this thing and that, for after all we have no other good or security or comfort than this, for after having left all for God, it is right that we not long for support or comfort in anything but God . (Letter 22, 757-758)5
In this passage, John empathically understands her affliction and expresses his care in the grief he feels over the potential harm it can do her; nonetheless, he genuinely shares his assessment of her situation and counsels courage in her commitment to God, reminding her that she lives for God, not the provincial.
These three qualities appear again in his letters to Doņa Juana de Pedraza, a single woman in her early 30s, living in Granada. John had been her spiritual director when he was stationed there from 1582 to 1588. In June 1588, John was transferred hundreds of miles to the north to Segovia, but continued to guide her through the mail.
We do not have Juana's letters to John, but we have two of his to her. These suggest that she was undergoing prolonged periods of spiritual darkness and had complained that he was too far away and his letters too infrequent to help her, and she wanted the help of other spiritual directors to whom she might have more ready access.
On January 28, 1589, John wrote from Segovia to Juana in Granada. He opens with both caring and understanding:
Jesus be in your soul.
A few days ago I wrote to you through Father Fray Juan in answer to your last letter, which, as was your hope, I prized. I have answered you in that letter, since I believe I have received all your letters. And I have felt your grief, afflictions and loneliness. These, in silence, ever tell me so much that the pen cannot declare it.
Then, in the body of the letter, John speaks genuinely to her concerns:
In what concern the soul, it is safest not to lean on anything or desire anything. A soul should find its support wholly and entirely in its director, for not to do so would amount to no longer wanting a director. And when one director is sufficient and suitable, all others are useless or a hindrance. Let not the soul be attached to anything, for since prayer is not wanting, God will take care of its possessions; they belong to no other owner, nor should they.
Finally, John concludes his letter, reassuring Juana, that he cares for her:
I am well, although my soul lags far behind. Commend me to God, and, when you can, give your letters to Fray Juan or to the nuns more often and it would be better if they we re not so short.
From Segovia, January 28, 1589.
Fray John of the Cross (Letter 11, 744-745)
Juana continued through most of 1589 writing to John, complaining that her darkness was not lifting and accusing him of forgetting her because she had not received any letters from him. On October 12, 1589, John again wrote her from Segovia. He begins with ge nuineness and care:
Jesus be in your soul and thanks to Him that he has enabled me not to forget the poor, as you say, or be idle, as you say. For it greatly vexes me to think you believe what you say; this would be very bad after so many kindnesses on your part when I least deserved them. That's all I need now is to forget you! Look, how could this be so in the case of one who is in my soul, as you are?
Noting the difficulty of translating accurately the phrase harto me hace rabiar in the Spa nish original of the above paragraph, E. Allison Peers suggests that the words might also be rendered "makes me absolutely furious."6 The passage thus indicates John's ability to express strong negative emotion to his directee when he judges it appropriate to do so. Yet, at the same time the very next line conveys how he truly prizes her.
After a prolonged exhortation to walk in her "darknesses and voids of spiritual poverty" with trust in God, John concludes his letter, as he began it, with genuineness and care.
Desire no other path than this and adjust your soul to it (for it is a good one) and receive Communion as usual. Go to confession when you have something definite; you don't have to discuss these things with anyone. Should you have some problem, write to me about it. Write soon, and more frequently. Commend me also to God, my daughter in the Lord.
From Segovia, October 12, 1589.
Fray John of the Cross (Letter 19, 754-55)
OTHER LETTERS OF DIRECTION
John's letters to Madre Leonor and Doņa Juana de Pedraza contain examples of all three qualities of genuineness, care, and understanding. Other letters of direction, too, show genuineness and caring.
For example, in a letter to Madre Leonor Bautista, a Carmelite nun in Beas, John shows both these qualities to a woman who was quite upset because her community did not ree lect her as their prioress. He writes:
Jesus be in your Reverence.
Do not think, daughter in Christ, that I have ceased to grieve for you in your trials and for the others who share in them. Yet, in remembering that since God called you to live an apostolic life, which is a life of contempt, he is leading you along its road, I am consoled. After all, God wishes religious to be religious in such a way that they be done with all and that all be done with them. For it is God himself who wishes to be their riches, com fort, and delightful glory. God has granted Your Reverence a great favor, because truly forgetful of all things you will be able to enjoy his good in solitude, and for love of him have no care that they do to you what they will, since you do not belong to yourself but to God. (Letter 9, 742-3)
John demonstrates the same genuineness and caring in a letter to Madre Ana de Jesús Jimena, distraught over his transfer from Segovia where he had been her director for three years. On July 6, 1591, he wrote to Ana:
If this cannot be [that I remain in Segovia], Madre Ana de Jesús will not be left wit hout my direction, as she fears, and thus she will not die of this sorrow that the opportuni ty, in her opinion, of being very holy has come to an end. But whether leaving or staying, wherever or however things may come to pass, I will neither forget nor neglect you, as you say, because truly I desire your good forever.
Now, until God gives us this good in heaven, pass the time in the virtues of mortification and patience, desiring to resemble somewhat in suffering this great God of ours, humbled and crucified. This life is not good if it is not an imitation of his life. May His Majesty preserve you and augment his love in you as his holy beloved. Amen.
From Madrid, July 6, 1591
Fray John of the Cross (Letter 25, 759-60)
These examples from his letters of spiritual direction show John's genuineness, caring, and understanding with his directees. True, they are only letters; we do not know what he was like when he sat down face-to-face with these persons in a spiritual direction session. Ho wever, "one recipient of his letters, a Carmelite nun in Toledo, testified that a letter from him had the same effect as hearing him speak."7 Presumably, John was as genuine, caring, and understanding with his directees when he met with them in person as when he wrote to them from a distance.
At the same time, his letters suggest that John was capable of pursing his own agenda rat her than responding directly to the person's expressed issues and needs. In a letter to Ana de Jesús and the Carmelite sisters at Beas, for example, John defends the long absence of his letters with an eloquent statement on the value of "silence and work" over "writing or speaking"(Letter 8, 741-742).
On another occasion, he writes the following to a young Castilian lady who desired to be a Carmelite nun:
A great deal could be said about the three points you raised [in your letter], more than my lack of time and paper now permits. But I shall speak to you of another three that you will find a help. ( Letter 12, 745-746)
John then proceeds to give apparently unsought advice about sin, the Lord's passion, and seeking true glory, ending the letter with a prayer that God will grant her his spirit.
LEARNING, DISCRETION, AND EXPERIENCE
Nowhere does John himself explicitly say that genuineness, caring, and understanding are indispensable for a good spiritual director. In fact, in the Living Flame of Love, he insists rather that a spiritual director should be learned, discreet, and experienced. He writes furt her: "Although the foundation for guiding a person to spirit is knowledge and discretion, directors will not succeed in leading a person onward in it when God bestows it, nor will they even understand it if they have no experience of what true and pure spirit is" (F, 3, 30).8
We find these qualities in John's letters also. His learning, for instance, may be seen in his combined use of Sacred Scripture, the theology of divine transcendence, and the psycholo gy of attachment or addiction to challenge persons to journey to God, not by pleasant fee lings, but in deep faith, concerned only with living in union with the divine will. Accor dingly, John responds to one of his fellow Carmelite friars who sought his advice on how to occupy one's will in God alone "by loving God above all things." John's long reply to the friar includes the following passage:
Loving God purely, above all things means centering all the strength of one's will on God. In being bound and attached to [a] creature by means of the appetite, the will does not rise above it to God, who is inaccessible. It is impossible for the will to reach the sweetness and delight of the divine union and receive and feel the sweet and loving em braces of God without the nakedness and void of its appetite with respect to every particu lar satisfaction, earthly and heavenly. This is what David meant when he said: Dilata os tuum et implebo illud ["open wide your mouth and I will fill it" (Ps 81:10)].
It is worth knowing, then, that the appetite is the mouth of the will. It is opened wide when it is not encumbered or occupied with any mouthful of pleasure. When the appetite is centered on something, it becomes narrow by that very fact, since outside of God ever ything is narrow. That the soul have success in journeying to God and being joined to God, it must have the mouth of its will opened only to God himself, empty and disposses sed of every morsel of appetite, so God may fill it with his love and sweetness; and it must remain with this hunger and thirst for God alone, without desiring to be satisfied with any other thing, since here below it cannot enjoy God as he is in himself. And what is enjoyable if there is a desire for it, as I say impedes this union. Isaiah taught this when he said: All who thirst, come to the waters [Is.55:1]. He invites to the abundance of the divine waters of union with God only those who thirst for God alone and who have no money, that is appetites.
It is very important and fitting for Your Reverence, if you desire to possess profound pea ce in your soul and attain perfection, that you surrender your whole will to God so that it may this be united with God and that you do not let it be occupied with the vile and base things of earth.
May His majesty make you as spiritual and holy as I desire you to be.
From Segovia, April 14.
Fray John of the Cross (Letter 13, 748-749)
John's discretion a word that implies "both a practical, natural judgment of internal reali ties ('discretion') and the virtue which moderates external behavior ('prudence')"9 may be seen in his letter to his dear friend, benefactor, and directee, Doņa Ana de Mercado y Peņalosa, the "very noble and devout" laywoman for whom he wrote his masterful poem and commentary, the Living Flame of Love (see F, Prologue, 1). Writing to Doņa Ana, by then a widow in Granada, from the "holy solitude" (Letter 31, 763) in La Peņuela, "six leagues north of Baeza," on August 19, 1591, four short months be fore his death, John advises:
Take care of your soul and do not confess scruples or first movements or imaginings in which the soul does not desire to be detained. Look after your health, and do not fail to pray when you can. (Letter 28, 761)
Doņa Ana's condition at the time of this letter is unknown; but there appears to have been a health problem, possibly a lingering depression related to the successive deaths of her husband and daughter, together with other family misfortunes over the previous ten years.10 As a general rule, John would have been the first to insist on continuous prayer; in particular cases, he also knew that illness can adversely affect one's ability to pray.11 Therefore, with this particular woman at this time in her life he counsels her to take care of her health first and pray when she is able.
Evidently, Doņa Ana was also prone to scruples, a neurotic and often very painful obsession with religious and/or moralistic ideas. Because these obsessive thoughts (e.g., images or "first movements" of attraction or revulsion toward objects) are not voluntary, there is no sin in such mental activity, regardless of its content. Therefore John directs Doņa Ana not confess to them in sacramental penance.
He gives the same counsel to a discalced Carmelite nun suffering from scruples to whom he wrote a year or so earlier, shortly before Pentecost:
If you could put an end to your scruples, I think it would be better for your quietude of soul not to confess during these days. But when you do confess, you should do so in this manner:
In regard to thoughts and imaginings (whether they concern judgments, or other inordinate objects or representations, or any other motions) that occur without being desired or accep ted or deliberately adverted to: Do not confess them or pay attention to them or worry about them. It is better to forget about them no matter how much they afflict the soul. At most you can mention in general any omission or remissness as regards the purity and perfection you ought to have in the interior faculties: memory, intellect, and will.
In regard to words: Confess any want of caution in speaking with truthfulness and rectitu de, out of necessity, and with purity of intention.
In regard to deeds: Confess any lack of the proper and only motive God alone without any other concern.
By such a confession you can be content and need not confess any other particular thing, however much it may battle against you.
Clearly, John does not regard frequent sacramental confession as the cure for scruples. Constantly reiterating the same troublesome thoughts, images, and affective movements to a confessor only reinforces, rather than heals, obsessional thinking. Instead, he counsels "forgetting," his method for healing the memory described in the Ascent of Mount Carmel (see A, 3, 15, 1). In her case that means letting go of emotional attachment to specific involuntary thoughts, fantasies, and movements, and confessing only in the most general terms failures in purity of intention and truthfulness.
After acknowledging with empathic understanding how difficult it is to break the obsessio nal process, John recommends some practices to help her do just that. The first is not to allow her obsessional thoughts of sin or unworthiness keep her from the communion rail. "Receive communion on Pentecost in addition to those days on which you usually recei ve." Next, he recommends the practice of silence to break the tendency in scrupulous per sons to talk compulsively about their obsessions: "When something distasteful or unplea sant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be silent. Live in faith and hope, even though you are in darkness, because it is in these darknesses that God protects the soul."
Finally, he directs her to practice trust in God.
Cast your care on God, for he watches over you and will not forget you. Do not think that he leaves you alone; that would be an affront to God.
Read, pray, rejoice in God, both your good and your salvation. May He grant you this good and this salvation and conserve it all until the day of eternity. Amen, Amen.
Fray John of the Cross. (Letter 20, 755-756)
Unfortunately, we do not know how the woman responded to John's therapy of forgetting. Possibly, in advising her to confess only in general terms her lack of truthfulness and pro per motivation, he merely introduced two more religious concepts for her to obsess about, and her problem worsened. But possibly too, she perceived his belief in her ability to change her way of thinking and found strength in this perception to make a determined effort to do so.
Regardless of the outcome, we see clearly John's approach in spiritual direction. He coun sels persons to let go of inordinate emotional attachment to specific desires, thoughts, me mories, images, and interior movements, no matter how religious or spiritual, and instead to center their mental energies on the incomprehensibly good God present in the depths of their being, a process he summarized in his little verse, Suma de la perfeccion:
Olvido de lo criado,
memoria del Criador,
atencion a lo interior,
y estarse amando al Amado.
Finally, John's remark to the scrupulous Carmelite nun about God protecting persons in darkness comes, I believe, from his own experience of spirit. In his October letter to Juana de Pedraza already quoted, he confidently encourages her to be at peace and to trust inte rior darkness, a security he himself has gained from years of walking by faith alone.
Those who desire nothing else than God walk not in darkness, however poor and dark they are in their own sight. You are making good progress. Do not worry, but be glad!...
Speaking from personal experience, John reassures Juana about the fruits of contemplative darkness humility, detachment, and a deeper understanding of God, self, and the world:
You were never better off than now because you were never so humble or so submissive, or considered yourself and all worldly things to be so small; nor did you know that you were so evil or God was so good, nor did you serve God so purely and so disinterestedly as now, nor do you follow after the imperfections of you own will and interests as perhaps you were accustomed to do.
Next he describes with genuineness the reality of the contemplative life, pointing out the psychological benefits of letting go of attachment to "experiences" and of embracing in stead the emptiness demanded by the inner journey.
What is it you desire? What kind of life or method of procedure do you paint for yourself in this life? What do think serving God involves other than avoiding evil, keeping his commandments, and being occupied with the things of God as best we can? When this is had, what need is there of other apprehensions or other lights and satisfactions from this source or that? In these there is hardly ever a lack of stumbling blocks and dangers for the soul, which by its understanding and appetites is deceived and charmed; and its own facul ties cause it to err. And thus God does one a great favor when he darkens the faculties and impoverishes the soul in such a way that one cannot err with these.
Finally, he reassures her of the inner security that results from living daily in utter sim plicity and emptiness of spirit:
And if one does not err in this, what need is there in order to be right other than to walk along the level road of the law of God and of the Church, and live only in dark and true faith and certain hope and complete charity, expecting all our blessings in heaven, living here below like pilgrims, the poor, the exiled, orphans, the thirsty, without a road and wit hout anything, hoping for everything in heaven? (Letter 19, 754-755)
By his own criteria, then, John was a good guide: wise, discreet, experienced. Moreover, by criteria developed in contemporary therapeutic psychology, he appears to have been even more effective because he was able to bring the qualities of genuineness, caring, and understanding into his relationships with his directees.
THE SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
But specifically, why, in addition to learning, discretion, and experience are genuineness, caring, and understanding so valuable in the helping relationship of spiritual direction? The answer, I believe, is that these qualities create an interpersonal atmosphere between the director and directee that promotes the Spirit's guidance of the directee.
John maintains, after all, that the Holy Spirit is a person's primary guide; the human direc tor is merely the Holy Spirit's instrument in this guidance. In the Living Flame of Love, he writes:
Directors should reflect that they themselves are not the chief agent, guide, and mover of souls , but the principal guide is the Holy Spirit, who is never neglectful of souls and they themselves are instruments for directing these souls to perfection through faith and the law of God, according the spirit given by God to each one.
Thus the whole concern of directors should not be to accommodate souls to their own me thod and condition, but they should observe the road along which God is leading one; if they do not recognize it, they should leave the soul alone and not bother it. (F, 3, 46)
Psychologically, Rogers observed that a person's inner potential for self-direction, behavio ral guidance, and value formation is ordinarily released through relationships with other persons who experience and communicate genuineness, caring, and understanding to the individual.
Similarly, with a director who is genuine, caring and understanding in their relationship, and who is communicating these in a perceptible way, directees experience the freedom, indeed the encouragement, to explore, express, and discern the interior movements of the Holy Spirit. They are enabled to discover the road along which God is leading them, and to live more consciously under the Holy Spirit's guidance.
Persons on extended retreat or in individual on-going direction, for example, often come with an agenda for discussion and discernment: what to do about this particular situation, or with this particular relationship. Very soon, however, in the freedom of the direction relationship where these qualities are present, they often experience the delicate move ments of the Holy Spirit within themselves and their own unique relationship with the ri sen Lord. These experiences enable them to recommit themselves to the risen Lord and open themselves anew to the daily guidance of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the "agenda" has not necessarily been resolved point by point, but the renewed relationship with the Holy Spirit of the risen Lord has strengthened them to live more fully in each moment as Jesus' disci ples, following wherever his living Spirit leads them.
John's reminder that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate guide and that spiritual directors are instruments in bringing directees into contact with the Holy Spirit also helps us to situate the many counseling tools available today within the overall work of spiritual direction. Undoubtedly John would welcome journaling, dream work, guided imagery, the Ennea gram, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, focusing, and other similar methods as helpful for self-understanding and discovering the particular road one is called to walk; but he would also firmly remind us that the Christian spiritual journey itself is one of personal transfor mation through dark faith and self-transcending love. He would caution us not to substitute these methods for the daily self-emptying of disordered desires, thoughts, memories, and behavior necessary for continued growth in faith and love.
John similarly cautioned the Carmelite community at Beas de Segura where he served as both confessor and spiritual director following his first assignment to Andalusia in 1578:
The waters of inward delights do not spring from the earth. One must open toward heaven the mouth of desire, empty of all other fullness, that thus it may not be reduced or restric ted by some mouthful of another pleasure, but truly empty and open toward God who says: Open your mouth wide and I will fill it [Ps 81:11].
Accordingly, those who seek satisfaction in something no longer keep themselves empty that God might fill them with his ineffable delight. And thus just as they go to God so do they return, for their hands are encumbered and cannot receive what God is giving. May God deliver us from these evil obstacles that hinder such sweet and delightful freedom.
Serve God, my beloved daughters in Christ, following in his footsteps of mortification, in utter patience, in total silence, and with every desire to suffer, becoming executioners of your own satisfactions, mortifying yourselves, if perhaps something remains that must die and something still impedes the inner resurrection of the Spirit who dwells within your souls. Amen.
From Málaga, November 18, 1586
Your servant,
Fray John of the Cross (Letter 7, 740-741)
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The qualities that John exemplifies in his letters of spiritual direction genuineness, caring, understanding, wisdom, discretion, experience provide an excellent checklist for those of us who do spiritual direction today. Being a good spiritual guide requires continual growth in each of these six areas.
Obviously, we must be praying contemplatively if we are to know "true and pure spirit" from firsthand experience; otherwise, we easily become like uncertain guides who try to lead others through a terrain they do not know themselves. We must be faithful to our stu dy of Sacred Scripture, theology, Christian spirituality and psychology, as these are the basic foundational sciences for our applied ministry. We must hone our skills in applying general principles of the spiritual life to the specific requirements of individual persons, a process fostered through regular participation in case conferences, peer supervision, and consultation with other spiritual directors and helping professionals.
Perhaps not so obvious, but nonetheless crucial for creating an intimate interpersonal atmo sphere, is our need to grow continually as persons who can experience and communicate genuineness, caring and understanding in human relationships. These qualities are not un merited gifts (gratia gratis data) like healing, tongues, prophecy and miracles in the New Testament; they are human attitudes that can be developed with practice. We can learn to be more real with ourselves and with others, to prize others unconditionally, and to listen with empathy.
This, of course, is an agenda for a lifetime. But as we grow in experience, wisdom, discre tion, genuineness, caring and understanding, our effectiveness as spiritual directors increa ses, for these qualities are particularly suited to helping directees dispose themselves for the completely gracious action of the Holy Spirit, who alone transforms persons in God.
NOTES
1. This summary of Rogers's teaching on the qualities that make for successful psychothe rapy is based on his following writings: "A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interper sonal Relationships, as Developed in the Client-Centered Framework," in Psychology: A Study of a Science, vol 3, Formulations of the Person and the Social Content, ed. Sigmund Koch (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 184-256; "The Interpersonal Relationship: The Core of Guidance," in Carl R. Rogers and Barry Stevens, Person to Person: The Pro blem of Being Human (Layfayette, CA: Real People Press, 1967), 89-103; "Client-Cente red Psychotherapy," in Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry II, 2nd ed., vol. 2, ed. Al fred M. Freedman, Harold I. Kaplan, and Benjamin J. Sadock (Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins, 1975), 1831-1843; "Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being," The Coun seling Psychologist 5 (1975), 2-10. See also my "Toward a Contemporary Model of Spiri tual Direction: A Comparative Study of St. John of the Cross and Carl Rogers," in Carme lite Studies, vol. 2, ed. John Sullivan (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1982), 95-166.
2. Using the system of abbreviations indicated on page vii above, all quotations from John of the Cross are taken from The Collected Works of John of the Cross, rev. ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991). The letters appear on pages 736-764 of this new edition, and will be cited both by letter and by page number. Thus, "Letter 4, 738" refers the reader to John's Letter N. 4, on page 738 of the new revised edition.
3. Letter of Teresa of Jesus to Ana de Jesús, December, 1578 (#261), in The Letters of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers, 2 vols. (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950) 2: 625.
4. See Federico Ruiz, et al., God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross, trans. by Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 297, 343, 362-364.
5. Except for Scriptural citations, the italics used in the quotations from John's letters are my own, to indicate instances of his genuineness, caring and understanding.
6. The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers, 3rd rev. ed., 3 vols. (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953), 3: 265.
7. See Collected Works, rev. ed., 735.
8. A thorough discussion of John's three recommended qualities for a director may be found in Dennis R. Graviss, Portrait of the Spiritual Director in the Writings of Saint John of the Cross (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1983).
9. Graviss, Portrait, 176.
10. Ruiz, et al, God Speaks in the Night, 324-325.
11. See, for example, N, 1, 9, 1-9, where John acknowledges the disturbing effects of "bo dily indisposition," "bad humor," and "melancholia" in one's prayer life.
12. See Collected Works, 73.