On Prayer

Certainly an atmosphere of great challenge pervades the writings of Saint John of the Cross. It is possible that the recurring accent on purification, interior trials, dissatisfaction in prayer, or the wounds of love in certain sections of Saint John of the Cross’ writings has a jarring or intimidating effect. His attention to painful experiences may seem to propose a spirituality of endless burdens and impossible endurance. From our perspective, this focus may be too excessive. It is not that we lack struggles and tribulations. Who does not experience them?

Yet our own thought may be that matters of trial and difficulty should be kept to a minimum and brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible. For many people, even of strong religious conviction, the common experiences of fatigue and pain compete with the pursuit of pleasures and comforts. We often find a way to compensate ourselves with worldly enjoyment if for a time we have faced trial and difficulty. Perhaps we do not ponder the Gospel deeply enough. Suffering for the sake of a profound love of God can be a neglected notion in our understanding of love, though clearly not for Saint John of the Cross: “Let Christ crucified be enough for you, and with him suffer and take your rest, and hence annihilate yourself in all inward and outward things” (SLL 92). That kind of advice is not commonly heard at any time in the Church.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (p. 317). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

The concealment of God’s presence, mysteriously near to our soul, yet known only by love, is at the heart of contemplation. The hidden presence of God is a truth of inescapable provocation, never fully lifted or overcome in a lifetime, showing many variations in the experience of a soul. Sometimes the hidden presence of God is stronger in the silence of prayer; other times it is met outside prayer in the sudden opportunity for sacrifice or in the disguised face of Jesus hiding in a poor person. God as elusive, hiding behind shadows, speaking in quiet whispers, disappearing from sight even in the encounter with him, is all a realization of greater faith. His presence has no predictable quality and offers no promise of an easy recognition. Shadows and darkness can become for lengthy periods the ordinary ambiance of prayer. When the darkness stretches over time and is greater, the thought of God’s withdrawal can trouble souls in their silent prayer, despite how close they may be to God.

The contemplative paradox of darkness as the setting for a very personal contact with God implies a need at times for reassurance. This comes as we deepen a calm certitude of faith in prayer and continue to long for our Lord in love and yield to him in surrender. All the while, over years of committed daily prayer, God works to bring a soul to a greater surrender to his mysterious personal love.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 290). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

What, then, of the feelings of love that may be experienced in prayer? Are they to be denied or mortified? Ignored or renounced? Saint John of the Cross writes that they should be treated simply as secondary factors in prayer, incidental in importance. The awareness of an inflamed undercurrent of love in the will is far more significant, because it is the deeper truth. Yet it may not be encountered in an experiential manner for its deeper truth. Nonetheless, in a receptive response to a longing for God deep within the soul, this reality of love is fostered. The mistaken approach, on the other hand, is to allow a search for feelings in prayer to dominate the exercise of prayer.

For many people, feelings can become a coveted item in prayer as well as a source of continual frustration and instability—a possessive need for a satisfaction that is somehow felt and then becomes the measure of prayer, a habit hard to relinquish. Feelings of love, delightful as they may be, ought to be only a means to recognizing the more inaccessible reality of love operating at hidden layers of depth in the will and in the soul. The greater truth takes place in the unseen “cavern” of the will as it undergoes a profound “soul desire” for God. There is in every contemplative life a need, at least for a time, to release the soul from the pursuit of feelings in order to embrace this deeper recognition. Love in the will, rather than any feeling, is the much deeper truth in prayer and in contemplation.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 275-276). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

It can be useful initially to recall the operation of inclination in the will, the first operation of the will, as described in chapter 5. The will by its natural inclination, in or out of prayer, seeks the satisfaction of taking possession of what it desires. This natural inclination plays a crucial role in prayer. The possibility in prayer is that on certain days the delight of consolation can be received in the course of prayer. This satisfaction, which may be graced, nonetheless can detour the soul from a pure pursuit of God if it becomes the primary desire sought in prayer. The desire for a spiritual taste or feeling, as Saint John of the Cross repeats often in his writings, may replace the far greater need to turn our desire fully and exclusively toward God himself in a great surrender to him. In a letter to a Carmelite nun in Córdoba written at almost this same time in July of that same year, he writes: “To possess God in all, you should possess nothing in all. For how can the heart that belongs to one belong completely to the other?” (L17). The pure desire for God himself has to be a consuming need for a soul that would love God with intensity. Secondary desires for experiences of satisfaction in prayer must be understood as an inferior pursuit.

This teaching entails further insights and challenges. Nothing that can be enjoyed as a satisfaction in prayer should be interpreted as taking hold of God, just as no knowledge of God received in prayer is equivalent to comprehending the actual truth of God. No taste of the presence of God in prayer removes the inaccessibility of God in his divine nature to the human soul’s immediate experience. To think otherwise is to be deceived. It is necessary, then, not to halt at any experience of satisfaction in prayer as though a possession of God had been enjoyed in this delight. On the contrary, the soul must accept that the deeper truth of prayer extends always beyond any experience in prayer. The inclination of the will in prayer should remain ever desirous for God himself without arriving, as it were, at a destination in some satisfaction. In truth, a pure desire for God never arrives at a final satiation in this life, but rather is inflamed increasingly over time with an intensifying desire for God. If we enjoy some delight in prayer on any day, this experience does not convey the deeper truth of prayer, which is often concealed within unseen layers of the soul.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 270-271). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

The ease with which contemplation can take place when a soul is accustomed to approach God with a deeper surrender of itself is evident in this passage. The great obstacle to the soul at this time, on the other hand, as mentioned already, lies in an excessively conscientious approach to prayer that resists adaptation. And in a real sense, this involves a lack of surrender to God. The conscientiousness to “do prayer” as taught in one’s training is not necessarily a virtue; it actually can be a fault that makes a soul reluctant to alter its ways. The person may have become accustomed for many months, sometimes for years, to fill a silent time of prayer with an imaginative gaze on the Gospel or in searching for spiritual insights. The familiarity of the method has trained the person to seek satisfaction in the acquisition of new thoughts or in the enjoyment of some felt sense of loving God. The virtuous resolutions that may conclude such prayer give the time of prayer a sense of a purposefulness. For many souls, it becomes very hard to accept that a prayer less active, less searching, a prayer more inconclusive, more open-ended, can be an advancement in prayer. The suggestion to remain quiet seems to invite the laziness of non-activity into prayer and to yield fruitless results.

As we have mentioned, these souls, if they are receiving contemplative graces, are the fervent and dedicated people of the spiritual life. They are people who do give themselves generously in charity and to the will of God. They work hard and spend themselves. Otherwise, the grace of contemplation would not be occurring. But it is precisely this conscientiousness that can work against them at this time. They are not acclimated to a more receptive acceptance of subtle graces from God. If the person can trust inwardly and allow the soul to follow its deeper instinct of love, as described in the fifth sign, then the door opens to the graced inner desire to seek nothing but to love God in prayer. Unfortunately, an active mentality may tend for a time to resist the “apparent” abandonment of concrete fruits from its prayer. Such a soul may prefer, as Saint John of the Cross comments, to do over and over again what has been done and completed already. The aversion can be strong to doing what is thought to be doing nothing. Yet how mistaken this may be. Saint John of the Cross employs a striking image: removing the rind from a piece of fruit, so that it is ready to eat, and then trying to peel it once again…

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 196-197). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

The whole matter is nonetheless very delicate in description. The beginning of contemplation is not just a passive drifting with an interior current of grace that carries the soul away easily into the presence of God. A soul must learn to give itself to a quiet, loving attentiveness and discover that in the silence itself the mystery of God is hidden. There is a need to learn that nothing is lost in relinquishing active, reflective thought, as long as one’s attentiveness remains turned toward the mystery of the divine presence. Letting go in this way, so that God himself permeates the inner “activity” of prayer, requires a gradual adjustment to a new attraction felt inwardly in the soul. Receptivity is certainly the key word of advice. The soul must receive the inclination of quiet and respond to it with surrender, without seeking to grasp at an experience that it can claim as its own. It has to trust that God is mysteriously near and strive to be receptive to his hidden, drawing action. Saint John of the Cross offers this description: The proper advice for these individuals is that they must learn to abide in that quietude with a loving attentiveness to God and pay no heed to the imagination and its work. At this stage, as was said, the faculties are at rest and do not work actively but passively, by receiving what God is effecting in them. If at times the soul puts the faculties to work, it should not use excessive efforts or studied reasonings, but it should proceed with gentleness of love, moved more by God than by its own abilities. (AMC 2.12.8)

The essential adjustment into this new stage of prayer is thus twofold in nature. The four earlier signs demonstrate a need to relinquish meditative prayer because it no longer works. If a soul perceives itself at fault for the inability to meditate, it tends to impede and block the desire it feels delicately for a silence alone with God. It has to fight off, if necessary, an anxious concern that it is failing in diligence if it no longer pursues meditative prayer. The advice to trust one’s heart and its deeper desire at this time is apt. The choice to leave behind meditation happens more easily to the degree a person is more docile to the deeper inclination. Nonetheless, there remains the dilemma what to do now in a quiet and solitary state, without giving thought and imagination to any subject. This is the second aspect of a necessary adjustment. A soul almost always finds itself initially in a transitional state of some confusion. It needs to cross a bridge not knowing what it means to be on the other side of a silence without thought. The recommendation to embrace a “loving knowledge” of God is not refined sufficiently in most lives to be identified clearly as a target of desire.

The soul may be subject to gentle waves of intermittent desire and feel an inclination drawing it. When it abandons meditation and gives way to the desire “to remain alone in loving awareness of God” (AMC 2.13.4), forsaking considerations, it is possible that it may soon find a new satisfaction. “Interior peace and quiet and repose” (AMC 2.13.4) may now gradually permeate it, without any need to respond with acts and exercises. A preference to stay in that quiet and peace may be gently felt, without realizing so well that it is being drawn to a deeper love for God. At the same time, a lack of perception is often experienced because a painful aridity is also felt. The aridity can be strong despite the obscure desire to enter into a greater love for God. A passage from The Dark Night exposes some of the difficulty of this moment of adjustment. It also identifies benefits that accrue precisely from the difficulty.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 189-191). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition. (AMC 2.13.7).

The more a soul in responding to contemplative grace becomes “habituated” to the calm that is drawing it from within, the more likely that a “general, loving knowledge of God” rises up from within the recesses of the soul. In time, it can be expected that this loving knowledge will pervade the soul’s awareness more distinctly and more appealingly. Nonetheless, it would seem clear that this last sign is in a certain way the most difficult to discern. The previous four signs exhibit strong negative reactions. This last sign is subtle always in its beginnings and delicate in its attraction, and to answer to it means to respond to a grace that may not seem so assured. In many cases, it may be that a soul gives itself to this inclination quite unknowingly. It is led by God and surrenders to the calm and loving knowledge without thinking much about what it is doing. This may certainly be true in the lives of simple souls who are not so analytical and intellectual.

As Saint John of the Cross comments: “It is noteworthy that this general knowledge is at times so recondite and delicate (especially when purer, simpler, and more perfect), spiritual and interior that the soul does not perceive or feel it even though the soul is employed with it” (AMC 2.14.8). The last phrase seems to make clear that souls often initially enter into the graces of contemplation without realizing that they are doing so. The general loving knowledge that descends on the soul is accompanied by a deep interior calm and draws the soul like the fragrance of newly baked bread for a hungry man. The man in hunger simply moves in the direction of that bread, not thinking so much what he is doing. And this is precisely what can happen in prayer. The more a soul finds itself following the deeper inclination to enter this inward calm and quiet peace, the more likely it is that the soul begins to be attracted to the simple desire to love that it is receiving in grace. The movement forward to contemplation is a response to this grace: “The more habituated persons become to this calm, the more their experience of this general loving knowledge of God will increase. This knowledge is more enjoyable than all other things because without the soul’s labor it affords peace, rest, savor, and delight” (AMC 2.13.7).

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 192-193). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

We turn our attention now to one of the most important contributions to spirituality in the writings of Saint John of the Cross. This concerns the signs that indicate a need to discontinue the practice of discursive meditation and shift to a prayer of contemplation. Two things might be stressed before providing an extensive treatment of these signs. One is that a soul’s practice of meditation as a daily method of prayer is presumed in this teaching. A person has a regular commitment to silent prayer and is employing some method of reflective consideration on the Gospels or other parts of Scripture, as spoken of previously. The signs that Saint John of the Cross will identify make no sense except as a trial and struggle that enter into the prayer of meditation.

There is no encouragement here to forgo the preliminary effort of meditation, as though one might simply enter into a more graced and intimate relationship with God by leaping ahead into contemplative prayer as a favored method of prayer. The preliminary stages must be observed. A propaedeutic period of learning to pray reflectively in silence is indispensable. We have to learn to think about our Lord and the mysteries of faith in order to enter into deeper love for our God. This effort in turn must be accompanied by a serious pursuit of virtue and of faithfulness to the will of God. A life without a clear sacrificial dimension should not expect graces of contemplation in the interior life of prayer.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (p. 175). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

We are ready now to take up the teaching of Saint John of the Cross on contemplation. However, it can be beneficial to ease a bit into the subject, which is what Saint John of the Cross does in his writings. On a few occasions, for instance, he mentions a primary motive for him in taking up his pen. A matter of critical importance for him—“extremely necessary to so many souls” (AMC Prologue 3)—is the harm done to souls who do not recognize the initial symptoms of contemplative graces and do not adjust their approach to prayer accordingly. The failure to advance into contemplation when the grace is being offered is, for him, a great misfortune. A lack of understanding is the obvious reason and an excuse of sorts; nonetheless, this ignorance is consequential and requires remedy.

The loss is inestimable, not just to particular souls, but to the vast fruitfulness that a contemplative soul can bear for the sake of others. Saint John of the Cross wastes no time in bringing up the issue. The first pages of the Prologue to The Ascent of Mount Carmel express his lament. When he refers to the “dark night” in the following passage, he is referring to the initial experience of purification that occurs as the grace of contemplation commences. What should not be missed in this passage is also the opening phrase. The initial graces of contemplative prayer do not presume the rarity of a saintly life, but a life sincerely engaged in a wholehearted pursuit of virtue.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (p. 158). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

We can view this next chapter as an argument in defense of the rigors of purification proposed in the many previous instructions. It is a preparatory chapter for taking up a more concentrated examination of the prayer of contemplation in the subsequent chapters. The treatise of The Dark Night begins in book 1 with a vivid treatment of certain imperfections commonly seen in those still in the earlier stages of spiritual pursuit. Saint John of the Cross is referring here to people who have already committed themselves to a habit of spiritual exercises and daily prayer, usually in the structured context of religious life, yet among laity as well, but who typically do not understand yet the serious nature of giving themselves fully to God. They are untried in the rigors of dedicated virtue and have not faced yet the arduous interior struggles that must be withstood over some time before a depth of spiritual quality embraces the soul. There can be no tested endurance in a soul that has not had sufficient time to persevere through hard trials.

This demand is not just a need for seasoning and maturing in the experience of the spiritual life. The essential testing is much more fundamental. As an astute spiritual psychologist, Saint John of the Cross plunges underneath the surface of lives and identifies the motivation of souls in the early period of spiritual pursuit as often sullied and impure. Almost everyone in this early period of the spiritual life professes to be seeking only God, while at the same time the person shows signs of being excessively preoccupied with self in the spiritual pursuit. Saint John of the Cross comments explicitly: “Since their motivation in their spiritual works and exercises is the consolation and satisfaction they experience in them, and since they have not been conditioned by the arduous struggle of practicing virtue, they possess many faults and imperfections in the discharge of their spiritual activities” (DN 1.1.3). In this incisive section at the beginning of The Dark Night, he uses the schema of the seven capital vices to expose seven spiritual vices that generally afflict souls in the early period of a spiritual life. It proves to be an interesting commentary on the factor of underlying self-interest in the pursuit of spiritual life. This tendency to self-preoccupation demands a clear effort of interior mortification if we are to seek God with the selfless spirit that can lead eventually to contemplative graces in prayer.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 141-142). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.