The Theology of Christian Perfection

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Note: This is an adaptation-abridgment-translation, whose scholastic format has somewhat been modernized; its last part on defending mystical phenomena against rationalists' criticism has been really gutted compared to the better, unabridged Spanish (4ª and last ed.) original (which has also been machine-translated into English).

PDF's pagination different from PDF_OLD/PDF_OCR's pagination. (I'm not sure why; they appear to be the same ed.…)

Apparently, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., said this work is even better than his Three Ages of the Interior Life.

True Restoration Radio series based on this book (audio)

St. Paul on the utility of knowledge and learning (PDF_OLD p. 159)

Quotes sublime passages regarding the senses raising us to God (à la Rom. 1:20; PDF_OLD pp. 146-7), faith the proximate means for union with God (PDF_OLD p. 161), and some adages of the spiritual life (PDF_OLD p. 164) from St. John of the Cross's Ascent of Mount Carmel (Súbida), bk. 3 ch. 24; bk. 2 ch. 8,12,16; bk. 1 ch. 13, respectively

St. John Chrysostom (d. 407 AD) never preached specifically on virginity after his De Virginitate (c. 381 AD). It seems it caused too much controversy. But it certainly is an antidote to all the "Theology of the Body", "personalism", and worship-of-human-love Modernism that Wojtyła et al. have promoted (cf. Love & Responsibility p. 29, which blasphemes the love the Divine Persons have, where he writes: "Love is exclusively the portion of human persons. "!). Amoris Lætitia §159 quotes neo-Jovinian Wojtyła's "Theology of the Body" Catechesis (14 April 1982), 1: Insegnamenti V/1 (1982), 1176:

John Paul II noted that the biblical texts “give no reason to assert the ‘inferiority’ of marriage, nor the ‘superiority’ of virginity or celibacy” based on sexual abstinence.

The paleo-Protestant heretic Jovinian is the first St. Alphonsus mentions as holding the view "that marriage and virginity were equally meritorius". I see this as a grave heresy because it ends up in humanism/naturalism, disparaging and limiting charity , when in fact Christian perfection consists in growing in charity (cf. Summa II-II q. 184 a. 3). Even married Christians must have the spirit of the evangelical counsels, even if they are not obligatory on them and they are impeded from living up to them to the fullest (cf. Royo Marín pt. 2 ch. 1, & circa PDF_OLD pp. 75 regarding whether we're bound to choose the greater good).

I've found St. Thomas's commentary on Mt. 19:12 ("He that can take, let him take it.") very interesting; I've asked myself the same question:

But why is this? Is not a man obliged to do the greater good? I say that one must distinguish the greater good in regard to the actual performance or in regard to the desire. One is not held to the greater good in regard to their actual performance, but to the desire to do them, because every rule and every action is determined to something defined and certain : but if one is bound to do every action that is better, one is bound to something uncertain. Hence, in regard to exterior actions, because one is not bound to do something uncertain, one is not bound to do the greater good; but in regard to the desire, one is held to desire the greater good. Hence, he who does not always wish to be better, cannot wish without contempt [of doing the greater good].55. “There is a way of fulfilling this precept, so as to avoid sin, namely, if one do what one can as required by the conditions of one’s state of life: provided there be no contempt of doing better things, which contempt sets the mind against spiritual progress” (II II, q. 186, a. 2 ad 2um).

I forgot that desire plays an important role in the question of Christian perfection.

on desiring the meliora , even if it cannot be put into action:

St. Thomas on Mt. 19:12:

quantum ad actus exteriores, …, non tenetur ad meliora; sed quantum ad affectum [=desire], tenetur ad meliora

II II, q. 186, a. 2 ad 2um:

tam religiosi quam saeculares, tenentur aliqualiter facere quidquid boni possunt, omnibus enim communiter dicitur, Eccle. IX[:10], quidquid potest manus tua, instanter operare; est tamen aliquis modus hoc praeceptum implendi quo peccatum vitatur, si scilicet homo faciat quod potest secundum quod requirit conditio sui status; dummodo contemptus non adsit agendi meliora, per quem animus obfirmatur contra spiritualem profectum.

[related question, which Fr. R.M. cites ibid. : "Whether the external action adds any goodness or malice to that of the interior act?" (I-II q. 20 a. 4)]

my friend replied:

Key and overlooked Scriptural bases exist for “desire” understood in the fashion of the very life of God, participated by men whom He sanctifies.

First of all, behind the term “of hosts”/צְבָאוֹת in “YHWH of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3), we have the stem (צב) and divine revelation of a divine “desire” (צב, also “ornament,” “glory”) pertaining to the dynamics of the Triune God’s inner life: Y-H-W-H (Father-Son-& Holy Ghost proceeding from both) tsēvaot , lit. “of Desires” (צב + plural אוֹת, the meaning of צְבָאוֹת containing more hidden layers of meaning consistent with the structure of revelation itself and its economy of signs than I can unpack here). The approximate translated idea of “of Hosts” or “of Armies” or “of Powers” remains valid in the sense that God communicates His desire to His angelic hosts/armies/powers, who take delight in carrying His words and will (e.g. Psalm 102(3):20-21), yearning to share His own blessedness with all His rational creatures, angels and men.

Also, quite crucially, Our Lord in the Gospel expresses His wholly divine and wholly human longing for the sacrificial Passover of the New Testament to be sealed in His Precious Blood, saying, as He institutes the adorable Sacrament of the Altar in Luke 22:15:

Επιθυμία ἐπεθύμησα [רגתא רגתני], Desiderio desideravi , lit.: “ Desiring greatly [with great desire] have I desired this Passover to eat with you…” This Scriptural way of grammatically emphasizing an all-important aspect of divine revelation betrays the original Aramaic thinking and expression beneath the Greek and Latin texts (famously in Gen 2:17, the Semitically expressed divine warning that ended up violated, literally goes as follows: “/…/ of death you shall die,” the word “death”/מות occurring twice therein, which is lost in the conventional translation: “/…/ you shall surely die.”).

The “desire” inseparable from “Christian perfection” must be patterned after such a desire of God Incarnate for the redemption and salvation of men, which His Sacred Heart has so loved. Such divine love could not be manifested to us without the reality of the divine desire , as it were fueling and accompanying it (as do the angels the Triune appoints to accompany the effecting of His providential designs), in a manner which God alone fully comprehends, in His sheer simplicity necessarily bereft of change.

Also, St. Maximus the Confessor, whom I have a particular devotion toward and admiration for, writes about desire (for example in his On the Lord’s Prayer) as 1) a spiritual mechanism of the saintly soul (modeled after the desire/επιθυμία of the Incarnate divine Logos) in its unmixed disposition toward God (such Christ-like desire consists in “a single disposition of will and purpose that chooses only virtue”); and 2) as a passion, i.e. a manifestation of the “incensive power” (producing “a diffusion of blood around the heart”) striving for what is inferior and corruptible by way of covetousness, which he sees as typifying the “female” category in St. Paul’s saying in Gal 3:28: “In Christ there is neither male nor female.” In his mystically enlightened view, St. Maximus explains that the “man” category typifies “anger”/θυμός and “generation”/γενιά, while the “female” category typifies “desire”/επιθυμία (understood as greedy covetousness) and “corruption”/διαφθορά.

I have a beautiful edition of his texts, which including his On the Lord’s Prayer. The latter also offers a simple yet sublimely coherent and deep refutation of the Greeks and the Jews, who equally fall into “disbelief in the true God” (St. Maximus explains why in just a few, inescapably sound lines of clearheaded spelling out of the true Trinitarian doctrine).

I did forget but meant to point out that the two-letter root צב/TS-V , in tsēvaot /צְבָאוֹת (“of Desires”/“of Armies”/“of Powers”), besides meaning “desire” (and also “ornament” and “glory”), is the generic term (with addition of a final yod , צְבִי/tsēvi) for different kinds of “gazelles” (= deer, stag, antelope). Though this, to my knowledge at least, is never talked about, I believe the connection—through the proto-biconsonantal Hebraic root צב—of “desire” and “gazelle” is in fact profoundly significant. In the Song of Songs (2:9), the divine Beloved is compared to “a gazelle or a young stag [צבי].” In 2:8:

Ecce iste venit, saliens [sicut hinnuloque cervorum] in montibus, transiliens [aeternorum] colles.

“Behold He is coming, leaping [like a young stag] upon the mountains, skipping upon the [everlasting] hills.”

The divine Bridegroom as Incarnate comes from above (from the heavenly hills), swiftly leaping as a gazelle (the gazelle-desire linguistic correlation points to the Incarnation and its sacrificial purpose perpetuated in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, as Jesus Himself tells His disciples in Luke 22:15). His revelation is mediated by “His armies” (צבאיו/tsēva’av , see Psalm 102(3):20) of pure spirits who carry out His designs and desires (as we also see at the Incarnation and birth of the eternal Word, Luke 1:26, 2:9-10, 2:13-14). Hence, the desiderium collium aeternorum , which the Litany identifies as the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the human Heart/intellect & will of God Incarnate), is also, conversely, the desire of men longing for union with Him, desire accordingly essential to Christian perfection, the fruition of which is in Heaven, where the eternal hills are.

Cor Iesu, desiderium collium aeternorum, miserere nobis.

Does לַחמוֹד, ἐπιθυμίαν really mean concupiscentia?

They do (while ἐπιθυμίαν does also take on the other meanings we previously discussed in relation to desire and Christian perfection).

חמוד ,חמד, literally means “to desire passionately” as in trying to acquire “by coveting” (Exodus 20:17).

It takes on a natural, concupiscible basis meaning in the pre-fall order of creation, as seen in Genesis 2:9:

“And YHWH God caused to sprout from the ground every tree [NB: all trees in the original Garden of preternatural bliss refer to all that it befalls Adam to know , to assimilate/eat from as a free intellectual agent, save for one tree] that was desirable/“concupiscibly” attractive [נֶחְמָד] to the sight [of the intellect] and good for nourishment [of the intellect].”

In this situation, נֶחְמָד refers to the specific response of the concupiscible appetite (hence my adverbial neologism above in rendering verse 9 of Gen 2), a lower power, naturally ordered to the higher power of knowledge, and thereby to the good of human nature, the ultimate good end of which being to know God (John 17:3) by seeing/sighting Him in the beatific vision.

The passions animae are indeed given from the beginning as intrinsic “kinetic” sources of intellectual and moral action in human nature. Disordered carnal sense urges, rooted in concupiscence, are the symptoms of the dualistic contradiction (schism) introduced by original sin. Adam’s sense life (especially his concupiscible and irascible powers we talked about on the phone earlier this year) is naturally directed, provided his rightful use of reason, to the proper ends of both nature and grace. In his preternatural condition, the sense passions are thus actively associated with the moral life at both the cardinal and theological level.

In Isaiah 1:29, the sin of “finding pleasure” (חֲמַדְתֶּם) in false/idolatrous knowledge (naturally figured by trees, “the terebinths,” themselves unmistakably found in “gardens” to draw the correlation and critical distinction with Adam and the Garden of Eden) is ultimately a cause of shame and confusion:

“For they shall become ashamed of the terebinths that you have “concupiscibly” desired [חֲמַדְתֶּם], and you shall be confounded over the gardens that you chose.”

However, under another tree, the “apple tree of true knowledge , the soul united to Her divine Beloved is “delighted to sit” (Canticle of Canticles 2:3):

“As an apple-tree among the [barren] trees of the forest [of the fruitless idols of the nations], so is my Beloved among the sons. Under its shadow I took [concupiscible] delight [חִמַּדְתִּי] to sit, and its fruit was sweet to my taste.”

To illustrate that ἐπιθυμίαν does also mean concupiscence in Scripture, consider this particularly crucial verse, Matt 5:28:

“Εγώ όμως σας λέω ότι καθένας που κοιτάζει μια γυναίκα, για να την επιθυμήσει [Aramaic = דנרגיה, very similar to לַחמוֹד, Latin = concupiscendum], διέπραξε ήδη μοιχεία μέσα στην καρδιά του.”

The Hebrew תַּאֲוָה (Gen 3:6) can also take on a closely related meaning to ἐπιθυμίαν, in relation to both the neutral concupiscibili propensione (e.g. Pr 10:24) and the disorderliness of concupiscence (Ps 106:14).

The mechanism of “sexual release,” as we experience it in our fallen condition under the disorderliness of concupiscence, is certainly a turpitude. See here attached a short paper I wrote in French a few years ago about Reich and the masturbatory culture of lustful releasing pride we live in.

Desideremus divina sponsum in Sanctissimi Sacramenti.

… quia concupivit Rex speciem tuam.

§V is the best treatment on prayer I have ever seen, much more in-depth than in Fr. G.-L.'s Three Ages. §V §§3 on contemplation is very interesting, because of its close relation to my favorite gifts of the Holy Ghost, e.g., p. 531:

The immediate eliciting principle of contemplation is faith informed by charity and strengthened and perfected by the intellectual gifts of the Holy Ghost. Informed faith provides the substance of the act of contemplation, and the intellectual gifts of wisdom, knowledge and understanding provide the supernatural mode of operation.

And pp. 535-6 on "cherubic contemplation" (illumination of the intellect predominating) and "seraphic contemplation" (inflammation of the will predominating).

He writes on p. 182 (PDF_OLD p. 95) that "the seventheenth century […] begins the [2 cen. long] age of decadence" in mystical theology.

cf. PDF p. 441ff. of Los grandes maestros de la vida espiritual: Historia de la espiritualidad cristiana on this "decadencia "

PDF pp. 233-5 are on the saintly exorcist Fr. Jean-Joseph Surin, S.J., who voluntarily ransomed the demons of Loudun Ursuline convent in exchange for himself being oppressed for two decades; the last years of his life were peaceful, and his physician testified it was a miracle.

Why does God desire glorification?

St. Ambrose defined glory as:

Gloria est clara notitia cum laude.
Glory is clear fame/notoriety/knowledge with praise.

Gloria is related to γνῶς in the sense of "fame, notoriety/knowledge."

Fr. Antonio Royo Marín, O.P.'s Theology of Christian Perfection ch. 1 §"The Glory of God" pp. 3-4 discusses how the glory of God is the ultimate purpose of the Christian life. He distinguishes God's

1. intrinsic glory
   The persons of the Holy Trinity mutually praising, knowing, and loving each other.

from His

1. extrinsic glory
   His communication of His infinite perfections to creatures because goodness (which "is diffusive of itself," Bonum est diffusivum sui. *) and love desire to be shared, and God is love (1 Jn. 4:8).

*cf. Scholastic axiom 3.10, from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 27 a. 5 arg. 2 (major premise)