SJC8 - The Will's Capacity for Love - St. John of the Cross with Fr. Donald Haggerty

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The Will’s Capacity for Love – St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation with Fr. Donald Haggerty

Fr. Haggerty and Kris McGregor discuss materialism and the struggle for happiness in a consumer-driven world, highlighting the Gospel teaching that true fulfillment comes from losing oneself in love for God. Fr. Haggerty reflects on the nature of happiness through the lens of Thomistic theology, including the role of the human will in spiritual growth, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and echoed in St. John of the Cross’s writings. He describes three operations of the will—desire, choice, and delight—demonstrating their spiritual implications in aligning one’s life with God’s will.

Fr. Haggerty also shares insights into asceticism and the deepening of one’s relationship with God through detachment from material desires. He reads a profound passage from St. John of the Cross, emphasizing the necessity of denying worldly attachments to attain union with God.

Discerning Hearts Reflection Questions

Identifying Sources of Happiness: Reflect on where you seek true happiness in life and how it aligns with your relationship with God.
Desiring God Above All: Examine the desires of your heart and consider if they lead you closer to union with God’s will.
Living Detachment: Contemplate areas in your life where material attachments hinder your spiritual growth and surrender them to God.
Understanding the Role of Suffering: Ponder how embracing life’s trials with faith can deepen your relationship with Christ and bring redemptive value.
Engaging the Will in Spiritual Life: Assess how your choices and actions reflect your commitment to aligning your will with God’s will.
Cultivating a Contemplative Heart: Explore how practices of prayer and asceticism can nurture your longing for God’s presence and intimacy.
Trusting Divine Providence: Consider how you can grow in trust that all circumstances in your life, including difficulties, are part of God’s providential plan.
Embracing Humility: Reflect on how humility allows the soul to rest in God and fosters a deeper openness to His grace.

An excerpt from St. John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation

“For Saint John of the Cross, it is not simply the pleasures and enjoyments of the senses in themselves that are the crux of the problem. The human experience of sense satisfaction is unavoidable. Even the desert monks of the early Christian centuries, who took on extreme physical hardships, no doubt preferred the taste of one cooked leaf to another or found one cool spring of water a better choice over another. The Gospel recounts that Saint John the Baptist, in his desert, along with his consumption of the unpalatable locusts, survived also on honey. The Christian perspective in this matter, when it is healthy, advocates a balanced approach. It does not propose a denigration of bodily life to the point of destroying or damaging it. We are an inseparable unity of body and soul as human persons, and bodily life has a sacred dimension, a truth that has far-reaching consequences in morality. But that unity of body and soul is precisely the point and the issue of importance in asceticism. Nothing of bodily life can be lived as though detached from the soul’s existence.

Even more to the point, bodily pursuits inevitably engage the will. The will and its desires remain always in a kind of dynamic consort with bodily, emotional, and intellectual activity. At the same time, the will is a primary reality in our lives by the manner in which it cooperates with or rebels against the graced invitations of God. Seeking union with God demands a deeply rooted determination of our soul to give our will fully in love to God. This cannot be accomplished without the desires of the will aligning themselves with the goal of a union with God’s will in all facets of bodily, emotional, and intellectual life. Most importantly, the will is the faculty of love in the soul. The will must be empty of desires for gratification if by a great love it is to seek for God as a primary desire. All that touches and enters into the desires of the will is crucial for the possibility of a union with God by means of love. It remains now to explain how the will in its capacity for love is affected by the principles of self-denial and asceticism. These two statements from book 2 of The Ascent to Mount Carmel in effect define the nature of sanctity and at the same time express the essential importance of the will’s purification in sanctity.”

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 107-108). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.