Theology of Christian Perfection BY F.L. RVDO. P. FR. ANTONIO ROYO MARIN, O. P. DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY AND PROFESSOR AT THE PONTIFICAL FACULTY OF THE CONVENT OF SAINT STEPHEN FOREWORD BY THE EXCELLENCY. AND H.E. DR. DR. FR. ALBINO G. MENENDEZ-REIGADA (f) BISHOP OF CORDOBA FOURTH EDITION LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN AUTHORS MADRID . MCMLXII LIBRARY D E CHRISTIAN AUTHORS Declared of national interest THIS COLLECTION IS PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES AND DIRECTION OF THE PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA. THE COMMISSION OF THE SAID PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY IN CHARGE OF THE IMMEDIATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE B. A. C. WAS FORMED IN 1962 BY THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS: Chairman : Francisco Barbado Viejo, O.P., Bishop of Salamanca and Chancellor of the Pontifical University. Vice President: Mr. Dr. Lorenzo Turrado, Rector Magnífico. Dr. Lorenzo Turrado, Rector Magnificent. Members: R. P. Dr. Luis Arias, 0. S. A., Dean of the Faculty of Theology; R. P. Dr. Marcelino Cabreros, C. M. F., Dean of the Faculty of Law; R. P. Dr. Pelayo de Zamayón, O. F. M. Cap., Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy; R. P. Dr. Julio Campos, Sch. P.., Dr. Antonio Garmendia de Otaola, S. I., Assistant Dean of the Section of Classical Humanities; R. P. Dr. Maximiliano García Cordero, 0. P., Professor of Sacred Scripture; R. P. Dr. Bernardino Llorca, S. I., Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Secretary: M. I. Mr. Dr. Luis Sala Balust, Professor. CATHOLIC PUBLISHING HOUSE. S. A. P.O. Box 466 MADRID - MCMLXII Nihil obstnl: Fr. Theophilus Urdánoz, O. P., S. Theol. Lector. Aranandus Bandera, O.P., S. Theol. Lector Imprimí potest: Fr. Anicetus Fernández, O. P., Prior Prov. Imprimatur : f Fr. Franciscos, Bpiscopus Salmant. Salmanticae, 7 martii 1962 Nfnn. Beffistro 1517-196:3 Legal deposit IVI 3900-1962 To the Immaculate Virgin Mary with filial affection GENERAL INDEX Pages Prologue by the Most Reverend Bishop of Cordoba xr Author's note xxxi Letter from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange to the author xxxv Letter from Fr. Philipon to the author xxxvi Critical judgment of Mr. Baldomero Jiménez Duque xxxvni Historical-bibliographic summary i General introduction 27 PART ONE The end Chapter I. - The end of the Christian life 45 Chapter 2. - The configuration with Jesus Christ 49 Article 1 . - The mystery of Christ 50 Article 2 . - How to live the mystery of Christ 63 Chapter 3. - The Virgin Mary and our sanctification 69 PART TWO Fundamental principles Chapter i. - N ature and organism of the supernatural life . . Si Article 1. - The formal principle of our supernatural life 83 Article 2 . - Supernatural powers 94 I. - The infused virtues 95 II. - The gifts of the Holy Spirit 114 Article 3 . - Current graces 160 Article 4. - The Inhabitation of the Most Holy Trinity. ... 163 Chapter 2. - The development of the supernatural organism 173 Chapter 3. - Christian Perfection 187 Chapter 4. - Nature of Mysticism 223 Chapter 5. - Relationship between perfection and mysticism 253 VIII GENERAL INDEX THIRD PART TE The Normal Development of the Christian Life Pages Introduction 280 BOOK I. - Negative Aspect of Ja Christian Life 289 Chapter i . - The struggle against sin 289 Article 1 . - Mortal sin 289 Article 2 . - Venial sin 294 Article 3 . - Imperfection 300 Chapter 2. - The fight against the world 3°S Chapter 3. - The struggle against the devil 308 Article 1 . - Temptation 308 Article 2.- The diabolical obsession 3 ! 5 Article 3 . - Devil possession 320 Chapter 4.- The struggle against one's own flesh 33°. Article 1 . - The unquenchable thirst for enjoyment 332 Article 2 . - Horror of suffering 338 Chapter 5. - Active purification of the powers: \ . * 346 Article 1 . - Necessity of this purification 346 Article 2 . -Active purification of the senses 349 A) External 35 B) Interns 363 Article 3 . - Active purification of the passions 369 Article 4 - Active purification of the powers of the soul . 377 Chapter 6. - Passive purifications 393 Article I . - Necessity of passive purifications 393 Article 2 . - The night of sense 400 Article 3 . - The night of the spirit 409 BOOK II. - The Positive Aspect of the Christian Life 414 I. Principal means of perfection 415 Chapter i. - The sacraments 415 Article 1. - The Sacrament of Penance 416 Article 2 . - The Eucharist, Source of Sanctification 423 Article 3 . - The Holy Mass as a means of sanctification . . 429 Chapter 2 - The infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit . . . 434 A) The theological virtues 434 Article 1. - The virtue of faith 434 The gift of understanding 440 The gift of science 448 GENERAL INDEX IX Pages Article 2. - The virtue of hope 456 The gift of fear 46! Article 3. - The virtue of charity 469 The gift of wisdom 487 B) Moral virtues Article 4. - The virtue of prudence The gift of counsel The virtue of justice The gift of mercy Article 6. - The Virtue of Fortitude The gift of fortitude Article 7. - The virtue of temperance The gift of fear and the virtue of temperance . 498 499 SOS Su 526 544 552 559 579 Chapter 3. - The life of prayer 580 Section 1. - Prayer in general 581 Section 2. - The degrees of prayer 595 A) Predominantly ascetic stage 598 B) Predominantly mystical stage 626 II. Secondary means of perfection 696 Chapter 4. - Internal secondary media 696 I. Psychological springs 696 A) Affecting understanding 697 Article 1 . - The presence of God 697 Article 2 . - Examination of conscience 700 B) Affecting the will 703 Article 3 . - The energy of character 704 Article 4. - The desire for perfection 709 Conformity with the will of God 712 Article 5. Article 6 . - Fidelity to grace 720 II. Physiological spring 728 Article 7. - Improvement of own temperament 728 Chapter 5. - External secondary media 734 Article 1.- The life plan 734 Article 2 . - Spiritual reading 737 Article 3. - Holy friendships 739 Article 4. - The Apostolate . 740 Article 5. - Spiritual direction 748 Appendix: The discernment of spirits 774 X GENERAL INDEX P R O L O G O PART FOUR EXTRAORDINARY MYSTICAL PHENOMENA Pages Introduction 784 Preliminary notions 785 Chapter I. - The causes of extraordinary phenomena 790 Article 1 . - God as the author of mystical phenomena . 790 Article 2 . - Purely natural causes 802 Article 3 . - The diabolical 810 Chapter 2. - The phenomena in particular 813 I. Cognitive Phenomena 814 1. Visions 814 2. Locutions 819 3. Disclosures 821 4. Discretion of spirits 824 5. Hierognosis 827 6. Other knowledge phenomena 830 II. Affective Phenomena 832 1. Mystical ecstasy is not a free grace given 832 2. The fires of love 832 III. Bodily phenomena 835 1. Stigmatization 835 2. Tears and blood sweat 842 3. Renewal or change of hearts 843 4. Inedia 845 5. Vigil 846 6. Agility 848 7. Bilocation 849 8. Levitation 857 9. Subtlety 859 10. Lights or glows 860 11. Supernatural perfume 862 Conclusion 866 Analytical index 866 Onomastic index 884 Table of contents 894 1 Jesus and his apostles were passing through Samaria on their way to Galilee, and when they reached the vicinity of Sychar, tired and thirsty, he sat down at the well of Jacob's well, while his disciples were on their way to the next town in search of food. It was past noon. And now a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink. The woman was surprised to hear this and replied, "How can you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, to drink? Samaritans and Jews are not on friendly terms". And Jesus answered, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would be the one to ask me, and I would give you living water to drink..... Whoever drinks of the water of this well will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst again, for it will become within him like a spring welling up to eternal life." Then the woman said to him, "Lord, give me some of this water, so that I may never thirst again and never come to the well to fetch it".... A fortunate encounter! Two thirsty people who see each other for the first time, who belong to two categories of people, who live far apart and shy away from each other, and yet need each other and complete each other. They are both thirsty... And the thirst of the one can be satisfied by the other, and the thirst of the other can only be satisfied by the first. The one is Jesus; the one who, dying on the cross, complained of his burning thirst, forgetting all his other horrible torments. The other is... the Samaritan woman, by no other name; the woman of the schismatic and heretical people who separated herself from the people of God; the ardently passionate woman with an unquenchable thirst in her heart that nothing can quench; the one who changes her position seven times, and will change it seventy times, without ever finding what she craves. A happy encounter, for which the humanized God sighs and a thirsty and empty soul sees before her her treasure, her happiness! And Jesus drew near to Jericho, surrounded by the great multitude that followed him on every side. Now there was in that city a man named Zacchaeus, who desired to see Jesus, but he could not see him because of the crowd that surrounded him, being small in stature as he was. So he climbed a tree on the road where Jesus was to pass by. Zacchaeus was content to see him, even if only from a little distance. foreword xa. Zacchaeus was rich and lived quietly enjoying his riches. He was the kind of man who was satisfied. And perhaps his curiosity to see Jesus was a little restrained by an instinctive fear that this thaumaturge, who so much recommended lemonade and contempt for wealth, condemning the injustice of the rich Pharisees, might address to him some disturbing word to the tranquility of his slumbering conscience. Therefore, the best thing to do was to watch him from a tree, from a distance. But when Jesus saw him, he looked at him with a look of infinite love and said to him, "Come down from the tree, Zacchaeus, for today I want to stay at your house. And Zacchaeus ran down. And when he came to Jesus, and felt inside himself transformed and filled with joy, he exclaimed, "Half of my goods, Lord, I am ready to give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will repay him four times as much. Just by placing himself in the presence of the Lord and hearing his words, Zacchaeus felt flooded by a torrent of light and trembled in waves of that ineffable happiness that only true love brings. And he suddenly changed the scale of values that had been established in his soul and that informed all his conduct. And he began to love what he did not love - Jesus and all that Jesus represents? - and to despise what he loved - riches, to which he devoted all his care. Zacchaeus is simply one more of those whom the Gospel presents to us who, upon knowing Jesus and in contact with Jesus, are transformed... for their own good, for their own happiness, for their own glory. And for the good and happiness and glory of all humanity. And the Gospel is eternal. What matters today as it did yesterday is that people know Jesus, that they put themselves in relationship with Him, who is the Source of salvation and life. On the road to Damascus, Saul went in haste in search of Christians to imprison and condemn. A burning love for his people, their traditions and their Jewish ideals pushes him to the point of sacrifice. He knows Christ by hearsay, and he knows him badly. And because he knows him badly, and thus, badly known, he finds him in opposition to his ideals, he hates him and persecutes him. Suddenly, a very intense light coming down from heaven dazzled him, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground. And he heard a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" This voice was heard by those who were with him, but they did not see the light. And Saul asked, "Lord, who are you?" And again the voice, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Arise and go into the city, and there you will be told what you are to do." Saul arose, seeing nothing; and being led by his own, he went into the city, where he was three days blind, neither eating nor drinking, because the light within had cut off all communication with the world without. And there Ananias, the disciple of Christ, came to see him, to make known to him the gospel in the name of Jesus of Nazareth and in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. xan chronologist What do you want me to do?" And Saul saw the Light. He knew Christ and loved him with the most ardent love and gave himself entirely to him until he said: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me". He immediately affirmed that he overflowed with joy in all the tribulations he suffered for the love of Jesus. And from being a persecutor, he became a vessel of choice and an apostle to the nations, to carry the name of Jesus to the ends of the earth and to give for him every moment of his life, every beat of his heart and every drop of his blood. Saul, Zacchaeus and Samaritans are found at all times along the roads of life. That society of our mid-twentieth century in its greater part and in its most characteristic part; that which in evangelical language we could call the world; that society that dies of thirst, and that to quench that thirst goes out of itself and takes new paths every day; that society that dies of fear of war, and that in full war lives inside and outside of itself, because it has lost the key to establish an order on which peace rests; that society which worships idols and pursues empty ideals and turns its back on the light, slave and prisoner of its basest instincts; that society which for more than two centuries has been fleeing from Jesus, with whom it wants no dealings, and whom, being all love and gentleness, it takes for a terrifying phantom, when only in Him can it find what it seeks; that society of our days is almost entirely composed of Sauls, Zacchaeans and Samaritans. Who wait without knowing it for the Redeemer. Who seek, without telling even themselves out of cowardice, what He alone can give them, the living water that will fully satisfy their thirst and leap to eternal life; the Light descended from heaven that will make them lose sight of the ghosts that now delude them and see all things in their true reality, temporal or transcendent. This society does not deal with Jesus or pursues Him because of lack of habit, because of a backwards education, because it has hardly heard of Him and knows Him badly, because prejudices and ghosts have been interposed that frighten it, because their business, their amusements, their pleasures do not leave them time; because..., because it is easier to let go, dragged by the current formed by instincts and passions and fear of what they will say, than to fight like men and march as free persons towards a previously established end. Some, however, by God's special providence come to meet Him. And finding Him and dealing with Him, they begin to know Him. And in the measure in which they get to know Him, they begin to love Him; their hearts spontaneously turn to so much Good, to so much Love.... That is why today there are so many conversions, conversions of the first, second and third degree: conversions to faith, conversions to grace and conversions to the life of perfection and to the religious state. The book that begins with these lines will provide an opportunity for many of you to read it. XIV FOREWORD FOREWORD XV We needed it so much! Because if this modern society would get to know and ask even a little about the gift of God.... II The Gospel begins by being a doctrine: "Go and teach". It was natural that it should be so, because Christ is the Truth above all, Christ is the Light. And it is the truth that he preaches: "If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?" And to bear witness to the truth he came into the world. But since this truth is at once human and divine and, while illuminating the paths of temporal life, is above all supernatural, and therefore transcendent to the spirit of man, faith follows its preaching. Faith, which opens for us the gates of the infinite; faith, which with its mysterious light illuminates all the great mysteries of our life and death; faith, which lifts us above ourselves, putting us at peace within and without and opening infinite horizons to our hopes. Therefore, the more this truth, from which universal history and true human progress were born, is known, the more man is elevated and perfected. The evangelical truth, the truth of God, the truth of theology (science of God), the substantial truth, which is Christ. Veritas liberabit vos: "The truth will set you free", with the true freedom of children of God who have broken the irons of the passions, on which all slavery rests. A glance at universal history, pointing to the periods of greatest holiness, of greatest perfection, of most accelerated and solid human progress, will convince us that those are precisely the periods in which the faith is most intensely felt and propagated, the Gospel truth most venerated, the theology most cultivated and deeply rooted in life. In the first three centuries of struggles and incessant triumphs, truth shone with dazzling splendor on bonfires and martyrdom crosses. The truth lived more than the truth preached or studied. Then, those four magnificent centuries in which the Church of Christ carried out its greatest undertakings: to save what could be saved of the Roman Empire, especially with the enormous construction of its law, and to civilize the barbarian peoples, turning them into new factors of progress and culture. And it was all then evangelical culture and preaching. It was all then theology, as can be seen by just taking a look at those immense libraries of Holy Fathers and writers of all kinds until after the Carolingian period and the last embers of our Isidorian culture were extinguished. Then, the decadence. It seems as if man-humanity, as if the human individual is tired of standing too long. That standing on tiptoe, looking up to the sky and striving to rise, means to keep up with the truth and the virtue, that from the height they come: "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence..." The Muslim invasion, on the other hand, had contributed to obscure the calm lights of truth with the incessant flashing of daggers and scimitars. But these epochs of forced austerity and unavoidable effort prepare man again to stand up and raise his forehead until the lights of truth flood it again and sustain it in the ways of the spirit. And theology returns in the twelfth century, and in the thirteenth century it reaches its maximum splendor, spreading its splendor to all the horizons of human knowledge. A glance again at the libraries and a glance at the saints. And a look at the social and political institutions that germinate there. And a look at their programs and their most cherished ideals, not of a Society of Nations without law or authority to coordinate and unify them, but of a true Human Society that reaches all men, because all are children of God and brothers in Jesus Christ, and all have the right and the duty to help each other. A glance at our temples of that time, and at our poems and our history, and at the whole of European culture, which owes so much to that glorious century of theology. Theology everywhere, everything is theology: theology in stones (cathedrals and statues), theology in colors (paintings and codices miniated), theology in verses (Berceo and Cantigas and Divina comedia), theology in scenic representations (liturgy and dances of death...), theology in essays of particular histories and of general or universal history... Everything and everywhere theology, because everything revolved around God and every construction had Christ as its foundation. And again the weariness and decadence in the course of the fourteenth century and the whole of the fifteenth. Theology falls and goes astray; truth is hidden; morality leaves the field to corruption, which invades everything; and even the arts and culture lose originality and vigor, and everything is confusion and disorder. Wars, unrest everywhere, crimes always unpunished, if not imposed by personal vengeance; total absence of authority and justice. .. Always the same. "Because you have turned your back to science (to divine science, to transcendent truth), I will reject you...", said God through a prophet. And once again the excess of evil returned to sane men. And once again theology returned to illuminate the world with the brightest radiance. And once again the world, as if awakening, raised again the tone of its history to give way to that glorious sixteenth century and part of the seventeenth, which is one of its best periods. Century of theology, century of the light (not of the lights). Century of knights and saints, in which the known earth almost doubles in extension and humanity sees before its astonished eyes infinite horizons never suspected. And the alma mater of all this is sacred theology. It is the one that creates international law. And it makes humanity feel again as a single family. And it specifies the laws by which this family is to be governed. And it pushes literature and the fine arts again. XVI FOREWORD FOREWORD XVII to heights not yet surpassed. And it strengthens the personality of man, who never feels so great and so strong as when he leans on God and makes Christ his helper and model. In the 16th century, theology fills everything. Spain is filled with universities, and in them theology is taught and everything revolves around theology. Theology is preached in the pulpits. In the confessionals theology is taught and applied. Books of piety (ascetics and mysticism) are written which are nothing but theology. And theology comes to the theater, in much greater proportion than in the 13th century, (autos sacramentales)... and poems of theology are written (la Cris tiada, la Jerusalén libertada). And more than half of the lyric poetry is steeped in theology. And even in Don Quixote, and in the Romancero, and... in picaresque literature there are constant references to theology. And much more so in the books destined to the good government of the people and the education of princes and, in general, to the formation of children and young people. And in the problems raised by the conquest of the New World. And, finally, in all the already very broad content of human culture. In such a way that it can be said that this century, the highest and most brilliant of our history, is all informed and steeped, even more than the thirteenth century, in the clear splendor of sacred theology. Theology flourishes in all its branches (dogma, morals, canon law, Sacred Scripture, patristics, mysticism, ascetics...) and extends its influence to all the related sciences, in which it can and must influence (philosophy in all its branches, law in its own, etc.). Century of theological splendor, century of intense culture and accelerated human progress. III Then came the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; once again the decadence of theology and once again the decadence of humanity. Perhaps this decadence is not noticed until much later; perhaps until our days, because today we are still reaping the fruits that were sown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Harvesting their very bitter fruits when a counter-current of healthy reaction is already beginning to rise in the summits, which is becoming stronger every day. The progress of the experimental sciences is of little importance, of little significance. When has mankind as a whole gone backwards, when has mankind been more fearful since the time of the barbarians, when have the bitterest hatreds and the deepest abysses opened up between people and people, between party and party, between social class and social class? When did mankind feel such a deep and extensive malaise and such insoluble problems as that of housing, for example? When did it feel more tired and more fed up with life, for which it feels impotent with a kind of gripping abulia, which does not seem to be able to lead it except to a collective suicide by inaction - sterile and selfish - and to a collective suicide by inaction? tion - or to a catastrophic suicide, in which all their forces, in two concentrated camps, mutually destroy each other? From the middle of the XVII century until the beginning of the XX century there was hardly any theology. And what theology there was, was quite disconnected from life and with weak and, in general, not very successful reactions of an apologetic sense (ontologism, traditionalism, biblical concordism...) in the face of the burning problems that life itself in that agitated and revolted epoch presented to it. And, since there was no theology, the queen of knowledge..., there could be no constructive and serious philosophy, and all human knowledge was enclosed in the study of matter as its exclusive object. There was no theology. And the little that there was, concentrated in convents and seminaries, without contact with reality; without wanting to go out to the street to pick up the living problems that swarmed in it. Even from the pulpits - and I do not know if we could say from the confessionals - true theology had fled. If anything of it reached everywhere, it was so crumbled and broken up, so lacking in life and without a total vision of the whole, that, having lost the link with the principles, it could hardly engender strong convictions, nor hardly influence the true life of souls or the external life of human societies. Since the 17th century, dogmatic theology had lost its inner cohesion and its homogeneity with the doctrine relative to the ecclesiastical faith. Marín Sola reacts marvelously against all this in his transcendental work La evolución homogénea del dogma católico (The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma). In morals, first with probabilism and then with the two ways to reach sanctity (asceticism and mysticism), confusion and disorientation are also produced; because there is no longer one way to reach perfection, but two or many, as many as have in their favor some reason of probable value. In mysticism, with the contemplation acquired and the self-sufficiency of asceticism, one arrives at such deviations that even in convents of cloistered nuns (!) the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa are forbidden by certain confessors.... Blessed saints, who would have thought it when you were writing them!.... And, of course, with an almost total absence of theology in life or with such a theology? How can we be surprised that the great mass of our societies have come to sink into the crude paganism in which they find themselves today? Christian societies and those that consider themselves as such are now so little distinguishable from those that are not! All this effort to enclose the Church and Religion in the sacristies would not have been so fearful and so harmful if we Catholics had not lost so much of our influence in life. SVffi foreword FOREWORD XIX rv The study of theology can be considered as divided into two stages: the first, of abstraction, of the appraisal of concepts or ideas, of method and rational organization, of rigorous speculation in short, so that its unity, its logical linkage, its totality, may shine forth, embracing the whole horizon of divine knowledge, to which all human knowledge is subordinated; and the second, of integration or incorporation into life. The analysis must be followed again by synthesis; a vital and articulated synthesis, but less abstract and in less technical and simpler language. Both stages are necessary, and neither of them could be dispensed with with impunity. The work of the first stage is mainly constituted by scholasticism; the second, by what is being done again today and is absolutely necessary to do: the work of integration and approach to life. With which we return a little to the Gospel, in which there is hardly anything abstract or governed by the laws of logic, but a looseness and a vital disorder, like that which nature - within an admirable superior order - offers us everywhere. The patristic production, still so close to the Gospel, prepares and outlines scholasticism in some way. And from all these previous manifestations of divine truth there is something to be taken from the integration of theology with life that we need today. The book for which these lines serve as a prologue certainly has something of this. But the modern period of which we have been speaking cannot be classified in either of these two stages. It comes to be the weakening and completion of scholasticism, without reaching the vital integration that we now seek. This weakening and disintegration began in the second half of the 15th century. Morals became more and more separated from dogma. And, having broken communication with the principles from which it naturally flows, it continues to descend into the most extreme casuism. It is no longer a rational doctrine within faith, but a kind of penal code or a form of prescriptions for measuring the morality of each case that may arise in life. The positive part, that is to say, the virtues, are increasingly ignored. The whole problem consists in avoiding sins, as if that were possible without at the same time filling the soul with something more substantial! The Gospel is not a law of prohibitions and negations, but of very emphatic affirmations: you shall love...; be perfect.... If it is also said that it is necessary to deny oneself and die..., it is only in order to be born again in Christ and through Christ and, incorporated with Him, as members of His Mystical Body, to participate in the very life of God; Ego sum vita...; Veni ut vitam habeant et abundantius habeant.... Qui manducat meam carnem.... habet vitam aeternam.... And there are also very emphatic affirmations: pray, give alms, forgive, do good to your enemies, blessed are the peacemakers, live united and be one ("with one soul and one heart"), as I am one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and so many more. The spiritual life, the life of souls seeking perfection, was also dismembered. The idea of mysticism was falsified and, once falsified, it was fought relentlessly and relentlessly. The idea of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural and the mission of each of these orders was lost. In the study of mysticism, the truly theological was ignored, and Catholic authors themselves were sometimes influenced by rationalist authors, who, seeing in mysticism only certain epiphenomena or simply accessories or completely foreign to it, had reduced it to a chapter of experimental psychology of hysterics or abnormal people. The liturgy, on the other hand, had fallen into complete disuse on the part of the faithful, for whom it was something totally incomprehensible and boring. Perhaps it is still so today, in spite of the efforts being made to make it understandable to the people. The liturgy is not easy to understand, or even to explain, unless it is based on very clear principles (as far as possible) of dogma and biblical science, especially sacred history, since a good part of the liturgy is taken from the Old Testament, in which everything is a symbolic and prophetic foretaste of what was to come, of what happens to us and what we live; for, as St. Paul tells us, omnia in figura contingebant lilis: "Everything that then happened to them was a figure of what was afterwards to come." In the secular environment - sciences, literature, fine arts, law, politics? - not only do we not find, as in the nineteenth and sixteenth centuries, a Christian atmosphere and aromas, but quite the contrary. Every advance in science in the 15th and 19th centuries became a weapon against religion. Politics counts among its main aims, and in more or less declared forms, the de-Christianization of peoples. Law and morality, after having driven God out of their field, are eagerly looking for a burning nail to grasp, something that can serve as a foundation, however despicable it may be, to replace "the one who is set, who is Jesus Christ". In this way, what is so strange that nothing is standing, that everything is shaken, that everything is in crisis in the times we live in...? Had not our Donoso Cortés and the German Spengler, to cite only the first and the last of the series, already announced it with prophetic eyes and irrefragable logic? Theology was missing, faith was missing, and so was the soul of humanity. Autonomous reason could not be sustained. The meaning of life was lost and, naturally, the meaning of death. And, wanting to suppress mysteries, everything became a mystery; and man finds everywhere, neither outside nor inside himself, only insoluble problems. And this will of ours, with infinite yearnings, where will it go? To close our eyes, to let the beast prevail...? But there is something always alive within us that does not know what to do? foreword FOREWORD XXI satiate, who cannot be satiated with what the beasts are satiated with. "Make us, O Lord, for you," said St. Augustine, "and our heart does not rest until it rests in you. V The book you hold in your hands, dear reader, is a book of theology. But not an abstract theology, but a living and integral theology, which wants to become the book of your life. It marks an ideal for you, the only ideal that can and must be written with a capital letter: the possession of God; God Himself, who wants to give Himself to you as an everlasting inheritance. He sets you an ideal, which is holiness, which is perfection; an ideal, which is happiness, that which you seek, that which you crave, and for which you have such a burning thirst that you cannot quench with anything else. Happiness, that one happiness for which we have been created, can logically only be the result of perfection. For only the perfect fully attains its end. And the end must be happiness in us, to which everything in life is ordered. The book is dogma and morals..... Evangelical morality, which is the morality of perfection; not purely Sinaitic morality, which was only a first stage in a slow and long evolution, which was to be crowned by Jesus Christ. "Nihil ad perfectum adduxit Lex"? And within morality there is asceticism and mysticism, which cannot and should not be separated, because they are not two ways, but only one, seen under two different aspects that mutually complete each other. It is simply Christian life, which without mysticism cannot even be Christian, because the whole Christian life moves in mystery. The Christian life begins at baptism. And baptism imprints character. And that character is something of supernatural origin which is indelibly added to our natural being. It brings with it grace - if it is not hindered - which is a new supernatural element added to our being, to which it gives new demands and new capacities. And grace, which forms in us something like a second nature of a transcendent order, of a superior and divine order, comes to constitute in us as a new principle of action which is added to our natural action. And our life will thus be a result of these two principles as long as the one does not practically annul the other completely. Therefore, we can say that, in a very broad sense, mysticism begins in baptism, because of the supernatural element that is infused in it, like the mustard seed sown in the garden of the soul. And if it is the natural element that predominates at all, man returns to being the sinful son of Adam, the son of fallen Adam, the animal man of whom St. Paul speaks to us. If, on the other hand, the supernatural element prevails in us, the day will come when, after man has fully denied himself, after he has died to himself in order to rise again in Christ and through Christ, as a new creature fully governed by the spirit of Christ, he will become a new creature, a new creature fully governed by the spirit of Christ. God, can say: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me", and this fruit, now matured, is already sown in the soul through baptism. In the natural man there is, as it were, a double nature, corresponding to the two elements of which his being is composed: matter and spirit or animality and soul. The first works by means of the senses, by his instincts and passions; the second, by means of reason and will. But since human nature is fallen and disordered by sin, reason is weakened in its functions. It knows the truth poorly, amid hesitations and shadows. Thus it does not succeed in imposing itself on the senses and lower powers, which tend to their own objects without the control of a free reason that duly endorses and directs them. The natural man is thus subject to two forces: the specific force of reason, weak and impotent in practice to reduce to order the lower activities of his being, and the force or weight resulting from his animality, which constantly tends to go astray. But for us Christians man is something more than a rational animal; and to complete his definition we should add: elevated to the supernatural order. This elevation to the supernatural order does not change his essence - essences or substances cannot change (like numbers) without ceasing to be what they are - but it immensely perfects his nature. As fire does not change the substance of the iron that is introduced into it, but it sensibly modifies its nature, its accidents, its ways of acting. By this elevation to the supernatural order, man acquires or can acquire sanctifying grace, by which he becomes a child of God and a partaker, in some way, of God's nature and God's way of working. We have, then, in man three principles of operation: animality, reason and grace. And since each tends to its own object, hence the interior struggle in which man lives, without being able to attain true peace, which is based on the perfect order, by which the lower must be subjected to the higher, until, dead to itself (totally subjected), the animal is subjected to reason and reason surrenders and submits itself totally to God. And it should be noted that even before grace enters the soul there may already be in it some supernatural element - above all faith - which also exerts some influence on its actions and conduct. We can, therefore, represent man in order to his action, his conduct, the direction and course of his life by a system of forces constituted in the following way: a force of constant action, animality, which is exerted vertically, downwards, towards the sensible, towards the earth; another force of a spiritual character, intermittent, reason, which is exerted and tends to lead us horizontally; and a third force, the supernatural, faith, grace, also intermittent, which attracts us and pushes us upwards, towards its center, towards God. We say that the first one acts continuously because of its instinctive and even unconscious nature, XXII foreword and our free decision. The second two forces are intermittent, because the exercise of reason depends, at least to a very great extent, on the exercise of our freedom, which is intermittent in itself. And faith, the supernatural, works in us through reason and will. None of these forces acts in the Christian in an absolutely exclusive way, but combined in greater or lesser proportion with the other two. And even in practice, and as far as life as a whole is concerned, a conduct of pure reason is not given, but is placed either at the service of sense or at the service of God, depending on whether the animal or the supernatural influences it more or less. And according to the predominance of each of these forces, this is how our life, our conduct, is specified. Perhaps we could add here that sometimes reason does not seem to be at the service of either of these two external forces, the sensible and the supernatural, as when it becomes attached to itself through pride, for example. But this does not last, because :1 man knows perfectly well that he cannot be the end of himself. He feels empty. He is neither a source of good nor of truth. He is a being created and ordered ad alterum, to another, to something outside himself, whose possession fills him and beatifies him. Strictly speaking, he is created for God, who is the supreme Good; and when he tends to something else it is because, abstracted and illusioned by the force of passion (abstractus et illectus), he takes at that moment as the supreme good whatever else appears to him as a partial and momentary good. According to all that we have been saying, we could graphically represent this doctrine by a geometric figure composed of three circles that intersect, the animal, the rational, the supernatural, representing the position of the Christian at any given moment of his life; from which figure three fundamental lines depart: one vertical downward, which would represent the conduct of man totally spoiled and bestialized; another horizontal, that of right reason, and a third, finally, vertical upward, that of the perfect Christian, that of the mystic, that of the saint. And in the intermediate quarters, a multitude of lines that always radiate from the same point, representing the infinite variety of directions or conducts resulting from the combination of these three fundamental forces according to the different degrees of intensity of each one, largely dependent on our own freedom. When our conduct comes to be represented by one of the stripes below the horizontal, the soul is not going towards God, but towards the earth, towards hell; and it is in mortal sin. It is carried away by passion with more or less mixture of a slavish and obscure reason. When, on the other hand, it begins to rise above the horizontal, it goes towards God in a more or less direct way. And in FOREWORD XXIII It is therefore guided by reason and by faith and grace. Its works are human-divine; human, because they proceed from reason; divine, because reason produces them, supported by faith and strengthened by the infused virtues. The more this supernatural element prevails, the more divine they are, and the more the divine mode, which characterizes mysticism, becomes more noticeable in our actions. But there comes a moment when the supernatural element prevails altogether. The human, in its disorderly aspect, disappears completely. And that is to deny oneself, to die to oneself, in order to be resurrected or born again. And that which is not disordered in us submits itself totally to God by a total loving surrender. That is to say, neither our understanding nor our will move by themselves, but it is only the spirit of God who guides them. And then, upon this self-denial, upon this total submission of all that is ours to God in Christ and through Christ, as most docile members of his Mystical Body, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us to vivify and govern us, takes possession of us, and by means of his gifts takes possession of us, and by means of his gifts he gives us a new life. 1 Here is the figure with its corresponding explanation: H : It is man in his three spheres or zones: the lower circle represents animality, fallen nature: the intermediate, the soul, natural reason, and the upper, the supernatural, faith, grace. C; It is heaven. God. The symbols Ci, C 2 , C 3 ... represent the different degrees of glory. FN: This would be the natural happiness of man not elevated to the supernatural order. Today, the limbo of unbaptized children. I: It is hell, the lack of God and of all good, with its different degrees of sorrow. PKÓLOGÜ i-SlY It does indeed direct and govern us. Thus, by dying to itself, our ego has been transformed, renewed, born anew, without the burden, we might say, of the sad consequences of original sin; it has been perfected with its ultimate and true perfection, which consists in union with God in being and acting. We have been speaking of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of identifying our thinking and our will with that of God; but one might ask: How do we know in each case the thinking and will of God? How do we distinguish the impulse of the Holy Spirit from other motions or impulses to which we may be subject...? In general, we can answer that here too there are two stages; in the first, God speaks to us multifariam multisque modis, "with many forms and in many ways," as he first spoke to our fathers; he speaks to us through Sacred Scripture, through spiritual books, through good examples..., and, above all, through the Holy Spirit.... and, above all, by means of superiors from within and without, especially the spiritual director, to whom we submit ourselves (and through him to God) the more we deny ourselves; and all this governed by the infused virtue of prudence. In the second, without these means of knowing the will of God disappearing completely, there is added, in a higher and more intimate order - when we have already denied ourselves completely - the Holy Spirit himself, who governs us without hindrance, by means of his gifts. Thus the saints have an instinct so sure that it frees them from all error in order to salvation. And even in things that seem beyond their reach, they see more and are more accurate than the learned and theologians. And that is that in us the second part of the previous phrase of St. Paul is fulfilled: "Novissime diebus istís locutus est nobis in Filio: In these last times he willed to speak to us through the Son...". Who, in turn, speaks to us and suggests to us what we need through his Spirit: "suggeret vobis omnia quaecumque dixero vobis: he will suggest to us - in a personal, most intimate way - what Christ in general has taught us". For this are his gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, etc., since it is well known that the habitual exercise of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is one of the most characteristic features of the mystical life. It is then that we receive and live and act (or allow to be acted in us) the gift of God par excellence of which the Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman. From all this we can already form a fairly approximate concept of what mysticism is. For there are two stages, as we have seen, in the development of the Christian life in us: first, that in which God helps us with his supernatural aids (faith, grace, infused virtues...), and second, that in which man, dead to himself, having denied all that is his own, even his own self, the beginning of all sin and all imperfection, submits himself totally to God, gives himself totally to God in an act of perfect love. From this moment on, it is no longer he who lives, but Christ lives in him. He is a living and most docile member of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. PJtÓtOGO XXV Christ, who is properly the one who lives in him and works in him by means of his Spirit. In this way, man, while acquiring a very intense and perfect activity far superior to what he had before, becomes, nevertheless, like a passive agent, if the expression fits, potius agitur q uam agit, because it is God who works in him; it is God who uses him as a most perfect instrument; an instrument, of course, of a rational and free character, whose effort is to place all his capacity, all his activity in thinking and willing.... at God's disposal and as if adhering and adding himself fully to God's thinking and willing. This is the change of hearts that we so often see realized in the lives of the saints. This is the perfect union, as far as it goes, of God with the soul and of the soul with God. This is Christ reigning, Christ reigning in the inner world of the soul. And when this state is reached, the soul is usually conscious of this union and experiences God within itself, loving it, directing it, enlightening it, sanctifying it and working in it works of holiness and eternal life. This is what is usually called the state of infused contemplation or divine contemplation. And now a little example that we have already put in other times and we finish. Suppose we have to make a trip in an automobile. We love to drive, although we do not drive well at all, and we sit behind the wheel. But there is an excellent driver at our side, a true master, who knows the art like no other. And to help us, he starts by giving us some indications: "Honk your horn, there is a curve coming"; "Don't take it the wrong way, someone else may come along and crash"; "Until you see the exit, let off the accelerator"; "Avoid sudden changes of speed", etc., etc., etc. Sometimes, to get us out of some trouble, he himself puts his hand on the steering wheel and puts the car in its place. And as the traffic of cars and trucks increases, and the dangers increase, and we feel more and more incapable and more conscious of our incapacity, we leave the steering wheel more and more in his hands and we move our feet aside so that he can press the accelerator and the brakes and make the changes of speed, etc.; until at last we tell him: "Look, look, it is much better that you guide; I will go safer and more at ease, because I have complete confidence in you". That teacher to whom we entrust ourselves is Christ, is the Holy Spirit. And then everything goes well, everything is perfect. We have refused to lead. We have died to ourselves, even if it is our hands that still carry the steering wheel and even if we are in some way instruments through which He communicates the direction of the car. FOREWORD XXVI VII We could further schematize this march or ascent of man towards God by analyzing the various attitudes of the former towards the latter and of the latter towards the former. These can be reduced to five, reflected in the following propositions: i. a , when man seeks, God approaches; 2. a , when man asks, God answers; 3. a , when man listens, God speaks; 4. a , when man obeys, God governs; and 5. 1 , when man surrenders, God works. These propositions need clarification and we are going to give it to you right away. First of all, we should not believe that each of them represents a totally separate stage of our life and excludes the others, since they are usually more or less intertwined with each other. It is simply a general characterization of each one, according to the ordinary law. The very terms of each proposition are not entirely proper, and therefore need explanation. But, once explained, we believe that they can shed some light on what we have been saying. In this kind of doctrine neither mathematical language nor logical and exact precision are generally possible. 1. a When man seeks, God draws near. - When man seeks, what? Well, of course, when man seeks God, but not always in a concrete and definite way. Sometimes God is sought without knowing it, without naming Him or thinking about Him. One seeks the Truth; one seeks the Good; one seeks, finally, the infinite Beauty.... But, since all this can only be truly found in God..., God is sought. But he must be sought with sincerity, whatever the cost; that is to say, with sacrifice. With a kind of beginning to come out of oneself, to break the enslaving shell of selfishness. Newmann used to say that in judging a soul it is not so important to see how far it is from God as to see the direction in which it is going. Is it going towards Him or away? Well, if it goes towards Him, if it seeks Him with sincerity, then God begins to attract it; then God draws it near. Nothing else is meant by that thirst of which Christ himself speaks to us (loc. 7:37): "Whoever thirsts - for great and noble things, for Truth, for Beauty, for Love... - come to me and drink. And drinking - knowing him - he will believe in me. And "he who believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from his bosom". And this he said, the evangelist adds, "referring to the Spirit that those who believe in him will receive". 2. a When man asks, God answers. - Man's questioning can take many different forms. A misfortune can make us ask about the cause of it. And, if we go deep enough, we will find God, who begins to answer us. A phenomenon of nature, or the order of the Universe, the march of History, or the origin of authority - if it is to be true - or of Law or Morality.... In all this, if FOREWORD XXVII If we go deeper, if we ask, God begins to answer us by means of reason. At other times man asks: What shall I do to be happy? Where is happiness? Where is the truth and the good that I long for? At other times, like St. Paul: Who will deliver me from this body of death?.... Or who can bring peace on earth...? The peace of the soul, the peace of societies.... And God continues to answer by means of reason, or by means of a counselor, or by means of a human book, or by means of a divine book, written by Himself (Sacred Scripture), or, finally, by an interior illumination, as often happens with those who are converted. The point is to ask with an eagerness to know. To ask without respite or rest. To ask oneself and to ask all creatures. With recognition of our radical incapacity; with a sincere desire to obtain an answer and, once obtained, to accept it. When we ask, God answers. 3. a When man listens, God speaks. - It is difficult for man to listen to his fellow man. The most difficult thing in conversation is precisely to know how to listen. But listening to God is much more difficult still. We live amidst an infinite series of noises; noises, let us say it this way, on the outside and on the inside. On the outside, the uninterrupted impressions of creatures through our external senses. Inside, the noises stored in our inner senses, which take advantage of any moment of silence and calm to deafen and stun us. And so the voice of God cannot be heard. For the voice of God is sweet and gentle. God "does not cry out or let his voice be heard outside, nor can that voice be heard in the public square or amidst the noise of the world" (Mt. 12:19). Therefore, when God wishes to speak to a soul, "he leads it into solitude and speaks to its heart" (Hos. 2:14). And when he speaks to a soul in this way, as a bridegroom speaks to a bride, no one else perceives what he says; and only to the soul that is given to him as a bride does he begin to speak in this way. But the soul that has come to hear his answer (the call of God), seeks him in solitude and wants to continue to hear him, and listens; and it puts all its senses into this supplicant listening. That is to say: the soul prays. And if it knew how to take advantage of all that God told it through messengers, to which we have referred before ("multifariam multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus..."), now, when the messengers (creatures) no longer know how to tell it, it is now that deep within itself it feels God, who says to it: "Here I am". And God begins to speak to her. And, at the beginning of this dialogue, the soul still has things to ask; but little by little the questions cease, because the soul has nothing left to say. And the soul becomes all ears. And it listens, it listens. And God speaks; God alone speaks. The process of prayer is like this. At first it seems that only the soul speaks, because it does not understand well the language of books, etc., through which God speaks to it. And it is hardly aware of XXVIII FOREWORD FOREWORD XXIX who is He... Then the dialogue begins (illuminative way...). Until finally the soul ceases to speak, to listen only..., so that only God speaks... 4. a When man obeys, God governs. - When it is already known that God speaks to us, with full and perfect conviction; that He speaks to us through creatures or that He speaks to us directly through Himself; when it is known in a vital way that God is infinitely wise, infinitely good, infinitely loving, that He knows infinitely better than we do the way we must follow for our good, then how easy and how pleasant it is to obey! To obey Him when He speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures; to obey Him when He commands us through His representatives on earth; to obey Him when He speaks to us through a good book, a good counselor, or even when He speaks to us without words from the most intimate part of our being. And so, when man obeys, God governs. God then governs us outwardly and inwardly. And man is a faithful servant who executes in everything and with the greatest possible perfection his sacred orders. When man obeys, God governs. And 5. a finally: When man gives himself, God works. Which is the perfect work of pure love. For that love, which has been living, which has been growing along the paths of knowledge..., when it becomes supreme, total; when with all his heart, because he no longer has any loving capacity left to love anything outside of God, for he denies himself and dispenses with all creatures, and for all and for himself remains as dead, when this happens, man surrenders.... As dead to the life of imperfection that he led, directed by his reason, by his prudence, by his selfishness, more or less disguised. As dead to a life that was incompatible with the supernatural life, only supernatural; with the life of God, which in him is now going to begin fully. And it is then that man becomes a living and perfectly healthy member of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, docile to the vital action of the Head, docile to the direction and rule and vital action of His Holy Spirit, who now, without hindrance or resistance, takes possession of the soul. Our self remains there, but totally surrendered to the divine self, added to the divine self, as if we were offering Christ une humanité de surcroit, as Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity says; a humanity superadded to that which in the most pure womb of Mary he deigned to take for us and for our redemption. We offer Christ our poor personal humanity, already purified and sublimated by his grace and love, so that in it he can continue to live on earth and continue his redemptive work. And this is how man can come to say: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me". Man emptied himself completely of himself and of every created being in order to be filled with God; man died to himself as the son of Adam, in order to be resurrected or born again, "not of the flesh nor of the blood, but of the flesh". gre", but of the Spirit of God; man denied himself, he alienated himself, because with all his energies and capacities he gave himself to God. The Word of God first united himself to our humanity in Christ with a hypostatic union, uniting to the divine person the impersonal human nature, that is, with no other person than the second person of the Blessed Trinity. Now He wants to unite Himself to our personal humanity with a mystical, that is, mysterious union, not only without detriment to our own person, but sublimating it, divinizing it (Ego dixi dii estis), giving Himself to Himself in possession, at the same time that the soul remains totally possessed by Him. This is the end of the Christian life. That is what perfection consists in; that is what holiness consists in: in that mystical, ineffable union with God, in which God alone lives and works in us, without hindrances. Creatures do not live in us, for they have lost all influence and attraction over us. Our "I" does not live as our own, because it has alienated itself, giving itself totally to God. And when man thus surrenders himself, it is God alone who works in us. VIII At this point we can already ask ourselves what mysticism is, and we believe that the answer is very easy to understand. Mystical life is that which man leads when, in union of love and totally surrendered to God, he is governed by the Holy Spirit through his gifts. It is that passive (and very active) state, in which it is no longer he who lives, but Christ lives in him. It is that experience of God which the soul has through its habitual state of most joyful divine contemplation, and which makes it happy and, even in the midst of the greatest martyrdoms, blessed. It is, finally, the Christian life in all its development; the supernatural life - which began in baptism - fully lived. And how does one know a man who has reached this mystical state? Well, by his style; by the way or style in which he conducts himself; by his conduct; by his works, we repeat; for it is always true that "ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos: by their fruits you shall know them". The style of God is always distinguished from the style of man; and we have already seen that after the total surrender and the necessary purification, it is God who works in man - taking him as his instrument - rather than man himself. The mystics, the saints, almost never act in the style of other men, because they are not inspired by the same principles of action nor do they judge things with the same ordinary criteria of the common Christian. All their action is abnegation, forgetfulness of self, joy in defeats, in scorn, love of the cross...; in the end, love of God, love of Christ crucified with all their heart, with all their strength, with all their soul, without any hindrance getting in the way: neither what people will say, nor the world, nor their own self, which appears nowhere. XXX FOREWORD The human way of acting has completely disappeared. All that remains is the divine way, the divine style of Christ, which we find in the Gospel and which is summed up by these words of his: "Quae placita sunt ei fació semper": "I always do what pleases the heavenly Father" and in the way that pleases him. That way or style of Christ by which the disciples of Emmaus knew him in the breaking of the bread, as they would have known him, if they were not "stubborn", when he spoke to them, making their hearts burn. As St. John, the one with the purest inner pupil, knew him when he saw him coming at night over the sea or at dawn on the sands of the beach. As the Magdalene knew him just by hearing him in the shadows call her by her own name. As all clean, purified souls know Him..., when, upon encountering a mystical person, they exclaim: "Digitus Dei est hic: here is the hand of God", here is the (supernatural) way of working, which is the way of Christ, which is the style of Christ and of His perfect followers, who in union with Him become other Christs. The human style or mode and the divine style or mode are distinguished as the imperfect (all that is human) from the absolutely perfect. But we are already entertaining the reader too much. Take the book calmly; not only to read, but to meditate and draw the consequences; and in its breadth, length and depth you will find explained in it what is summarized here, in a very quick glance, and what may interest you in order to solve the fundamental problem - the only one - of your life, which is to fulfill the destiny for which you were created by God, and thus reach eternal bliss. # # * We have nothing to say about the author of this book. He has been preaching for several years now with much fruit - especially the gift of God - in many provinces of Spain. And in our Faculty of Theology in Salamanca he has a class in Mysticism. Those who follow closely these studies of asceticism and mysticism already know him by his writings, published in different magazines, and by his intervention in a polemic of certain resonance. And we can well say that he is dedicated almost entirely to these studies on Christian life and perfection, which for reasons of method are usually separated into treatises on ascetics and mysticism, and that the ideal he pursues is none other than to teach and bring as much clarity as possible to these difficult questions, which so greatly influence the general development of the life of the followers of Christ, so that the evangelical ideal of holiness to which we are all called may flourish more and more each day in the world. f Fr, Albino, Bishop of Córdoba. TO THE FIRST EDITION We believe it is appropriate to briefly explain to the reader the nature and orientation of the book you are holding in your hands. Our first intention was to write a brief manual of asceticism and mysticism that could serve as a textbook in the Seminaries and general studies of the religious Orders. But friendly voices, with affectionate insistence, urged us to present a broader work that would cover the whole panorama of the Christian life in such a way that it could be used not only as a textbook during the school period for aspirants to the priesthood, but also as a book of ascetical-mystical formation for the same educated laity, eager for solid and truly theological spiritual doctrine. We had to yield to their repeated entreaties and embark on different routes from those we had planned. The panorama was thus considerably enlarged, and for unavoidable reasons of space it was necessary to reduce the length of some fundamental questions on which we would have insisted a little more in our original plan. It was no longer a question of a rigorously scholastic work to examine the theoretical questions that are stirred up in the schools of spirituality around Christian perfection, but it was necessary to take up many other theoretical-practical questions of the spiritual life in order to offer the most complete overview possible within the general characteristics of a work addressed to the educated public in general. With this it is said that ours is not a monographic and research work, but a panoramic and highly informative one. It is an informative synthesis of the great questions of the Christian life, which calls for further and broader developments in some fundamental points. However, as we present it today, it seems to us that our work can be positively useful for the double purpose intended: as a textbook in Seminaries and as a book of spiritual formation for educated laymen. Let us see in what form: a) As a textbook in the Seminaries. - We realize that its length is excessive to be used in a class of ascetics and mysticism as an ordinary text for a subject to which only one or two classes a week are usually dedicated in the xxxn NOTE IB, AUTHOR The last course of theology; there would not be enough material time to go through it in its entirety. But it should be kept in mind that it is not necessary for the professor to explain the subject in its entirety, nor even for the student to have to give a reason for it in the end-of-course exams. As a textbook, the teacher can limit himself to explaining the second part of the work, which deals with the great theological principles of the Christian life and with almost all the fundamental questions that are discussed in the schools of spirituality. The other three parts need not be explained in class, nor are they required in the final exam, and the students can reserve them for their quiet and attentive reading as a book for self-education and spiritual reading. In this way, our work will not be reduced to a simple textbook to be put away forever after the end of the course, as a tacit revenge against the scholastic sweats that its learning has caused us, but it will become a book of spiritual reading to which we will return again and again with affection and gratitude throughout our lives. b) As a book of spiritual formation for the educated laity. - Daily experience in dealing with souls has made us see many times that not only persons consecrated to God, but also the educated laity, often lament that they do not find books of solid spirituality among the immense ascetical-mystical production of our days. They hunger and thirst for theology, for solidly nourishing delicacies for their spirit; and often, under promising headlines, they are served only simple appetizers, which only increase their hunger and spiritual restlessness. We are fully convinced that a good number of Catholic intellectuals - professors, lawyers, doctors, engineers, politicians, etc. - are anxious for solid and substantial doctrines and are, on the other hand, sufficiently prepared to understand and assimilate the highest theological doctrines if they are presented to them in a clear and transparent form, stripped of the technicality and terminology of the schools. And in fact, when a solid book falls into their hands that has succeeded in exposing these theological truths in a clear and accessible way, they usually experience an intimate and deep satisfaction as one who has finally found a spring of clean and crystalline water where to quench the thirst for God that was tormenting his spirit. It is with these souls in mind that we have written this work. The clarity and transparency of thought has been a real obsession for us throughout its development. We realized that we were not only writing for technicians, but also for those who, without being technicians in these matters, are nevertheless entitled to the warm handout of truth. For this reason, while often sacrificing scholastic terminology and conciseness, we have gone into details and precisions unnecessary for technicians, but which will be - we firmly hope - of positive use for the uninitiated. We have sacrificed everything to transparency and clarity of thought, and it seems to us that there is nothing in all of our AUTHOR'S NOTE mili not a single page that cannot be perfectly assimilated by the educated laity. May it be that with the divine blessing, which we implore through the intercession of the sweet Mediatrix of all graces, the Blessed Virgin Mary, these modest pages may bring a ray of light to their intellects thirsty for truth and a little warmth to their hearts in love with God. It only remains for us to publicly express our gratitude to His Excellency the Bishop of Cordoba for the splendid prologue at the front of the volume and to all those who have helped or encouraged us to write these pages, and to warn our readers that we will cordially welcome any suggestions and constructive criticism they may wish to make in order to improve our modest work in successive editions. TO THE FOURTH EDITION The fourth edition is almost entirely identical to the third. We have only introduced some slight changes in the literary wording and we have improved some doctrinal points to make them clearer and more accessible to all. This is mainly the case in the exposition of the nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and their functioning in producing the mystical experience. We reiterate our intention to welcome any suggestions our readers may have to improve our humble work in future editions. LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM FATHER GARRI GOU-L AGRANDE My very reverend and dear Father, I thank you very much for sending me your beautiful treatise Theology of Christian Perfection. The title is excellent, and the division of the work corresponds perfectly to this title: i.° The end of the Christian life. 2. 0 The fundamental principles. 3. 0 The normal unfolding of the Christian life, by the struggle against sin, the sacraments, the normal unfolding of the infused virtues and of the gifts. The life of prayer. Secondary means of perfection. 4. 0 Extraordinary mystical phenomena. - This division has enabled you to deal with all the important questions concerning perfection. It has also allowed you to show the unity of the Christian life and to show how asceticism normally disposes us to a life of intimacy with God, which only finds its full development in mystical union. The latter constitutes the normal expansion of "the grace of virtues and gifts" and the normal disposition for the life of eternity, whether here on earth or in purgatory. I give you with all my heart, my dear Father, all my congratulations and I express the wish that this book, whose first edition has sold out so quickly, may be widely distributed for the good of souls, to show how only true mysticism accomplishes what so many false naturalistic mystics vainly promise, leading souls astray from the paths of salvation. I am also very pleased to see at the front of your book an excellent historical-bibliographical summary, in which you rightly characterize the main schools of spirituality and the doctrine of the greatest masters. From time to time you add, around the known authors, very accurate observations, such as the one concerning Gershom and his nominalism (p.io). Fortunately he forgot in his mystical works the error that he had formulated in his fundamental morality: "Nullus est actus intrinsece malus ex obiecto". I congratulate you, finally, for the serenity with which you expose the opinions that you are unable to admit, and which contribute, in their own way, to the manifestation of the truth that you do not know. With all my gratitude, I beg you to accept, my most reverend and dear Father, the expression of my religious devotion in Our Lord and Saint Dominic. Fr. Reginaldo Garrí gou-Lagrange, O.P. Rome, Angelicum. Letter í>eí. r. p. philipon to author xxxvil LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM R. P. PHILIPON Reverend and most beloved Father: I am confused that it has taken me so long to thank you for your magnificent Theology of Christian Perfection, but I wanted to take the time to read it again and again. In my opinion, it is the best manual of spiritual theology that has appeared to date, the most ordered and complete, a true sum of spirituality, of an extraordinary informative value and of a remarkable doctrinal certainty. Truly everything is found in it: the primordial sense of the glory of God and of our own sanctification, ordered to this glorification, supreme end of the universe; the concrete realization of our holiness through our configuration to Christ; the maternal mission of Mary, Mediatrix of all graces; the basic principles of an authentic spirituality; the transformation of our human nature through grace, which comes to divinize us and to clothe us with a whole supernatural organism of virtues and gifts, empowering us, under the ever more constant and dominating influence of the Holy Spirit, to live in the intimacy of the Trinity in the image of the Son. I have found in his beautiful book all the problems of contemporary mysticism, but resolved in their proper place, within a broader whole, with the advantage of benefiting thus from all the converging lights of an organic synthesis that knows how to reduce everything to unity: sapientis est ordinare. It was right to point out in the first place the negative aspect of the path to holiness: the energetic struggle against sin and a merciless asceticism that goes to the very root of evil and of the perverse tendencies that we all have and whose influence is felt in our faults and weaknesses, from which not even the greatest saints are ever completely free, with the exception of the Immaculate Conception and, I would willingly believe, St. Joseph, the only two human beings who, together with Christ, have responded fully and with absolute fidelity to the call of predestination. This is how you have been able to integrate in your exposition the purifying work, active and passive, whose unsurpassable description has been left to the Church by the genius of St. John of the Cross. However, he rightly insisted above all on the positive aspect of holiness: union with Christ through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and the practice of the theological and cardinal virtues, the axis of all holiness, which, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the special motion of his gifts, lead the Christian soul to the highest heights of heroism. I have always The spiritual theology of our teacher St. Thomas, totally oriented towards the development of this "grace of virtues and gifts," thus finds in the practice of the Church its most splendid confirmation and as a guarantee of the development of this "grace of virtues and gifts," which constitutes the backbone of morals and mysticism and whose concrete practice becomes, according to the judgment of the Church in the processes of canonization, the decisive criterion of sanctity. The spiritual theology of our teacher St. Thomas, totally oriented towards the development of this "grace of virtues and gifts", thus finds in the practice of the Church its most splendid confirmation and an infallible guarantee of its truth. But I would not finish, beloved Father, if I were to tell you with what deep joy I have been going through your beautiful chapters on the problems of contemporary mysticism and the various forms of the life of prayer, different and infinitely varied, as the freedom of souls demands, from simple discursive meditation and the "lectio divina" to the prayer of union of contemplative souls consummated in holiness. Everything has its place in his beautiful synthesis, without excluding extraordinary and charismatic mystical states. Thank you very much, beloved Father, for your book, so rich in doctrine and, at the same time, so simple, so accessible to everyone, even to the laity, so desirous today of high spiritual doctrine, but within the atmosphere of the Church. Perhaps never has Catholic spirituality felt so strongly the desire to return to the true sources of Christian life and to the Gospel. My wish is that your beautiful book will become a classic work, not only in Spain, but also among us and in many other countries where chosen souls are thirsty for God and spiritual doctrine to better serve the Church of Christ. Receive, Reverend and most beloved Father, my sentiments of gratitude and fraternal friendship in Santo Domingo. Fr. Maria Miguel Philipon, O.P. Rome, Angelicum, February 2, 1955. CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF D. BALDOMERO JIMENEZ DUQUE Here is a book that will attract a lot of attention. And it was needed in our priestly libraries. Every day the practical problems of the perfection of souls are of greater interest and concern. But everyone, priests and laymen, directors and directors, demand the doctrinal and theological justification of that transcendental and difficult art. This book comes to fill this felt need, to respond to these desires. Others had preceded it. But let us say it unequivocally, of all those we know in all languages - and there are many - ■ this one seems to us to be the best overall. The title itself is a true success. It is about "theology" of perfection. Nothing more and nothing less. That is why the method is mainly deductive, as must always be the method of all true theology. Of course, Father Royo has abundant recourse to the testimonies of the best mystics to confirm his theses. No one can accuse him of a lesser esteem for them. On the contrary. But it is in the great principles of theology, which offer the sources of revelation benefited by the light of faith and reason, that he bases and from which he deduces his affirmations and conclusions. Thus he has been able to offer us a truly scientific synthesis of this part of theology; a treatise which, I repeat, at the present time, in no other literature, as far as I know, is to be found equal to it. The book opens with a splendid prologue by the Bishop of Córdoba. It is a portico worthy of the building it introduces. Then the work is divided into four parts. The first speaks of the end of the Christian life. With the great success of exposing immediately that this end is achieved only through Jesus Christ, and thus presenting the mystery of Christ as something primary and fundamental for the traction of our supernatural perfection, which in fact can only be Christian. The second part deals with the study of the fundamental principles: nature and organism of the supernatural life and its development, ending with the problem of the nature of mysticism and its relationship with perfection. Particularly interesting in this part is the article dedicated to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, exhaustive and complete, which gathers together all the good that has been elaborated so far on his theology. The chapters dedicated to mysticism are, of course, as we can only imagine, very interesting. CRITICAL JUDGMENT OF D. BALDOMERO J. DUQUE X3CS3X The thesis supported: that of seeing in mysticism the normal term of Christian perfection, is in substance so powerfully demonstrated that it will be difficult for anyone to escape its influence, as long as he understands by mysticism what Father Royo understands precisely what he means here. The third part deals with the normal development of the Christian life, both in its negative and positive aspects, studying in the latter the principal means for attaining perfection. In the negative aspect, the pages dedicated to the passive nights of the soul are precious, as well as in the positive aspect, those dedicated to prayer and contemplation. Also the chapters that speak of the sacraments and of the theological and moral virtues are delightful, and of the most practical and immediate use that the book offers. The fourth part deals with extraordinary mystical phenomena, which, in spite of the curiosity they usually arouse in the general public, is the least important part of our subject. The volume ends with the corresponding indexes to facilitate the handling, as well as it begins by presenting a selection of spiritual literature of all times. A perfect work in its genre and as a whole. The best so far of those known. Evidently, given the number, breadth and density of the topics, several nuances and details and even some minor statements could be discussed. In this domain of theology, there is still material to be studied and elaborated for the future. But the book as such is very successful. The style is of truly admirable precision and clarity. The author wants his work to be useful not only for the studies of seminarians and priests, but also for educated laymen. He can be satisfied that he has succeeded fully in his work. Perhaps to some moderns it may seem too "scholastic" in terms of divisions and procedures. But we confess that clarity and precision lose nothing by it, quite the contrary. And as for the Thomism that oozes everywhere - St. Thomas is the author who incessantly directs the mind and hand of the author - I believe that this is one more merit, and one of the principal ones, of this treatise, for that very reason so powerful and so harmonious. The fourth part seems to us a little too timid and conservative, and as if it needed more up-to-date historical and psychological information. Along with our most fervent congratulations, may the author receive our best wishes for the new editions and translations of his book that will soon be multiplied for the good of souls 1. Baldomero Jiménez Duque, Rector of the Seminary of Avila. * Cf. Revisla Española de Teología XIV (1954) P.6S4-656. H ISTORICO-BIBLI OGRAPHIC SUMMARY From among the immense ascetical-mystical production that the centuries have bequeathed to us, we have selected this brief index, which includes only the most important works or those that have had the most profound influence on Christian spirituality. I. General history of spirituality P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne: I, "From the Origins to the Middle Ages" (Paris 1918); II, "The Middle Ages" (1921); III-IV, "Modern Times" (1925-28). F. Cayré, Patrologie et histoire de la Théolog le (3 vols., Paris 1927-44), where ample room is given to the spiritual doctrine of the Fathers and later authors. M. Viller, La spiritualité des premiers siécles chrétiens (Paris 1930). F. Vernet, La spiritualité médiévale (Paris 1929). J. Lebreton, La vie chrétienne au i. er siécle (Paris 1927). G. Bardy, La vie spirituelle d'aprés les écrivains des trois premien siécles (Paris 1935). A. J. Festugiére, L'idéal religieux des Crees et L'Evangile (Paris 1933). F. Cabrol, La priére des premiers chrétiens (Paris 1929). J. Rosanas, Historia de la ascetica y mística cristianas (Buenos Aires 1948); summary of Pourrat's work. P. Crisógono, Compendio de ascética y mística p-4. a , resumen histórico (Avila 1933)*. II. Collections Migne, Patrology (Latin, 221 vols.; Greek, 161 vols.). M. Viller, Dictionnaire de spiritualité (Paris 1937...). Vacant-Mangenot-Amann, Dictionnaire de Théologie catholique (Paris 1889-1939). Migne, Dictionnaire de Mystique (1858). Rouet de Journel, Enchiridion asceticum (Herder 1936). Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum (23rd ed., Fríburgi 1937). Cavallera, Thesaurus doctrinae catholicae (Paris 1936). De Guibert, Documenta ecclesiastica christianae perfectionis studium spectantia (Rome 1931). KRStrtuKS nystRtco-RinuoRnAPicO HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY III. Bibliographical notes on spirituality Tanquerey, Theologia ascetica y mística p.xxvii-XLVin. De Guibert, Theologia spiritualis n.458-540. Garrigou-Lagrance, Las tres edades de la vida interior (Buenos Aires 1944). p.XVII-XXVIII. Poulain, Des gráces d'oraison P-639-57 (11 ed., Paris 1931). Fiocchi, Praelectiones theol. asceticae 1 (1935) p.79-160. Scheuer: RAM July 1923 and January 1924; and separately (Paris 1924). Maréchal, Etudes sur la psichol. des mystiques 1, 2nd ed. (Paris 1938) p.247-98. A. Denderwindeke, Compendium theol. asee t. (1921) t.2 p. 531-834. Zimmermann, Aszetik 2. a ed. (1932); in each chapter. Bibliographical notes on modern works and journal articles can be found in : Truhlar, De experientia mystica (Rome 1951) p.22i-43Olazarán: "Manresa" (1950-1953). IV. Main journals "La Vida Sobrenatural" (Salamanca, since 1921). "Manresa" (Barcelona-Madrid, since 1925). "Revista de Espiritualidad" (Madrid, since 1941). "Revue d'Ascétique et de Mystique" (Toulouse, since 1920). "La vie spirituelle" (Paris, from 1920). "Etudes Carmelitaines" (from 1911; second series, 1931). "Vita cristiana" (Fiésole 1929). "Cros and Crown" (River Forest, Illinois [U. S. A.], since 1949). "Zeitschrift für Ascese und Mystik" (Innsbruck, since 1934). V. Authors of spirituality 1) Patristic period In the Holy Fathers we find very rich materials of the most solid Christian spirituality, but the fundamental lines of a complete treatise on the spiritual life as we understand it today are hardly found systematically traced. However, there are already two very appreciable syntheses: that of Cassian, in the West, and that of St. John Climacus, in the East. A) Greek Patrology St. Clement Romanus, Epistle ad Corinthios (ca. 95), on concord, humility and obedience (PG 1). Hermas, Pastor (140-155) (PG 2,891-1012), where the return to God through penance is discussed at length. St. Ignatius of Antioch (f ca. 110), Epistulae (PG 5,625ff). St. Polycarp (f 146), Epistulae (PG 5,ioo5ff), St. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus (after 195), in which he shows how asceticism leads to contemplation (PG 9,247-794). St. Athanasius (297-373), Pita St. Anton ii, where the spirituality of the patriarch of monks and cenobites is discussed (PG 28,838-976). St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386), Catechesis, where he admirably explains what a Christian should be (PG 33). St. Basil (330-379), De Spiritu Sancto, which speaks of its influence on the regenerated soul (PG 32); Regulae, on monastic discipline in the East (PG 3 r). St. Gregory Nisenus (333-395), Comment. in Cantica canticorum and De vita Moysis, where he deals with contemplation and the ascent of the soul to perfection (PG 44,756-1120; 297-430). St. Gregory Nazianzen (330-390), Sermons, particularly the prayer in praise of St. Basil (PG 35-36). Evagrius Ponticus (346-99), a disciple of Origen and the Greek monks, had a great influence in the East, mainly with his Epistulae (PG 40), De oratione and De diversis malignis cogitationibus, formerly attributed to Nilus of Ancyra (PG 79). St. John Chrysostom (344-407), with his magnificent Homilies, which constitute a treasure of morals and asceticism (PG 48-64), and his precious treatise De Sacerdotio (PG 48). St. Cyril of Alexandria (f 444), Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate, where he speaks of the relations of the soul with the Most Blessed Trinity (PG 75). The Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite (f around 500), who in his books De divinis nominibus, De ecclesiastica hierarchia and De mystica Theologia has exerted immense influence on all later mysticism (PG 3). St. John Climacus (f 649), whose Scala Paradisi is a compendium of asceticism and mysticism for Eastern monks, similar to Cassian's Collationes for Western monks (PG 88,632-1164). Diadocus, bishop of Photica (middle of the fifth century), De perfectione spirituali capita C. (PG 65,1167-1212). St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662) expounds Dionysius' doctrine on contemplation by referring it to the incarnate Word, who came to deify us, in his Scholia on Dionysius (PG 4), in his Librum asceticum (PG 90, 912-956) and in his Mystagogia (PG 91,657-717). St. John Damascene (675-749), in his three books of Sacra parallela, a very rich collection of sentences and edifying texts on the Christian life, taken from Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers, and others of lesser importance (PG 94-96). B) Latin Patrology St. Cyprian (200-258), mainly in De habitu virginum, De dominica oratione, De bono patientiae, De zelo et livore, De lapsis, etc. (PL 4). St. Ambrose (333-397), De officiis ministrorum, De virginibus, De viduis, De virginitate, etc. (PL 16,25-302). St. Jerome (347-420), Epistulae principally (PL 22). St. Augustine (354-430), Confessiones, Soliloquia, De doctrina christiana, De civitate Dei, Epistulae, etc. (PL 32-47). In almost all the works of this colossal figure we find precious ascetical-mystical materials, which have been used by all later mystics. Cassian (360-435), Instituia coenobiorum and Collationes (PL 49-50). His lectures or "collationes" have exerted an enormous influence on all later ase* tics, 4 HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY St. Leo (pope 440-461), Sermons (PL 54), full of sublime thoughts and deep piety. St. Benedict (480-543), Regula (PL 66), full of gentleness and discretion, which was until the 10th century that of almost all the monks of the West. St. Gregory the Great (540-604), Expositio in Librum lob, sive Moralium libri XXXV, Líber regulae pastoralis, Homiliae XL in Evangelia, Homiliae XXII in Ezechielem, Dialogorum Libri quatuor, etc. (PL 75-77). St. Isidore of Seville (f 636), Regula monachorum, Libri Sententiarum II-III (PL 83). 2) Middle Ages I. VIII to XI centuries It is a very poor era, which hardly contributed anything of interest to the history of spirituality. We gather here some of the best that was produced in this decadent epoch: St. Bede the Venerable (f 735 ). Homiliae (PL 94). Ambrose Autpertus (f 778), Líber de confictu vitiorum et virtutum, formerly attributed to St. Ambrose or St. Augustine (PL 40,1091). St. Theodore Studite (759-826), Catechesis minor et maior and Sermones de sanctis monachis (PG qq). John Aurelianense (t 843); three books De institutione laicali, a manual of piety for the laity (PL 106). Smaragdo (t c.830), Commentarium in Regulam S.Benedicti, Diadema monachorum (PL 102). Odon of Cluny (+ 942), Collationes (PL 133). St. Peter Damianus (f 1072), Epistulae et Sermones (PL 145). Simeon the Theologian (949-1022), Sermons, Hymni mystíci, etc. (PG 120). II. 12th to 15th centuries The different schools of spirituality began to take shape around the great religious orders. The teachings of the Holy Fathers were organized and systematized with the new contributions of experimental theologians and mystics. A) Benedictine school It draws its inspiration mainly from the liturgy and monastic observances through the Rule of its holy Founder. Here are the main representatives: St. Anselm (1033-1109), mainly in his very devout Meditationes et orationes (PL 158, with some interpolations of other authors) and Cur Deus homo, where he speaks of the gravity of sin and the infinite satisfaction of Christ (PL 158). St. Bernard (1090-1153), the Mellifluous Doctor, whose endearing devotion and tenderness has had a profound impact on all subsequent spirituality. Cf. principally: De consideratione (to Pope Eugenius III), De diligencio Deo, De gradibus humilitatis, De conversione ad eterices. ... Sexmo historical-bibliographic summary 5 nes, In Cántica canticorum, Epistulae, etc. (PL 182-84). A good study on St. Bernard is that of Stephen Gilson, La Théologie mystique de S.Bernard (1934). St. Hildegard (1098-1179) in her Scivias (sci vias Domini), Líber operara Domini, Epistulae, etc. (PL 197). Saint Gertrude the Great (1256-1301) and St. Mechthild of Hackerborn (c. i 242- i 299) has some very remarkable Revelationes, in which she manifests - among other very interesting things - a tender devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Saint Bridget (1302-1373), widow, nun in the Cistercian monastery of Alvastra (Sweden); she has some famous Revelationes that describe in particular the passion of the Lord. John of Castel (d.c.1410), probable author of the precious De adhaerendo Deo, attributed until recently to St. Albert the Great; other writings of his: De lumine increato, Formulae vitae religiosae, etc., remain unpublished. Louis Barbo (1380-1443) wrote his Formula oratiotús et meditationis, in which he initiated the methodical prayer current, which would be perfected by St. Ignatius. B) San Victor School Heir to the spirit of St. Augustine and the doctrines of Pseudo-Dionysius, the school of St. Victor - founded by William of Champeaux - has Platonic and allegorist tendencies. It represents a middle ground between the Benedictine school, with a predominantly affective orientation, and the Dominican school, which was then born with a more intellectualist tendency. Its main representatives are : Hugo of St. Victor (1096-1141) in his Comment. in Hierarchiam caelest. Ps.-Dionysii (PL 175), De vanitate mundi, Expositio in Regulam S.Augustini. De Institutione novitiorum, De arrha animae, De laude caritatis, De modo orandi, De meditando (PL 176). Richard of St. Victor (f 1173), De praeparatione ad contemplationem ( Be niamin minor), De gratia contemplationis ( Beniamin maior), De statu interioris hominis, De eruditione interioris hominis, De gradibus caritatis, De IV gradibus violentae caritatis, Expositio in Cantica canticorum, etc. (PL 196). Adam (f 1177) is the poet of the school with his Sequentiae (PL 196). C) Carthusian School Following the spirit of its order, the Carthusian school insists on a solitary and contemplative life. Its main representatives up to the 15th century were: Guido I (I 1137) was the fifth prior and true legislator of the Charterhouse: Consuetudines carlhusienses (PL 153), Meditationes (ed. Paris 1936). Guido II (f 0,1193), also prior: Scala Claustralium (lesson, meditation, prayer and contemplation) (PL 184-475). Hugo de Balma (13th century) is, it seems, the true author of the famous Theolngia myslica, or better, De triplici via ad sapicnliant, attributed for several centuries to St. Bonaventure, 6 HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY Ludolfo de Sajonia (d 1377), who was first a Dominican and later joined the Carthusian monastery, is the author of the famous Life of Christ (known as the Carthusian), which so influenced later spirituality and did much good to St. Teresa (1." ed. 1477). Dionysius the Carthusian (1402-1471) was called the Ecstatic Doctor; he wrote many books (44 vols. in 4. 0 of the new edition begun in 1896 by the Carthusians of Montreuil), among others the Commentaries to Cassian, to St. John Climacus, to the Pseudo-Dionysius, Of the narrow way of salvation and contempt of the world, Of the conversion of the sinner, Of the remedies against temptations, Mirror of the lovers of the world, Of prayer. Of the source of light, Of contemplation, Of the discernment of the spirits, Of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc., etc., etc. (ed. Monstrolii 1896-1923). John Lanspergio (d 1539), famous for his devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and for his major work Alloquium Christi ad animam fidelem, which closely resembles the Imitation or Kempis (ed. Monstrolii 1888-90). Lorenzo Surio (d 1578) published six volumes De vrobatis Sanctorum historiis, perfecting the work of A. Lippomani, and translated into Latin the sermons of Taulero. Antonio de Molina (d 1619), Instrucción de los sacerdotes (1608), a precious book, of which numerous editions and translations have been made; Ejercicios espirituales, De las excelencias, provecho y necesidad de la oración mental (Burgos 1615). Inocencio Le Masson (f 1703), Introduction á la vie religieuse el parfaite (1677), Disciplina Ordinis Carthusiensis (1703), Psalmodie intérieure (4 vols., 1696-97). Agustín Nagore (1620-1705), of the Carthusian monastery of Zaragoza (Aula Dei), published his famous Lucerna mystica (Valencia 1690) under the pseudonym of José López EzquERRA, Pbro. In it he opposes the errors of Molinos, as in his Lydius theologicus. D) Dominican School On a solid doctrinal basis, it brings together liturgical prayer and the contemplation with apostolic action. St. Dominic was a living embodiment of the Order's motto: contemplata aliis tradere. St. Dominic of Guzman (1170-1221), founder of the Order of Preachers, composed his Constitutions (Líber consuetudinum) - inspired by those of the Premonstratensians - which are very apt for harmonizing the contemplative life with the active life, which is the ideal of his Order. Jordan of Saxony (d 1237), the first successor of St. Dominic, wrote some remarkable Epistulas spirituales (ed. Altaner, Leipzig 1925). Humbert of Romanis (f 1277), fifth Master General, commented on the Rule and Constitutions with much doctrine, piety and unction: Expositi o super Regulam Sancti Augustini et Constitutiones Fr. Praedicatorum. Hugo de San Caro (d 1263), with his magnificent commentaries on Sacred Scripture, was able to form an excellent book, De vita spirituali (P. Dionisio Mésard, O. P. ; Pustet 1910), divided into four parts: purgative, illuminative, unitive and spiritual life of priests. St. Albert the Great (d 1280), the great teacher of St. Thomas, wrote an astonishing number of books on the most diverse subjects (38 volumes in 4. 0 of the ed. Vivés, 1890-99), of which it is interesting to highlight here the Commentaries on Dionysius Areopagite, To St. John, his precious Ma tnSTORlCÓ-ntHLtOGRAPHIC fiSSÜMEN ? ríale, Del santo sacrificio de la misa, Summa de Teología, Comentarios a las Sentencias, etc. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the Angelic Doctor, is indisputably the first authority in ascetic and mystical theology (Pius XI) and the teacher of all later theologians. His ecumenical work and his objective doctrine go beyond the molds of a certain school to make him the Common and Universal Doctor, as the Church calls him. In his works are scattered the great principles of spiritual theology and all the fundamental questions of Christian asceticism and mysticism. See mainly his wonderful Summa Theologica, the Commentaries on St. Paul, the Gospels, the Pseudo-Dionysius, his booklet De perfectione vitae spiritualis and the Office of the Blessed Sacrament, full of doctrine and piety. Speculative theology and experimental mysticism gave the Angelic Doctor a very close embrace, which has given his works their unshakable solidity and perennial vitality. Master Eckart (c. 1260-1327) wrote many ascetic-mystical works, but only a few fragments have come down to us, because after the condemnation of some of his propositions by John XXII - after Eckart's death - all his works were destroyed (cf. Denz. 501-529). He exerted a great influence on his disciples Taulero and Susón. Juan Taulero (d 1361) is one of the world's greatest mystics, who had a great influence on later mystics, especially on St. John of the Cross (cf. P. Crisógono, San Juan de la Cruz; su obra científica, intr., p.45). He expounded his doctrine in his Sermones, which were widely circulated through the translation of Surio. The famous Divine Institutions were not written by him, but contain a summary of his doctrine (ed. P. Getino, Madrid 1922). Blessed Henry Suson (c.1295-1366): The Book of Eternal Wisdom, The Book of Truth, Sermons, etc. His works were published in German by Fr. Denifle, Die Schriften des heiligen H. Suso, and in French by Fr. Thiriot, Oeuvres mystiques de H. Suso (Gabalda, Paris 1899). There are Spanish editions. Saint Catherine of Seine (1347-1380): her famous work The Dialogue and her precious Letters constitute a very rich arsenal of ascetic-mystical doctrines of the highest quality (Spanish editions). St. Vincent Ferrer (1346-1419) has several ascetic works, especially his famous Treatise on the Spiritual Life, which circulated from hand to hand for several centuries (last ed. Valencia 1950). St. Antoninus of Florence (d 1459), in his booklet Regola di vita christiana, gives excellent norms of sanctification (ed. Florence 1923). Jerome Savonarola (t 1498) wrote his books Treatise on Humility, Order, Love of Jesus, Simplicity of the Christian Life, his precious commentaries on the Our Father and the Miserere, etc., as well as his remarkable Sermons. Dominic Cavalca (d 1342), Specchio della croce, Disciplina delli spirituali, etc. Jacobo P assavanti (d 1357), Specchio di vera penitenza (ed. Florence 1924). John Dominici (t 1419), Libro d'amore di carita, Regola del govemo di cura familiari (ed. Salvi,i86o). Juan de Torquemada (t 1468). Meditations on the life of Christ (1467), Spiritual questions on the Gospels (1478), De nuptiis spiritualibus (unpublished). Blessed Osana of Mantua (d 1505), Book of her life and spiritual gifts received from God. s HISTORICAL-BIOMORAPHIC SUMMARY UlSlÓRlCO-BIIlOGRAPHIC SUMMARY E) Franciscan School He insists above all on the doctrine of love and on the need for self-denial and perfect poverty in order to imitate Christ. St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), Opuscula (critical ed., Quaracchi 1904), Collected Works (BAC n.4). St. Anthony of Padua (f 1231) speaks many things of mysticism in his Sermones dominicales et i n solemnitatibus (ed. Locatelli, Padua 1895-1903). David of Augsburg (d 1271) was widely read in his De exterioris et interioris kominis reformatione (ed. Quaracchi 1899) and in The Seven Degrees of Prayer (in RAM [1933] p. 148-70). St. Bonaventure (1221-1274): in addition to his theological works, he has many ascetical-mystical treatises, including the famous Itinerary of the mind to God, the Breviloquium, the Incendio de amor (also called De triplici via), the Lignum vitae, Vitis myslica. De sex alis Seraphim, and so on and so forth. He had a great influence on all later mysticism, especially in his school. See Works, ed. BAC, Madrid. Blessed Raymond Lulio (d 1315) is a mystic exalted in his Book of the Friend and the Beloved, which is part of his Blanquerna (critical ed., Palma de Mallorca 1914). See Obras literarias, ed. BAC n.31. St. Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444), Sermons, Scripta ascetica (ed. Rome 1903). Henry Harp (d 1477): his Theologia mystica was at first placed in the Index; but, corrected by the Dominican Father Philip (Rome 1586), it exerted great influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Blessed Angela of Foligno (t 1309): the famous Book of visions and warnings consists of a Memorial, collected by her confessor, and other documents. It describes mainly the sovereign transcendence of God and the torments of Jesus Christ. St. Catherine of Bologna (1413-1463) gives in her Revelations, with the title De septem armis spiritualibus, excellent practical means to overcome temptations. F) Independent authors We group here some of the most outstanding mystical writers who have had an influence on Christian spirituality, but who do not belong to any particular school. The main ones are : John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), called the Admirable, is the founder of the so-called Flemish mystical school, which has him as its main and almost only representative. His exalted mysticism exerted enormous influence in later centuries, but it is obscure and difficult in many of its passages. His main works are the Mirror of Eternal Salvation, The Book of the Seven Seals, The Spiritual Wedding Galas, The Kingdom of Lovers, The Little Stone, The Seven Closures, The Seven Degrees of Love, etc. (Original text, critical ed. Ruysbroeck Genoetschap Mechelen, 4 vols [1932-34]; Latin translation by Surio [1552]; several Spanish translations). Gerard Groot (1340-1384) is the author of several ascetic booklets. Gerlac Peters (1378-1411): Soliloquy on fire, of doctrine similar to that of the Imitation (ed. Rotterdam 1936). Thomas of Kempis (1379-1471), to whom the wonderful Imitation of Christ, the most widely read spiritual book in the world, is rightly attributed. He also wrote Prayers and Meditations on the Life of Christ, Soliloquy of the Soul, The Three Tabernacles. The true compunction, Discipline of the cloisters, etc. (critical ed., 7 vols., Freiburg 1902-22). John Mauburno or Monbaer (d 1503) summarized the main questions of spirituality in his Rosetum exercitiorum spiritualium (1491). Peter D'Ailly (1350-1420), Sermons and Treatises (Of the Four Degrees of the Spiritual School, Mirror of Consideration, Compendium of Contemplation, etc.), De falsis prophetis (among the works of Gershom, t.i). St. Lawrence Justinian (1318-1455), reformer of the Italian congregations and of the secular clergy, wrote many ascetical-mystical works, among which the most important are: De spirituali et casto connubio Verbi et animae, De perfectionis gradibus, De compuncLione, De humilitate, De obedientia, De vita solitaria, De contemptu mundi, De incendio divitii amoris, etc. (Opera omnia, Venice 1751). Walter Hilton (t 1396) wrote his famous The Scale of Perfection , which earned him his title of head of the English school. John Gerson (1363-1429): he erred profoundly in some nominalist theses ("nullus est actus intrinsece malus ex obiecto"), but he wrote excellent spiritual works: The Book of the Spiritual Life of the Soul, The Mount of Contemplation, Speculative and Practical Mystical Theology, Probation of the Spirits, Prayer, The Passions of the Soul, Temptations, The Perfection of the Heart, etc. His are also the precious little treatise De parvulis ad Christum trahendis and some devout Considerations on St. Joseph, which place him among the first and most determined promoters of Josephine devotion (Opera, ed. Dupin, 1706). Juliana of Norwich (1342-t 1413?), Revelations of Divine Love, new ed. St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510): Dialogus de divino amore (of which only p.i. a is authentic) and the precious Treatise on Purgatory. 3) Modern and Contemporary Ages Sixteenth to twentieth centuries The old schools - Benedictine, Dominican and Franciscan - continued to disseminate and concretize their doctrines. New schools emerged, such as the Carmelite, Augustinian, Ignatian and French schools of the 15th century. Mysticism is codified and systematized, making it more organic and scientific. School discussions began. Mystical heresies are fought. A) Benedictine school García de Cisneros (1455-1510), abbot of Montserrat, wrote his Exercitatorio de la vida espiritual, which perhaps inspired St. Ignatius the first idea of his Spiritual Exercises (ed. Barcelona 1912). T.udovico Blosio (1506-1566) stands out above all for his precious Institutio vitae spiritualis, in which he collects all his doctrines. He also wrote his Consolatio pusillanimium. Conclave animae fidelis, etc., and a defense of Taulero explaining him in a more accessible style (Opera omnia, 1632). HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY il 10 HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY Juan de Castañiza (t 1598) continued in Spain the reform of García de Cisneros, and wrote La perfección de la vida cristiana and the five books Institutionum divinae pietatis. Augustine Baker (1575-1641) wrote several booklets on contemplation, later collected under the title Sancta Sophia by D. Cressy ( r6 S7) Armando de Rancé (d 1700), reformer of the Gister (Trappists), wrote De la sainteté et des devoirs de la vie monastique (1683) and his Réponse au traité des études monastiques (1692), against Mabillon, who gave too much importance to literary studies in monastic life. Mabillon replied with his Réflexions sur la réponse.... (1692). John Cardinal Bona (1609-1674) is famous, above all, for his excellent treatise De discretione spirituum. He also wrote De divina psalmodia, Via compendii ad Deum, Manuductio ad caelum, Horologium asceticum, etc. Dominic Schram (1658-1720), Institutiones theologiae mysticae; it is an excellent treatise on ascetics and mysticism, didactic and pious at the same time (new edition, Paris 1868). Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875), restorer of the Benedictine order in France, wrote the first nine volumes of his monumental Liturgical Year, which has done so much good for souls. There is a summary, Liturgical Catechism, by Dom Leduc and Dom Baudot (Mame r92i). He also wrote his Conférences sur la vie chrétienne (1880). Cecilia Bruyére (d 1909), abbess of St. Cecilia, wrote La vie spirituelle et l'oraison d'aprés la Sainte Ecriture et la tradition monastique (new ed. 1922). Dom Vital Lehodey, Cistercian abbot of Our Lady of Grace, is noted for his precious works The Ways of Mental Prayer (1908) and The Holy Abandonment (1919). There are Spanish editions. Dom Cuthbert Butler (1858-1934) has written Benedictine monachism (1919), Western Mysticism (1922), Ways of christian Ufe (London 1932). Dom Saviniano Louismet (1858-1926) has several mystical works: Essai sur la connaissance mystique. La vie mystique, Miracle et mystique, La contemplation chrétienne, etc. Dom Columba Marmion (1858-1923), the famous abbot of Maredsous, is perhaps the most famous contemporary mystical author in the world. His influence has been enormous through his precious works: Jesus Christ, life of the soul (1918), Jesus Christ in his mysteries (1919), Jesus Christ, ideal of the monk (1922), Sponsa Verbi (1923) and The union with God (extracts of letters, 1934). His life was written by Dom Thibaut (Paris 1929). Dom Jean-B. Chautard (d 1936) is the author of the precious little work The Soul of Every Apostolate, well known all over the world. Dom André Malet has written a remarkable work in compendious form. La vie surnaturelle: ses éléments, son exercice (Paris 1934). Dom Anselmo Stolz (d 1942), Teología de la mística (Spanish ed., Madrid 1951), is an original and notable contribution to mystical studies. Dom German Morin, The Monastic Ideal and the Christian Life of the First Centuries (Spanish ed., Montserrat 1931). B) Dominican School Bautista de Crema (d 1534): Via di aperta veritá, Specchio interiore, Della cognitione e vittoria di se esteso (1531), which was adapted to Spanish by Melchor Gano, etc. Critics have lately restored to him the treatise Detti nota bili, attributed to S. Antonio Maria Zacarias. St. Catherine de Ricci (1522-1590), Lettere (ed. Firenze 1890). Pablo de León (d 1528), Guía del cielo (Alcalá 1553). Melchor Cano (d 1560), La victoria de sí mismo (Valladolid 1550), an adaptation of Crema's work. John of the Cross (d. c.1565), Dialogue on the Necessity of Prayer (Salamanca 1555). Felipe de Meneses (d 1572), Luz del alma (Valladolid 1554). Agustín de Esbarroya (t 1554), Purifier of conscience (Seville 1550). Domingo Baltanas (t 1564), Apologia de la oración mental (Seville 1556), Apologia de la frecuentación de la sacrosanta Eucaristía y Comunión (Seville 1558), Doctrina cristiana (Seville 1555). Alonso Cabrera (1548-1598), Los escrúpulos y sus remedios (Valencia 1599; reed. P. Getino, Madrid 1918). Fray Luis de Granada (1505-1588) is the Spanish author who has achieved the greatest number of editions in the whole world, as demonstrated by Father Llaneza (Bibliografía del P. Granada, 4 vols., Salamanca 1926-28). His precious works Guía de pecadores, De la oración y meditación, Memorial de la vida cristiana, Exposición del símbolo de la fe, etc., have not yet lost their freshness and relevance, being for souls an inexhaustible source of the purest and most ardent devotion (Obras, ed. critica del P. Cuervo en 14 vols., Madrid 1906SS). Bartolomé de los Mártires (1514-1590), archbishop of Braga, Compendium spiritualis doctrinae (1582), Stimulus pastorum (1564). Juan Gavaston (d 1623), El tratado de la Vida espiritual de San Vicente Ferrer declarado y comentado (Valencia 1626). John of St. Thomas (1589-1644) is the best commentator of the Angelic Doctor on the question of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (In I-II 68). Louis Chardon (1595-1651) wrote his magnificent works La Croix de Jésus (1647; reed. Paris 1937), Raccourci de l'art de méditer (1649), Méditations sur la Passion (1650). Thomas of Vallgornera (J 1665) collected innumerable texts of St. Thomas in his Mystica Theologia Divi Thomae (ed. Turin 1911), drawing much inspiration from the works of the Carmelite Philip of the Most Holy Trinity. Juan Tomás de Rocaberti (d 1699), Ejercicio de meditaciones (Barcelona 1668), Teología mística (ibid., 1669). Vincent Contenson (1641-1674) is the author of the famous Theologia mentís et coráis, in 9 vols. at the end of each question the practical or ascetic consequences are drawn. Blessed Francisco de Posadas (f 1713), Triumphs of chastity, against the quietist errors of Molinos. Antonio Massoulié (1632-1706), Traité de la véritable oraison (1699), Traité de l'amour de Dieu (1703), against quietism; Méditations de Saint Thomas sur les trois voies (ed. Paris 1934). Domingo Ricci, Homo interior (3 vols., 1709), against the errors of Molinos. Alexander Piny (1640-1709), The Most Perfect Way (Holy Abandonment). The Prayer of the Heart, The Key of Pure Love, The State of Pure Love, The Presence of God, etc. There is a new Spanish edition of the first one with the title El cielo en la tierra (Madrid 1947). J. B. Rousseau, Avis sur les divers états d'oraison (1710). Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861), Life of Saint Dominic (1840), Letters, Spanish edition: Obras completas, transl. P. Castaño (22 vols., Madrid 1926SS). 12 HISTORICAL-BIBLTOGRAPHIC SUMMARY Andrés María MeynarD (1824-1904), Traité de la vie intérieure (1884), new edition adapted by Father Gerest (1923-25). Spanish edition by Fr. Castaño: La vida espiritual (Barcelona 1908). B. Froget, De l'habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les ámes justes (1900). M. J. Rousset, Directorium asceticum, La vie spirituelle. d'aprés la tradition et la doctrine des Saints (1902). Jacinto M. a Cormier (1832-1916), Instruction des novices (1905), Retraites, Lettres, Vie du P. Jandel, Éntretiens sur la liturgie dominicaine, etc. Enrique Denifle (f 1908), La vida espiritual (collection of texts of the German mystics of the 14th century). Bilbao edition 1929. Ambrosio Gardeil (1859-1931), La structure de l'áme et l'expérience mistique (magnificent work in 2 vols., Paris 1927), La vraie vie chrétienne (incomplete, Paris 1935), Los dones del Espíritu Santo en los santos dominicos (Spanish translation by Fr. Urbano, Vergara 1907). Alberto M.* Weis (f 1925), Apología del cristianismo, in which frequent incursions are made into the field of asceticism and mysticism (Barcelona i9°5-6). Barthier, De la perfection chrétienne et religieuse d'aprés S.Thomas et S.Frangois de Sales (2 vols., 1902). M. A. Janvier (1860-1939), Exposition de la Morale Catholique, lectures at Notre-Dame de Paris (from 1903 to 1923), mainly the lectures on la chanté et la perfection chrétienne. Juan González Arintero (1860-1928) is the restorer of mystical studies in Spain. His works Evolución mística, Cuestiones místicas, Exposición del Cantar de los Cantares, La verdadera mística tradicional, Grados de oración, Las escalas de amor, etc., are constantly republished. In 1921 he founded in Salamanca "La vida sobrenatural". Vicente Bernadot (1883-1941), De ¡a Eucaristía a la Trinidad (Barcelona 1946), La Virgen María en mi vida (Barcelona 1941). He founded in France, in 1919, "La Vie Spirituelle". G. Gerest (1866-1941), Memento de vie spirituelle (1923). A. Lemonnyer (f 1932), Notre vie divine (Paris 1936). F. Joret (1884-1937), La contemplation mystique (Paris 1923), L'enfance spirituelle (Paris 1931). H. Petitot (f 1934). Introduction á la sainteté (Paris 1935), Saint Therese of Lisieux (Spanish ed., Barcelona 1948). T. Richard, Théologie et piété d'aprés S.Thomas (Paris 1935). H. D. Noble, La amistad divina (Spanish ed., Buenos Aires 1944). R. Bernard, Le mystére de Marie (Paris 1933). Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange is one of the most relevant figures of contemporary mysticism: Perfection chrétienne et contemplation (2 vols., 1923), L'amour de Dieu et la Croix de Jésus (2 vols., 1929), La providencia y la confianza en Dios (Spanish ed., Buenos Aires 1942), Las tres edades de la vida interior (Buenos Aires 1944), Las tres conversiones y las tres vías (Juvisy 1933), La unión mística en Santa Catalina de Sena (1938), El Salvador y su amor por nosotros, La Madre del Salvador y nuestra vida interior (Buenos Aires 1947). Benedict Lavaud, L'oeuvre mystique de Henri Suso, 5 vols. (LUF, Fribourg). Pierre-Tomas Dehau, La compassion de la Sainte Vierge (Lyons 1942), Le contemplatif et la croix (ibid., 1942), Le bon pasteur (ibid., 1942), En priére avec Marie (ibid., 1943), Des fleuves d'eau vive (ibid., 1941). Pius Regamey, La croix du Christ et celle du chrétien (Lyon 1944). M. M. Philipon, The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity (1937), a truly egregious work, one of the best that has been written in this field. HISIORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC REdUMSN 12 The sacraments in the Christian life (Buenos Aires 1950) and La doctrine spirituelle de Dom Marmion (Paris 1954), a precious synthesis of the spirituality of the distinguished Benedictine abbot. Ignacio G. Menéndez-Reigada (f 1951), Unidad específica de la contemplación cristiana (Madrid 1926), De dirección espiritual (Salamanca 1934), Necesidad de los dones del Espíritu Santo (Salamanca 1939), Los dones del Espíritu Santo y la perfección cristiana (Madrid 1948). Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, Corrientes de espiritualidad (Salamanca 1941). Sabino Lozano, Vida santa y ciencia sagrada (2nd ed. Salamanca 1942). Victorino Osende, El tesoro escondido (1942), Album de un alma (Salamanca 1926), Contémplate (2nd ed. Pamplona 1947), Las grandes etapas de la vida espiritual (Salamanca 1953). Emilio Sauras, The Mystical Body of Christ (BAC, Madrid 1952). Paul Philippe, Doctrina mystica S.Thomae (Rome 1952). C) Franciscan School Alonso de Madrid (f 1521) wrote his precious Arte para servir a Dios, a true jewel of our ascetical-mystical literature, and the Espejo de ilustres personas (ed BAC, n.38). Francisco de Osuna (d. c.1540), First, second and third Spiritual Abecedary (1525-1530). The third was used by St. Teresa, to whom it did much good (modern ed., 1. 1 6 NBAE, Madrid); Ley de amor santo (BAC, n.38), which constitutes his fourth alphabet, a summary of the previous ones. Bernardino de Laredo (1482-1540), a lay religious, wrote his celebrated Ascent of Mount Sion, full of light, sweetness and color (BAC, n.44). Antonio de Guevara (1480-1545), Monte Calvario y Oratorio de religiosos y ejercicios virtuosos (BAC, n.44), addressed to religious and lay people who want to live a holy life. Gabriel de Toro, Teología mística (1548). St. Peter of Alcantara (1499-1562), Treatise on Prayer, a brief summary of the book of Prayer and Meditation, by Friar Luis de Granada (new edition, Salamanca 1926). Juan de Bonilla, Tratado de la paz del alma (Alcalá 1580). Miguel de Medina (1489-1578), Infancia espiritual (BAC, n.44). Blessed Nicholas Factor (1520-1583), The Three Ways, a brief treatise of exalted mysticism, full of allegories (BAC. n.44). Diego de Estella (1524-1578) wrote the famous treatise on the Vanity of the World and his most devout Meditations on the Love of God (BAC, n.46). Juan de Pineda (J i 593 ?), Declaration of the Pater noster (BAC, n.46). John of the Angels (1536-1609) is one of the greatest Franciscan mystics in his Triumphs of the Love of God (NBAE, 20), Dialogues of the Conquest of the Kingdom of God (ibid.), Considerations on the Song of Songs (ibid.), Manual of the Perfect Life (BAC, n.46), Slavery Tomorrow (ibid.), etc. Diego Murillo (1555-1616), Instrucción para los principiantes y Escala espiritual (ed. Salamanca 1907). Benedict of Canfeld (d 1610), O.M.Cap., Régle de perfection (1609). Matías Bellintani de Salo (t 1611), Pratica delV orazione mentale (Assisi 1932-34) Constantine de Barbanson, Sécrets sentiers de l'amour divin (1622; reprint Paris 1932). HISl'ÓlUCO-BT BEIOGRAPHIC SUMMARIES RESUMES H1SIÓR1CO-B1BL1OGKÁF1C0 15 Joseph de Tremblay (d 1638), Introduction à la vie spirituelle par une méthode facile d'oraison (1626 and 1897). Ivo de Paris, Progrés del l'amour divin (1642), Les misericordes de Dieu (1645). Venerable Maria de Agreda (1602-1665), Mystical City of God, Ladder to Climb to Perfection, Laws of the Bride (new ed. Barcelona 1911-1920, 7 vols.). Peter Pictaviense, Lejour mystique (3 vols., Paris 1671). Luis de Argentan (1680), Conférences sur les grandeurs de Dieu; id., de Jésus-Christ; id., de la Ste. Vierge, Exercices du chrétien intérieur. Cardinal Brangati de Laurea (d 1693), De oratione christiana (1685), much quoted by Benedict XIV. Diego de la Madre de Dios (1712), Arte mística (Salamanca 1713). St. Veronica of Juliani (1660-1727), Diary (9 vols., Prato 1895-1928). Bernardo de Castelvetere, Direttorio mystico (1750). Ambrose de Lombez (d 1778), Traite de la paix intérieure , very effective against scruples (numerous editions); Lettres spirituelles (Oeuvres complétes) (3 vols., Paris 1881-1882). Antonio Arbiol, Mística fundamental (Madrid 1761), Desengaños místicos (Madrid 1772). He quotes St. John of the Cross a lot, but often misinterprets him. Luis de Bese, La Science de la priére (Rome 1903), Eclaircissements sur les oeuvres de S. Jean de la Croix (1889); very solid and recommendable author. Cardinal Vives y Tuto, Compendium theologiae ascetico-mysticae (1908). Adolfo de Denderwindeke, Compendium theologiae asceticae (1921), 2 vols. with extensive bibliography. J. Heerinckx, Introductio in theologiam spiritualem (Rome 1931). Miguel de Esplugas, Conferencias espirituales (1904). Ivo de Mohon, Le don de Sagesse (Paris 1928). D) Augustinian School It is inspired by the works of St. Augustine. The school counts as its representatives some authors of the Middle Ages (Ruysbroeck, Kempis, etc.), but it does not appear well defined until the Modern Age. Here are some of its most notable authors: St. Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555), in addition to his magnificent Sermons, wrote several ascetical booklets (Obras, BAC, n.96). Blessed Alonso de Orozco (i 500- i 59 i) is more important than the previous one in the history of mysticism; Vergel de oración y monte de contemplación, Desposorio espiritual, Libro de la suavidad de Dios and Regla de vida cristiana are his main works (Madrid 1736, 4 vols.). Venerable Tomé de Jesús (1533-1582) wrote, among others, his beautiful work The Works of Jesus, which is difficult to surpass (several editions). Fray Luis de León (f 1591), De los nombres de Cristo, La perfecta casada, Exposición del Cantar de los Cantares, Del libro de Job, etc. ( Works, BAC, n.3). Pedro Malón de Chaide (1530-1589), La conversión de la Magdalena, of exuberant color and marvelous style, but of somewhat contrived mysticism (several editions). Agustín Antolínez (1554-1626) commented with great piety on the mystical poems of St. John of the Cross in his famous Exposition. Agustín de San Ildefonso (1585-1662), Theología myslica, scientia y sabiduría de Dios mysteriosa, oscura y levantada para muchos (Alcalá 1654). Enrique Flórez (1702-1773), the immortal author of the España Sagrada, also wrote some works of mysticism, such as the Libro de los libros y ciencia de los santos, Modo práctico de tener oración mental and his precious translation of Los trabajos de Jesús, by the Venerable Tomé. Tomás Rodríguez is a notable Teresianist in his Analogías entre San Agustín y Santa Teresa (Valladolid 1883). Graciano Martínez (d 1925), Libro de Santa Teresa, posthumous work, which collects his articles and mystical studies. César Vaca, Guías de almas (3. a ed.); Haz meditación (2. a ed.); La vida religiosa en San Agustín (2 vols.). For more abundant Augustinian bibliography, see P. Monasterio, Místicos agustinos españoles (El Escorial 1929, 2 vols.). E) The Carmelite school Although it has some historical antecedents, the school did not really appear until the 16th century with St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross. It is a highly contemplative spirituality, in which everything is ordered to intimate union with God through detachment from everything created, recollection and a life of continuous prayer. St. Teresa of Jesus (1515-1582) is, without dispute, the leading figure of experimental Christian mysticism. In her works we find the highest mystical psychology that the centuries have bequeathed to us. His admirable descriptions, his marvelous classification of the degrees of prayer and of a hundred other mystical phenomena have not been surpassed by anyone. His immortal works, translated into the main languages of the world, are endlessly reprinted and are solid and exquisite food for souls thirsty for God (Obras, critical ed. by Fr. Silverio [9 vols., Burgos 1915-1926], and numerous other editions). St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) marks, with St. Teresa, the culminating moment of experimental Christian mysticism, with the advantage over the Saint that the Mystical Doctor does not limit himself to exposing the phenomena, but gives the reason for them, illuminating them with the great principles of Catholic philosophy and theology (Obras, ed. critica P. Silverio [5 f Vols., Burgos 1929-1931]; ed. manual BAC, n.15). Juan de Jesús María Aravalles (1539-1609), Instrucción de novicios (reed., Toledo 1925) and Tratado de la oración (Toledo 1926). Antonio de la Cruz, Book of Contemplation (ca. 1595). Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios (1545-1614), a great friend and disciple of Saint Teresa, wrote his Dilucidario del verdadero espíritu (1604), Mística teología (1601), Vida del alma (1609), De la oración mental, etc. (Obras, ed. P. Silverio, 3 vols.). (Obras, ed. P. Silverio, 3 vols. Burgos 1932-1933). St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzis (1566-1607), Carmelite of the Ancient Observance: Estasi e lettere scelte (critical ed., Firenze 1924). John of Jesus Mary (1564-1615), third general of the order, wrote his Instructio novitiorum (1605), Instructio magistri novitiorum (1608), Schola orationis et contemplationis (1611), Theologia mystica (Opera omnia, Florence 1771). Thomas of Jesus (1564-1627), Treatise on Mental Prayer (1610), De contemplatione divina (1620), De contemplatione acquisita (Milan 1922). He was HISl'ORIC-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY who introduced in his school the formula "acquired contemplation", which caused so much disorientation in mystical studies. Venerable Anne of St. Bartholomew (t 1626), Vie (autobiography) et instructions (Paris 1646; reed. 1895). José de Jesús María Quiroga (d 1629), Subida del alma a Dios (1656), Don que tuvo San Juan de la Cruz para guiar las almas a Dios (in Obras del Santo, ed. P. Gerardo, Toledo 1914, t.3). John of St. Samson (1571-1636), a convert of the Old Observance, has some remarkable Spiritual Works (2 vols., Rennes 1658); cf. "La Vie Spirituelle" (1925-1926). Cecilia del Nacimiento (d 1646), De la transformación del alma en Dios, De la unión del alma con Dios (in Obras de San Juan de la Cruz, ed. Toledo 1914, vol.3). Teresa of Jesus Mary (d 1648), Obras (ed. Madrid 1921). Nicolás de Jesús María (d.1670?), Elucidatio Theologica (Alcalá 1631), in defense of the doctrine of St. John of the Cross. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity (d 1671), Summa theologiae mysticae in 3 vols. (1656; reed. Paris 1875), from which the Dominican Vallgornera drew much of his inspiration. Anthony of the Holy Spirit (1674), his celebrated Directorium Mysticum (1677; reed. 1904) is but a compendium of the work of Fr. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity. Balthasar of St. Catherine of Siena (1673), his Splendori riflessi di sapienza celeste (Bologna 1671) is a commentary on the Moradas, by St. Teresa. José del Espíritu Santo (d 1674), Portuguese, wrote his Cadena mística carmelitana (Madrid 1678) and Enucleatio Theologiae mysticae, commenting on the Areopagite (reed. Rome 1927). Mauro of the Child Jesus (1618-1696), of the Ancient Observance: L'entrée á la divine Sagesse (4 vols., Soignies 1921). Antonio de la Anunciación (d 1714), Disceptatio mystica de oratione et contemplatione (Alcalá 1683); a kind of text of asceticism and mysticism. Honoratus of St. Mary (1651-1729), Tradition des Peres et des auteurs ecclésiastiques sur la contemplation (2 vols., 1709), against quietism; Motifs et pratique de l'amour divin (1713). Francisco de Santo Tomás (d 1707), Medula mystica (Madrid 1695). José del Espíritu Santo (d 1730), Andalusian, wrote his monumental Cursus theologiae mystico-scholasticae, in 6 vols. (new ed. Bruges, t.I-IV, 1924S). St. Teresa of the Child Jesus (1873-1897), with her Story of a Soul, Letters, Poems, etc., made her "little way" of spiritual childhood (Complete Works, Burgos [3rd ed. 1950] and numerous editions) famous throughout the world. Sister Isabel de la Trinidad (1880-1906), in her Memories and Retreats, shows herself to be one of the most sublime souls to have passed through the Carmelite cloisters (see the magnificent study by Fr. Philipon, O.P., The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Isabel de la Trinidad). Alphonse de la Dolorosa, Pratique de Voraison mentale et de la perfection d'aprés Ste. Thérése et S. Jean de la Croix (8 vols., Bruges 1909-1914). Wenceslao del Santísimo Sacramento, Fisonomía de un doctor (2 vols., Salamanca 1913). Aureliano del Santísimo Sacramento, Manuale Cursus ascetici (3 vols., 1917)' Theodore of St. Joseph, Essai sur Voraison (Bruges 1923), L'oraison d'aprés l'Ecole Carmelitaine (2nd ed., Bruges 1929). historical-bibliographic summary 17 Lucas de San José (1872-1936), La santidad en el claustro, La santa imagen de! crucifijo, Confidencias a un joven, Desde mi celda, etc. Crisógono de Jesús Sacramentado (1904-1945), San Juan de la Cruz: su obra científica y literaria (2 vols., Avila 1929), La escuela mística carmelitana (Avila 1930), Vida de San Juan de la Cruz (BAC, n.15), Compendio de ascética y mística (Avila 1933). Gabriel de Santa Maria Magdalena (1893-1953)^0 teresian mystic (Florence 1934), Santa Teresa, maestra di vita spirituale (1935), San Giovanni della Croce, Dottore dell'amore divino (1937), La contemplazione acquisita (1938), etc. Efrén de la Madre de Dios, San Juan de la Cruz y el misterio de la Santísima Trinidad en la vida espiritual (Zaragoza 1947). Eugenio del Niño Jesús, Quiero ver a Dios (2 vols., Spanish ed., Vitoria 1951-1952). F) Ignatian School Active, energetic, practical, disciplined, methodized spirituality. Everything is planned with mathematical exactitude. Through its sturdy structure, the spirit of the iron-willed Basque who founded it is effortlessly transparent. It tends to form the will for personal sanctification and apostolate. St. Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491-1495, f 1556), founder of the Society of Jesus and of the school of his name through his famous Spiritual Exercises, which had a great influence on later spirituality. To know his spirit we must also read his Autobiography, his Spiritual Diary, the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and his magnificent Letters (Obras completas, ed. BAC, n.86). St. Francis Xavier (d 1552) has some very beautiful Letters and other spiritual writings (BAC, n.101). St. Francis Borgia (1510-1572), Meditations (ed. 1912) and Spiritual Diary (ed. Mon. Hist. 1911). Alonso Rodríguez (d 1616), Ejercicios de perfección y virtudes cristianas (3 vols.; numerous editions); excellent work, but exclusively ascetic. St. Alphonsus Rodriguez (1531-1617), coadjutor brother of the Society, who soared to the highest level of contemplation, wrote his Autobiography and several booklets of sublime mystical elevation (Obras espirituales, 3 volumes, Barcelona 1885). Francisco Suárez (d 1617), De virtute et statu religionis (I-II, 1608-1609; III-IV, 1623-1625),. Jacobo Alvarez de Paz (d 1620), De vita spirituali eiusque perfectione (1608), De inquisitione pacis (1617; reed. 1875). He was one of the first to use the term "affective prayer", which became popular in schools. St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), De ascensione mentís ad Deum (1614), De gemitu columbarum sive de bono lacrymarum (1617), De arte bene moriendi (1620). Antonio Le Gaudier (f 1622), De natura et statibus perfectionis ( 1 643 ; reed. Turin 1903). Luis de la Puente (d. 1624), Meditaciones (1605), Guía espiritual (1609), perhaps the best mystical work of the school; De la perfección del cristiano en todos sus estados (1612), Vida del P. Baltasar Alvarez (1615; reed. Madrid 1920), Expositio moralis et mystica in Canticum (1622). H1STORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY 18 HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY Louis Lallemant (d 1635), Doctrine spirituelle, collected by his disciple Rigoleuc (reed. 1924 and 1936); precious book, one of the best that the school has produced. Luis de la Palma (d 1641), Camino espiritual (1626; reed. Barcelona 1887), Historia de la pasión del Señor (various editions). Miguel Godínez (t 1644), Práctica de la teología mística (ed. 1681; translated into Latin by Fr. Reguera; new ed. Paris 1920). Eusebius Nieremberg (d 1658), Difference between the temporal and eternal, Appreciation and esteem of divine grace (numerous editions). Juan Surin (d. 1665), Fondements de la vie spirituelle (1674; reed. Paris 193°). Questions sur l'amour de Dieu (ed. Paris 1930), Lettres spirituelles (ed. Toulouse 1926). The works of this author are magnificent, but his Catéchisme spirituelle (1657-165) was put in the Index in 1695, eight years after the condemnation of the errors of Molinos (quietism) and four years before those of Fénelon (semiquietism). The historical circumstances explain the inclusion of the Catechism in the catalog of banned books because of certain expressions that at that time could taste of quietism, although it is still in the Index today. Jacob Nouet (d 1680), L'homme d'oraison (1674). Blessed Claude de la Colombiére (J 1682), Journal des retraites (1684). Paul Segneri (1624-1694), Concordia tra la J atica e la quiete nell'orazione (1680), against the errors of Molinos. Juan Pinamonti (d 1703), Opere spirituali (1706). Pierre Causade (d 1751), Instructions spirituelles sur les divers états d'oraison (1741), Le abandonment à la Providence (various editions). John Baptist Scaramelli (1687-1752), Discernment of the Spirits (1753), Ascetic Directory (1754), Mystical Directory (1754); very extensive and recommendable works, but touched by not a few errors of his decadent era. John Nicholas Grou (1731-1803), Characters of True Devotion (1778), Spiritual Maxims (1789), Meditations on the Love of God (1796), Manual of Interior Souls (1803), The Interior of Jesus and Mary (1815). He is one of the most solid and sure authors of the school. There are several Spanish editions of his works. Benedict Valuy (f 1869), Directory of the Priest (1854), The Virtues of the Religious (ed. Barcelona 1931). Henri Ramière (t 1884), The Apostolate of Prayer (1860), The Heart of Jesus and the Divinization of the Christian (1891; ed. Bilbao 1936). Joseph Mach (d 1885), Norma de vida cristiana (1853), Tesoro del sacerdote (1861). Auguste Poulain (f 1918), Des g races d'oraison (1901), a very useful and celebrated work (11 ed., Paris 1931), but it gathers only the psychological aspect of mysticism, totally omitting the theological one. Renato de Maumigny (f 1918), La práctica de la oración mental (1905; Ediciones Fax, Madrid 1943), in which he considers mysticism as something abnormal and extraordinary. Maurice Meschler (1850-1912), Life of Our Lord (1890), The Gift of Pentecost (1887), The Spiritual Life (ed. Herder, 1911), Ascetics and Mysticism. Charles de Smedt, Notre vie surnaturelle (1913). Jerónimo Seisdedos (f 1923), Principios fundamentales de la mística (5 volumes, 1913-1919); a summary was made by Fr. Tarrago, Breve antología sobre la contemplación (Bilbao 1926). Maurice de la Taille, L'oraison contemplative (1921). L. Peeters (1868-1937), Vers l'union divine (2.* ed., Louvain 1931). Leontius de Grandmaison (f 1926), Ecrits spirituels (3 vols., Paris 1933-34), La religion persotmelle (Paris 1927). Germán Foch (f 1929), La vie intérieure (1924), Paix eljoie (1924), L'amour de la croix (1925), La vie cachée, etc. Raúl Plus, God in us, Christ in us, Christ in our neighbors, Living with God, Spiritual direction, Fidelity to grace, etc., etc., etc. Highly esteemed author with a modern and popular style (Ediciones Españolas, Barcelona). J. Marechal (f 1941), Etudes sur la psychologie des mystiques (I, 1924; II, 1937) Pablo de Jaegher, La vida de identificación con Jesucristo (6th Spanish ed., Salamanca 1949). José de Guibert (1877-1942), Etudes de théologie mystique (1930), Theologia spiritualis ascetica et mystica (ed. Rome 1939), Documenta ecclesiastica christianae perfectionis studium spectantia (Rome 1931), Lecciones de Teología espiritual (Madrid 1953). The Fathers of the Society - with the collaboration of many other religious, priests and lay people - have been publishing for years a remarkable Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (Beauchesne, Paris), which will be a precious and indispensable working tool. G) Salesian School Properly speaking, it does not constitute a separate school, being subsidiary to several related schools, especially the French school of the 17th century. But we group under this name the main authors who recognize St. Francis de Sales as their leader and follow in the footsteps of his sweet and charming spirituality. St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) is one of the authors who most profoundly influenced later spirituality through his Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), his Letters and Spiritual Talks (Entrétiens), and, above all, his magnificent Treatise on the Love of God (1616). See Oeuvres completes (Annecy 1892SS) and the Spanish edition of the BAC (n. 109 and 127). Peter Camus (bishop of Belley, f 1652), a great friend of the Saint, wrote The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales (i 641). There is a modern Spanish edition (Barcelona 1947).' St. Jeanne-Françoise F. de Chantal (1572-1641) founded with St. Francis de Sales the Religious of the Visitation (Oeuvres, with Ja "Life", 8 vols., Paris 1874-80). St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), confidant of the Heart of Jesus: Autobiography and other writings (Oeuvres, 3 vols., Paris 1915). St. John Bosco (1815-1888), for his distinctly Salesian spirit and his large number of religious works, deserves a prominent place in this school. Joseph Tissot (t 1894), Ea vida interior simplificada, precious work written by a Carthusian (several Spanish editions), El arte de utilizar nuestras faltas según San Francisco de Sales (1878). Henri Chaumont (d 1896), Directions spirituelles de Saint Frangois de Sales (several volumes on prayer, humility, religious vocation...), Monseigneur du Segur, directeur des dmes (2 vols., 1884). F. Vincent, Saint Frangois de Sales, directeur d'drnes (1923). TTISTÓi SUMMARY: tfO-I'TBUOCRÁFTCO HISIOGRAPHIC-B 1 BLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY H) French school of the 16th centuryÍ A very rich spirituality, founded on the dogma of our incorporation into Christ, the Incarnate Word, through the sacrament of baptism. Temples of the Holy Spirit through baptismal grace, we must, in union with the Incarnate Word, glorify God, who lives in us, and copy the interior virtues of Jesus, completely destroying the old man: "Hoc enim sentite in vobis quod et in Christo Iesu" (Phil. 2:5); "...exspoliantes vos veterem hominem.... et induentes novum" (Col. 3:9-10). Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629) is the founder of the school and the Congregation of the Oratory in France. His main work is his Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus (1623), but he also has the Traité de l'abnégat ion and many other booklets and letters (Oeuvres complétes, reed. Migne 1856). Charles de Condren (1588-1641), L'idée du sacerdoce et du sacrifice (1643; reed. 1857). François Bourgoing (1588-1662), Vérités et excellence de J.C. disposées en méditations (reed. 1892). St. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660), founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Daughters of Charity, is akin to the French school in his doctrines. See Biography and writings, ed. BAC, n.63. Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657), founder of the Society of St. Sulpice and one of the best exponents of the spirituality of the French school in his Catéchisme chrétien pour la vie intérieure (1656), Introduction d la vie et aux vertus chrétiennes (1647), Traité de SS. Ordres (1676), to prepare the seminarian to be God's religious by his transformation into Jesus, High Priest, Sacrificer and Victim; Journée chrétienne, to sanctify the day in union with Jesus; Lettres, etc. (Oeuvres, ed. Migne 1856). Louis Bail (d 1669), secular priest, La théologie affective de S.Thomas, very remarkable work in 4 vols. (Paris 1654); reprinted several times. Louis Tronson (1622-1700), Forma cleri, Examens particuliers, Traite de l'obeissance et de l'humililé, Manuel du Séminariste (Oeuvres, ed. Migne i8 S7) St. John Eudes (1601-1680), founder of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary (Enditas), was a tireless promoter of devotion to the Sacred Hearts. His main works are: La vie et le royaume de Jésus dans les ámes chrétiennes (1637), Le contrat de l'homme avec Dieu par le saint baptéme, Le Coeur admirable de la Mere de Dieu (1681), Mémorial de la vie ecclésiastique, etc. (Oeuvres, 12 vols., Vannes 1905SS). St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716), founder of the Society of Mary, emphasizes in his works mainly the Marian aspect of the school (Obras, ed. BAC, n.m). St. John Baptist de la Salle (1651-1719), founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools: Explication de la méthode d'oraison (1739), Méditations pour le temps de la rétraite (c.1725), Méditations pour tous les dimanches et fétes, etc. J. A. Emery (1732-1811), L'Esprit de Ste.Thérése (1775). A. J. M. Hamon (1795-1874), Méditations d l'usage du clergé et des fidéles (1872). V. P. Libermann (1803-1852), Instructions sur la vie spirituelle, sur l'oraison, L'oraison affective (Ecrits spirituels, 1891), Lettres spirituelles (3 vols., 1874). H. J. Icard (f 1893), Doctrine de M, Olier (1889), Traditions de la Compagnie de Saint Sulpice pour la direction des Grands Séminaires (1886). Monsignor Gay (1816-1892), Life and Christian Virtues, Elevations on the Life and Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Letters of Direction, etc. (numerous editions). G. Letourneau (f 1926), La méthode d'oraison mentale du Séminaire de S. Sulpice (1903). Jérôme Ribet (1837-1909), La mystique divine distinguée des contre/apons diaboliques et des analogies humaines (4 vols., Paris 1871-83), L'ascetique chrétienne (Paris 1887), Les vertus et les dons dans la vie chrétienne (Lecoffre 1901). Charles Sauvé (d 1925), highly recommended for his magnificent "Dogmatic Elevations" on the intimate God, the intimate Jesus, the Heart of Jesus, the intimate Priest, the intimate Christian, etc., and his precious little work Etats Mystiques (there are Spanish editions, Barcelona, Libreria Religiosa). L. Garriguet, The Virgin Mary (1916), The Sacred Heart of Jesus (1920). P. E. Lamballe (d 1914), an eudite, wrote The Contemplation, or Principles of Mystical Theology, a very remarkable and accurate work (Tequi, Paris 1912; Buenos Aires 1944). P. Lhoumeau, La vie spirituelle á l'école de Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (Bruges 1954). A. Tanquerey (1854-1932), Compendium of Ascetic and Mystical Theology (192324), Spanish translation by García Hughes (Desclée). I) Ligorian School There is no such school with its own specific characteristics. But We group under this title St. Alphonsus and his principal disciples. They insist above all on the love of God, on prayer and on the mortification. St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), besides being a great moralist, is the author of numerous excellent ascetical works: Visits to the Blessed Sacrament (1745), The Glories of Mary (1750), Of the Great Means of Prayer (1759), The True Bride of Jesus Christ (1760), The Practice of Love for Jesus Christ (1768), etc. (ed. BAC, n.78 and 113). Jenaro Sarnelli (1702-1744), II mondo sanctificato, Discrezione degli spiriti, Lettere spirittmli, etc. (Works, Naples 1877). Achilles Desukmont (f 1898), La charité sacerdotale, Le Credo et la Providence, La vie vraiment chrétienne (Oeuvres complétes, 12 vols., Paris 1906SS). J. Schrijvers (1876-1945), The Principles of the Spiritual Life (Paris 1913; Spanish ed. Madrid 1947), The Gift of Self, The Divine Friend, The Good Will, Those Who Trust, Jesus' Message to the Priest, My Mother, etc. (There are Spanish editions.) P. Dosda, L'union avec Dieu, ses commencements, ses progrés, sa perfeclion (Paris 1925). F. Bouchage, Pratique des vertus, Introduction d la vie sacerdotale, Catéchisme ascétique et pastoral desjeunes cleros (Beauchesne, Paris 1916). HISTORICAL-BIBIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY IIISTOKICÜ-IilBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY J) Independent authors We continue under this heading the list of the authors of the secular clergy or of those who, because of their independent ideas, cannot be framed in a certain school of spirituality. Blessed John of Avila (i499?-i5Ó9) is one of the greatest Spanish mystics, for whom St. Teresa felt true admiration. He exerted great influence with his oral teaching and through his beautiful works Audi filia, Libro del Santísimo Sacramento, Del Espíritu Santo, De la Virgen María, etc., and his wonderful Letters (see Obras completas, ed. BAC, n.89.103). Saint Anthony Mary Zacharias (1502-1539), founder of the Barnabites. The work Detti notabili (ed. 1583) was attributed to him, which critics have attributed to the Dominican Baptist of Crema. But we know his spirit and doctrine through the work Le lettere e lo spirito di S. A. M. Z. (ed. Rome 1909). Serafin de Fermo (d 1540), canon regular. Opere spirituali (Venetiis 1541) San Felipe Neri (1515-1595), founder of the Oratory, Lettere, rime e detti memorabili (ed. Florence 1922). Cf. L'esprit de S.Phil. de N. et son école ascetique by L. B. (Paris 1900). Lorenzo Escupoli (d 1610) wrote the famous Spiritual Combat, highly esteemed by St. Francis de Sales (numerous editions). Blessed John Baptist of the Conception (d 1613), reformer of the Order of Discalced Trinitarians: Works (4 vols., Rome 1830). St. Michael of the Saints (d 1625), a Trinitarian, wrote his Brief Treatise on the Tranquility of the Soul (reed. 1915). Rafael de San Juan, Trinitarian, Camino real de la perfección cristiana (1691). Venerable Mary of the Incarnation (1599-1672), Ursuline, Lettres (2 vols., 1681). New critical edition by D. Jamet: t.1-2, Ecrits spirituels (Paris 1929-30); t.3, Correspondance (Paris 1935). From the same: Le témoignage de Marie de l'Incam. (Paris 1932). Vicente Calatayud (d 1771), oratorian, Divus Thomas... priscorum et recentiorum errorum... tenebras... mysticam theologiam obscurare molientes, angelice dissipans (6 vols., Valencia 1744): work of ornate and baroque style against quietism. Jacob Benigno Bossuet (1627-1704), bishop of Meaux, Elévations sur les mystéres, Méditations sur l'Evangile, Traite sur la concupiscence, Instruction sur les états d'oraison (1617). He disputed with Fenelon on the "pure love", and the Church gave the reason to Bossuet. François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715), archbishop of Cambrai, Explication des maximes de Saints sur la vie intérieur (1697), Sentiments de piété, Avis, Lettres spirituelles (Works, ed. 1823). In his controversy with the bishop of Meaux he was defeated, humbly submitting himself to the opinion of the Church. His book Explication des maximes de Saints is in the Index. Prospero Lambertini (1675-1753) before his exaltation to the supreme pontificate (Benedict XIV from 1740 to 1758) wrote his celebrated work De servorum Dei beatificatione et canonizatione (1734), in which - in matters of asceticism and mysticism - he frequently reproduces the doctrine of Brancati de Laurea, De oratione christiana (1685). Needless to say, he does not speak in it as pope - he was not yet a pope - but simply as a private author. St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), founder of the Passionists, Lettere (4 vols., ed. Rome 1924): cf. Florilegio spirituale (2 vols., 1914-16). P. Seraphim (f 1879), Passionist, Principes de Théologie mystique (1873) Promptuarium super Passione Christi Domini. Joseph Goerres (d 1848), Christliche Mystik (4 vols., 1836-48). Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855), Massime di perfezione (1830), Storia dell'amore (1834), Epistolario ascetico (5 vols., 1911-13), Manuale dell'esercitatore (1840). St. Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860), Meditazioni, Istruzioni per Esercizi spirituali al clero (2 vols., 1892-93). Frederick William Faber (1814-1892). All for Jesus, Bethlehem, The Blessed Sacrament, The Precious Blood, At the Foot of the Cross, The Creator and the Creature, The Soul's Progress, etc. He is one of the most widely read authors of the last century (numerous editions). Blessed Julian Eymard (1811-1868), founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, Le tres Saint Sacrement (4 vols., 1872-78). St. Anthony Mary Claret (1807-1870), founder of the Missionary Sons of the Heart of Mary, Jacob's Ladder, Notices, Rules of the Spirit, etc., and many religious booklets. Antonio Chevrier (d 1879), Le prétre selon l'Evangile (1922). P. Giraud (f 1885), de la Salette missionaries, De V union a J.C. dans sa vie de victime (Paris 1870), De l'esprit et de la vie de sacrifice dans l'ét.at religieux (1873), Prétre et Hostie (1883). F. Dupanloup (f 1878), Journal intime (ed. Paris 1902). John H. Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), in addition to his precious Sermons, has the Apologia (1864), Méditations and devotions (1895) and other spiritual writings. Henry Cardinal Manning (f 1892), The Eternal Priesthood (ed. Barcelona 1889), The Inner Mission of the Holy Spirit, The Glories of the Sacred Heart, Sin and its Consequences, etc. José Scheeben (d 1888), Las maravillas de la divina gracia (Buenos Aires 1945), inspired by Fr. Nieremberg; Los misterios del Cristianismo (Barcelona 1950). Jaime Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921), The Ambassador of Christ (1896), Our Christian Heritage (1889; ed. Barcelona 1933). Maurice D'Hulst (f 1896), Retraites sacerdotales, Conférences (189ISS), Lettres de direction (1905). Monsignor Lejeune, Manuel de théologie mystique (1897), Introduction d la vie mystique (1899), Towards fervor, etc. St. Gemma Galgani (t 1903), Letters and Ecstasies (numerous editions). A. Devine, Passionist, A manual of ascetical theology (London 1902) and A manual of mystical theology (1903). L. Beaudenom (1840-1916), canon, Progressive practice of confession and direction. The Sources of Piety, Formation in Humility, Religious and Moral Formation of the Young Christian, Affective Meditations on the Gospel (Spanish ed., Subirana, Barcelona). Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), Ecrits spirituels (Paris 1923). Cardinal Mercier (1851-1926), To My Seminarians (1908), Pastoral Retreat (1910), The Interior Life, Call to Priestly Souls (1918). Alberto Farges (d 1926). Les phénoménes mystiques (1920), Les voies ordinaires de la vie spirituelle (1925). J. Guibert (1857-1913), Retraite spirituelle (19.09) and several booklets translated into Spanish: El carácter. Piety. Purity, etc. Mgr Waffel.aert (d 1932), Bishop of Bruges, is the continuator of the Flemish mystical school (Ruysbroeck) through his Méditations HISTORICAL-BIBLIOGRAPHIC SUMMARIES théologiques (2 vols., 1910), L'uníon de l'áme aimante avec Dieu (1916), La colombe spirituelle (1919), etc. Elisabeth Leseur (1866-1914), La vida espiritual, Diario y pensamientos de cada día, Cartas sobre el sufrimiento (Ed. Españolas, Barcelona, Poliglota). Sister Angeles Sorazu (1873-1921), La vida espiritual (Valladolid 1924), Opúsculos muríanos (ibid., 1929), Autobiography (ibid., 1929). Francisco Naval, C.M.F. (f 1930), Curso de Teología Ascetica y Mística (1914; 8th ed. 1955). Eulogio Nebreda, C.M.F., De oratione (Bilbao 1922). Robert de Langeac, Conseils a les ames d'oraison (Paris, Lethielleux, 1929), excellent work. Auguste Saudreau (t 1946) is one of the most recommendable and influential authors of our times: The degrees of the spiritual life (ed. Barcelona 1929), The ideal of the fervent soul (Barcelona 1926), L'état mystique (Angers 1921), La vie d'union a Dieu (Angers 1921), La piété á travers les ages (1927), La voie qui méne á Dieu, Manuel de spiritualité (1920), Les divines paroles (2 vols., 1936), an enlarged reprint of the work of the Dominican Father Saudreau. Martin Grabmann (1875-1949), Wesen und Grundlagen der Katholischen Mystik (München 1922). L. Paulot, L'esprit de sagesse (Paris 1927). Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (English ed., Dcsclée); De la vie d'oraison (Paris 1933). THEOLOGY OF PERFECTION ... haec et alia asceticae mysticaeque theou,giae capila si quis pernosse volé t, is Angelicum in pritnis Doctorem adeat oportebit. "... if anyone wants to know in depth these and other fundamental points of ascetical and mystical theology, it is necessary to turn, first of all, to the Angelic Doctor". (H.H. Pius XI in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem. of June 20, 1923: AAS 15 [1923] p.320). GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1. Preliminary notions of terminology Arintero, O.P., Cuestiones mysticas (3.* ed.) p. 16-108; Ramirez, O.P., De hominis beaiitudine (Salmanticac 1942) t.i p.3-89; Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Las tres edades de la vida interior (Buenos Aires 1944) p.1-26; Perfection chrétienne et contemplaron (7. a ed.) p. 1-45; Menessier, S.I., Notes de théologie spirituelle: "Vie Spir.* (1935, juillet, sup.56-64); De Guibert, S.I., Theoíogia spiritualis ascetica et mystica (Romae 1939) p.1-38; Valensin, S.I., L'objet propre de la théologie spirituelle: "Nouv. Rev. Théol.* (1927) p.161-91; Regamey, Réflcxions sur la théologie spirituelle: "Vie Spir." (1938) t.58 sup.21-32; 151-66; Tanquerey, Teología ascética y mística (Spanish ed.) p.2-34; Schrijvers, G.SS.R., Principios de la vida espiritual (Spanish ed., 1947) p. 6 1-74; H. Heerinckx, O.F.M., Introductio in Theologiam spiritualem Asceticam et Kíisticam (Romae 1931). 1. In the study of any science, it is necessary, first of all, to establish with exactitude and precision the meaning of the fundamental terms used in that science. Frequently, disputes and controversies between authors arise from the fact that they have not previously agreed on the simple meaning of words 1 . x) The expression spiritual life can be taken in three senses: a) As opposed to material life, and thus we speak of the spiritual activity of man who thinks, reasons and loves in the purely natural order (broad sense). b) To signify the supernatural life, as distinct from the purely natural life. In this sense, every soul in a state of sanctifying grace (strict sense) has spiritual life. c) To express the supernatural life lived in a fuller and more intense way. And so we speak of spirituality, spiritual man, etc., to signify the science that deals with things relative to Christian spirituality, or the man who dedicates himself to live it as an attempt or as a professional (in the strictest sense). We always use it in the latter sense. 2) We understand by Christian perfection the supernatural life of grace when it has reached, by means of its operative principles, an eminent development in relation to the initial degree received in baptism or in the justification of the sinner. We will specify more in its corresponding place. 3 ) We consider as ordinary and normal in the development of grace everything that falls within its intrinsic demands, however high and rare its ultimate manifestations may in fact be; and as extraordinary and abnormal, everything which, although 1 Cf. Balmes, The Criterion XIV,5, 28 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 2. NATURE OF THEOL. OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION Although it is sometimes convenient for the sanctification of the soul or the edification of others, it does not, however, fall within the intrinsic demands of grace. To the first chapter belong all the graces formally sanctifying the soul that receives them; the second is made up, almost exclusively, of the graces freely given (visions, revelations, miracles, prophecies, etc.), which are not directly ordered to the sanctification of the individual, but to the usefulness of others 2 . 4) The supernatural can be supernatural in two ways: a) Substantially (quoad substantiamj , that is, that which is intrinsically and entitatively supernatural, in such a way that it exceeds not only the causality of all created efficient forces, but also the very essence and natural demands of all created or creatable nature (grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the lumen gloriae); and b) As to the mode ( quoad modum), that is, everything that, being intrinsically and entitatively natural, has nevertheless been produced in a supernatural way. Such is the case of the miracle (e.g., in the resurrection of a dead person, his purely natural life is restored in a supernatural, miraculous way). There is a gulf between the two forms; the supernatural quoad substantiam, although less spectacular, is worth infinitely more than the supernatural quoad modum -*. But it is necessary to keep in mind that sometimes a supernatural operation quoad modum can fall upon an act that is already supernatural quoad substantiam. Such is the case of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which imprint their divine modality on the act of the infused virtues, which is already supernatural quoad substantiam. 5) The acquired virtues are intrinsically and entitatively natural (quoad substantiam et quoad modum). The infused virtues are intrinsically and entitatively supernatural ( quoad substantiam) ; but, detached from the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that is, handled and acted upon by man, they produce their act in the human manner connatural to man. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernatural in both senses (quoad substantiam et quoad modum) 4 . We will return to this at length. 6) Prayer is called vocal when it is carried out principally with the word, as a manifestation of the interior spirit;5 and mental, if it is carried out only with the interior acts of the understanding and the will. The latter will be discursive or meditative when it proceeds by way of discourse or reasoning connatural to man, and it will be intuitive or contemplative when it proceeds by simple intuition of the truth, in the manner of angelic knowledge °. This *. Cf. I- II, 1, 1, 1, 1. 3 Cf. I-II, ii i,5 < Cf. !-U,¡h et IÍ8. 3 Cf. II-U,83,I2-I3. - Cf 11-11,189. The latter is produced by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, acting in the soul with his divine or superhuman modality. 7) We understand by ascetic life that stage of the supernatural life in which the development of grace is achieved through the exercise of the infused virtues in the human or discursive way; and by mystical life, that stage in which this development is achieved predominantly through the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which imprint the divine or superhuman way on the infused virtues 7 . Other terminology issues will be discussed in the appropriate places. 2. Nature of the Theology of Christian Perfection a) the name There is no uniformity of criteria among authors to designate with a common name the science of Christian perfection. Some speak of interior life 8 ; others, of spiritual life 9 , or supernatural life 10 ; others, of Spiritual Theology n , or Ascetical and Mystical Spiritual Theology 12 ; others, of Asceticism and Mysticism 13 or Ascetical and Mystical Theology 14 ; others, finally, of Perfection and Contemplation I 5 . All these denominations have their advantages and disadvantages. In any case, and in the absence of a title definitively consecrated by usage, we prefer to adopt that of Theology of Christian Perfection. It seems to us that it has the advantage of explicitly gathering together three fundamental things that do not appear with such clarity in other denominations: 1. a We are in the presence of a true theological science, that is, of a part of the One Theology. 2. a. That its proper object and purpose is to expound the doctrine of Christian perfection in all its breadth and extent. For, although our science also deals with the means of attaining perfection, it is a known and elementary thing that the means are specified by the end. 3. a Nothing is prejudged beforehand about the much discussed relations between Asceticism and Mysticism, the necessity of infused contemplation for Christian perfection, the unity or duality of ways, etc., etc. It seems to us that these advantages fully justify the name adopted and make it preferable to all others. 7 Cf. Arintero, Cuestiones místicas 6. a.a.i p.635 (3rd ed.). * Thus Meynard, Mercier and Tissot. 9 Le Gaudier, Schriivers. I or Ch. de Smedt. I I Heerinckx. 1 2 De Guibert. 1 * Chrysogon of Jesus. ,4 Naval, Tanqurrev. D Garrigou-Lagrange, IXIKODUCCION GKNI.iíAL 2. NATURÁLUÜA 1)E tA TKÓL. tHe Christian l'iiíUTCClÓX 3U b) relations with other branches of theology 3. Let us now specify its relationship with the other branches of Theology, that is, with dogmatic, moral and pastoral theology. Dogmatic Theology. - Since Theology is essentially one, as St. Thomas 16 teaches, because of the identity of its object and form] in all its parts, it is inevitable that all of them be intimately related to one another. Therefore, there is nothing strange in the fact that the Theology of perfection is subsidiary, in a good part, to Dogmatic Theology. It takes from the latter the great principles of the intimate life of God, which is to be participated in by man through grace and the beatific vision; the doctrine of the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in the justified soul; of the reparation by Christ the Redeemer of fallen human nature for the sin of origin; of the capital grace of Christ; of the sanctifying efficacy of the sacraments, and other similar ones, which are like the cornerstones of Catholic dogma. Cardinal Manning was right when he said that dogma is the source of true Christian spirituality. Moral Theology. - But even more intimate are its relations with moral theology. As a great theologian of our day 17 has pointed out, it is evident that moral theology and ascetical and mystical theology - our theology of Christian perfection - have the same formal object quod. For the moral act by essence, which is the act of charity toward God, is also the primary object of ascetical and mystical theology. There is only a modal and accidental difference, insofar as moral theology considers this act of charity in all its development, that is, as incipient, proficient and perfect; while casuistic morality focuses mainly on incipient charity, which deals with what is licit and illicit, that is, with what is compatible or not compatible with this initial charity; and asceticism insists above all on proficient charity, accompanied by the exercise of the other infused virtues; and mysticism deals principally with perfect charity under the predominant influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. However, there are no irreducible or watertight departments among all these parts: it is a question of the predominance of certain activities common to all of them. St. Thomas already warned that, although the active are distinguished from the contemplative, the latter are also active in part, and the active are sometimes contemplative IS . Cf. 1 , 1 . 3 . 17 Cf. Ramirez, De hominis beatitudine t.i n.85. 18 Here are his own words: "Activi a contemplativis distinguuntur, quamvis et contemplativi aliquid aqunt et activi aliquid corjtemplentur aliquandot (S. ThoM-, In IV Sen cntiitmm d. ¿1,1,2 q.¿), "They err, then, who between moral theology and ascetics and mysticism as sciences want to establish an essential difference on the part of their primary object, as would err who would specifically distinguish the psychology of childhood, adolescence and manhood of the same man. "1 A 3. Pastoral Theology. - This is that part of Theology which teaches the ministers of the Church, on the basis of revealed principles, how they are to conduct themselves in the care of the souls entrusted to them by God. It is an eminently practical science, and is intimately related to our Theology of Perfection in that one of the principal duties of the pastor of souls is to lead them - at least the most fervent ones - to the summit of perfection. They differ, however, in that this mission of perfecting souls constitutes one of the partial objects of pastoral theology, while the theology of perfection has it as its own exclusive object. Having pointed out the points of contact and the main differences of our Theology of Perfection with the other branches of Theology, let us now specify the field to which its study extends; that is, where it should begin and end. c) EXTENSION OR FIELD OF THE THE THEOLOGY OF PERFECTION 4. At first glance, and interpreting the very name Theology of Perfection in an overly restrictive sense, it would seem that it should be limited to the study of questions that revolve around perfection itself or those that immediately prepare for it. But it would be a great mistake to think so. Intimately related as it is to dogmatics and morals, it must necessarily embrace - if we are to have an accurate and exact vision of things - a much broader field than its own formal and specific object seems at first sight to require. In order to justify the breadth of the panorama to be covered by our Theology of Perfection, allow us to quote here a page from a great theologian of our times. Let us listen to Father Garrigou-Lagrange: "Theology means the science of God; and we must distinguish natural theology or theodicy, which knows God by the light of reason alone, and supernatural theology, which proceeds from divine revelation, examines its content and deduces the consequences of the truths of faith. This supernatural theology is called dogmatic insofar as it deals with the revealed mysteries, principally the Most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Eucharist and the other sacraments, and the future life. It is called moral insofar as it deals with human acts, with the revealed precepts and counsels, with grace, with the Christian virtues, theological and moral, and with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are principles of action ordered to the supernatural end that revelation makes known to us. 1 9 Ramirez, M 52 INTRODUCTION r.SN'KRU Moral theology, too often separated from dogmatics - to which it has abandoned the great treatises on grace, the infused virtues and the gifts - has often been mutilated and unfortunately reduced to casuistry, which is the least elevated of its applications; thus it has become in many works more of a science of sins to avoid than of virtues to practice and develop under the constant action of God in us. It has thus lost much of its elevation and remains manifestly insufficient for the guidance of souls aspiring to intimate union with God. On the contrary, as it is expounded in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, moral theology retains all its greatness and all its efficacy for the guidance of souls called to the highest perfection. St. Thomas, in fact, does not consider dogmatics and morals as two distinct sciences; sacred doctrine, for him, is absolutely one, eminently speculative and practical, like the very science of God, from which it derives 2U . Therefore, in the moral part of his Summa, he treats at length not only of human acts, precepts and counsels, but also of habitual and actual grace, of the infused virtues in general and in particular, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of its fruits and beatitudes, of the active and contemplative life, of the degrees of contemplation, of the graces freely given, such as the gift of miracles, the gift of tongues and of prophecy, of ecstasy, as well as of the religious life and its various forms. Moral Theology thus conceived clearly contains the principles necessary to lead souls to the highest holiness. And ascetical and mystical theology is nothing other than the application of this great moral theology to the direction of souls toward an ever more intimate union with God. It presupposes all that sacred doctrine teaches about the nature and properties of the Christian virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and studies the laws and conditions of their progress towards perfection. To teach the practice of the highest virtues, perfect docility to the Holy Spirit and to lead to a life of union with God, she brings together all the lights of dogmatic and moral theology, of which she is the highest application and its crowning glory. In this way the cycle formed by the different parts of Theology is completed and completed, in which its perfect unity appears more and more. Sacred science proceeds from revelation, contained in Sacred Scripture and in tradition, preserved and explained by the Magisterium of the Church; it arranges all revealed truths and their consequences in a single doctrinal body, in which the precepts and counsels appear founded on the supernatural mystery of the divine life, of which grace is a participation. Finally, it shows how, through the practice of the virtues and docility to the Holy Spirit, the soul comes not only to believe the revealed mysteries, but to taste them, to grasp the profound meaning of the word of God, the source of all supernatural knowledge; to live in a union, so to speak, continuous with the Most Holy Trinity dwelling within us. Doctrinal mysticism thus appears truly as the ultimate crowning of all acquired theological science and can lead souls along the paths of experimental mysticism. The latter is a loving and savory knowledge, totally supernatural, infused, which only the Holy Spirit, with his unction, can give us, and which is like the prelude to the beatific vision. Such is, manifestly, the notion of ascetic and mystical theology that the great masters of sacred science, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas, made for themselves" 21 . 2 " 1 , 1 , 2 - 8 . 21 Gasrjgou-Lagkange, Perfection.... p.i-4. i. NAlURALIZA Di LA ltuL. Di LA WtRFliCCtUN CRISTIAN WtRFliCCtUN 55 If this is so, it is beyond any doubt that the field of the Theology of perfection coincides, in a certain way, with the field of the whole of theology. It can exclude nothing, although it can and must insist on what corresponds to it in a very special way. In its descriptive and experimental aspect, it must take a soul as it may initially find itself - even if it is in mortal sin - and teach it the path that leads step by step to the summits of Christian perfection. This is how the great Saint Teresa of Jesus conceived the spiritual life, who begins by speaking in the first dwellings of her brilliant Interior Castle of the "crippled souls... who are in great misfortune and great danger" (c. 1,8) and goes on at length to explain "what an ugly thing is a soul that is in mortal sin" (c. 2), to end, in the seventh dwellings, with the ineffable wonders of union with God - transformative 2 - . We do not mean by this that our Theology of Perfection should begin by treating of the conversion of the sinner who is alien to all religious practice or who lives in unbelief or paganism. De Guibert 23 , that the study of the conversion of such a sinner belongs to Religious Psychology, if it is a matter of describing its modes, motives and effects; to Pastoral Theology, if it is a matter of the means by which it could be achieved; and to Missiology, if it is a matter of the conversion of an infidel or pagan. But, taking into account the possibility of sin, even grave and mortal sin, in a pious soul that sincerely aspires to Christian perfection, we believe that a complete treatise on the spiritual life should cover the entire panorama of this life, from its very beginnings (justification of the sinner) to its ultimate crowning in the great heights of union with God. We will do so, in the third part of our work, as we go through the various stages of the spiritual life. d) DEFINITION OF THE THE THEOLOGY OF PERFECTION 5. After the preceding notions, we can now attempt a definition of our theology of perfection. First of all, let us look at the various definitions proposed by the principal contemporary authors. Garrigou-Lagrange gives the following descriptive definition: "Ascetical and Mystical Theology is nothing other than the application of Moral Theology to the direction of souls towards an ever more intimate union with God. It presupposes all that sacred doctrine teaches about the nature and properties of the Christian virtues and of the gifts of God. 22 Among the authors who are of the same opinion are Saudreau, The Degrees of the Spiritual Life (Barcelona 1929) n.1-15; Marchetti, Le senil de l'ascetique: "Rev. Ascét. et Myst." ( x 920) p. 36-46; and Hferinckx, Introductio in theolngiam spiritualem n.6. - ' Thenl. spirit. n.6. Uncle, from Perfec. 34 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Holy Spirit and studies the laws and conditions of its progress in view of perfection "24 . In another part of his works he says: "This part of the Theology is, above all, a development of the treatise on the love of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, whose purpose is to explain the applications derived from them and to lead souls to the divine union" 2S . Fr. De Guibert: "Spiritual theology may be defined as the science which deduces from revealed principles in what the perfection of the spiritual life consists and in what way the wayfarer man can tend to it and attain it" 26. Tanquerey limits himself to saying that the science he is going to deal with has as its "proper end to lead souls to Christian perfection. But later, when he points out the difference between Asceticism and Mysticism, he clarifies his thought a little more, defining Asceticism as "that part of spiritual science which has as its proper object the theory and practice of Christian perfection from its beginnings to the threshold of infused contemplation". And Mysticism is that other part of the same science which "has for its proper object the theory and practice of the contemplative life from the first night of the senses and stillness until the spiritual marriage" 2? Schrijvers affirms that "the science of the spiritual life aims at directing all the activity of the Christian towards his supernatural perfection" 29 . Father Naval defines Mysticism in general as "the science that has as its object Christian perfection and the direction of souls towards it" 30 . As can be seen, all these definitions coincide in substance, differing only in a matter of nuances or details. Gathering the best of all of them and adding the part that corresponds to the experimental element provided by the mystics - whose great importance in our science is manifest - it seems to us that the following definition could be proposed: It is that part of Sacred Theology which, basing itself on the principles of divine revelation and the experiences of the saints, studies the organism of the supernatural life, explains the laws of its progress and development, and describes the process that souls follow from the beginnings of the Christian life to the summit of perfection. 24 Perfection... c.i a.i P-321 The three ages... t.l p.y. 16 Theologia spiritualis n.Q. 27 Ascetical and Mystical Theology n .3 c). 23 Ibid., n.io and XI. 29 The principles . ... c.prel. a.i. 30 Course of Ascetical and Mystical Theology n.l (83 in the 8th ed.). 2. NATURE OF THEOL. OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 35 Let us explain the terms of the definition. "That part of Sacred Theology..." - With this is gathered what we have explained above, namely, that the Theology of perfection is not distinguished from Theology one except as the part of the whole. There is no specific and essential distinction between them, but only modal and accidental. This doctrine, as we shall see, is of great theoretical and practical importance. "... That being founded on the principles of divine revelation..." - Theology would not be Theology if it were not so. It is well known that Theology does not consist in anything other than deducing, with reason enlightened by faith, the virtualities of the revealed data. A great modern theologian could define it with only two words: explicatio fidei 3 1 , that is, the development or unfolding of the data of faith. "... And in the experiences of the saints..." - Spiritual Theology has two very distinct aspects, although perfectly harmonious and coincident, although with profound subordination of one to the other. The fundamental element is the revealed data and the virtualities contained in it. This is what gives it solidity and the category of true theological science. But it is not licit to dispense with the element or experimental data provided by the mystics, if we do not want to construct an aprioristic system with our backs turned to reality. This element must be entirely subordinated to the first, to the point that the theologian will reject, out of hand, any data coming from the experimental field if it does not agree and harmonize perfectly with the certain data provided by Theology; but it is unquestionable that it is of great importance and becomes absolutely indispensable to embrace in all its extension the theoretical-practical panorama of the supernatural life, whose laws and vicissitudes the theologian could explain sufficiently without the precious data provided by those who have succeeded in living it. For this reason, any definition of this part of Theology that does not include and incorporate this experimental element, which constitutes a large part of the circa quam subject matter of the theologian's research, seems to us incomplete and incomplete. "... Study the organism of the supernatural life..." - That is the first thing the theologian must do before moving on to the study of the development or growth of the Christian life. In this first, fundamental part, the theologian must adhere, almost exclusively, to the revealed data. Only on the basis of these will he be able to establish the unshakable foundations of the Christian life, which do not depend on the sway of various experiences or the prejudices of certain schools. "... It explains the laws of its progress and development..." - Having already pointed out the characteristics of the supernatural organism, we must now specify in what way it grows and develops progressively until it reaches perfection. The theological element, based on revealed data, still retains here its preponderant and almost exclusive importance over the experimental data. 31 Cf. Fr. Marín Sola, O.P., La evolución homogénea del dogma católico, p.812 (ed. BAG. 0.84). . . 32 We underline this word in order to prevent the overly hasty assessments to which speculative theologians are often led. GENERAL INTRODUCTION "... And it describes the process that souls follow..." - Theology is both a speculative and a practical science, although as a whole it is more speculative than practical 3 3 . Nevertheless, this part of Theology, which deals with questions relative to the spiritual life and Christian perfection, has a multitude of aspects that have a direct and immediate bearing on practice. It is not enough to know the great principles of the supernatural life and the theoretical laws of its progress and development; it is also necessary to examine in what way this evolution and development are verified in practice and what are the paths that souls actually follow in their march towards perfection. And although it is true that God's action on souls is extremely varied - and in this sense it can be said that each soul has its own path - it is nevertheless possible to discover, in the midst of this very rich variation of nuances, certain common traits that allow us to point out, at least in their fundamental lines, the stages that the normal development of the Christian life usually follows. For this descriptive and experimental part, the data of the experimental mystics are absolutely indispensable. The theologian must lovingly collect them, contrast them with theological principles and formulate the theoretical-practical laws that the spiritual director will then apply to each particular soul under the dictates of prudence. "... From the beginnings of the Christian life to the summit of perfection". - We have already seen how our science must embrace, as a whole, the whole panorama of the spiritual life without excluding any of its stages. However, the fundamental target and purpose to which this part of Theology points are the great heights of perfection that souls must reach. So important is this aspect, that as res denominantur a potiori (things are called by what is most excellent in them) it has lent to our science its very title and denomination 3. Importance and necessity of the Theology of Perfection 6 . The extraordinary importance of the Theology of Perfection is deduced from its very nature and excellence. Nothing can be so noble and elevated for man as the study of the science that teaches him the way and the means to reach intimate union with God, his first principle and last end. In reality, "only one thing is necessary" (Le. 10:42), which is the salvation of the soul; but only in heaven will we be able to appreciate the great difference that exists between salvation achieved in its lowest degree (imperfect Christians) or in the full and perfect degree, which corresponds to the saints. The latter will enjoy a much higher degree of glory and, above all, will glorify God immensely more for all eternity. Now the attainment of one's own happiness, fully subordinated to the eternal glorification of God, constitutes the very reason for the creation, redemption and sanctification of the human race. There is, therefore, and can be, no nobler and more important object of study than that which constitutes the very essence of our Theology of Perfection. Its necessity is manifest, especially for the priest, the guide of souls. Without a profound knowledge of speculative laws }3 1,1,4. 4. MODE OF STUDY of the Christian life and of the practical norms of spiritual direction, he will walk blindly in the sublime mission of leading souls to the summit of perfection. He would thereby incur a very grave responsibility before God by frustrating, perhaps, more than one canonizable sanctity. For this reason, the Holy Church has ordered the establishment of chairs of ascetical and mystical theology in all the great centers of formation of the secular and regular clergy 34 . But even the faithful themselves will find the study of our science very useful. Let us remember the importance that has always been given in the Church to the excellent practice of spiritual reading. Few things, in fact, stimulate and enliven the desire for perfection as much as contact with books that know how to open horizons and teach with method, clarity and precision the way to intimate union with God. The knowledge of these paths facilitates and completes the spiritual direction and could even replace it - at least in great part - in those cases, not too beacons, in which the souls are forced to lack a director or do not find him as good as they would wish. Bearing in mind the need of these souls, we will often, in the course of our work, go into details and practical advice, which would not be necessary in a book intended exclusively for directors. 4. How to study it 7. In approaching the study of this science, the student must first of all possess a great spirit of faith and piety. So intimate and so close is the relationship between theory and practice in the study of these questions, that he who does not possess a lively faith and intense piety will not even succeed in judging correctly from the same speculative principles. Speaking of Theology in general, St. Thomas writes the following words, which should be applied a fortiori to our Theology of perfection: "In the other sciences it is sufficient that man be perfect only intellectually; in this, on the other hand, it is necessary that he should be perfect also affectively; for we must speak of great mysteries and explain wisdom to the perfect. Now, each one is accustomed to judge of things according to his dispositions; and thus he who is overcome by anger judges very differently during his outburst than when he has completely calmed down. That is why the Philosopher says that each one seeks his own end in the things to which he is particularly inclined') 33. It is also necessary to keep in mind, during the study, the intimate relationship of this part of Theology with Dogmatic, Moral and Pastoral Theology. There are fundamental points of doctrine which we limit ourselves here to recall, but whose perfect knowledge requires a profound study of those other parts of Theology where they are to be found in the Theology of the Church. 3. GENERAL INTRODUCTION Theology has its proper and appropriate place. In no other science as in Theology does the famous phrase attributed to Hippocrates apply: "The doctor who knows nothing but Medicine, does not even know Medicine". It is necessary to know in depth the entire Theology and the auxiliary sciences for the direction of souls, among which the rational and empirical Psychology and the somatic and psychic Pathology of the nervous system and mental illnesses occupy a preeminent place. 5. Method 8. Since our Theology of perfection is a part of the one Theology, intimately related to Dogmatic and Moral Theology - from which it takes its fundamental principles - and having, on the other hand, much of a practical and experimental science, inasmuch as it traces for us the concrete norms for leading souls to the summit of perfection, the method to be employed in its study must be both strictly theological - positive and deductive - and inductive or experimental, based on experience and the observation of facts. The disadvantages of the exclusive use of either method are very great. The descriptive or inductive method, relying exclusively on the data of experimental mystics, has the following main drawbacks : 1) He forgets that the Theology of perfection is a branch of Theology one, to turn it into a part of Experimental Psychology. In doing so, he incredibly lowers it, making it lose almost all its elevation and greatness. 2) It cannot constitute true science by itself. It certainly provides materials to constitute it, by offering us a set of phenomena taken from experience that must be explained; but as long as we do not point out their causes and the laws to which they obey, we do not have science properly speaking. And in order to point out these causes and laws, it is absolutely indispensable to have recourse to the great principles from which the deductive method starts. Without this, the director of souls would have to move within the field of a narrow and perplexing casuistry, inevitably subject to great perplexities and mistakes. 3) For the same reason, one easily runs the risk of giving too much importance to what, however spectacular it may seem, is secondary and accidental in the Christian life (concomitant phenomena, graces freely given), to the detriment of what is basic and fundamental (grace, virtues and gifts). In fact, one of the most determined supporters of this method, while admitting the truth of the theological doctrine of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, almost completely dispenses with it as being - he says - "little less than sterile for directors" - 16 , since it does not clarify the facts nor the practical questions of direction. But the majority of theologians think, on the contrary, that this doctrine is the only one that allows us to resolve the capital question of our science, which is none other than that of determining with all precision what belongs to the order of sanctifying grace and enters into the order of the Holy Spirit. P. fyüLAlN, Des gráccs d'oraison c.6 n.19 bis (11. a ed. p.lQ-j), 5. METHOD in its normal development in its eminent forms, but within the reach of all, of what belongs to the graces freely given, which are properly extraordinary and abnormal, as something that exceeds the ordinary demands of grace 37 . The analytical or deductive method presents, in turn, the following disadvantages when used exclusively: 1) He forgets that the great principles of the Theology of perfection must be focused on the direction of souls and, therefore, must be contrasted with experimental facts. It would be a mistake to be content with the principles of St. Thomas, without taking into account at all the admirable descriptions of the great experimental mystics St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Jesus, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales, etc., who contribute so much to clarify and confirm those great theological principles. 2) There is a risk of establishing as incontrovertible truths apriorlstic affirmations that neither agree with experience nor are confirmed by facts, thus establishing a regrettable divorce between theory and practice, with disastrous consequences in the direction of souls. Therefore, the double method is necessary: deductive and inductive, analytical-synthetic, rational and experimental. First of all, we must study revealed doctrine as we find it in Scripture and Tradition and in the Magisterium of the Church. We must then determine, on the basis of the deductive method, the nature of the Christian life, its supernatural organism, the modes of its growth, the laws that govern it, in what true Christian perfection consists, what enters into the normal development of sanctifying grace as an intrinsic requirement of it and what is to be considered extraordinary and abnormal because it falls outside these requirements, and many other similar things. At the same time it is necessary to observe the facts, to collect the data of the experimental mystics, to examine their trials, struggles, difficulties, methods employed for their perfection and sanctification, results obtained, and so on. And with all this in view, one will have the guarantee of proceeding correctly in pointing out and discerning the essential from the accidental, the ordinary from the extraordinary, that which is absolutely indispensable for the sanctification of any soul from that which is variable and adaptable to different temperaments, circumstances, states of life, etc. Only in this way will it be possible to give precise and exact norms of direction, which will not obey a few aprioristic principles nor the always provisional and variable results of a rickety and sickly casuistry, but will be motivated and supported by the great theological principles, contrasted with the experience and direct treatment of souls. This, it seems to us, is the only legitimate method to be used in the study of this branch of Theology, and we will try to approach this ideal in the development of our work. 37 Cf. P. Garrigou-Lagrangé, Perfection.... p,. This is the ultimate and absolute goal of the whole Christian life. In practice, the soul that aspires to sanctification must set its eyes, as the target and end to which it directs its forces and desires, on the very glory of God. Nothing at all must prevail before it, not even the desire for one's own salvation or sanctification, which must come second, as the most opportune means to achieve it fully. It must try to look for my 5 "To act on the impulse of some indigence is exclusive to imperfect agents, able to act and to receive. But this is excluded from God, who is liberality itself, since he does nothing for its own sake, but everything for the sake of his goodness alone" (1:44:4 ad i; cf. rni $d 3). 6 Cf. on this magnificent subject: Tissot, The Interior Life Simplified p.hf ?.r, and Ph impon, O.P., The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity c.4. I>, I. EL fIN 4S cersc to St. Alphonsus Liguori, of whom it is said that "he had nothing on his mind but the glory of God "7 and to take as his motto that which St. Ignatius bequeathed to his Society: "To the greater glory of God. Ultimately, this attitude is the one adopted by all the saints after St. Paul, who left us the most important motto of the Christian life when he wrote to the Corinthians: Omnia in gloriam Dei f acite: do all things to the glory of God 8, The sanctification of our own soul is not, therefore, the ultimate end of the Christian life. Above it is the glory of the Most Blessed Trinity, the absolute end of all that exists. And this truth, though so elementary for those who understand the divine transcendence, does not appear, however, dominating in the life of the saints until very late, when their soul has already been consummated by love in the unity of God. Only at the summits of transforming union, fully identified with God, their thoughts and desires are also identified with the thoughts and desires of God. Only Christ and Mary, from the first moment of their existence, have carried out with perfection this program of divine glorification, which is the end where all the process of sanctification here on earth comes to an end. In practice, nothing should concern a soul that aspires to sanctification so much as the constant forgetfulness of itself and the full rectification of its intention for the greater glory of God. In the heaven of my soul," said Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, "the glory of the Eternal, nothing but the glory of the Eternal "10 : this is the supreme watchword of the whole Christian life. On the highest peak of the mountain of love, St. John of the Cross carved it in golden letters: "On this mountain alone dwells the honor and glory of God". 2. Sanctification of the soul, the proximate and relative end of the Christian life. 1 2. After the glorification of God, and perfectly subordinate to it, the Christian life has as its goal the sanctification of our own soul. Baptism, the gateway to the Christian life, sows in our souls a "seed of God": it is sanctifying grace. This divine germ is called to develop fully, and this fullness of development is, fully, holiness. We are all called to it - at least with a remote and sufficient call, as we will explain in its place - although in very different degrees, according to the measure of our predestination in Christ n . What does it mean to be a saint? What is its intimate and essential constituent? There are various formulas in use to answer these questions, but they all coincide in substance. The main ones are three - holiness consists in our full configuration to Christ in union with God through love and in perfect conformity to the divine will. r Schrijvers. The principles of the spiritual life i.i p.3,* c.4 : * i Cor. 10,31. 9 Cf. Philipon, O.C., c.4. I o Laudem gloriae Retreat day 7. II Cf. Eph. 4 , 7 . 13 ,' Rom. 12. 3 i 1 Cor. 12, ir. C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST 49 We will speak at length about the last two formulas in their corresponding places 12 . Here we will insist on the first, which is the most profound and theological because it has its foundations in the very sources of divine revelation. The whole message of St. Paul can be reduced to this: the need for us to be fully configured to Christ in order to attain our own perfection. CHAPTER II Configuration to Jesus Christ We are going to study this subject with the maximum amplitude that the nature of our work allows us. Configuration to Christ is the very purpose of our Christian life in order to our sanctification and even in view of the glorification of God, the ultimate and absolute purpose of creation. It is, therefore, of capital importance to have clear ideas about this very important matter. 13. The exceptional role of the person of Christ in our sanctification is often underemphasized in preaching and in books of piety. At times, "devotion to Our Lord" is singled out as one of many means of sanctification, alongside spiritual reading, the examination of conscience or the plan of life. In this way, the piety of the faithful is unfortunately distorted and they are led to conceive a very mistaken idea of what in reality constitutes the cornerstone of the edifice of our sanctification. We will be saints only to the extent that we live the life of Christ or, perhaps better, to the extent that Christ lives his life in us. The process of sanctification is a process of christification. The Christian has to become another Christ: christianus, alter Christus. Only when we can accurately and truly repeat "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:2o)_ can we be sure that we have reached the summit of Christian perfection. Let us examine, then, the fundamental lines of what St. Paul called the "mystery of Christ, in which are enclosed all^ the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:2-3). 12 Cf. Nature of Christian perfection n. 109-17, and Conformity to the will r ¡^ God n. 495-99 1>. I. THE END C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST Yes CHAPTER I The Mystery of Christ Marmion, Jesus Christ, life of the soul; Jesus Christ in his mysteries; Jesus Christ, ideal of the monk; Mersch, Le corps mystique du Christ; Prat, Théologie de S. Paul; E. Mura, Le corps mystique du Christ; Plus, S.I., Christ in us; Christ in our neighbors; Sauvé, Intimate Jesus; the Heart of Jesus; Jaegher, S.I., The life of identification with Jesus Christ; Adam, Jesus Christiis; Christ, our brother; Schutz, Christ; GouÁ, Jesus Christ the Redeemer; Sauras, The Mystical Body of Christ (BAC, n.85); Royo Makín, Jesus Christ and the Christian life (BAC, n.210). The role of Jesus Christ in the life of his living members was St. Paul's obsessive idea. His whole concern was to reveal to the world the "mystery of Christ" (Col. 4:3), that "hidden sacrament" (Eph. 3:9) in which the fullness of the divinity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9), and in which the Christian will find all things (Ibid. 10) until he is completely filled with the very fullness of God (Eph. 3:19). We are going to gather the fundamental lines of the Christological doctrine related to the spiritual life, taking as our starting point the formula that Christ himself left us in the Gospel of St. John: "I am the way, the truth and the life" (lo. 14:6). Jesus Christ, the Way 14. Jesus Christ is the only Way. No one can come to the Father except through him (loc. 14:6), since no other name under heaven has been given to us by which we can be saved (Act. 4:12). Indeed. According to the divine plan of our predestination, the holiness to which God calls us by grace and supernatural adoption consists in a participation in the divine life brought into the world by Jesus Christ. This is expressly stated in divine revelation: "For in Him He chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him and predestined us in love to adoption as His children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us pleasing in His sight in His beloved Son" (Eph. 1:4-6). It is Jesus Christ who has re-established the divine plan of our salvation, destroyed by Adam's sin. "God's love for us was manifested by sending his only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through him: ut vivamus per eum" (1Lo. 4:9). From now on, Christ will be the only Way to go to the Father: "no one comes to the Father except through me" (lo. 14,6). Without Him we can do absolutely nothing: nihil (lo. 15,5). The Christian's whole concern must consist in living the life of Christ, in incorporating himself into Him, in leaving the world behind him. The life-giving sap of Christ circulates through their veins without the least resistance. For he is the vine and we are the branches; and the life of the branch depends on union with the vine, which sends it the life-giving sap. Separated from it, he withers and is cast into the fire (loc. 15:1-6). St. Paul could not find the right words in human language to express this ineffable reality of the Christian's incorporation into his divine Vine. The life, death and resurrection of the Christian: everything must be intimately united to Christ. And since it was impossible to express these realities with the human words in use, he created these entirely new expressions, unknown until then, which could not satisfy him either: "we have died together with Christ": commortui (2 Tim. 2:11), and with him we have been buried: consepulti (Rom. 6:4), and with him we have been buried: consepulti (Rom. 6:4), and with him we have been buried: consepulti (Rom. 6:4). 6:4), and with Him we have been raised: conresuscitati (Eph. 2:6), and we have been vivified and planted in Him: convivificavit nos i n Christo (Eph. 2:5), et complantati (Rom. 6:5), so that we may live with Him: et convivemus (2 Tim. 2:11), in order to reign together with Him forever: et consedere fecit in caelestibus in Christo Iesu (Eph. 2:6). The distinguished Abbot of Maredsous Dom Columba Marmion rightly says in his admirable book Jesus Christ, Life of the Soul : "Let us understand that we will only be saints when the life of Christ is spread in us. This is the only holiness that God asks of us; there is no other. We will be holy in Jesus Christ, or we will not be holy at all. Creation does not find in itself a single atom of this holiness; it derives entirely from God by a sovereignly free act of his omnipotent will, and is therefore supernatural. St. Paul emphasizes more than once the gratuitousness of the divine gift of adoption, the eternity of the ineffable love, which resolved to make him a partaker of it, and the admirable means of its realization by the grace of Jesus Christ". h Christ is, then, the only Way to go to the Father, the only possible form of holiness in the present plan of divine Providence. Only through him, with him and in him can we attain the goal and ideal intended by God in the creation, redemption and sanctification of the human race: the praise of his own glory (cf. Eph. 1:5-6). The Church reminds us of this every day in one of the most august moments of the sacrifice of the altar: "Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso est tibi Deo Patri Omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti omnis honor et gloria". It is only through Christ, his beloved Son, that the Father accepts our love and our homage. For this reason, the great saints, enlightened by God himself in a very special way to understand the "mystery of Christ," wanted to disappear and allow themselves to be absorbed by him so that Christ could live his own life in them. Elizabeth of the Trinity, one of the souls who came to understand this mystery most deeply, asks Christ himself in a sublime prayer "that you clothe me with yourself, that you identify my soul with all the movements of your soul, that you immerse me, that you invade me, that you substitute yourself in me, so that my life may be but an irradiation of your life". He wants to be fasci 1 Dom Columba Marmion, Jesus Christ, life of the soul I,r,6. i', i. 1 1. Hh í>2 nothing for Him "so that I may no longer be able to escape from your influence". And in a sublime outburst of incredible boldness and audacity, she asks the Holy Spirit to come to her "so that he may become in my soul like an incarnation of the Word". She wants to become for Christ a kind of "superadded humanity, in which he renews his whole mystery". She wants to clothe herself totally with Christ, so that the Father "may see in her only the beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased" 2 . How mistaken, then, are those who consider "devotion to Our Lord" as one of many exercises of piety, like the examination of conscience or spiritual reading! Our devotion and incorporation into Christ is the cornerstone, the alpha and the omega, the very substance of our supernatural life. In fact, this is the true asceticism and the true mysticism, of which the others are but derivations and consequences. Those souls who truly want to sanctify themselves would do well to dispense with the disputes and controversies of the different schools of spirituality, and dedicate themselves to live in an ever fuller and deeper way the very life of Christ; and if they fully achieve this ideal, they will have risen, without a doubt, to the highest summits of Christian asceticism and mysticism. At the summit of holiness are all the saints, without exception, with these two slogans alone: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me" (Gal, 2:20); and: "only the honor and glory of God dwells on this mountain" (St. John of the Cross). Jesus Christ, Truth 15. But Christ is not only the Way: he is also the Truth. The absolute and integral truth. Uncreated Wisdom as Word, he communicated to his most holy Humanity, and through it to us, all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. This leads us to speak of the exemplary causality of Jesus Christ, which he exercises over us in three main ways: a) in his person; b) in his works, and c) in his doctrine. a) In his person: Here is how Dom Columba Marmion expresses this sublime idea: "The divine filiation of Christ is the type of our supernatural filiation; his condition, his "being" as Son of God, is the exemplar of the state in which sanctifying grace must establish us. Christ is the Son of God by nature and by right, by virtue of the union of the eternal Word with human nature. We are so by adoption and by grace, but really and with a very true title. Christ has, moreover, sanctifying grace; he possesses it fully; to us only something of that fullness flows with lesser or greater abundance, but in its substance it is the same grace which fills the created soul of Jesus and which deifies us. St. Thomas says that our divine filiation is a likeness of the eternal filiation: quaedam similitudo filiationis aeternae 3 . 2 Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elevation to the Trinity. See in Philipon, 1st doctrine. Elizabeth of the Trinity c.Q, with an admirable commentary. * 111,23,2 ad 3 C. i. ¡.t WITH W'.IÍR ACTION WITH JfcSIIi KISTO ! >¡í This is the primordial and supereminent way in which Jesus Christ is our exemplar; in the incarnation He is constituted, by right, Son of God. Son of God; we must become so by the participation of the grace that comes from Him, and that, deifying the substance of our soul, constitutes us in the state of sons of God. This is the first and radical feature of the resemblance that we must have with Jesus Christ, which is the basis and condition of all our supernatural activity. So, according to this, "the whole Christian life, like all holiness, is reduced to being by grace what Jesus is by nature: Son of God. This must be the fundamental concern of the Christian: to contemplate Jesus and to assimilate, first and foremost, the attitude of a son before his heavenly Father, who is also our Father. Christ himself told us: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (lo. 20:17). These realities," says Dom Columba Marmion, "are precisely what constitute the essence of Christianity. We will understand nothing of what perfection and holiness are, and not even what simple Christianity consists in, as long as we are not convinced that the essence of Christianity consists in being "children of God" and that this quality or state is lent to us by sanctifying grace, by which we participate in the eternal filiation of the incarnate Word. All the teachings of Jesus Christ and of the apostles are synthesized in this truth, all the mysteries of Jesus tend to realize it practically in our souls" 6 . Undoubtedly, this is the most important exemplary causality that Christ exercises over us, but it is not the only one. Christ is also our incomparable model in his works, that is, in his admirable virtues. b) In his works. - Christ practiced what he taught and taught what he practiced: "what Jesus did and taught," says the author of the Acts of the Apostles. His life and his doctrine formed a harmonious and unitary whole, from which an immense glorification of God rose unceasingly toward heaven. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the principal motive of the Incarnation of the Word was the redemption of the human race.8 . But, apart from this fundamental purpose, the incarnation also had other very lofty purposes, among which, without any doubt, is that of giving us in Christ an exemplar and the most complete model of all the virtues. And this was not without an adorable design of divine Providence. Indeed. Absolutely speaking, the prototype and supreme exemplar of all perfection and holiness is the Eternal Word. He is, if it is licit to speak thus, the very Ideal of God. The Father contemplates Himself in the Word with infinite complacency and love. He is his living Ideal, 4 Columba Marmion, Jesus Christ, life of the soul 11,2. 5 Id., Jesus Christ in his mysteries 111,6. 6 Jesus Christ in his mysteries TU, 6 ^ Act. i,i. s Oí. IÍLm P. I. KL Fttf C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST splendid, infinite, personal, in whom he is infinitely pleased from all eternity. By him angels, men, and the whole universe were created: all things were made by him, and without him nothing was made that has been made (lo. 1:3). God's ideal, it is also the ideal of angels and men; and it would be so by right of all creatures that God would like to bring out of nothing through the centuries in all the present or possible universes. "Is it possible for us to have the same ideal of life as God? - Yes, and it is not granted to us to choose a less elevated work. See, my soul, what is your dignity; see if nobleness obliges you.... But this sublime ideal by no means exceeded the reach of human reason and even for faith itself was placed at too great a height. That is why he lowered himself. He became a man, a child, a slave; he wanted to know the weaknesses of our first years, our labors, our fatigues; the poverty, the darkness, the silence, the hunger, the thirst, the pain and the death. Of all our miseries, there is only one that he has not been able to experience: sin and certain moral disorders that derive from sin. Unable to take this weakness into himself, he took its likeness and bore its penalty. I do not have to go up to heaven to seek God's thoughts about me; I do not have to do anything else, O my Jesus, but contemplate you. You are the complete ideal in which I find mine" 9 10 . c) In his doctrine. - Finally, Jesus Christ exercises upon us his role of eternal Truth by communicating to us, through his divine doctrine, the splendor of his infinite wisdom. The intelligence of Jesus Christ is an abyss where poor human reason, even when illuminated by faith, is lost and annihilated. In Christ there were four kinds of knowledge, completely distinct, but perfectly combined and harmonized with each other: the divine knowledge, which he fully possessed as the Word of God; the beatific, which corresponded to him as blessed even here on earth; the infused, which he received from God and in a degree incomparably superior to that of the angels; and the acquired, which was growing, or manifesting itself more and more perfectly, throughout his life 1 °. St. Paul was rightly astonished to see all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge gathered together in Christ (Col. 2:3). And he did not want to reserve these infinite treasures exclusively for himself. He asked the Father that they be communicated to the adopted sons in the measure and to the degree necessary for their life as such. Christ himself said to the Father at the Last Supper: "I have communicated to them the words that you gave me, and now they have received them, and they truly know that I came from you, and they believe that you sent me" (loc. 17:8). And what a doctrine that of Christ! "No man ever spoke like this" (lo. 7,46). The most celebrated conceptions of the so called "geniuses of the 9 Sawé, Jesús intimo elev.5.* n.5 c. 203-4 (Barcelona 1926). 10 Cf. ITT, 9-12. humanity" pale and vanish before a single verse of the Sermon on the Mount. His sublime moral, initiated in the divine paradoxes of the beatitudes and finished in the marvelous sermon of the Seven Words that he pronounced agonizing on the cross, will always be for humanity, thirsty for God, the divine code of the most exalted perfection and sanctity. The soul that wants to find the true way to go to God has only to open the Gospel of Jesus Christ in any of its parts and drink the Truth in torrents. The saints end up by losing their taste for books written by men: "I," said St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, "hardly find anything in books except the Gospel. That book is enough for me. Jesus Christ, Life 1 6. Christ is our Way and our Truth; but above all V above all he is our Life. We have arrived at the most profound and at the same time most beautiful and moving aspect of the "mystery of Christ" in relation to us. Christ can be said to be our Life in three main ways: insofar as He merited grace for us, the supernatural life of the soul (meritorious cause); insofar as this life flows from Him (efficient cause); and insofar as He communicates it to us (capital influence). Let us examine these three aspects. 17. a) Jesus Christ, meritorious cause of grace 12 . - The merit of Christ in our regard is intimately linked to his redemptive sacrifice. Let us recall, even briefly, the fundamental milestones of his infinite satisfaction, which merited and restored to us the supernatural life lost by Adam's sin. 1) Impossibility for the human race to condignly satisfy Adam's sin. God could, if he had so willed, have graciously condoned the debt. But if he demanded a rigorous satisfaction, ad aequalitatem, the impotence of the whole human race was total and absolute, given the infinite distance that separates man from God. Only a God made man could bridge this infinite abyss and offer divine justice full and complete satisfaction. On this assumption, the incarnation of the Word was absolutely necessary for the redemption of the human race 14 . 2) "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (lo. 1,14). And since in Christ the two natures, divine and human, were united under one divine personality - that of the Word - all his actions had an absolutely infinite value. With the slightest smile of his lips, with a simple aspiration from his divine Heart, Jesus could have redeemed millions of worlds. However, in fact, redemption was only accomplished by the sacrifice of the cross. Thus I plead with the Eternal Father by the inscrutable design of his divine Providence. Theologians will endeavor to point out its conve 11 Gf. Novísima verba May 15, p.378 (Obras completas, Burgos 1950). 12 Cf. 111,48 and 49. 13 Gf. Makmion, Jesus Christ, trida of the soul c.3. 14 Cf. 1 II,i, 2 ad 2; í-11,87,4. * P. I. THE END c; 2- I.- I.CONFIGURATION WITH JKSUCRIST niences l5 , but its ultimate background remains absolutely mysterious and hidden from our eyes. 3) Christ deserves not only for himself, but for us, with rigorous merit of justice: de condigno ex t oto rigore iustitiae, say theologians. This merit has its foundation in the capital grace of Christ, by virtue of which he has been constituted Head of the whole human race; in the sovereign freedom of all his actions and in the ineffable love with which he accepted his passion to save us. 4) The efficacy of his satisfactions and merits is rigorously infinite and, therefore, inexhaustible. This should produce in us an unlimited confidence in his love and mercy. In spite of our weaknesses and miseries, the merits of Christ have superabundant efficacy to bring us to the summit of perfection. His merits are ours: they are at our disposal. He continues in heaven interceding unceasingly for us: "semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis" (Hebr. 7:25). Our weakness and poverty constitute a title to divine mercies. By asserting our rights to the satisfactory merits of his Son, we immensely glorify the Father and fill him with joy, because by this we proclaim that Jesus is the only mediator whom it pleased him to place on earth. 5) Let no one, therefore, be discouraged at the consideration of his miseries and destitution. The inexhaustible riches of Christ are at our disposal (Eph. 3:8). Jesus himself said to a soul who was complaining about his poverty, "Do not call yourself poor when you have me". 18. b) Jesus Christ, efficient cause of our supernatural life. - All the supernatural graces that man received after the sin of Adam until the coming of Christ into the world were granted to him solely because of Him: intuitu meritorum Christi. And all those that humanity will receive until the consummation of the centuries flow from the Heart of Christ as from his only source and fountain. We no longer have gratia Dei, as the angels have it and as our first parents had it in the state of original justice; ours, that of all fallen and repaired humanity, is gratia Christi, that is, grace of God through Christ, grace of God christi fied. This grace of Christ is communicated to us in many ways - we will see this immediately - but the source from which it flows is absolutely unique: Christ himself, his most holy humanity united personally to the Word. This is what is meant by the expression: "Christ, the efficient cause of grace or supernatural life". Jesus is the source of life. His holy humanity is the instrument united to his Divinity for the efficient production of supernatural life. Even more: that same humanity united to the Word can also be, if he wishes, the source of bodily life. The Gospel tells us that from him came a virtue that cured the sick and raised the dead: "virtus de illo exibat et sanabat omnes" (Le. 6:19). The leper, the man born blind, the paralytic, 15 Cf. 111,46,3. and 6 As is known, philosophy uses, in relation to instruments and from the point of view that interests us here, the expression united instrument to designate that which is by its very nature united to the principal cause that employs it (e.g., the arm or the hand is an instrument united to man to paint or write); and separate instrument that which is by itself separated from the principal cause that employs it (e.g., the artist's paintbrush or the writer's pen). the deaf-mute and, above all, the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain and his friend Lazarus could speak eloquently of Christ as the source of health and bodily life. But here we are interested in considering Christ above all as the source of supernatural life. In this sense, we owe our life entirely to him. To communicate the natural life to us, God has willed to use our fleshly parents instrumentally. To communicate his own divine life to us, he has never used nor will he ever use any other instrument than the most holy humanity of Christ. Christ is our life: we owe it all to him. He has been constituted by his Eternal Father as Head, Chief, supreme Pontiff, universal Mediator, Source and dispenser of all grace. And all this, principally, in view of his passion, as Redeemer of the world, for having accomplished by his sufferings and merits the salvation of the human race: "He humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, and was made in human likeness, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross; wherefore God exalted him and gave him the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus the knee should bow, whatsoever is in the cycles, and on earth, and in the depths" (Phil. 2,7-10). The Gospel shows us how Christ used his own humanity in his earthly life to confer supernatural life on souls. Son," he says to the paralytic with his word, "your sins are forgiven". And at once there is a movement of surprise and scandal among those who had just heard the expression. "Who is this man who pretends to forgive sins? Only God can do it. And Christ, who sees within himself that movement of scandal, offers them the overwhelming argument that he has full power precisely as a man to forgive sins: "What are you thinking in your hearts, which is easier, to say to the paralytic: Your sins are forgiven you, or to say to him: Get up, take your stretcher and go? But that you may see that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins," he said to the paralytic, "I say to you, get up, take up your mat and go home". And immediately he carried out exactly what Christ had just commanded him, in the midst of the astonishment and amazement of the people 17 . Christ undoubtedly uses the expression the Son of man with all deliberation. It is certain that no one can forgive sins but God alone or he who has received from Him that power to use it in the name of God. Now he who dares to forgive sins, not in the name of God, but in his own name, and proves by a superhuman prodigy that he has indeed full power to do so, has left beyond all doubt that he personally has the very power of God; that is to say, that he is personally God. Christ is the Son of God, the Author of grace, the only one who can forgive sins by his own authority. But let us take a closer look: this Son of God uses his most holy humanity as an instrument (united to his Divinity) for the efficient production of supernatural life in souls. That is why he uses the expression "the Son of man", as if to signify that, Cf. Mt. 0:1-8; Me. 2:1-12; Le. 5,17-26. 5S P. I. F.L FIN C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST If, precisely insofar as Man works his miracles, forgives sins and distributes grace with sovereign freedom, power and independence, it is because his most holy Humanity is in itself life-giving; that is to say, he is an instrument apt to produce and cause grace by virtue of his personal union with the divine Word 18 . There is no great difficulty in explaining the ins- trumental causality of the Humanity of Christ while he remained on earth, even if we understand this causality in the physical sense, as the Thomistic school understands it. But from the day of the Ascension, that is, from the moment when the Humanity of Christ disappeared from the sight of men, ceasing, for the same reason, to have physical contact with them, in what way should we understand this influence of the Humanity of Christ upon us? Will it be a mere moral causality, because of his merits and infinite satisfactions or in any other way of the sort, or can we still speak of a true physical influence upon us? This is the question we are now going to examine. c) Vital influence of Christ on the members of his Mystical Body. - Let us recall here the fundamental lines of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. Jesus Christ is the Head of a mystical Body which is his Church. It is expressly stated in divine revelation: "He put all things under his feet and made him Head over all things in the Church, which is his body" (Eph. 1:22-23; cf. 1 Cor. i2ff.). The proof of reason is given by St. Thomas in a magnificent article that answers the question: "Whether Christ, as man, corresponds to be Head of the Church" 19 . In going on to demonstrate this, the Angelic Doctor establishes an analogy with the natural order. In the human head, he says, we can consider three things: order, perfection and influence on the body. Order, because the head is the first part of man, beginning with the superior. Perfection, because in it are contained all the external and internal senses, while in the other members only touch is found. Influence, finally, over the whole body, because the strength and movement of the other members and the government of their acts proceeds from the head by the sensory and motor virtue that dominates it. Now then: all these excellencies belong to Christ spiritually; therefore, it behoves him to be the Head of the Church. For: 58 St. Thomas says it beautifully: "To give grace or the Holy Spirit authoritatively belongs to Christ as God; but to give it instrumentally belongs to him as man, since his most holy humanity was the instrument of his divinity. And thus, by virtue of his divinity, his actions were salutary to us, inasmuch as they meritoriously and efficiently cause grace in us* (III, 8, i ad i). And in another article of this same question he insists again: "To produce grace interiorly belongs exclusively to Christ, whose humanity, by its union with the divinity, has the virtue of justifying" (ibid., a.6). i" Cf. III,8,i. a) The primacy of order corresponds to Him, since He is the "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29) and has been constituted in heaven "above all rule and authority and power and might and dominion, and everything that has a name, not only in this age, but also in the age to come" (Eph. 1:21), so that "He may have the primacy over all things" (Col. 1:18). b) He also has the perfection above all others, since in Him is found the fullness of all graces, according to St. John (1:14): "We have seen Him full of grace and truth". c) Finally, he has a vital influence on all the members of the Church, since "from his fullness we all receive grace upon grace" (loc. 1:16). In a sublime text, St. Paul summarized these three functions of Christ as Head of the Church when he wrote to the Colossians (1:18-20): "He is the Head of the Body of the Church; He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that He might have the primacy over all things (Order), and it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell (Perfection) and through Him to reconcile to Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross, all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven" (Influence). Elsewhere, St. Thomas proves that Christ is Head of the Church by reason of his dignity, his government and his causality 20 . And the formal reason for being our Head is the fullness of his habitual grace, connoting the grace of union. Thus, according to St. Thomas, the personal grace by which the soul of Christ is sanctified and that by which he justifies others as Head of the Church is essentially the same; there is only a difference of reason between them 21 . How far does this capital grace of Christ extend? To whom does it affect and in what form or measure? St. Thomas affirms categorically that it extends to the angels and to all men (except the damned), although in varying degrees and in very different ways. And so: 1) Christ is the head of the angels. - This is expressly stated in Sacred Scripture. Speaking of Christ, the Apostle Paul says: "He is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:10). The proof of reason is given by St. Thomas, who says that where there is only one body, there must be only one head. Now the mystical body of the Church is not made up of men alone, but also of angels, since both are ordered to the same end, which is the glory of the divine fruition. And of all this multitude Christ is the Head, because his most holy Humanity is personally united to the Word and, consequently, participates in his gifts much more perfectly than the angels and influences in them many graces, such as the accidental glory, ca 28 Cf. De vertíate q.29 a. 4. 21 St. Thomas expressly says: *Et ideo eadem est secundum es sentiam gratia personal is qua anima Christi est iustificata et gratia eius secundum quam est caput Eccíesjae justifícaos alios: differt lamen secundum rationem* (111,8,5). t-. i. the nn The supernatural revelations, revelations of the mysteries of God, and the like. Therefore, Christ is the Head of the angels themselves 22. 2) Christ is the head of all men, but in different degrees. Here is how St. Thomas explains it 23 : a) Of the blessed He is most perfectly so, since they are united to Him in a definitive way by confirmation in grace and eternal glory. Let the same be said of the souls in purgatory, as regards confirmation in grace. b) Of all men in grace it is also perfectly so, since by the influence of Christ they possess the supernatural life, charisms and gifts of God and remain united to Him as living and present members by grace and charity. c) Of Christians in sin it is in a less perfect way, inasmuch as, by the faith and hope reported, they are still united to it in some actual way. d) The heretics and pagans, both the predestined and the future reprobates, are not actual members of Christ, but only in potency; but with this difference: that the predestined are members in potency that will become actual, and the future reprobates are members in potency that will never become actual or will be so only transitorily. e) The demons and the damned are in no way members of Christ, because they are definitely separated from Him and will never be united to Him, not even potentially. Neither are they, and for the same reason, the children of limbo. 20. Now, in what way does Christ the Head exercise his vital influence on his living members who remain united to him in this life by grace and charity? He exercises it in many ways, but fundamentally it can be reduced to two: by the sacraments and by the contact of faith vivified by charity. Let us examine each of these two ways. 1) Through the sacraments: It is a matter of faith that Christ is the author of the sacraments 24 . It had to be so, because being nothing other than "sensible signs that signify and produce sanctifying grace," only Christ, the sole source and fountain of grace, could institute them. And he instituted them precisely in order to communicate to us, through them, his own divine life: "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly" (cf. Lk. 10:10). These sensible signs have the virtue of communicating grace to us by their own intrinsic power (ex opere operato), but only as instruments of Christ, that is, by virtue of the movement or impulse they receive from the Humanity of Christ united to the divine Word and filled with his very life. "Does Peter baptize? - says St. Augustine: "It is Christ who baptizes, Judas baptizes: it is Christ who baptizes". Therefore, the unworthiness of the human minister who confers the sacraments - sinner, heretic? - is no obstacle to its validity, as long as he intends to do what the Church does in the administration of this sacrament. Christ, the God-Man, willed to put the communication of his divine grace through the sacraments completely in the hands of the Church. 22 Cf. 111,8,4. 22 Cf. 111,8,3. 24 Cf. Denz. 844. 25 "Petrus baptizet, hic (Christus) est qui baptiza!; Paulas baptizet, hic est qui baptizat ; ludas baptizet, hic est qui baptizat" (Tract. in To. 6 : ML 35,1428.) C. S. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST This gives us Christians absolute confidence and certainty in the efficacy of this divine help, provided we do not put any obstacle in the way of receiving it. For it is necessary to note that we can indeed place an insurmountable obstacle to the sanctifying efficacy of the sacraments. No sacrament is valid if we do not interiorly consent to receive it 26 . The lack of repentance impedes the reception of grace in the sacrament of penance or in the baptism of an adult in sin, and conscious mortal sin 27 impedes the reception of grace in the five living sacraments and makes it a sacrilege. But even when we have the indispensable dispositions for the valid and fruitful reception of the sacraments, the measure of grace that they will communicate to us in each case will depend not only on the greater or lesser excellence of the sacrament itself, but also on the degree and fervor of our dispositions. If the soul comes to receive them with its receptive capacity enlarged by a true hunger and thirst to be intimately united to God by the worthy reception of his grace, it will receive it in an overflowing and very full measure. The image of the fountain and the cup has often been used: the amount of water that is collected in each case does not depend only on the fountain, but also on the size of the cup with which we are going to collect it. Therefore the ardent preparation for receiving the sacraments, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist, which brings us not only grace, but the source and fountain of grace, which is Christ himself, is of the utmost importance. It is through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, that Christ exercises his vital influence on us. We must have recourse to them above all to increase our supernatural life and our union with God. They are the authentic sources of grace, which must be placed in the first place and which nothing else can ever replace. There are souls who have not realized this and want to find in other exercises or devotional practices a spiritual nourishment that is infinitely far from the efficacy of the sacraments. It is an insult to Christ not to give due appreciation or to relegate to second place these authentic channels that He Himself has willed to institute to communicate to us His graces, His own divine life; and it is a tribute of gratitude and love to pay Him homage by going to drink avidly, as often as each one of them allows, of the clean and crystalline water that they communicate to us; of that divine water which, flowing from the Heart of Christ 28 , then runs through our souls and finally leaps up to eternal life (lo. 4:14). Christ himself urges us in a pressing way: "Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (lo. 7:37). 2) By faith. - St. Paul has in one of his epistles a mysterious expression. He says that Christ dwells by faith in our hearts: Christum habitare ver fidem ir. cordibus vestris (Eph. 3:17). What do these words mean? Is it a physical indwelling of the humanity of Christ in our souls, like the indwelling of the Most Blessed Trinity in every soul in grace? It would be a great mistake to think so. Christ's humanity comes precisely into our souls in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but his real, physical presence is linked in such a way to the species 26 In children who receive baptism or confirmation, it is the Church that supplies that ntention. 27 We underline this word because, according to the almost unanimous consent of theologians, the sinner who, without realizing that he is in mortal sin, approaches in good faith to receive a sacrament of the living (e.g., the Eucharist) with repentance of supernatural attrition, would validly and fruitfully receive the sacrament, that is, would receive sacramental grace. 28 "Haurjetis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris" (Is. 12.3), P. I. THE END C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST sacramental, which, when they are substantially altered, disappears completely, leaving only his divinity (with the Father and the Holy Spirit) and the influence of his grace in the soul. And yet it is a fact - it is expressly stated in the words of St. Paul - that Christ, in some way, dwells by faith in our hearts. St. Thomas, commenting on the Apostle's words, does not hesitate to interpret them as they sound: "By faith Christ dwells in us, as we are told in Eph. 3,17. And for the same reason the virtue of Christ is united to us by faith. "29 These last words of the Angelic offer us the true solution. It is the virtue of Christ that properly dwells in our hearts through faith. Every time we turn to Him through the contact of our faith vivified by charity,30 a sanctifying virtue comes out of Christ that has a beneficial influence on our souls. The Christ of today is the same as in the Gospel, and all those who approached Him with faith and love participated in that virtue that came out of Him and healed the sicknesses of bodies and souls: "virtus de illo exibat, et sanabat omnes" (Le. 6:19). "How, then, can we doubt that when we approach him, even outside the sacraments, by faith, in humility and trust, a divine power comes forth from him that enlightens, strengthens, helps and assists us? No one has ever approached Christ in faith and love without receiving the beneficent rays that flow unceasingly from this focus of light and warmth: virtus de illo exibat...". 31 . The soul, therefore, that wishes to sanctify itself must multiply and intensify this contact with Christ more and more through an ardent faith enlivened by love. This highly sanctifying exercise can be repeated at every moment, infinite times a day; unlike sacramental contact with Christ, which can be established only once a day. 2i. Let us now answer the question we asked above 32: Of what nature is the vital influence of Christ's humanity upon us? Is it a physical influence or only a moral one, by his merits and satisfactions, or in any other way of the kind? Theologians are divided. Some affirm that it is only a moral influence. The Thomistic school strongly affirms the physical influence of Christ's humanity, as a simple extension of its theory of the physical causality of the sacraments in the production of grace. For if the sacraments, separate instruments of Christ, produce it physically, how can the humanity of Christ, who is the instrument united to his divinity, not produce it in this way? The greatest difficulty that can be raised against this theory is that physical action presupposes physical contact between the agent and the patient of that action; and such contact did occur during Christ's earthly life (e.g., when he touched lepers and miraculously cured them); but now that Christ's humanity is triumphant in heaven, how can such physical contact be verified? 2 ' 111.62.5 ad.2. 50 It is well known that "faith without works is dead," as the Apostle James says (2:26). Faith must be enlivened by charity: "in caritate radicati et fundati," says St. Paul immediately after saying that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:17). 31 Marmion, Jesus Christ, life Jet alma I, .1,4. n AI fine! of n.iS, To this we have several things to answer: 1) This difficulty supposes a concept of physical causality on the part of Christ's humanity that cannot be accepted, since it imagines this causal contact as something of a quantitative order. Let us bear in mind that to humanity belongs not only the body of Christ, but also his soul. Now, the soul of Christ can work with his will, as an instrument of the Word, even for the production of supernatural effects materially distant from it. The human will of Christ was elevated to the production or immediate causation of supernatural works with its volitional efficiency, in which the rest of Christ's humanity has a part under the rule of his human will 33 . 2) If the humanity of Christ is not physically present everywhere, the divine Word, to which it is hypostatically united, is. And there is no inconvenience in that the Word uses everywhere the instrumental virtue of his most holy humanity for the production of grace in our souls. For this, the virtual contact of Christ's humanity is sufficient, as St. Thomas explains in regard to the efficient causality of Christ's resurrection over our own 34 . 3) We must attribute to the humanity of the triumphant Christ all the prerogatives that he had here on earth that are not incompatible with the state of glory; but the instrumental physical causality is perfectly compatible with the state of glory; therefore, undoubtedly, he has it. Otherwise, that most holy humanity would be less perfect in heaven than it was on earth. 4) The plan of the Incarnation is more beautiful on the basis of this theory. With it, the physical action of Jesus is not restricted only to the Eucharist. Everywhere, always, and in relation to every kind of grace, Christ appears with his beneficent influence, filling us with blessings. There is not a single soul, not a single people, that is not physically visited by the God-Man. It is the endless prolongation, through the centuries, of him who passed through the world doing good and healing all (Acts 10:38), which sums up so movingly the passage of the Son of God through this valley of tears and miseries 3S . ARTICLE 2 How to live the "Mystery of Christ The glory of God as the absolute ultimate end, our sanctification as the proximate end to which we must unceasingly strive, incorporation into Christ as the only possible way to attain both: this is the very quintessence of the Christian life. In 33 Cf. Solano, De Verbo Incarnato n.323, in vol. 3 of Sacrae Theologiae Summa, edited by the BAC. 3 4 "The resurrection of Christ is the efficient cause of our resurrection by the divine virtue, from which it is proper to raise the dead. Now this virtue extends presentially to all times and places, and this virtual contact suffices for that efficiency* (III, 56, i ad3). 35 Cf. for this whole chapter on the physical causality of the humanity of Christ the precious work of Fr. Hugon La causalité instruméntale en Théologie (Paris 1907), especially chapter 3, "La causalité instrumental de rhumanité saint de Jésus", and the magnificent study of Fr. Sauras El Cuerpo místico de Cristo (BAC, 1952) c.2 a.3. y. i. ix FIN In the final analysis, everything boils down to living with ever greater intensity and perfection that "mystery of Christ" that obsessed St. Paul. 3 3. There^is^a^sublime^formula^that summarizes admirably all that we should do to climb the highest peaks of Christian perfection. It is used by the Church in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and constitutes by itself one of her most august rites. The priest, immediately before pronouncing the incomparable Sunday prayer - the Our Father - genuflects before the Blessed Sacrament placed on the corporal and then reverently taking the sacred host, traces with it five crosses, three on the chalice and the other two outside it, at the same time pronouncing these sublime words: "Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti, in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria". Let us comment on this brief formula, and we will see how it effectively contains the quintessence of the Christian life and the unique path to holiness. General idea. - The glorification of the Most Blessed Trinity is the absolute end of the creation of the world and of the redemption and sanctification of the human race. But in the present economy of Providence and grace, this glorification is only achieved through Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ and in Him. So that anything that man could attempt to glorify God apart from Christ would be completely out of the way and completely inept to achieve that end. Everything is reduced, then, to incorporating oneself more and more into Christ in order to do everything "through Him, with Him and in Him, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the Father". This is the whole Christian life. Let us look at it in more detail. "Per ipsum...". - Christ is the only Way (lo. 14:6). No one can go to the Father except through Him (ibid.), since only He knows the Father and he to whom He wills to reveal Him (Mt. 11:27). Therefore, the fundamental concern, and we could almost say the only one, of the Christian who wants to sanctify himself must be none other than to incorporate himself more and more intensely into Christ in order to do everything for him. It is necessary for us to disappear, or rather - to take away from the phrase any pantheistic resabbism - it is necessary to so incorporate all our good works into Christ that we dare not present a single one of them before the Father except by Christ, through Christ, by means of Christ. This will please the Eternal Father and give him immense glorification. Let us not forget that the Eternal Father, in reality, has but one love and one eternal obsession - if it is lawful to speak thus -: his Word. Nothing interests Him apart from Him; and if He loves us infinitely, it is "because we love Christ and have believed that He came from God"; absolutely for nothing else. He has expressly said it himself C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST 6b Christ: "Ipse enim Pater amat vos quia vos me amastis et credidistis quia ego a Deo exivi" (lo. 16,27). Sublime mystery, which should make our love for Christ a kind of obsession, the only one of our life, as it constitutes the only one of his heavenly Father and constituted and will always constitute the only one of all the saints! What else does the Church do and what else does she teach us in her divine liturgy but this alone? In spite of being the immaculate bride of Christ, in whom there is not the least spot or wrinkle (Eph. 5:27), the holy Church dares not ask the Eternal Father for anything in her own name, but only and exclusively in the name of her divine Spouse: per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum.... For the sake of Christ: this is the first great concern that a Christian must have in the accomplishment of all his good works. Without this, he will be off track, he will not take a single step forward, he will never reach the summit of holiness. What disorientation, then, is there in those who place "devotion to Our Lord", as one of the many means of sanctification, alongside the examination of conscience or spiritual reading! "But to do all things for Christ through Christ is still too little. They must be done with Him, in intimate union with Him. The divinity of Christ, the Word of God, is permanently and habitually present in every soul in grace. And the Word can continually use the instrumental virtue of his most holy humanity - to which he is hypostatically united - to flood us with supernatural life. Let us not forget that Christ, Man-God, is the unique source and wellspring of grace and that the grace of Christ that sanctifies us is not His grace of union - which is proper and exclusive to Him - but His capital grace, that is, the habitual grace, with which His most holy soul is filled, and which overflows from Him upon us as from the head flows life to all the members of a living organism b So it is not a sublime illusion, as beautiful as it is unrealizable, that of doing all things with Christ; it is a profoundly theological reality. As long as we remain in grace, Christ is with us, he is within us - physically with his divinity, virtually with his most holy humanity - and there is nothing to prevent us from doing everything with him, together with him, intimately united to him. What value and price our works acquire before the Eternal Father when we present them to him in this way, incorporated into Christ and in intimate union with him! Without this union they would be worth absolutely nothing: nihil, as Christ himself expressly says (loc. 15:5). With him, on the other hand, they acquire an absolutely incomparable value. It is the little drop of water, which is worth nothing by itself, but which, thrown into the chalice and mixed with the wine of sacrifice, becomes the blood of Jesus, with all its rigorously infinite redemptive and sanctifying value. 1 111, S, 5. Trnl. of. the Pcrlec. a 66 - P. I. THE END This idea, complementary to the previous one and preparatory to the next, constituted the obsessive torture of St. Paul. This extraordinary man, who received like no other the most vivid light from God in order to peer into the unfathomable abyss of the "mystery of Christ," did not know how to explain to the world the incomprehensible riches enclosed in Him: "investigabiles divitias Christi" (Eph. 3:8), and how the Eternal Father has enriched us with them: "Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor, so that you might become rich through his poverty" (2 Cor. 8:9), to the point of filling us in Christ with the very fullness of God: "and you are filled with him" (Col. 2:10), "so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19). All the Christian's efforts should be directed toward increasing and intensifying this union with Christ. He must do all things with Jesus, in intimate union with Him. Prayer, work, recreation, food, rest..., everything must be united to Christ in order to be done together with Him. A single act of Jesus glorifies God more than all the acts of all the angels and blessed together, including the immaculate Mother of God herself, will glorify Him for all eternity. What unfathomable riches we have in Christ and what poverty and misery outside of Him! Even if we were to tear ourselves to pieces with bloody disciplines, if we did not incorporate those pains with those of Christ, they would be worthless. Our blood is impure, and only by mingling with that of Jesus can it have any value before God. The saints profited unceasingly from these ineffable riches which the Eternal Father has placed at our disposal, and, through them, they looked with confident optimism to the future, without being frightened by their poverty. "Call not thyself poor, having me," said Christ Himself to a soul who lamented before Him his misery. "... et in ipso...". - Sublime is all that we have just recalled, but there is something much higher still. To do all things for Christ and with Him is of incalculable price and value. But to do them in Him, within Him, identified with Him, takes this sublimity and greatness to the paroxysm. The first two modalities (by, with) are something extrinsic to us and to our works; this third one puts us inside Christ, identifying us, in some way, with Him and our works with His works. This is a sublime theme, which must be treated with all serenity and exactitude so as not to deform it, lowering its level, or overflowing it, falling into lamentable deviations. In order to catch a glimpse, even from afar, of this ineffable mystery, it is necessary to recall the general lines of our incorporation into Christ as Head of the Mystical Body. By virtue of this incorporation - of which we cannot entertain the slightest doubt, since it is expressly stated in the very sources of revelation - the Christian forms part of Christ. The total Christ of whom St. Augustine speaks is Christ plus us. The Christian in grace forms as one and the same thing with Jesus. A branch of Christ, he lives from his very life, the same life-giving sap of his divine Vine circulates through his veins. Jesus Christ is not complete without us. He does not reach his fullness as the total Christ if we are not one with him. Incorporated into him, we are integral parts of his total unity. "It is said: Christianus aller Christus: the Christian is another Christ, and nothing truer. But it is necessary not to be mistaken. Other here does not mean different. We are not another Christ different from the Christ we see C. 2. CONFIGURATION WITH JESUS CHRIST 67 We are destined to be the only Christ that exists: Christus facti sumus, as St. Augustine says. We are destined to be the only Christ who exists: Christus facti sumus, as St. Augustine says. We are not to become something other than him; we are to become him" 2. Keeping this divine reality in mind, it is easier to understand those mysterious expressions of St. Paul and of the Gospel: our sufferings complete what is lacking in his passion (Col. 1:24); he is the one who fights in us (Col. 1:29) and who triumphs. When we are persecuted, He is persecuted (Acts 9:5); the least service rendered to us, He accepts and rewards as if it had been done to Himself (Mt. 10:42; 25:34-46). The last and supreme desire of Christ on the night of the supper is that we be one with Him (lo. 17:21) in an ever more perfect way, until we become "consummated in unity" in the bosom of the Father (lo. 17:23). So it is beyond any doubt that Christ has incorporated us into himself, he has made us his members. We have become something of his, we are truly his body. We depend entirely on Christ, Christi sumus; better yet, Christus sumus; not only of Christ, but Christ. St. Augustine does not hesitate to affirm this: "Concorporans nos sibi, faciens nos membra sua ut in filo et nos Christus essemus.... Et omnes in illo et Christi et Christus sumus, quia quodammodo totus Christus, caput et Corpus est" 3 . If this is so, it is easy to understand that the Christian must carry out all his works as such, not only for Christ and with Christ, but in Him, identified with Him. He must so clothe himself with Jesus Christ (Rom. 13:14) that the Eternal Father, looking at him, will always find him, so to speak, clothed with Jesus. This was the supreme illusion of Sr. Elizabeth of the Trinity: "See in me only the beloved Son, in whom you have all your complacencies". And to arrive at this sublime result, she had asked Christ to "replace her"; and the Holy Spirit, to realize in her soul "as a new incarnation of the Word", in order to become for Him "a new superadded humanity, in which He renews all His mystery" 4 . It is not, therefore, an illusory and misguided aspiration to want to do all our works in Christ, identified with his. On the contrary, it is a divine reality whose ever more intense and frequent actualization will raise the Christian to the summit of holiness, until he feels so dominated and possessed by Christ that he is moved to exclaim like St. Paul: "mihi vivere Christus est": my life is Christ (Phil. 1:21), because it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me: "vivo autem, iam non ego; vivit vero in me Christus" (Gal. 2:20). The Christian has then reached his fullness in Christ (Eph. 4:13), he has reached his complete and total Christification, he is at the very summit of perfection and holiness. Let us now take a brief look at the rest of the formula we are examining. "... est...". - Let's take a closer look. The Church uses this word est in the indicative, and not sit, in the subjunctive. It is not the expression of a desire that has not yet been realized, but the affirmation of a fact that is already present in all its infinite reality. "At this moment, when the Church is gathered around the altar to offer 2 Plus, Christ in us p.2. 3 St. Augustine, In Ps. 26 enarr.2,2; ML 36,200. 4 Sister Isabel de la Trinidad, Elevation to the Most Holy Trinity. ]'. I. FL FIN c. 3 * MARY AND OUR SANCTIFICATION 6 !) the body of the Lord that rests upon it, God indeed receives all honor and glory" 5 . And the same is true of every action of the Christian who ascends to heaven through Christ, with Him and in Him. The smallest of his actions thus acquires a somewhat infinite value and immensely glorifies God. The Christian, we will not tire of repeating it, should have as his only concern his constant incorporation into Christ. Only in this way would he remain continually on the straight line of his sanctification, directly arrowed to God without the slightest detour or deviation. This is undoubtedly the fundamental point of view in which any soul that aspires to sanctify itself in a short time must place itself. This is not the way around; it goes directly to the end. "tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti...". - Everything is ordered, finally, to the Father. The glory of his heavenly Father obsessed Christ. He does not want his own will to be fulfilled if it is in the least opposed to that of his Father (Mt. 26:39); he works only to please him (lo. 8:29); he lives only by him and for him (lo. 6:58); and if, when the time comes, he asks his Father to glorify him, it is only so that he may also glorify the Father (lo. 17:1). The first word that the Gospel records about Jesus as a child is this: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? (Le. 2:49); and the last word that his dying lips pronounced on the top of the cross was this one: "My Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Le. 23:46). Jesus Christ lived and died thinking of his heavenly Father. The Christian is to resemble his divine Model in everything, but principally in this continual aspiration to his heavenly Father. St. Paul reminded us of this when he told us - thereby establishing the hierarchy of values in everything that exists -: "All things are yours; but you are Christ's, and Christ is God's" (1 Cor. 3:22-23). And a little further on, in the same Epistle, he completes his thought when he writes: "He (Christ) must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet..."; but "when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one to whom he has subjected all things, so that he may be all things to God" (ibid., 15:25-28). The glory of God is the ultimate, absolute end of the whole divine work of the creation of the world, redemption and glorification of the human race. It is in heaven that the words of St. John of the Cross will be fulfilled in all their perfection and integrity: "On this mountain alone dwells the honor and glory of God. "... in unitate Spiritus Sancti...". - This glory of God, as is obvious, does not belong exclusively to the person of the Father. It is the glory of the divinity, of the One and Triune God of revelation. Consequently, that glory which the Father receives through Christ, with Him and with Him, is the glory of the Trinity. 5 Jungmann, S.I., The Sacrifice of the Mass t.r.z n.37¿ (ed. BAC, 1951). in Him, also belongs to the Holy Spirit, the divine bond that unites the Father and the Son in an ineffable bond of love that consummates all three in the unity of one and the same essence. "... omnis honor et gloria". - Omnis, all honor and glory. It is because, as we have already said, in the present plan of the economy of grace, all the glory that the Most Blessed Trinity is to receive from the children of men must come to it through Christ, with Him and in Him. There is no doubt about it. In the per ipsum of the Holy Mass we have a sublime formula of sanctification. The Christian who devotes himself to living it will find in it a very complete program of perfection and a hidden manna that will nourish his spiritual life and increase it until it reaches its full expansion and development at the summit of holiness. CHAPTER III The Virgin Mary and our sanctification St. Thomas Aquinas, Collationes de Ave Maña; St. Alphonsus Liguori, Glories of Mary; St. John Eudes, Le Coeur admirable ; St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin; The Secret of Mary; The Admirable Secret of the Most Holy Rosary (in ed. BAC, n.m); Olier, Vie intérieure de la tres Sainte Vierge ; Perardi, The Virgin Mother of God and the Christian Life; Señeri, The Devotee of the Virgin Mary; V. Agreda, Mystical City of God; Garriguet, La Vierge Marie; Hugon, Mane, pleine de gráce; Arintero, Influence of the Blessed Virgin on the sanctification of souls; La veritable traditionnelle mystique, appendix; Terrien, The Mother of God and of men; Merkelbach, Mariology; Garrigou-Lagrange, The Mother of the Savior and Our Interior Life; Alastruey, Treatise on the Blessed Virgin; Sauvé, The Intimacy of Mary; Lhoumeau, La vie spirituelle a Vécole de Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort . For strictly theological doctrine, see the magnificent collection of Estu. ios Marianos that the Spanish Mariological Society has been publishing since 1942. "One of the reasons why so few souls reach the fullness of age in Jesus Christ is because Mary, who now as always is the Mother of Jesus Christ and the fruitful Bride of the Holy Spirit, is not sufficiently formed in their hearts. Whoever wishes to have the ripe and well-formed fruit, must have the tree that produces it; whoever wishes to have the fruit of life, Jesus Christ, must have the tree of life, which is Mary. He who desires to have in himself the operation of the Holy Spirit, must have his Spouse, faithful and indissoluble, the divine Mary.... Persuade yourselves, then, that the more you look at Mary in your prayers, contemplations, actions and sufferings, if not in a clear and distinct way, at least with a general and imperceptible glance, the more perfectly you will find Jesus Christ, who is always with Mary, great and powerful, active and incomprehensible, and more than in heaven and in every other creature in the universe. "1 1 St. Louis Marie Gricnion de Montfort, True Devotion c-5 a. 5 n. 164-65 P S31-32 (ed. BAC.). C. 3 . MARY AND OUR SANCTIFICATION 70 V. 1. THE END These words of one of the most authoritative interpreters of devotion to Mary give us the opportunity to examine the very important role of the Blessed Virgin in the sanctification of souls. Mary is, quite simply, the shortest and surest way to Christ, and through Him to the Father; and therein is contained all our holiness. God has done what he has willed. And he wanted to associate Mary in such a way with the divine enterprise of the redemption and sanctification of the human race that, in the present economy, it would not be possible to achieve them without her. It is not, therefore, just another devotion, but something basic and fundamental in our Christian life. That is why we have chosen to include Mary's role in our sanctification in this first part of our work, even though we recognize that she is not the end, but only one of the most effective means to achieve it. 1. Basis for Mary's intervention in our sanctification All the titles and greatness of Mary derive from the colossal fact of her divine maternity. Mary is immaculate, full of grace, Coredemptrix of humanity, she ascended body and soul to heaven to be there the Queen of heaven and earth and the universal Mediatrix of all graces, etc., etc., because she is the Mother of God. The divine maternity places her at such a height, so far above all creatures, that St. Thomas Aquinas, so sober and discreet in his appraisals, does not hesitate to qualify her dignity as in a certain sense infinite 2 . And his great commentator Cardinal Cajetan says that Mary, by her divine maternity, reaches the limits of divinity 3 . Among all creatures, it is Mary, without a doubt, who has the greatest "affinity with God". And it is because Mary, by virtue of her divine maternity, enters into the hypostatic order, she is an indispensable element - in the present economy of divine Providence - for the incarnation of the Word and the redemption of the human race. Now, as theologians say, the hypostatic order immensely surpasses that of grace and glory, just as the latter immensely surpasses that of human and angelic nature and even any other created or creatable nature. Divine maternity is above the adoptive filiation of grace, since the latter establishes only a spiritual and mystical kinship with God, while the divine maternity of Mary establishes a kinship of nature, a relationship of consanguinity with Jesus Christ, and a, so to speak, a kind of 2 Here are his own words: "The humanity of Christ by reason of his union with God; the created beatitude, which consists in the fruition of God; and the Blessed Virgin, by reason of her being the Mother of God, have a certain infinite dignity, because God is an infinite good" (1,25,6 ad 4). 3 "Only (the Blessed Virgin Mary) touches the frontiers of divinity by her own natural operation (ad fines deitatis propria operatione naturali attigit), inasmuch as she conceives, begets, gives birth to, and nourishes with her own milk God himself" (Cajetan, In II- 1 I I 103,4 ac l 2). affinity with the whole of the Blessed Trinity 4 . The divine maternity, which ends in the uncreated person of the Word made flesh, thus surpasses by its end, in an infinite way, the grace and glory of all the elect and the fullness of grace and glory received by the Virgin Mary herself. And a fortiori it surpasses all the graces freely given or charisms, such as prophecy, knowledge of the secrets of hearts, the gift of miracles or of tongues, etc., because all these gifts are inferior to sanctifying grace, as St. Thomas 5 teaches. From this colossal fact - Mary, Mother of the redeeming God - stems the so-called principle of consortium, by virtue of which Jesus Christ intimately associated his divine Mother to his entire redemptive and sanctifying mission. Therefore, all that He merited for us with the merit of rigorous justice - de condigno ex toto rigore iustitiae -, Mary also merited for us, although with a different kind of merit. 2. Office of Mary Most Holy in our sanctification 24. We know of nothing so synthetic, so exact and at the same time so practical and pious on this matter as the argumentation of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in his precious little book The Secret of Mary 7 . We offer the reader a synthesis of those arguments, often based on his own words. 1) The need to sanctify ourselves through Mary. - a) It is God's will that we sanctify ourselves. b) To sanctify oneself, one must practice the virtues. c) To practice virtue we need God's grace. d) To find God's grace we must find Mary. 2) Why so? - a) Because only Mary has found grace before God, either for herself, or for each and every man in particular. Neither the patriarchs, nor the prophets, nor all the saints of the Old Law could find it in this way. b) Because Mary gave being and life to the Author of grace, and for this reason she is called Mater gratiae. c) Because God the Father, from whom every perfect gift and every grace descends as from its essential source, giving her divine Son, gave Mary all graces. d) For God has chosen her to be the treasurer, administrator and dispenser of all graces, so that all pass through her hands; and according to the power which she has received, she distributes to whom she wills, as 4 Cf. Hugon, Afane pleine de grdce (5.* ed.) p.63. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Mother of the Savior p.i.* c.i a. 2. Cf. I-II.i n. 5 6 What is the nature of Mary's merit in relation to us is still a matter of debate. discussed among theologians. Some see only a merit of convenience (de congruo); others affirm that it is a strict merit, although not according to the full rigor of justice, but only by a certain proportionality (de condigno ex condignitate). It seems to us that the latter are right ... . 7 There are numerous editions in Spain. We use that of the BAC (n.m) p.268-300. r. I. THE END wants, when he wants and as much as he wants the graces of the Eternal Father, the virtues of Jesus Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. e) For as in the order of nature a child must have both father and mother, so in the order of grace, in order to have God as Father, it is necessary to have Mary as Mother. f) For just as Mary has formed the Head of the predestined, Jesus Christ, so it belongs to her to form the members of this Head, which we Christians are; for mothers do not form heads without members, nor members without a head. Whoever, therefore, wishes to be a member of Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth, must allow himself to be formed by Mary through the grace of Jesus Christ, which fully resides in her, in order to communicate it fully to the true members of Jesus Christ and to the true saints. g) Because the Holy Spirit, who espoused Mary and in her, through her and from her formed his masterpiece, the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, since he never repudiated Mary and she continues to be his true spouse, continues to produce in her and through her those predestined by a true, though mysterious, way. h) For, as St. Augustine says, in this world the predestined are enclosed in Mary's womb and do not come forth until that good Mother leads them to eternal life. Therefore, just as the child receives all his nourishment from the mother, who gives it to him in proportion to his weakness, so the predestined draw all their spiritual nourishment and all their strength from Mary. i) A sculptor can bring a statue or portrait to life in two ways: by carving it in hard, shapeless material or by casting it in a mold. The first procedure is long, difficult, exposed to many dangers; a bad blow of chisel or hammer is enough, sometimes, to spoil everything. The second is quick, easy and smooth, almost without work and without expense, as long as the mold is perfect and represents the figure naturally; as long as the material we use is manageable and in no way resists the hand. Now then: the great mold of God, made by the Holy Spirit to form the natural God-Man by hypostatic union and to form a man deified by grace, is Mary. Not a single trait of divinity is lacking in this mold; anyone who enters into it and allows himself to be handled receives there all the traits of Jesus Christ, true God; and this in a gentle and proportionate manner to human weakness, without great labor or anguish; in a safe manner and without fear of illusions, since the devil has no part here nor will he ever have any entrance where Mary is; in a manner, finally, holy and immaculate, without the least stain of guilt. How much it goes from the soul formed in Jesus Christ by ordinary means, which, like the sculptors, relies on its own expertise and relies on its own industry, to the soul that is well treatable, well detached, well fused, which, without resting on itself, enters into Mary and allows itself to be guided there by the action of the Holy Spirit! How many blemishes, how many defects, how much darkness, how many illusions, how much that is natural and human in the first! How pure, divine and similar to Jesus Christ is the second! j) Because Mary is God's paradise and his ineffable world, where the Son of God entered to work wonders, to keep him and to have his pleasure in him. He has made one world for the pilgrim man, which is the earth we inhabit; another world for the blessed man, which is heaven; but for Himself He has made a paradise and called it Mary. Blessed is the soul to whom the Holy Spirit reveals the secret of Mary so that she may know him, and opens this closed garden so that she may enter into it. G. 3. MARY and OUR SANCTIFICATION 73 and this sealed fountain, so that she may draw from it the living water of grace and drink in a long vein from its stream! This soul will find only God alone, without creatures, in Mary; but God, while infinitely holy and sublime, infinitely condescending and within reach of our weakness. God is everywhere and can be found everywhere; but nowhere can we find him so close and so within reach of our weakness as in Mary. Everywhere he is the bread of the strong and of the angels, but in Mary he is the bread of the children 8 . k) Finally: no one should imagine - as certain false illuminati do - that Mary, because she is a creature, is an impediment to union with the Creator. It is no longer Mary who lives, it is Jesus Christ alone who lives in her. Mary's transformation into God exceeds that of St. Paul and all the other saints, more than heaven to earth. Therefore, the more a soul is united to Mary, the more intimately it remains united to God, who dwells in her. Whoever finds Mary, finds Jesus in her, and God in Jesus. There is no surer and quicker way to find God than to seek Him in Mary. According to the order established by divine Wisdom, as St. Thomas says, God does not ordinarily communicate himself to men, in the order of grace, except through Mary. To ascend and unite oneself to Him, it is necessary to avail oneself of the same means that He used to descend to us, to become man and communicate His graces to us; and that means has a very sweet name: Mary. In order to enter into God's plans, it is therefore necessary to have a deep devotion to Mary. She will lead us to Jesus and will trace in our souls the features of our configuration to Him, which constitute the very essence of our holiness and perfection. Here is how St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort demonstrates this truth 9 . In speaking of the reasons for having a great devotion to Mary, he says that one of the principal ones is because it leads to union with Our Lord, ■ And he affirms that this is the easiest, shortest, most perfect and surest way. Easy way: it is the way that Jesus Christ has opened by coming to us, and in which there is no obstacle to reach Him. The anointing of the Holy Spirit makes it easy and light. It is a short way: either because no one gets lost on it, or because it is a way that is more joyful and easier to walk and, consequently, more quickly. It is in Mary's womb that the young become old through light, holiness, experience and wisdom, reaching in a few years the fullness of age in Jesus Christ. Perfect way: for Mary is the holiest and most perfect of all creatures, and Jesus Christ, who has come to us in the most perfect way, has taken no other way in so great and admirable a journey. The sure way; for Mary's office is to lead us safely to her Son, just as Jesus Christ's is to lead us safely to his Eternal Father. The sweet Mother of Jesus always repeats to her true devotees the words she pronounced at the wedding feast of Cana, teaching us all the way that leads to Jesus: "Do whatever he tells you" (lo. 2:5). * From this beautiful idea it follows that the best way to practice the spirit of spiritual infancy (which St. Therese of the Child Jesus instilled so much) is to abandon oneself totally in Mary's arms like a little child in its mother's arms. No one needs a mother's care as much as a little child. 9 Gf. True devotion to the Blessed Virgin c.5 a. 5 p.522sa. (ed. BAC). F. I. F.L FIN MARY AND OUR SANCTIFICATION But to achieve these advantages and salutary effects, it is necessary to practice a solid and true devotion to Mary. Let us see what it consists of. 3. True devotion to Mary 25. In this section we will again take up the ideas of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in his admirable book True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, which is the masterpiece of devotion to Mary, a precious vade-mecum that should be in the hands of all lovers of Mary. After a first chapter in which he speaks of the necessity of devotion to Mary for salvation and sanctification and a second in which some fundamental truths concerning devotion to the Virgin are exposed, St. Louis describes in the third chapter the characteristics of true and false devotion. Here is a brief summary of his ideas, which should be meditated on at length in their original source. \ r. Characteristics of false devotion to Mary - Seven are the kinds of false devotees of Mary that St. Aloysius points out: a ) The critical devotees: proud and haughty people who are dedicated to criticize the simple and naive practices of devotion to Mary, labeling them lightly as anti-theological or exaggerated. b) The scrupulous devotees: who fear to demean Christ if they praise Mary too much, without realizing that Jesus Christ is never honored as much as when Mary is honored, since we only go to her as the surest means and the straightest way to find Him. c) The exterior devotees: who make their devotion to Mary consist entirely in some exterior practices; they load themselves with medals and scapulars, belong to all the confraternities, attend all the processions, pray endless prayers...; but without making an effort to amend their lives, to correct their passions and to imitate the virtues of Mary. They love only the sensible part of devotion, without liking what is solid in it; if they lack sentimentality, they believe that they no longer do anything, they become discouraged, they abandon everything or they do it routinely. d) The presumptuous devotees: who take refuge in their pretended devotion to Mary to live quietly in their vices and sins, thinking that God will forgive them, that they will not die without confession and will not be condemned, because they pray the crown or wear the scapular or belong to the confraternity of the Virgin, etc., etc., etc. These such commit a most grievous injury against Mary, as if she were ready to authorize the crime or to help crucify her divine Son, saving in any case those who want to live in sin. All these bear a great mark of reprobation. e) The inconstant devotees: who change their devotional practices or abandon them completely at the slightest temptation, dryness or displeasure. They join all the confraternities, but soon cease to fulfill the duties and practices they impose. f) Hypocritical devotees: who join the confraternities and wear Mary's livery to be considered good. C- 3 g) Those who are devoted and interested: those who have recourse to Mary only to win a lawsuit, to be cured of an illness or to ask her for other temporal goods, and outside of which they forget about her. 2. Characteristics of true devotion to Mary. - After discovering and reproving false devotions to Mary, St. Louis points out the characteristics of true devotion. The main ones are five: a) Interior devotion: that is, born of the spirit and the heart. It comes from the esteem we have for the Blessed Virgin, from the high idea we have of her greatness and from the sincere and intimate love we have for her. b) Tender devotion: that is, full of trust in the Blessed Virgin, like that of a child in his loving mother. She makes us have recourse to Mary in all our needs of soul and body, in all times, places and things with great simplicity, trust and tenderness; in doubts, to enlighten us; in our wanderings, to bring us back to the right path; in temptations, to sustain us; in weaknesses, to fortify us; in falls, to strengthen us; in weaknesses, to strengthen us; in falls, to strengthen us; in weaknesses, to strengthen us; in weaknesses, that she may strengthen us; in falls, that she may raise us up; in discouragements, that she may infuse us with new courage; in scruples, that she may dispel them; in the crosses, labors and setbacks of life, that she may console us. Always and in everything, having recourse to Mary as a loving and tender Mother. c ) Holy devotion: that is, on the basis of avoiding sin and imitating Mary's virtues, especially her profound humility, her lively faith, her blind obedience, her continuous prayer, her total mortification, her divine purity, her ardent devotion, her heroic patience, her angelic sweetness and her heavenly wisdom, which are the ten principal virtues of the Blessed Virgin. d) Constant devotion: that is to say, it consolidates the soul in goodness and prevents it from easily abandoning its devotional practices; it gives it courage to oppose the assaults of the world, of the devil and of the flesh; it helps it avoid melancholy, scrupulosity or timidity; it gives it strength against discouragement. And this is not to say that he does not fall and experience some change in the sensible of his devotion, but that, if he has the misfortune to fall, he immediately gets up again by reaching out his hand to his kind Mother; and if he lacks taste and sensible devotion, he is not discouraged by it, because the true devotee of Mary lives by faith in Jesus and in his loving Mother, and not by bodily feelings. e ) Disinterested devotion: that is, he does not serve Mary out of a spirit of profit or interest, nor for her temporal or eternal good of body or soul, but only because she deserves to be served, and God in her. He loves Mary not so much for the favors he receives or hopes to receive from her, but mainly because she is worthy of all our love. That is why he serves and loves her with the same fidelity in her setbacks and dryness as in her sweetness and sensitive fervors: he professes the same love for her on Calvary as at the wedding feast of Cana. How pleasing and precious before God and his most holy Mother are these devotees of his who do not seek themselves in any of the services they render to him! 4. Main morning devotions 26. With these dispositions we should practice the morning devotions, choosing from among them those that inspire us the most devotion, are best suited to the obligations of our state, and excite our piety towards her. Here are the principal ones: a) The most holy rosary: morning devotion par excellence, a very rich string of pearls that we unravel at the feet of Mary, guir" (the Holy Rosary). P. 1, THE END The rosary is the softest of roses with which we gird her immaculate Heart, the clearest sign of predestination for all those who pray to it devoutly and daily, the pledge and guarantee of the most fruitful divine blessings, to which Mary has linked in our days - principally at Lourdes and Fatima - the salvation of the world. No self-respecting devotee of Mary will omit a single day the recitation of the Most Holy Rosary - at least a third of it - even if for unexpected circumstances he has to omit any other practice of Marian devotion: the Rosary makes up for all of them, and it does not make up for any of them. b) The five First Saturdays, to which Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima has attached a most precious promise analogous to that of the First Fridays in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Here are his own words, addressed to Lucia, the fortunate visionary of Fatima, on the eighth day of December 1921: "Look, my daughter, at my Heart, all pierced with thorns, which men pierce at every moment with their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console it and let it be known that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for eternal salvation, all those who on the first Saturdays of five consecutive months go to confession, receive Holy Communion, recite the third part of the Rosary and keep me company for a quarter of an hour meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of giving me reparation"). For the conversion of sinners and the final perseverance of the just, the devotion of the Three Hail Marys is also very effective, as has been proven many times in practice. c) The Hail Mary and the Angelus, whose pious and frequent recitation fills Mary with joy by reminding her of the scene of the Annunciation and her supreme title of Mother of God; the Litany of Laurel, in which the titles and greatness of Mary are recited while imploring her protection; the Salve, Regina, a beautiful prayer, full of softness and tenderness; the Sub tuum praesidium and the O Domina mea, formulas that exude love, trust and total surrender to Mary; the Memorare, by St. Bernard, which undoubtedly recreates Mary's ears because of the unwavering trust in her maternal mercy that we show her with her; and, above all, the Magnificat, by St. Bernard, which, without a doubt, recreates Mary's ears because of the unwavering trust in her maternal mercy that we show her with her; St. Bernard's Memorare, which undoubtedly recreates Mary's ears because of the unshakable trust in her maternal mercy that we manifest to her; and, above all, the Magnificat, a sublime canticle that the Holy Spirit made burst forth from Mary's heart to magnify the marvels that the Most High performed in her "because he looked upon the humility and littleness of his handmaid". d) The Office of the Blessed Virgin, a true breviary for souls in love with Mary, in which her greatness is extolled using the incomparable formulas of the official liturgy of the Church. e) The scapular and the medal of Our Lady, which are like a protective shield and a pledge of a special blessing of Mary for 10 From the Official Handbook of the Pilgrim of Fatima, edited by order of the Bishop of Leiria, May 13, 1939. C. 3 . MARY AND OUR SANCTIFICATION 77 all those who know how to wear them in a spirit of filial devotion and to better imitate her virtues. Among the scapulars stands out for its antiquity and veneration that of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, to which Mary linked a promise of salvation, which, like that of the first five Saturdays, will not obtain those who seek to rely on it to live peacefully in sin; and among the medals has been imposed, mainly, throughout the Catholic world the so-called Miraculous, which inspired the Blessed Virgin to the humble daughter of Charity St. Catherine Laboure. APPENDIX: HOLY SLAVERY AND MARIAN FILIAL PIETY Let us say a few words about two excellent methods of Marian life that have been proposed to the faithful with the blessing and encouragement of the Holy Church: holy Marian slavery and Marian filial piety. A) Holy Marian slavery 11 27. It is a method of sanctification proposed by St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort on the basis of a total surrender to Mary. "It consists - explains the Saint - in giving oneself entirely, as a slave, to Mary and to Jesus for her: and, furthermore, in doing all things for Mary, with Mary, in Mary and for Mary. This devotion essentially involves two things: a) an act of total surrender or perfect consecration to Mary, which is the radical and most important act of all, by virtue of which it begins for the soul as a new state (like the religious on the day of his profession); and b) striving to live henceforth in conformity with the demands of this total surrender, seeking in all things union with Mary; that is, doing everything through, with, in and for Mary, in order to unite ourselves more intimately to Jesus through her. Here is how the Saint explains the scope of this act, which, except for the vow and its consequences, is very similar to the heroic act in favor of the souls in purgatory: "It is necessary to choose an appointed day to give oneself, to consecrate oneself and to sacrifice oneself; and this must be voluntarily and out of love, without shrinking, entirely and without any reserve: body and soul, external goods and fortune, such as house, family, income; interior goods of the soul, namely: its merits, graces, virtues and satisfactions. 11 Cf. Saint Louis Marie Gkignion df. Monfort, works cited, and the precious study by Lhoumeau, La vie spirituelle a l'tcole de Saint f-otiis-Marie Crismo/! de híunlfurl, where this system of Marian spirituality is amply expounded. 12 Cf. The Secret of Mary p.a." n.28 p.279 (ed. BAC). P. I. THE END It is necessary to note here that with this devotion the soul is immolated to Jesus through Mary as a sacrifice, which is not required in any religious order, of all that the soul most appreciates and of the right that each one has to dispose at will of the value of all his prayers and satisfactions; so that everything is left at the disposal of the Blessed Virgin, who will apply it at her will for the greater glory of God, which she alone perfectly knows. All the satisfactory and impetratory value of good works is left at her disposal; so that, after the oblation that has been made of them, even without any vow, one is no longer the owner of anything that is good; the Blessed Virgin can apply it either to a soul in purgatory to relieve or free it, or to a poor sinner to convert him. We also place our merits with this devotion in the hands of the Blessed Virgin; but it is so that she may keep, embellish and increase them for us, since neither the merits of sanctifying grace nor those of glory can be communicated to one another. Give us, however, all our prayers and good works, in so far as they are satisfactory and impetratory, so that he may distribute and apply them to whom he pleases. And if, after being thus consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, we wish to relieve some soul from purgatory, to save some sinner, to support some of our friends by our prayers, mortifications, alms or sacrifices, we must humbly ask her for it and be ready to do what she determines, even if we do not know it, well persuaded that the value of our actions, administered by the very hands that God uses to distribute his graces and gifts to us, cannot but be applied to the greater glory of his own. I have said that this devotion consisted in giving oneself to Mary as a slave; and it is to be noted that there are three kinds of slavery. The first is slavery by nature; good and bad are thus servants of God. The second is forced slavery; demons and the damned are thus slaves of God. The third is slavery of love and voluntary slavery; and with this we must consecrate ourselves to God through Mary in the most perfect way that a creature can consecrate himself to his Creator. As for the second essential element - life of intimate union with Mary - he who has given himself to her as a slave must do everything: Through Mary: that is, we must always go to Our Lord through Mary, never daring to appear before Him without being accompanied by His Mother, who is also our Mother. With Mary: that is, taking the Virgin as the ultimate model of all that is to be done. In Mary: that is, by entering and dwelling in Mary's Heart, in her intentions and feelings, in such a way that she is like our atmosphere, our world, the air in which we live and breathe. For Mary: not seeking ourselves in anything, but doing everything for the glory of Mary, as the proximate end, and through her, for the honor and glory of God, as the ultimate and absolute end. As can be seen, it is a very excellent and heroic act, of deep transcendence and repercussion in our whole spiritual life, to which it traces a very concrete, eminently morning direction. 13 The Secret of Mary p. 2. to n. 29-32 p. 279-80 (ed. BAC. 279-80 (BAC ed.). C. MARY AND OUR SANCTIFICATION 79 and determined. For the same reason, it should not be done too lightly or too quickly, but after mature reflection and in agreement with the spiritual director. For, although it is true that it does not carry with it a true vow that obliges its fulfillment by the virtue of religion, it would be unserious and irreverent to easily go back on one's word or to live as if one had not made such a consecration or had not given it the profound meaning that it has. But those who, moved by a special attraction of the Holy Spirit, and with the express authorization of their spiritual director, decide to make this total surrender to Mary, with all its immense repercussions, do not doubt for an instant that - as St. Louis admirably explains - the Blessed Virgin will love them with particular predilection, she will provide them with splendor and largesse with all that they need in soul and body, she will guide them with a firm hand along the paths of holiness, she will defend and protect them against the dangers and snares of their enemies, she will intercede continually for them before her divine Son and will assure them of their perseverance, a pledge and guarantee of their eternal happiness. B) Marian filial piety 15 27 bis. Entirely parallel and similar to the method of Marian slavery just described, but very different in the way of approaching the life of total consecration to Mary, there is the method of Marian filial piety, propagated mainly, although not exclusively, by the Marianists in the footsteps of their founder, Father William Joseph Chaminade. Almost everything we have just said about holy Marian slavery applies to the current of filial piety, to the point that "in making his own, on a certain occasion, an act of consecration to Mary by Father Gallifet, a slave author, Father Chaminade kept the entire text of the prayer, but carefully replaced the expression slave with that of son" 16 . However, it seems to us that it would not have grasped the true meaning of Marian filial piety if it were limited exclusively to this change of terminology or interior attitude. It is not only a matter of loving Mary as a son, of imitating her as a son, of living continually for her, with her, in her and for her as a son, etc. Undoubtedly all that is required to be and live as an authentic son of Mary. But the Marian filial piety movement aspires to much more than all that. It wants to love Mary, not with our own heart, which will always be too small and disproportionate, even if we place it at Mary's feet in its fullest tension. 14 True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin c.6 a. 2 p. 550-56 (BAC ed.). 1 5 On this magnificent form of Marian piety, one can read fruitfully the works of the French Marianist Neubert Mi ideal, Jesús, Hijo de María (3.* ed. Carabanchel Alto, 1949); La devoción a Marta (Madrid 1950); Notre Mere, pour la mieux conmítre (ed. X. Mappus, 1941), etc.; and that of the Spanish Marianists Bernardo Curva, Doctrina y vida mariams (Madrid 1953), and Félix Fernández, La piedad filial mariana (Madrid 1953), and Félix Fernández, La devoción a Marta (Madrid 1953). and that of the Spanish Marianists Bernardo Curva, Doctrina y vida mariams (Madrid 1953), and Félix Fernández, La piedad filial mariana (Madrid 1954). Felix Fernandez, S.M., o.c., p.129. P. I. FL FIN but with the very heart of her divine Son Jesus. This is neither an illusion nor a chimera, if we bear in mind that Christ really dwells through faith in our hearts (Eph. 3:17), and that, as we have explained above, every soul in grace continually receives his vital influence as a member of his Mystical Body, of which he is the divine Head. Nothing, therefore, prevents us from uniting ourselves intimately to the filial sentiments of Jesus Christ towards his Mother so that, as we love Mary, it is Christ himself who loves her in us. Thus filial Marian piety tends first of all to identify us more and more with Christ, until we are transformed into him and can exclaim in all truth: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me; it is no longer I who love Mary, but Christ who loves her in me. In this way, so to speak, we will complete in ourselves what is lacking in the filial love of Jesus for Mary in relation to the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church (cf. Col. 1:24). The dogmatic foundations of this splendid method of Marian piety are mainly these three; a) The spiritual motherhood of Mary over all of us. b) The mystery of our incorporation into Christ by grace and as members of his Mystical Body. c) The obligation to imitate Jesus as the Son of Mary. We must aspire to have in our hearts the same sentiments that Jesus Christ had in his heart CPh.il. 2,5), with which our Marian piety will be nothing more than a participation and extension of the filial piety of Jesus towards his Most Holy Mother; and since Jesus became the Son of Mary to save humanity, we must conclude that filial Marian piety must be eminently apostolic. Mary, Mary duce! must be the battle cry of the true son of Mary. We cannot here dwell at length on other very beautiful features of this method of Marian spirituality, which the Church herself seems to propose to all Christians when she says in the same Canon Code that "all the faithful should honor the Blessed Virgin Mary with filial devotion" (can. 1276). It would be a mistake, however, to try to claim for a particular form of Marian devotion the exclusive right or monopoly over all others. It is necessary to respect the particular inclination of each soul, under the direct prompting of the Holy Spirit, who does not lead everyone along the same path. The soul must follow the special attraction of grace and follow the method of Marian piety that is most effective for her in order to detach herself completely from herself and give herself totally to Mary under the title of Queen of heaven and earth or the sweetest of Mother of Jesus and our Mother. PART TWO Fundamental principles of the leology of perfection 28. Having already studied in the first part of our work the proximate and remote end of the Christian life, having specified the fundamental elements of our configuration to Christ and having pointed out the role that corresponds to Mary in the great enterprise of our sanctification, it is now necessary to examine the fundamental principles of the Theology of Christian perfection. This will constitute the second part of our work, which will consist of the following chapters: 1. Nature and organism of supernatural life. 2. The development of the supernatural organism. 3. Christian perfection. 4. Nature of Mysticism. 5. Relations between perfection and Mysticism. CHAPTER I Nature and organism of supernatural life Preliminary notions Before beginning the study of our supernatural organism, it is convenient to take into account certain elementary notions about the natural and supernatural life of man. 1. The natural life of man 29. Man is a mysterious being composed of body and soul, of matter and spirit, intimately associated to form a single nature and a single person. It has been said of him with c. 1 . NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE 82 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES justice that is a small world, a microcosm, an admirable synthesis of the entire creation. "Man," says St. Gregory beautifully, "has something of all other creatures; for he has being like the stones, life like the trees, sensibility like the animals, and intelligence like the angels." '' Man - in fact - exists like inanimate beings; he is nourished, grows and reproduces like plants; like the animal, he knows sensible objects, is directed toward them by the sensitive appetite, with its emotions and passions, and moves with immanent and spontaneous movement; like the angel - finally - , but to a lesser degree and in a different way, he knows intellectually the suprasensible being under the reason of true, and his will is directed toward it under the concept of rational good. The mechanism and functioning of all these vital elements in their threefold vegetative, sensitive and rational manifestation constitutes the natural life of man. These three manifestations of his natural life are not superimposed or unrelated to each other, but rather they interpenetrate, coordinate and complement each other in order to concur to the same end, which is none other than the natural perfection of every man. 2. Supernatural life There is no element in man's nature that demands or postulates, proximately or remotely, the supernatural order. The elevation to this order is a totally gratuitous favor of God, which infinitely surpasses and transcends the demands of nature 1 2 . There is, however, a close analogy between the natural and supernatural orders. For grace does not come to destroy nature or to place itself on the margins of nature, but precisely to perfect and elevate it. The supernatural order constitutes for man a true life, with an organism similar to that of natural life. For just as in the natural order we can distinguish in the life of man four fundamental elements, namely, the subject, the formal principle of his life, his powers, and his operations, so we find all these elements in the supernatural organism. The subject is the soul; the formal principle of its supernatural life is sanctifying grace; the powers are the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the operations are the acts of those virtues and gifts. With this we have already outlined in its fundamental lines the path that we are going to follow in this chapter. Let us examine each of the following questions separately: 1) The formal principle of our supernatural life. 2) Supernatural powers. 3) The current graces. 4) The indwelling of the Trinity in the soul. With this we will have examined all the essential elements of our supernatural organism in its double static and dynamic aspect. ARTICLE 1 The formal principle of our supernatural life I. Preliminary Notions of Psychology 31. There is no need here for more than a few brief notions of psychology concerning the human soul, which is the subject in which our supernatural life is rooted. The human soul is a spiritual substance which in its being and action is independent of matter; although, while it remains united to the body, it makes use of the bodily organs for the exercise of certain functions. However, the soul is not a complete substance, nor can it properly be called a "person". The self, the person, is neither the body alone nor the soul alone, but the composite that results from the substantial union between the two. We know not only from reason and sound philosophy 3 , but even from the solemn dogmatic declaration of the Church 4 , that the soul is the substantial form of the body. By virtue of this substantial information, man has the being of man, of animal, of living being, of body, of substance, and of being. Consequently, the soul gives man the whole essential degree of perfection and, moreover, communicates to the body the act of being with which it exists 5 . The soul is not immediately operative 6 . As the substance that it is, it is given to us in the order of being, not in the order of operation. Like every substance, it needs in order to operate powers or faculties - the understanding and the will - which emanate from the essence of the soul as from its own root 7 , although they are really distinguished from it and mutually from each other 8 . Such is the subject on which our supernatural life rests and rests. Grace, which is the formal principle of it, resides in the very essence of our soul in a static way. The virtues and gifts, which are the supernatural dynamic element, reside in the powers or faculties precisely in order to elevate them also to the supernatural order. Nothing more is needed at the moment. 3 Cf.1,76,1. 4 It was expressly defined by the Council of Vienna; cf. Denz. 481. 5 Thesis thom. F.s one of the 24 Thomistic theses proposed by the Sacred Congregation of Studies as completely safe norms of direction (cf. AAS 6.383a"). 6 Cf. 1,77, x. i Cf. 1,77,6. "Cf. 1:77:1-3. 1 St. Greoorio, Hom. 29 super Evans: ML 76,1214. 2 Cf. Denz. 0.1001-1007,1009,1021,1023a. ,1079,1671a. P, II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE DF. SUPERNATURAL LIFE 11. The formal principle itself The formal principle of all our supernatural life is sanctifying grace. Sovereign, yet accidental participation in the very nature of God, by infusing itself into our soul, it elevates us to the rank of his children and heirs of glory. "We are children of God," exclaimed St. Paul; "and, being children, we are also heirs: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. And in his magnificent sermon at the Areopagus he insists that we are of the race of God: Being therefore the offspring of God .... 10 11 * . This same truth is emphasized by St. Thomas when, commenting on St. John's expression "ex Deo nati sunt", he writes: "This generation, because it is of God, makes us children of God". We are going to examine the nature of grace, the subject in which it is rooted and the effects it produces in the soul. These are the three fundamental questions for our object. I. NATURE OF SANCTIFYING GRACE 32. Grace can be defined by saying that it is a supernatural quality inherent in our soul that gives us a physical and formal - though analogous and accidental - participation in the very nature of God under his own reason of deity. Let us examine the elements of this definition. 1) It is a quality - Quality, in philosophy, is "a dispositional accident of substance". But four species of qualities are commonly distinguished. If they dispose the substance good or bad in itself, we have habit and disposition; if they dispose it in order to action, they are called potency and impotence; in order to reception they are passion and passible quality, and in order to quantity they are nothing other than form and figure. It is obvious that sanctifying grace cannot belong to any of the last three species of quality, since it is not directly ordered to operation, like potency and impotence, nor is it a corporeal accident, like passion, passible quality, form and figure. It must therefore belong - at least reductively - to the first genus of quality; and, within it, to habit, not to simple disposition, since it is a permanent and hardly movable quality. 2) Supernatural: It is evident. Grace is the formal principle of our supernatural life, that which elevates and constitutes us in that order. Insofar as it is supernatural, it is a thousand times above all natural things, transcending and surpassing all nature and making us enter the sphere of the divine and uncreated. St. Thomas was able to write that the smallest participation of sanctifying grace, considered in a single individual, surpasses and transcends the natural good of the whole universe 12. 9 Rom. 8:16-17. 1 11 Act. 17, ¡9. 11 S.Thom., Comment. in Evang. fo. 1,1:1. 1 2 "Bonum gratiae unius maius est quam bonum naturae totius universi" (1-11,113,9 ad 2). 3) Inherent to our soul. - The Protestants denied it with their theory of justification by extrinsic imputation of the merits of Christ; but it is a truth of faith defined by the Council of Trent I3 . St. Thomas reasons it very profoundly, basing himself on a sublime theological principle: "the love of God infuses and creates goodness in things" I4 . In this principle lies the main difference that distinguishes human love from divine love. In us, love is born of the good object, real or apparent, while God creates the goodness of the object by the mere fact of loving it. And since love takes pleasure in that which resembles it, hence grace, by which God loves us with the love of a friend, elevates us in a certain way to his rank, deifies us by a formal participation in his own divine nature: "It is necessary that God alone deify by communicating his divine nature by a certain participation of likeness. "15 More briefly: God loves with absolute supernatural love the man who is pleasing and dear to him; but since God's love is the cause of what he loves, it follows that he must produce, in the man who is thus pleasing to him, the reason for that supernatural goodness, that is, grace 16 , 4) That it gives us a physical and formal - though analogous and accidental - participation in the very nature of God. - Participation is nothing other than the assimilation and inadequate expression in an inferior thing of some perfection existing in a superior thing. "For," says St. Thomas in this regard, "that which is wholly some certain thing, does not participate in it, but is identified with it. But that which is not wholly that thing, but has something of it, is properly said to participate in it. "17 Participation may be moral or physical. Physical participation is subdivided into virtual and formal; and formal participation can be univocal or analogous. These are known concepts that do not need to be explained 18 . Taking all these elements into account, we say that sanctifying grace gives us a physical and formal, though analogous and accidental, participation in the divine nature. That she makes us partakers of the divine nature is a truth that is expressly stated in Sacred Scripture. The Apostle Peter says: "And he bestowed on us precious and rich promises to make us partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). It is impossible to speak more clearly or more explicitly. This is confirmed by the liturgy of the Church when she sings in the preface of the Ascension, referring to Christ: "He ascended into heaven to make us partakers of his divinity". 1 2 "If anyone says that men are justified only by the imputation of Christ's righteousness or by the remission of sins alone, to the exclusion of the grace and charity which is diffused by the Holy Spirit into their hearts and adheres to them, or that the grace by which we are justified is only the favor or benevolence of God, let him be anathema" (Denz. 821). 14 1 , 20 , 2 . >5 I-II.i ia.r. 16 I-II,no,r; cf. De veritate q.27 a.i. 17 Metaphys. I lect.io. 1 8 However, for the sake of the uninitiated in philosophy, let us give some clarifying examples. Each of the members of a corporation participates morally in its good or bad reputation. The moon physically participates in the light of the sun. The flowers and fruits are virtually contained in the tree that is to produce them, and even in the seed of the same. Animality is formally participated in by man and brute (both are animals, though they differ specifically from each other). If formal participation is said or predicated of all participating subjects in the same and unique way (as humanity is said of all men in the same sense) we have a univocal participation; if, on the contrary, it is predicated of various subjects in a different or proportional way (as being is predicated of God, of the angel, of man, of animals, plants and stones, but in a different way or in a different proportion) we have an analogous participation. 86 f. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES With what persuasive eloquence the great St. Leo the Great tries to instill this in the souls of his listeners: "Know, Christian, your dignity and, having become a partaker of the divine nature, do not want to return to the vileness of your former condition" 19 , 33. But it is necessary to examine here the way in which sanctifying grace participates in the divine nature. God is not similar to creatures, since He and He alone is being by essence, all creatures being beings by participation. But creatures are, nevertheless, in some way similar to God; for since every agent produces something similar to itself, it is necessary that in the effect there be the similarity of the agent form 20. However, creatures cannot be said to be similar to God by communication in form according to the same reason of genus and species, but only according to a certain analogy, inasmuch as God is being by essence, and creatures by participation 21, Now then: there are three kinds of creatures that analogically imitate God and are in some way similar to him! a) Irrational creatures. - They partake of the divine perfection in so far as they have being, and this remote resemblance is called vestige; for just as by the vestige or impression of the foot one can trace, even ifnpetfectly, the author of that huiia, so by the creatures one can trace the Creator. In this sense, it is said that irrational creatures are like the footprint, the trace, the vestige of the Creator 22. b) Rational creatures, insofar as they are endowed with intelligence, imitate and represent the perfections of God in a more express and determined manner; and for this reason they are called the natural image of God. c) Souls in grace, inasmuch as they are united to God with the love of Friendship, imitate Him in a much more perfect way, and for this reason they are properly called and are properly called the supernatural image of God. Does this image of God as the author of the supernatural order require, in order to be perfect, a true physical and formal participation in the very nature of God? Undoubtedly it does. Apart from the fact that this is a precious datum that immediately follows from revelation, here are the theological reasons that support it; 1. a The operations proper to some higher nature cannot become connatural to a lower nature without the latter participating in the former in some way, since the effect can never be superior to its cause and the operation follows the being. But God's own operations - at least some of them, such as beatific vision, beatific love, etc. - become in some way connatural to man through grace. Therefore it is evident that man participates in some way by grace in the very nature of God physically and formally. 2. a From grace flows an inclination to God as he is in himself. Now every inclination is founded and rooted in some nature and manifests its condition. But an inclination to the divine order in itself cannot be founded in a nature of a lower order; therefore, it must be founded in a divine nature, "saltem participative". And this participation must be physical and formal, since physically and formally that inclination springs from it. 19 St. Leo the Great, Serm. 21 c.3: ML 34,192. 20 Necease est quod ¡n effectu sit similitudo formae agentis. (1,4,3), 21 1,4,3 ad 3. 22 S.Thom., In } Sent. d.3 q.2 a.i". C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 87 3. a Because of the very nature of the infused virtues. The infused virtues - as we shall see later - are like the powers or faculties for supernatural operation. But since operation follows being, a supernatural operation that springs vitally from the soul presupposes in it the presence of a supernatural nature, which can be nothing other than a physical and formal participation in the very nature of God. And let it not be said that, by means of actual grace, a sinner can perform a supernatural act without the necessity of putting habitual grace into his soul. This objection does not invalidate our argument, since in it we speak of an act springing from the soul in a connatural way and without violence, not of the violent thrust to the second act without passing through the habitual proximate dispositions. We have yet to examine in what sense we say that the participation in the divine nature through grace, although physical and formal, is nevertheless analogous and accidental. a) Analogous participation. - It means that the divine nature is not communicated to us univocally, as the Father transmits it to his Son by way of eternal natural generation or as in Christ humanity subsists in the divinity. Man by grace becomes God neither by natural generation, nor by hypostatic or personal union, nor by a pantheistic dissolution of our substance in the divine, but by an analogical participation, by virtue of which what exists in God in an infinite way is participated in by the soul in a limited or finite degree. Iron put in the forge retains its iron nature and takes on only the properties of fire; the mirror illuminated by the sun does not acquire the nature of the sun, but reflects its same radiance. In this way, says St. Leo, "the original dignity of our race lies in the fact that the form of divine goodness shines in us as in a shining mirror. b) Accidental participation. - The reason, very clear, is given by St. Thomas in the following words: "Every substance constitutes either the very nature of the object of which it is a substance, or at least a part of this nature. .... Now, since grace is above human nature, it cannot possibly be a substance or substantial form of the soul, but only an accidental or superadded form. In fact, what is substantial in God is communicated accidentally to the soul that participates in the divine goodness" 24 . And this accidental communication of what is substantial in God is precisely grace. On the other hand, the Tridentine Council expressly teaches - as we have already seen - that habitual grace is inherent in the heart of man 2S . Now then: what is inherent in another is not substance, but accident, as the most elementary philosophy teaches. Nor does this in any way diminish the dignity of grace with respect to natural substances, since, being a supernatural accident, it surpasses and transcends by its own essence, infinitely, all natural substances, whether created or creatable. Let us not forget the words of St. Thomas quoted above: "Bonum gratiae unius, maius est quam bonum naturae totius universi" 2 ". 23 Serm. 12 (al. 11) of ieiunio c.i: ML 54,168. 24 I-II,no,2 ad 2. 25 Denz. 821. 26 1-11,113,9 ad 2. 8a P. II. FTTNNAMENTAtfiS PRINCIPLES 34. 5) Under his own reason of deity. - Not all theologians admit this doctrine, but it is undoubtedly that of the best interpreters of the Thomistic school, such as Cayetano, Ledesma, Martínez del Prado, Juan Vicente, etc. Here are the arguments on which they are mainly based. i. Because grace is - as we have already said - the connatural principle of operations that reach God himself under the most formal reason of deity; therefore grace, the principle of these operations, must participate in the divine nature precisely insofar as it is divine, that is, under the most formal reason of deity. The antecedent is indisputable. All supernatural knowledge and love has as its object God himself under his own mode of deity. Such is the case of faith, of charity, of the beatific vision: they fall directly upon God as he is in himself, whether in the midst of the shadows of faith or in the clear facial vision. The consequence is an inevitable consequence of grace being the radical principle of the theological virtues. 2. 0 For otherwise the supernatural participation of the divine essence would not be distinguished from its merely natural participation. For the natural is also a formal participation in the divine nature, inasmuch as man, in the formal image of God, understands, loves, etc.; he is simply an intellectual nature like God is. Therefore, the divine, formally as such, must be the differentiating note between natural and supernatural participation. 3. The supernatural form - grace - ■ in order to transcend the whole of nature and constitute the supernatural, must be either God himself or something that touches God himself under the most formal reason of deity; only this transcends the whole of nature. Now grace is not God (as is evident); therefore it must necessarily be something that formally touches God under the very reason of deity, that is, a participation in the divine nature precisely insofar as it is divine. These arguments seem to us to be entirely convincing. Of course - as we have already indicated above - we must not think that through grace we participate in such a way in the divine nature that it is communicated to us in the same way that it is communicated from the first to the second person of the Blessed Trinity, or as in Christ humanity subsists in the divinity through the hypostatic union with the Word. Nor is there anything pantheistic about the communication of the divine nature by grace, since, in the final analysis, it is an analogical, accidental participation, of pure resemblance. St. Thomas has written the following words: "Grace is nothing other than a certain likeness that participates in the divine nature "21 . 21 Taking the intimate nature of God as an exemplar, sanctifying grace is a perfect imitation that is realized in us by divine infusion. By virtue of this divine infusion, prior to every operation of the intellect and will, a real, supernatural perfection is conferred on the soul physically and formally, which is found formally in God in a superior way. In this way a very special likeness to God is produced in the soul, which infinitely transcends that which it already had in the order of simple nature as the image of the natural God. By virtue of this intimate resemblance to the divine nature insofar as it is divine, man comes as it were to be related to God: he becomes his son by adoption and becomes part, so to speak, of the "family of God". Such is the sublime greatness to which divine grace elevates us. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 89 In order to understand less imperfectly this divine greatness, it is necessary to examine the admirable effects that grace produces in the justified soul; but before pointing them out, let us see where it resides, that is, what is the subject of grace. 2. SUBJECT OF GRACE 35. This question must be resolved in the light of the question that arises when we ask whether grace is distinguished from charity or not. Theologians who deny their real distinction 28 affirm that grace resides in the will as its proper subject. Those who, on the contrary, affirm the real distinction between grace and charity 29 place this virtue in the will, and sanctifying grace in the very essence of the soul. The latter is undoubtedly the true sentence. Here are the arguments that prove it: 1. The regeneration of man is effected by sanctifying grace. But regeneration affects the essence of the soul before it affects the powers, because the generative action ends in the essence. Therefore, grace resides in the essence of the soul 30 . 2. The spiritual accidents that give being adhere to the substance of the soul, and those that are ordered to operation are received in the powers. But sanctifying grace confers on the soul supernatural being, and charity is ordered to operation. Therefore, sanctifying grace must adhere to the very essence of the soul, and charity to one of its powers, that is, to the will. 3° "Every perfection of the powers of the soul has a reason for virtue" 31 . 31 But sanctifying grace has no reason for virtue, nor is it ordered by itself to action 32 . Therefore, sanctifying grace is not a perfection of the powers of the soul, but of its own essence. 3. EFFECTS OF SANCTIFYING GRACE Having examined, even if only briefly, the nature of grace and the subject in which it resides, let us now see what admirable effects it produces in the justified soul. This will give us a slightly less imperfect idea of the incalculable riches enclosed in this mysterious participation in the very nature of God. The first effect of sanctifying grace is to give us that participation in the divine nature of which we have already spoken. This is the root and foundation of all the other effects proceeding from grace. 28 Such are, among others, Pedro Lombardo, Enrique de Gante, Escoto, Durando, Baron and Biel, 29 St. Thomas (I-II,itó ,3 séd contra; ni), Egidio Romano, Argentina, Capréolo, Medina, Soto, Suárez, Valencia, Salmanticenses and most modern theologians. 30 I-II,iio ,4 sed contra. 31 T-TT,t 10.4 c. III, fia, 1; r, II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Among these effects, however, the three mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans occupy a place of preference because of their sovereign transcendence: "For you did not receive the spirit of servanthood to fall into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption by which we cry out, 'Abba, Father,' and the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:15-17). Based on this sublime Pauline text, we will point out the three main effects that sanctifying grace produces in our souls. 36. i. Grace makes us truly adopted sons of God. - To be a father it is necessary to transmit one's own specific nature to another being. The artist who makes a statue is not the father of that inanimate work, but only the author. On the other hand, the authors of our days are truly our fathers in the natural order, because they really transmitted to us, by way of generation, their own human nature. Is it this natural sonship of God that is communicated to us by sanctifying grace? Not at all. God the Father has only one Son, according to nature: the Eternal Word. To him alone does he eternally transfer, by an ineffable intellectual generation, the divine nature in all its infinite fullness. By virtue of this natural generation, the second person of the Blessed Trinity possesses the same divine essence as the Father; He is God exactly as He is. Therefore, Christ, whose human nature is hypostatically united to the person of the Word, is not an adopted son of God, but a natural son in all the strictness of the word 33 . Our divine filiation through grace is of a very different nature. It is not a natural filiation, but an adoptive filiation. But it is necessary to really understand this truth in order not to form a rickety and dwarfed idea of its sublime greatness. Let us explain it a little. Adoption consists in the gratuitous admission of a stranger into a family, which considers him henceforth as a son and entitles him to inherit property. Human adoption requires three conditions: a) On the part of the subject, human nature, because a similarity of nature with the adoptive parent is required. No one can adopt a statue or an animal. b) On the part of the adopter, a free love and free choice. No one has the right to be adopted and, by the same token, no one has the obligation to adopt. c) On the part of the assets, it is necessary to have a real right to the inheritance of the adoptive parent; otherwise, the adoption would be purely illusory and fictitious. Now sanctifying grace confers on us a divine adoption which, fully realizing all these conditions, far exceeds and surpasses them. For purely human or legal adoptions come to be reduced, in the last analysis, to a juridical fiction, totally extrinsic to the nature of the adoptee, which confers upon him - it is true - before human society the rights of children, but without instilling in him the blood of the family, without producing in his human nature and personality any 33 1 , 27 , 2 , 111,23,4. c. 1. nature df. supernatural life 91 no intrinsic immutation. On the other hand, in adopting us as his children, the Triune God infuses us with sanctifying grace, which gives us, as we have seen, a mysterious but very real and formal participation in his own divine nature. It is a question of an intrinsic adoption, which physically and formally places in our souls a divine reality, which circulates (using metaphorical language that involves a sublime reality) the very blood of God in the most intimate part of our souls. By virtue of this divine grafting, the soul becomes a participant in the very life of God. It is a true generation, a spiritual birth that imitates natural generation and that recalls, analogically, the eternal generation of the Word of God. In a word: as the Evangelist John expressly says, sanctifying grace does not merely give us the right to be called children of God, but makes us such in reality: "Videte qualem caritatem dedit nobis Pater, ut filii Dei nominemur et simus. 35 An unbelievable marvel that would seem incredible if it were not expressly stated in divine revelation! 37. Z.° It makes us truly heirs of God. - This is an inevitable consequence of our adoptive divine filiation. St. Paul expressly says: "If children, then heirs" (Rom. 8:17), but how different is the adoptive filiation of grace from purely human or legal adoptions! Among men, children inherit only when the father dies, and the lesser the inheritance, the greater the number of heirs. But our Father will live forever, and with Him we will possess such an inheritance that, in spite of the number of the participants, it will never experience any diminution or diminution. For this inheritance, at least in the principal of its aspects, is rigorously infinite. It is God himself, one in essence and triune in persons, who is the principal fruitful object of our eternal inheritance as adopted children. Your reward will be very great: et merces tua magna nimis 36 , God said to Abraham and repeats to every soul in grace. The beatific vision and the fruitive joy of God which it brings with it: such is the principal part of the inheritance which belongs, by grace, to the adopted sons of God. After this, all the riches of the divinity will be communicated to them, all that constitutes the very happiness of God and gives him endless joy: they are the infinite, inexhaustible perfections of the divinity. Finally, God will place at our disposal all his external goods: his honor, his glory, his dominions, his kingship. All this will provide the soul with an inexplicable happiness and joy, which will fulfill fully, in overflowing abundance, all its aspirations and longings. And all this the soul will receive as an inheritance due by way of righteousness. Grace is entirely gratuitous; but once possessed it gives us the capacity to merit heaven by way of righteousness. For the operation follows the nature of being, and the value of a work comes first of all from the dignity of the one who performs it; and, grace being a divine form inherent in the justified soul, any supernatural action of which grace is the root and foundation, says an intrinsic relation to glory and carries with it the demand for it. There is a perfect parallelism between grace and glory. They are both situated on the same plane, they are substantially one and the same life. There is only a difference of degree between them: it is the same life in the initial state or in the consummated state. The child does not differ specifically from the mature man: he is an adult in germ. That .same 34 Cf. 1:45,6; 111:23,2. 3! t lo. 3,1. 36 Gen. 15,1, 92 P. IT. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES happens with grace and with glory. This is why St. Thomas was able to write these profound words: "grace is nothing other than a beginning clc " glory in us. 38. 3. 0 It makes us brothers of Christ and co-heirs with Him. - It is the third affirmation of St. Paul in the text of the Epistle to the Romans quoted above. And this relationship is immediately derived from the other two preceding ones. For, as St. Augustine says, "he who says 'ac l re ours' to the Father of Christ, what does he say to Christ but 'our brother'?" 38 By the very fact that grace communicates to us a participation in the divine life that Christ possesses in all its fullness, we must necessarily become his brothers and sisters. He willed to become our brother according to humanity in order to make us his brothers according to divinity: "Ut nos ivinitatis suae tribueret esse participes" 39 God predestined us, says St. Paul, "to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" 40 . Certainly we are not brothers of Christ according to nature, nor are we sons of God in the same way that He is. Christ is the firstborn among his brethren, but also the only-begotten Son of the Father. In the order of nature He is the only Son; but in the order of adoption and grace He is our elder brother, as well as our Head and the cause of our health. For this reason the Father deigns to look upon us as if we were one with his Son. He loves us as Himself, considers Him as our brother and confers on us a title to His own inheritance. We are co-heirs of Christ. -1 has a natural right to the divine inheritance, since he is the Son, "whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world" 41 . Now ien. "It was fitting that He for whom and by whom are all things, who purposed to bring many sons to glory, should perfect by tribulations the Author of their salvation. For all, both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified, come from one, and therefore he is not ashamed of his brethren, saying: I will declare your name to my brethren, I will praise you in the midst of the assembly" 42 . For this reason, those brothers of Christ will share with Him the love and the inheritance of the heavenly Father. God n ° S P , mo< ^ e * e * a do on Christ: we are with Him the children of the same Father who is in heaven. Ultimately, everything will end up by fulfilling the same desire of Christ: that we may be one with Him, as He is one with the heavenly Father. 43 Divine realities that should make us mad with gratitude and love! These three are the main effects of grace, but not the only ones. Here are some more: 39- 4. 0 He gives us supernatural life. - This physical participation and for , 1 <4e the very nature of God - which constitutes the very essence , e , a grace - exceeds and infinitely transcends the being and the demands of ,° a created or creatable, human or angelic nature. With it, the man is elevated, no longer above the plane of the human, but even above the angelic nature itself. It enters into the plane of the divine, it becomes as of the family 3 8 , h,34,3 ad a. 3" pj ?- f-3: ML 35,1563¿, re ^ aCÍO of the Ascension. " Rom. 8,2". 'I Hebr. ,, 2 ~ Hebr. 2,10-12. * lo. 17,21-24. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE of God, he begins to live in a divine way. Grace, therefore, has communicated to him a new superadded life, infinitely superior to that of nature: a supernatural life. 40. 5. 0 It makes us righteous and pleasing to God. - Physical participation as it is in the very nature of God, grace necessarily gives us a participation in the divine justice and holiness, since all the attributes of God are really identified with his own divine essence. Therefore, sanctifying grace is absolutely incompatible with mortal sin, which supposes precisely the deprivation of that justice and holiness. Therefore, grace makes us pleasing and pleasing to God, as we contemplate in ourselves an irradiation of his beauty, a radiance of his own holiness. The Council of Trent taught it beautifully when it said that the justification of the sinner by sanctifying grace "is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and interior renewal of man by the voluntary reception of grace and gifts, by which man becomes just from being unjust, and from being an enemy, a friend". And a little further on he adds that the only formal cause of this justification "is the righteousness of God, not that which makes Him righteous, but that which makes us righteous; that is, that which, given by Him, renews us interiorly and causes us not only to be reputed as righteous, but to be called such and to be such in truth. 41. 6 .° It gives us the capacity for supernatural merit. - Without grace, the most heroic natural works would have absolutely no value in order to eternal life.45 A man deprived of grace is a corpse in the supernatural order. A man deprived of grace is a corpse in the supernatural order, and the dead can merit nothing. Supernatural merit radically supposes the possession of supernatural life. This principle is of incalculable scope in practical life. How much pain, how much suffering that could have an extraordinary value in order to eternal life is completely sterile and useless because it affects a soul deprived of sanctifying grace! As long as man is in mortal sin, he is radically incapable of meriting absolutely nothing in the supernatural order. 42. 7. 0 It unites us intimately with God. - Already united with God in the simple natural order by the divine conserving action, which makes him truly present in all beings by essence, presence and power,46 sanctifying grace comes to increase this union with God to an unspeakable degree and to transform and elevate it to another infinitely superior plane. By virtue of this new union, God is really present in the justified soul as a friend (no longer only as Creator and Preserver), establishing a mutual current of love and friendship between the soul and God and a kind of mutual transfusion of lives: "God is charity, and he who lives in charity abides in God and God in him" 47 . It is impossible to imagine a more intimate union with God apart from the personal or hypostatic union, which is proper and exclusive to Christ. The last degrees of development that grace can attain in this life, the same indissoluble union that precedes the beatific vision in the homeland, are not substantially different from 44 Denz. 79g. 44 Cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-3. Vide 1-11,114,2. 46 1, 8,1-3. 47 1 lo. 4,16. P. tt. PRINCIPLES FtJÑTnMEtmtKS - C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE that which is established between God and a soul that has just been justified by the infusion of grace in its most minute degree. There is between the one and the other a difference of degree, but within the same substantial line. Such is the inconceivable height to which the simple possession of the state of grace raises us! 43. 8º It makes us living temples of the Most Holy Trinity. - It is a The consequence of all that we have been saying, which is expressly recorded in the divine revelation. Christ himself deigned to reveal to us the unsearchable mystery: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode in him. It is the uncreated reality, rigorously infinite, which inseparably carries with it sanctifying grace. In its proper place we will examine this divine indwelling with the breadth that its importance requires in our work as a whole "9 . Having examined the static element or formal principle of our supernatural life, which is sanctifying grace, in its intimate nature and its principal effects, let us now look at the dynamic element, that is, the supernatural powers or faculties, which are none other than the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. ARTICLE 2 Supernatural powers 44. We have already said that there is a perfect analogy between our natural organism and the supernatural. And just as in the former our soul is not immediately operative by its own essence, but makes use of its powers or faculties-understanding and will-which emanate from it as from its own root, something similar happens in our supernatural organism. Sanctifying grace, which constitutes as it were the essence of that supernatural organism, is not immediately operative, it is not a dynamic element, but a static one; it is not given to us in the order of operation, but in the order of being. The reason is that, although grace is in itself an accident, as we have already said, it nevertheless serves as a substance in the supernatural order, and therefore, like substances, it needs to avail itself of a kind of supernatural powers, which are infused by God into the soul together with grace itself, from which they are inseparable b And these supernatural powers are none other than the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This dynamic element of our supernatural life is so important in the theology of perfection that it is necessary to examine it with the breadth that the case requires 2 . 48 lo. 14,23. 49 Cf. n. 96-98. 1 With the exception of faith and hope, which can subsist without grace, albeit in a formless way, as we shall see below. 2 We take for granted here everything concerning the treatise on the virtues in genere and on the natural or acquired virtues. The reader will be able to find sufficient information on I. The infused virtues The first dynamic element of our supernatural life is the infused virtues. Here is the order we will follow in our study: 1. Existence and necessity. Nature. 3. Their distinction from natural or acquired ones. 4. General properties. 5. Fundamental division. At the end we will list, in the form of synoptic tables, all the moral virtues that St. Thomas points out in the Summa Theologica, grouping them around their principal one and briefly pointing out the function or office of each one of them. I. EXISTENCE AND NECESSITY 45. Its existence and necessity derive from the very nature of sanctifying grace. As a seed of God, grace is a divine germ that requires growth and development until it reaches its perfection. But since grace is not in itself immediately operative-although it is radically so, as the remote principle of all our supernatural operations-it follows that it demands and postulates immediate principles of operation that flow from its very essence and are inseparable from it. Otherwise, man would be elevated to the supernatural order only in the depths of his soul, but not in his powers or operative faculties. And even if, by no means, God could elevate our operations to the supernatural order by means of continuous actual graces, there would nevertheless be a real violence in human psychology because of the tremendous disproportion between the pure natural power and the supernatural act to be performed. Now: this violence cannot be reconciled with the gentleness of divine Providence, which moves all beings in harmony and in accord with their own nature. Hence the necessity of certain supernatural operative principles so that man may tend to the supernatural end in a perfectly connatural way, gently and without violence. Let us hear the Angelic Doctor expound this doctrine: "It is not fitting that God should provide on a lesser scale for those whom he loves to communicate supernatural good to them, than for creatures to whom he communicates only natural good. But to natural creatures he so provides, that he does not merely move them to natural acts, but he also Prümmer and Merkelbach, O.P., who interpret St. Thomas's approach very well. You can also consult our Moral Theology for the Laity (BAC, ítb). 9 ' P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES He gives them certain forms and virtues, which are the principle of acts, so that by them they may be inclined to that movement; and in this way, the acts to which they are moved by God become connatural and easy to those creatures. Much more, then, does he infuse into those whom he moves to achieve the supernatural and eternal good certain supernatural forms or qualities so that, according to them, they may be moved by him gently and readily to the attainment of that eternal good. Later, when examining in particular the theological and moral virtues, we will see the scriptural basis for the existence of the infused virtues and the different opinions of the ancient theologians on this matter. 2 Nature 46. They can be defined by saying that they are operative habits infused by God into the powers of the soul to dispose them to act according to the dictates of reason enlightened by faith. Let us examine the elements of the definition separately. Operative habits... - This is the generic element of the definition, common to all natural and supernatural virtues 4 . From the psychological point of view, the operative habit is "a hardly movable quality that disposes the subject to act easily, promptly and delightfully". It gives the subject facility to act, because every habit is an increase of energy in order to its corresponding action; it gives him promptness, because it constitutes a sort of second nature, by virtue of which the subject throws himself quickly into action; and it causes him, finally, pleasure because it is always produced by every prompt, easy, perfectly connatural operation. ... infused by God into the powers of the soul .... - Here we have one of the most radical differences with the virtues acquired by reason of the efficient cause 5 . The natural or acquired virtues are engendered in man by force of repeated acts. In the supernatural or infused virtues, the only producing cause is the divine infusion; hence the name infused virtues. And we say that they are infused by God into the powers of the soul because they are operative habits immediately ordered to action. Their mission is to supernaturalize the powers, elevating them to the order of grace and making them capable of producing supernatural acts. Without them - or without actual grace, which has the power to supply them in some cases, e.g., in the sinner before justification - it would be as impossible for man to perform an act of supernatural virtue as it is for an animal to perform an act of intelligence or reason; it transcends and exceeds his natural powers. Here we see, once again, the close resemblance and analogy between our natural psychological organism and the supernatural organism. St. Thomas is pleased to repeat it: C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE "As from the essence of the soul spring its powers, which are prin, ciple of operation, so also from the same grace spring the virtues in the powers of the soul, by which those powers move, come to supernatural acts. "6 . ... to dispose them to act according to the dictates of reason ... nothing by faith. - This is the main element of specific differentiation with the acquired virtues: by reason of their formal object. The infused virtues dispose the powers to follow the dictates not of simple natural reason - like the acquired virtues - but of reason enlightened by faith. The motives of the acquired virtues are purely and simply natural. Those of the infused virtues are strictly supernatural. Hence the gulf that separates one virtue from the other by reason of their formal object quo or ratio sub qua, which is the most characteristic element in any specific differentiation. 47. Let us now examine another interesting question: How are the infused virtues united with the natural powers so as to constitute with them a single principle of operation? To answer this question, we must keep in mind that - as we have just said - the infused virtues have the mission of perfecting the natural powers by elevating them to the supernatural order. Consequently, the supernatural virtuous act will spring from the joint union of the natural power and the infused virtue that comes to perfect it. As a vital act, it has its radical potency in the natural faculty, which infused virtue comes to complete essentially by giving it the potency for the supernatural act. Hence the whole supernatural act springs from the natural power insofar as it is informed by the infused virtues, that is, from the natural power elevated to the supernatural order. The radical potency is the understanding or the will; and the proximate formal principle-all of it-is the corresponding infused virtue. Some theologians - manifestly departing from the thought of St. Thomas - say that the natural power forms with infused virtue a single proximate formal principle of the supernatural act: they are two partial causes that concur equally in the production of the same act (simultaneous concurrence). But this cannot be admitted. The proximate principle must correspond exclusively to infused virtue. Otherwise, the substance of the act would spring from the natural potency, and infused virtue would merely add to it the supernatural mode. Some theologians have not shrunk from this consequence, which leads directly to the denial of the supernatural substance of the infused virtues, leaving them in a simple supernatural quoad modum. Now, as is well known, the order of sanctifying grace (gratia gratum faciens) is all supernatural "quoad substantiam", that is, intrinsically superior to nature as a whole: "supra facultatem naturae". And that the infused virtues belong to the order of grace "gratum faciens" is something evident that no one disputes. The aforementioned theologians try to overcome this insurmountable difficulty by admitting the entitative elevation of the infused virtues over the acquired ones, produced by elevating grace; but they do not admit their objective transcendence, by reason of their material and formal object. But neither can this 3 MI, 110, 2. 4 Uf. 1 - 11 , 55 . 5 1-11,63,4 ( sed contra and ad 3). 6 I-II,iio,4 ad 1. '¡'col. of the Pcrfec. i P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES explanation, since we would then have in the infused virtues a double and contradictory specification: because, on the one hand, they would be specifically distinct from the acquired ones (by reason of elevating grace), and, on the other hand, not (by the formal and material object). This explanation goes, moreover, against the universal principle that habits are specified by their formal objects. It is inexplicable that there should be a supernatural contest on the part of God in the order of sanctifying grace without that divine motion intrinsically affecting the very substance of the act. Much higher than all this is the thought of St. Thomas. According to him, the infused moral virtues are essentially distinct, by their formal object, from the higher acquired moral virtues described by the philosophers. The latter, however heroic they may be supposed to be, could always grow and develop without ever attaining the formal object of the former. There is an infinite difference between Aristotelian temperance, regulated only by right reason, and Christian temperance, which obeys the dictates of faith and supernatural prudence. Read the magnificent article that he devotes to this question in the Summa Theologica and you will see the lofty idea that the Angelic Doctor had formed of the infused virtues and their sovereign transcendence over their acquired counterparts.7 The infused virtues are inspired by the infused virtues. The infused virtues are inspired and regulated by the lights of faith - totally ignored by simple natural reason - on the consequences of original sin and our personal sins, on the infinite elevation of our supernatural end, on the need to love God, the author of grace, more than ourselves, and on the demands of the imitation of Jesus Christ, which leads us to abnegation and total renunciation of ourselves. None of this reaches the simple natural reason, even if it is that of a Socrates, Aristotle or Plato. St. Thomas rightly writes that the specific difference between the infused virtues and those acquired by reason of their formal object is "manifest". Here are his own words: *It is clear that the measure imposed on this kind of concupiscence by the rule of reason or by the divine rule is essentially different (alterius rationis). Thus, for example, in the act of taking food, human reason establishes as a measure that it does not harm the health of the body or impede the use of reason; but the rule of the divine law requires, in addition, that man "punish his body and reduce it to servitude" (I Cor. 9:27) by abstinence from food and drink and other similar things. Hence it is clear that infused and acquired temperance are specifically different ("differunt specie"); and the same is true of the other virtues ("et eadem latió est de aliis virtutibus") "8 . Nor is it worth objecting that habits are known by their acts, and the acts of infused temperance are identical to those of acquired temperance, namely, the moderation of the lusts of touch; therefore, they do not differ specifically. St. Thomas answers this objection by conceding the identity of the material object, but making clear the specific and radical distinction by reason of the formal object: "To the second we must reply that acquired temperance modifies the concupiscences of things pleasant to the touch for reasons entirely different from those of infused temperance, as we have already said. They do not, therefore, have the same act" 9 . t Cf. 1-11,63,4. * 1-11,63,4. 9 1-I|,fi3,4 ad 4. - The coincidence of the acts is purely material, but not formal: C. I. NATURE OF I.A SUPERNATURAL LIFE 1 " According to the thought of St. Thomas, then, it is clear that the infused virtues do not differ from the acquired virtues only by their entitative elevation, but also by their formal object, which makes them superior to the acquired l°. Let us now see in what "category" we should place the infused virtues, that is, what is their essence from the philosophical point of view. 48. Essence of the infused virtues. - Are the infused virtues powers or habits? Properly speaking, they are neither powers nor habits, although they have much more of the latter than of the former. They have something of potency insofar as they give us the posse in the dynamic supernatural order; but they are not potencies properly and formally speaking. And this for Ararii reasons: a) because the powers can move to their own acts and acquire habits; whence it follows that, if the infused virtues were true powers, they could acquire new infused habits, which is absurd and contradictory (they would be acquired and infused at the same time); b) because the powers are indifferent to good or evil, while the virtues can only work the good, and c) because the powers, as such, do not grow in intensity - e.g., the understanding, as a power, does not grow in intensity, the understanding, as a power, does not grow even if its knowledge grows, and the infused virtues do. Therefore, for all these chapters, the category of habits is better realized than that of potencies. Of course, in something they also fail in the reason of habits, since they do not give us the omnipresent facility to act that is proper and characteristic of them. They confer, certainly, the intrinsic inclination, ability and readiness for good; but not the extrinsic inclination, because they do not remove from us all the obstacles to good, as is clear in the sinner who is converted after a depraved life and who experiences great difficulty in doing good - due to his acquired vicious habits - despite having received, with grace, the habits of all the infused virtues. St. Thomas distinguishes very well between the facility that comes from habit and that which comes from the strong inhalation to the object of virtue. The former is not conferred by the infused virtues from the very moment of their infusion into the soul, but the latter n . The reason why the infused virtues do not exactly fulfill either of the two categories - powers or habits - is because the supernatural entities properly speaking cannot fit into the categories of natural entities, like God, of whom they are an intimate participation. Nevertheless, they can be reduced, more or less and according to a certain analogy, to the natural categories. Thus, sanctifying grace, since it is a spiritual and permanent accident, is reduced to quality as an entitative habit; and supernatural operative principles are also reduced to quality as operative habits, even though they do not have all the common notes with them.12 Let us now briefly review the main differences between infused and acquired virtues. "Quoniam etsi etsi sít ídem actus virtutis acquisitae et infusae, materialiter: non est tamen ídem formaliter*, says expressly elsewhere St. Thomas himself (In til Sent. d.33 Q.i a.z;q.4ad 2). Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Perfection chrétienne et con templation t.i c.2 a.2; and Fr. Froget, O.P., De l'habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les dme s justes p.4.* c.5. 11 "Facilitas operandi opera virtutum potest esse ex duobus, seil.: ex consaetudmc procedí, et hanc facilitatem non tribuít vírtus infusa in suo principio; et iterum ex forte in/iae. sione ad obiectum virtutis, et hanc est invenire in virtute infusa statim in suo principio" (S. Thom...), In IV Sent. d.14 q.2 a.2 ad 5. Cf. De virt. a. 10 ad 15.) 1 " Cf. Merkelbach, Summa Theol. Moralis i n.619. P. II. FUNTUMENTAI.ES PRINCIPLES 101 3. Differences between natural virtues AND SUPERNATURAL 49. The main ones are the following: 1. a By reason of their essence. - The natural ones are habits properly so called, which do not give the power to act - the faculty already has it in itself - but only the facility of the operation. The supernatural, on the other hand, give the power to act supernaturally - without it it would be impossible, unless there is a violent actual grace - but not always the omnipotent facility for the act, as St. Thomas has just told us. 2. a By reason of the efficient cause. - The natural ones are acquired by the principles of nature and our own acts; the supernatural ones must be infused by God. 3. a By reason of the final cause. - With the natural virtues, man conducts himself rightly in human affairs and performs acts in keeping with his rational nature. The supernatural virtues, on the other hand, are given to us in order to lead us rightly in our condition as adopted children of God destined for eternal life and in order to exercise the supernatural acts appropriate to the divine nature in which we participate.13 The supernatural virtues are given to us in order to lead us rightly in our condition as adopted children of God destined for eternal life and in order to exercise the supernatural acts appropriate to our divine nature. 4. a By reason of its formal object. - In the natural, it is the good according to the rule and light of natural reason, or conformity to the natural end. In the supernatural, it is the good according to the supernatural rule and light of faith, or conformity to the supernatural end. It is therefore evident that the infused virtues are specifically distinct and extraordinarily superior to their natural or acquired counterparts. Let us now consider the main properties of the infused virtues, which will give us a better understanding of their very nature. 4. General properties of the infused virtues 50. Leaving aside the four properties that are common to the acquired virtues - namely: a) that they consist in the middle between two extremes (except for the theological virtues, and even these by reason of the subject and the mode); b) that in the perfect state they are united to each other by prudence (the infused ones also by charity); c) that they are unequal in perfection; and d) that those that do not include imperfection endure after this life in what they have of form 14 - let us briefly list some characteristics proper to the infused virtues. The main ones are the following: "" 1-11,63,1. Cf. 1 - 11 , 64 - 67 . C. I. NVmRAI.UZA DF r.A SOBRENATURAL LIFE 1. a They always accompany sanctifying grace and are infused together with it. - This is a common doctrine among theologians, although it is not expressly defined by the Church, as we shall see when we treat in particular of the existence of the theological and moral virtues. 2. a They are really distinguished from sanctifying grace: it is enough to remember that grace is an entitative habit that is infused in the very essence of the soul; and virtues, operative habits that are infused in the powers, which are really distinct from the soul 15 . 3. a They are specifically distinguished from their corresponding acquired ones. - We have already demonstrated this above. 4. a We possess them imperfectly. - This is a property that we will study at length - in dealing with the necessity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit - and which is of great importance in order for mysticism to be necessary for Christian perfection. St. Thomas speaks clearly about it i fi . 5. a They increase with grace. - This is clear in Sacred Scripture and in the teaching of the Church. St. Paul writes to the faithful of Ephesus (4:15): "Let us grow in love"; to the Philippians (1:9): "I pray that your love may increase more and more in knowledge and in all discretion"; to the Romans (15:13): "that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit," etc., etc., etc. St. Peter writes (2. a , 3, 18): "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ". And, finally, the holy Church asks God in her liturgy for "increase in faith, hope and charity" 17 . 17 But we will speak at greater length about all this when we study in its proper place the development of the supernatural life with all the questions connected with it. 6. a WE ARE GIVEN INTRINSIC POWER FOR THE SUPERNATURAL ACTS, BUT NOT THE EXTRINSIC FACILITY FOR THEM. - We have already seen this above. This explains why the repentant sinner experiences great difficulties in practicing the virtues opposed to his former vices. It is necessary for these difficulties to disappear that the infused virtues be helped by the acquired virtues; not intrinsically, of course - because the natural habit of the acquired virtues is absolutely incapable of perfecting intrinsically the supernatural habit of the infused virtues - but extrinsically, by removing the obstacles, that is, the perverse inclinations and disordered concupiscence. Once these obstacles are removed, the infused virtues also begin to work promptly and delightfully l*. 15 Cf. 1-11,110,4 ad 1 . >" Cf. 1-11,68,2. 17 "... da nobis fidei, speí et caritatis augmenturm (dom. 13 post Pentes.). 1 8 Cf. S.Thom., De virtut. in com. a. 10 ad 14 . 102 P. II. PlilNCJl'lOS KIINDAMEN I ALUS C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 7. a They all disappear - except faith and hope - because of mortal sin. - The reason is because these virtues are like properties founded on sanctifying grace; hence, when grace is destroyed or disappears, they too must disappear. Only remain - though in a formless and imperfect state - faith and hope, as a last effort of the infinite mercy of God that the sinner may more easily be converted 5 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 19 . But, if one sins directly against them, they also disappear, leaving the soul totally devoid of all traces of supernatural life. 8. a They cannot be directly diminished. - This diminution, in fact, can only come about through venial sin or through the cessation of the acts of the corresponding virtue, since mortal sin does not diminish them, but destroys them totally. Now: they cannot be diminished by venial sin, because venial sin is a deviation from the straight path that leads to God, but leaving unimpaired the tendency to the ultimate supernatural end, which is proper to the infused virtues. Nor can they diminish by the cessation of acts, since, being infused virtues, just as they were not caused by human acts, neither can they diminish by the simple cessation of human acts. Indirectly, however, the infused virtues are diminished by venial sins, inasmuch as these dampen the fervor of charity, impede progress in virtue, and predispose to mortal sin 20 . Such are the main properties of the infused virtues. Let us now consider their fundamental division. 5. Division of the infused virtues 5 1. It is analogous to that of natural habits. Some order the The first specifies the theological virtues; the second, the moral virtues. The first specifies the theological virtues; the second, the moral virtues. The first ones respond, in the order of grace, to what they are in the natural principles, which order mankind, and the natural principles to their natural end; the latter respond to acquired virtues, that perfect it in relation to the media. Once again it appears here the close resemblance and analogy between the natural order and the supernatural. Let us now make a brief in genere study of each one of these groups. The detailed study of each of the virtues is reserved for the third part of our work. 19 Cf. Denz. 838 and 1407, and 1-11,71,4. 20 Cf. 11-11,24,10. A. The theological virtues 52. 1. Existence. - The existence of the theological virtues is clearly stated in Sacred Scripture. Here are a few unequivocal texts from St. Paul: "The love of God - charity - has been poured into our hearts by virtue of the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us" (Rom. 5:5); "For without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebr. 11:6); "Now these three things remain: faith, hope, charity; but the most excellent of these is charity" (1 Cor. 13:13). It is impossible to speak with greater clarity and precision. After Sacred Scripture comes the Magisterium of the Church. Innocent III says that theologians discuss if the infants receive in baptism the infused virtues; but nothing resolves 21 . Clement V in the Council of Vienna teaches it as more probable, but without defining it expressly 22 . Finally, the Council of Trent teaches with equivalent formulas that man receives with grace other gifts of faith, hope, charity, etc. 23 Since the acts are not infused, it must be concluded that it is a matter of permanent habits, that is, of infused virtues. Theologians argue about whether or not this existence is expressly defined. Among others, Vega, Ripalda, Suarez and Benedict XIV say yes, alluding to the Council of Trent. But Soto, Medina and Báñez say that it was not the intention of the council to define it expressly, although it said it equivalently. It is, therefore, at least a proximate truth fdei. Billot says that it is a most certain theological conclusion. Moreover, no ancient or modern theologian has ever denied the existence of the theological virtues. Only the Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, erred in identifying charity with the Holy Spirit himself, thus destroying it as a virtue. The existence of the theological virtues is postulated by the very nature of sanctifying grace. Since it is not immediately operative - as we have already seen - it needs supernatural operative principles in order to grow and develop until it reaches its perfection. Now, among these principles, some must refer to the supernatural end (theological virtues) and others to the means leading to it (infused moral virtues). This is a reason that has its force, especially in view of the gentleness of divine Providence, which is known to us by revelation. 53. 2. Nature.- The theological virtues are principles We are ordered directly and immediately to God as our supernatural ultimate end. They have God himself for their material object and one of the divine attributes for their formal object. In 21 Cf. Denz, 410. 22 Cf. Denz. 483. 2 2 Cf. Denz. 799 800 and 8¿i. X04 1\ 11. I'KINCIPLES l'UNDAMENl'ALüS As strictly supernatural, only God can infuse them into the soul, and their existence can only be known by revelation 24 . 54. 3 . Number. - There are three: faith, hope and charity. The reason for the ternary number is because with it is perfectly realized the immediate union with God, which his nature of the theological virtues demands. For faith makes Him known to us and unites us with Him as the First Truth, "sub ratione Veri"; hope makes us desire Him as the supreme Good for us; and charity unites us with Him with the love of friendship, inasmuch as He is infinitely good in Himself. And there can be no new aspects in union with God, since, although the divine perfections are infinite, they cannot be attained by human acts except under the reason of Truth - by the intelligence - or under the reason of Good - by the will. And only the latter admits of an unfolding; either for us (hope) or in Himself (charity) 25 . That the theological virtues are distinct from one another is something that cannot be doubted, since they can really be separated. Faith can subsist without hope and charity (e.g., in one who makes an act of despair, but without losing faith); hope can subsist without charity (though not without faith) for any mortal sin that does not go directly against faith or hope; charity will subsist eternally in heaven separated from faith and hope, which will have disappeared;26 and, finally, in this world, faith and hope can subsist without charity, which happens whenever a mortal sin is committed that does not go directly against them. Of course, in all these cases, faith and hope remain in the soul in a formless state - since, as we shall see later, charity is the form of all the virtues - and therefore do not have their own true reason for virtue 27. This leads us, as if by the hand, to examine the order among the theological virtues. St. Thomas devotes an article 28 to this. 55 . 4 . Order among them. - Two orders can be distinguished: that of generation and that of perfection. In the order of generation or origin,29 the first thing is to know (faith), then to desire (hope), and then to obtain (charity). And this gradation is by reason of acts. By reason of habits it is also the same: faith comes before hope, and hope before charity, since the understanding precedes the will, and imperfect love precedes perfect love. According to the order of perfection, charity is the most excellent of all 30 , because it is the one that most intimately unites us with God and the only one of the three that will remain eternally in the homeland. As for the other two, Medina and Báñez say that in se, as virtue tco 2 * Cí. 1-11,62,1. 2 5 Cf. 1-11,62,3. 2 6 Cf. i Cor. 13:8. 27 Cf. 1-11,65,4. 2 8 Cf. 1-11,62,4. 29 This is, of course, a priority of nature, not of time, since the infused virtues are all infused at the same time with grace. 30 "Maior autem horum est caritas? (i Cor. 13,13). C. I. NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE 1Ó5 logically, faith is more excellent than hope, because it looks at or relates to God more in itself than hope, which presents him to us as a Good for us (the theological motive does not stand out so much) and, moreover, because it is the foundation of hope. On the other hand, hope is closer to charity, and in this sense is more perfect than faith. 56. 5. Subject of the theological virtues. - According to the doctrine of St. Thomas, shared by almost all theologians, faith resides in the intellect; and hope and charity, in the will 31. Among the mystics, St. John of the Cross - in spite of being eminently Thomistic in all his doctrine 32 - put the virtue of hope in memory, undoubtedly because it suited him well to speak of the purification of this power, not with the intention of departing from St. Thomas and from the common doctrine in Theology 33. B. The infused moral virtues 57. i. Existence. - The existence of the infused moral virtues was denied by a few ancients (e.g., Scotus, Durando, Biel and some other nominalists), but today it is admitted by almost all theologians, following in the footsteps of St. Augustine, St. Gregory and St. Thomas. It has its foundation in Sacred Scripture. Thus, in the book of Wisdom we are told that nothing is more useful to man's life than temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude: "And if you love justice, the fruits of wisdom are the virtues, for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude, the virtues most profitable for men in life. "34 And the apostle St. Peter, immediately after speaking to us of grace as a participation in the very nature of God - "divinae consortes naturae" - -, tells us that we must make every effort "to show in our faith virtue, in virtue knowledge, in knowledge temperance, in temperance patience, in patience piety, in piety fraternity and in fraternity charity" 35. We have, then, in these and other texts 36 a truly solid scriptural foundation, which the Holy Fathers and theologians will later elaborate to the point of giving us a perfectly organized and systematic body of doctrine. It is true that the Church has not defined anything expressly 37; but 51 Cf. 11-11.4,2: i8,i: 24.1. 32 Cf. Fr. Marcelo del Niño Jesús, C.D., El tomismo de San Juan de la Cruz (Burgos 193°). 33 Cf. Fr. Marcellus, o.c., c.ii. 3 " Sap. 8,7. 35 2 Pet. 1:5-7 36 Cf. Rom. 8:5-6; 8:15; 1 Cor. 2:14; Iac. 1:5, etc. 37 We have, however, sufficiently clear hints in the official Magisterium of the Church. Thus, e.g., Innocent III speaks of faith, charity aliasque virtutes in children (Denz. 410). Clement V teaches as more probable the opinion of those who say that 106 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Today the affirmation of the existence of the infused moral virtues is so general and common among Catholic theologians that it could not be denied without a "manifest note of recklessness. The reason for this existence has already been indicated when speaking of the infused virtues in general and of the theological virtues in particular. Since the theological virtues are demanded by sanctifying grace in order to be dynamically ordered to the supernatural end, the infused moral virtues are demanded, in turn, by the theological virtues, because to be ordered to the end demands disposition in relation to the means. The relationship that the moral virtues have to the theological virtues is, in the order of grace, the same as that which, in the order of nature, the acquired virtues have to the acts of synderesis and rectitude of the will 38 . 58. 2. Nature. - The infused moral virtues are habits that dispose the powers of man to follow the dictates of reason enlightened by faith in regard to the means conducive to the supernatural end. They do not have God himself as their immediate object - and in this they are distinguished from the theological virtues 39 - but rather the honest good distinct from God; and they rightly order human acts in order to the supernatural ultimate end, and in this they are distinguished from their corresponding acquired virtues 40 . The means that are to regulate the infused moral virtues refer - in a certain way - to all the acts of man, even (at least on the part of prudence) to the very acts of the theological virtues, even though the latter are far superior in perfection to the moral virtues 4 L Because, although the the theological virtues, considered in themselves, cannot be excessive - and in this sense they do not consist in the means, like the moral virtues 42 - they can nevertheless be excessive in the mode of our operation, and that mode is what falls under the object of the moral virtues. Hence the moral virtues must necessarily be many, as we shall see below, because the movements of man's powers, which must be regulated in order to attain the supernatural end, are also many and varied. 59. 3. Number. - St. Thomas establishes a fundamental principle of distinction: "for any act in which a special reason of goodness is found, man needs to be disposed by a special virtue "43 . 43 According to this, there will be as many moral virtues as there are species of honest objects that the appetitive powers can find as means leading to the supernatural end. In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas studies more than fifty of them, and in baptism grace and the virtues (the theological and moral virtues) are infused into infants (Denz. 483); and the Roman Catechism of St. Pius V teaches that by baptism grace and "the most noble cortege of all the virtues" are infused: "Huic (gratiae sanctificanti) autem additur nobilissimus omnium virtutum comitatus, quae in animam cum gratia divinitus infunduntur* (p. 2.. a de sacr. bapt. c.2 § 39). 38 1-11,63,3. 39 1-11,62,2. 40 1-11,63,4. 41 1-11,58,3; 66,6, etc. 42 1-11,64,4; II-II,I7,S ad 2. 4 3 11-11,109,2. e, I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 107 It may not have been his intention to give us a complete and exhaustive classification 44 . In any case, since ancient times all the moral virtues have been reduced to the four principal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. They are already found - as we have seen above - literally in Sacred Scripture, where we are told that they are "the virtues most profitable to man in life" (Sap. 8:7). They were also known - as natural or acquired virtues - to the pagan philosophers. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Macrobius, Plotinus, Cicero, etc., speak expressly of them as chicial virtues. Among the Holy Fathers, St. Ambrose was the first, it seems, who called them cardinal 4 L The scholastic theologians unanimously subdivide the moral virtues on the basis of the four cardinal virtues. Let us say, then, two words about these important virtues. 60. The cardinal virtues. - 1. Nature. - The name "cardinal" is derived from the Latin cardo, cardinis, the hinge or hinge of the door; because - in effect - on them, as on hinges, the whole of human moral life turns and rests. St. Thomas teaches that these virtues can be called cardinal from two different points of view: a) less properly, in that they are like certain general conditions necessary for any virtue (in all must shine prudence, justice, fortitude and moderation); and b) more properly - mephitis - , in that they affect special matters, in which the general matter of that virtue shines forth principally. The cardinal virtues - in fact - are special virtues, not supreme genera of virtue that would contain beneath them all the other virtues 47 ; and they have, therefore, matters of their own, which are constituted by those objects in which principally and in their highest degree one of those four general conditions of every virtue shines forth: prudence, justice, fortitude, and tem 44 It is well known that the classification of the infused moral virtues made by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica bears a striking parallelism with the classification of the acquired virtues made by the philosophers of antiquity, especially Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. They - the philosophers - drew it from an attentive and insightful observation of the movements of human psychology. And the theologians, basing themselves on two most fruitful principles, namely, that grace does not come to destroy nature, but to complete and perfect it, and that God can have no less providence in the supernatural order than in the natural, established a perfect parallelism and analogy between these two orders; but without this meaning that the infused moral virtues can be neither more nor less than those which they point out. Perhaps a more acute and penetrating introspection could discover some more. It is quite another thing when it comes to the theological virtues. Since they are strictly supernatural and have no correspondence in the purely natural or acquired order, the philosophers totally ignored them, and their existence can only be known to us through divine revelation. Now, in this revelation it is expressly stated that the theological virtues are but three: faith, hope and charity (cf. I Cor. 13:13). The same is true of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They too are strictly supernatural and have no parallel in the purely natural order. For this reason they are no more and no less than seven, as indicated by Sacred Scripture, as interpreted unanimously by the Holy Fathers and the Magisterium of the Church (cf. n. 69). 45 Expos. in Le. 1.5 n.49 et 62: ML 15,1738. 4 ^ Me, 61, 4. 47 This was taught by Seneca, Cicero and St. Augustine himself. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 109 planza or moderation. It is true that all the virtues must participate, in some way, in these four general conditions; but it does not follow that every kind of discretion must be produced by prudence itself, and every rectitude by justice, and every firmness by fortitude, and every moderation by temperance. These virtues are the ones that fulfill these conditions in a principal way and as if by antonomasia, but not exclusively. Other virtues also participate in their own way in these same qualities, although to a lesser degree. The principal nature of the cardinal virtues is shown precisely in the influence they exert on all their annexes and subordinates, which are like participations derived from the principal virtue, which communicates to them its manner, its way of being and its influence. They are the so-called potential parts of the cardinal virtue, charged with playing their role in secondary matters, the principal matter being reserved for the corresponding cardinal virtue 48 . The influence of the principal virtue is manifest in the subordinate ones: he who has overcome the principal difficulty will more easily overcome the secondary ones. In this sense, each of the cardinal virtues can be considered as a genus that contains underneath itself integral, subjective and potential parts. Integral parts are called those useful or necessary complements that must concur for the perfect performance of the corresponding virtue; for this reason, patience and constancy are integral parts of fortitude. Subjective parts are the different species subordinated to the principal virtue; thus, sobriety and chastity are subjective parts of temperance. And finally, potential parts are called those other virtues which are annexed to the principal virtue and which do not have the force of the principal virtue or are ordered to secondary acts. Thus, the virtue of religion is annexed to justice, because it aims at giving God the worship that is due, although without being able to do so with perfection because the condition of equality that strict justice demands is not fulfilled.49 But it is worth asking: does the primacy of the cardinal virtue over its subordinates also refer to its intrinsic existence? Evidently not. Within justice are religion and penance, which are more excellent because they have nobler objects; to temperance belongs humility, which is more perfect as the foundation "ut removens prohibens" of all the other virtues, and so on. In any case, the cardinal virtues should be reserved as the principal virtues, inasmuch as they are the cornerstones or axes of the others and perform their office in a more perfect way than their annexes. Thus, for example, commutative justice has more reason for justice than religion itself or penance, and so on. The matter or object of some annexed virtue can be more excellent than that of the principal virtue; but the more perfect mode always corresponds to the corresponding cardinal virtue. St. Thomas, in a very curious article, picks up and explains, Christianizing it, the doctrine of Macrobius - taken from Neoplatonic philosophy - about the political virtues, purifiable, purified and exemplary. The first (virtutes politicae) would be the cardinal virtues of a good citizen in the purely natural order. The second (virtutes purgatoriae), the cardinal virtues infused in an immanent Christian. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE perfect. The third (virtutes iam purgad animij, the heroic virtutes of the saints. And the last (virtutes exemplares) are the same as they pre-exist exemplarily in God 50 . 6i. 2 . Number. - That the cardinal virtues are precisely four, is well proved by several reasons: a) By reason of the object. - The good of reason - which is the object of virtue - is found in four ways: essentially in reason itself, and in a participatory way, in the operations and passions; and among the passions there are those that impel to acts contrary to reason and others that restrain from practicing what reason dictates. Hence there must be a cardinal virtue that imposes the good in reason itself: prudence; another that rectifies external operations: justice; another that impels against the passions that retract from the order of reason: fortitude; and another, finally, that restrains disordered impulses: temperance 51. b) By reason of the subject. - Four are the powers of man capable of being the subject of moral virtues, and in each of them there must be a principal virtue: prudence, in reason; justice, in the will; fortitude, in the irascible appetite; and temperance, in the concupiscible appetite. c) As a remedy for the four wounds - "vulnera" - produced in human nature by original sin. - And so, against the ignorance of the understanding, prudence is placed; against the malice of the will, justice; against the weakness of the irascible appetite, fortitude; and against the disorder of concupiscence, temperance. # # * As a complement to these four fundamentals, there is the numerous cortege of their derivatives and annexes. Reserving for the third part of our work the detailed examination of each one of them, we are going to gather here in the form of synoptic tables all those that St. Thomas studies in the Summa Theologica, grouping them around their principal and indicating very briefly the function or office of each one. In passing, we will also indicate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the beatitude corresponding to each cardinal virtue and the vices that oppose them and all their derivatives. so Cf. I-II,6i,s. 51 Gf. I-II,6i, 2. "* Cf. 1141.18."- Ct. ¡I-ll.iS. 110 P. ir. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 62. INFUSED PRUDENCE AND ITS DERIVATIVES Prudence (11-11,47) has: -Integral parts, which deal with knowledge: a) Considered in J Of the past: Memory (49,1). itself j Of the present: Understanding (a. 2). b) In their acquisition of docility (a. 3 ). CÍÓn l For the invention P r °P ia ] llná-Ralón t In relation to the end: Providence (a. 6). Circumstances: Circumspection (a. 7). To impediments: Caution (a. 8). B. - Subjective parts (or species): a) To govern oneself: Monastic prudence. b ) To rule (In the prince: Prudencia regnativa (II-II,so,i). the multitude:) In the subjects: Politics (a. 2). Prudence of go- ] In the family: Economic (a.3). bierno (In war: Military (a. 4). C. - Potential parts (cf. 1-11,57,6): a) For right counsel: Eubulia (11-11,5 1,1-2). b) To judge according to common rules: Synesis (a.3). c) To deviate rightly from the common law: Gnome (a. 4). Corresponding gift of the Holy Spirit: Counsel (52,1-3). Corresponding Beatitude: The merciful (a. 4). opposite vices: i . Manifestly contrary (53) Recklessness (a. 1-2). negligence (54). Precipitation (a.3). Inconsideration (a.4). Inconstancy (a.5). 2. Falsely resembling prudence (55). . f Prudence of the flesh (a. 1-2). < Cunning (a.3) [Excessive request (a. 6-7). Fraud (a.4). Fraud (a.5). 63. JUSTICE AND ITS DERIVATIVES Justice (11-11,58), whose object is law (57), has: A. - Integral parts (79): a) To do good (not just any good, but the good due to another). b) To avoid evil (not just any evil, but the evil that is harmful to another). Against commutative justice: NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE B. - Subjective parts (or species): a) To give his own to the community: Legal justice (58,5-6). b) Individualmcn- C j) e ] prince to subjects: Distributive. te: Par-J Justice ticular (Between private persons: Commutative. C. - Potential parties (80): ("Concerning God: Religion (81) L a) By default dej Q on with respect to parents: Mercy (101). equality with respect to the superior: Ob- J Dulía (103). t servitude (102) | Obedience (104). "For benefits received: Gratitude (106). For injuries received: Just punishment (108). fIn the promises: Fideli " , , , , , , dad (1 10,3 ad 5). In order to be true: I In order to be true: I In order to be true: I In order to be true: I In order to be true: I In order to be true: I In order to ' pa|a ¿ ras facts; b) For lack of simplicity (109,11 . . . . ^ ad 4, 111,3 a< ^ 1 2 )* In dealing with others: Affability or friendliness (114). To moderate the love of riches: Liberalism (117). To deviate with just cause from the letter of the "law: Equity or epikeia (120). Corresponding gift of the Holy Spirit: Piety (121,1). Corresponding Beatitude: Meekness (a. 2). VICES OPPOSED TO JUSTICE: Against justice "in genere " : Injustice (59). Against distributive justice : Acceptance of persons (63). In order of truth: Truthfulness (109). . I 2. 0 By word of mouth a) Against persons. a) Trial. Í Homicide (64). Mutilation (65.1). Flagellation (a.a). 1. ue oora . .<| ^ ^ Imprisonment (a.3). (b) Against things: Theft and robbery (66). On the part of the judges (67). On the part of the accusers (68). 'a ) At trial 4 On the part of the defendants (69). On the part of the witnesses (70). 2." By word of mouth) (By attorneys (7 x). Contumelia (72). Defamation (73). J>) Out of judgment. 5 Murmuring (74). Irritation (75). Curse (76). " -- , , , , . . . i Commercial fraud (77). 3. 0 In voluntary commutations ) Usury (78) 1 To which, once sin has been supposed, penance is added, of which St. Thomas speaks in the third part of the Summa (q.85 a. 1-3). P. II. PRINCIPLES OF FITND MF.NTALS 'Superstition (92). Undue worship (93). Idolatry (94). Divination (95). C*!ontra religion 4 Vana observance (96). Temptation of God (97). Perjury (98). Sacrilege (99). . Simony (100). Against piety ¡ Impiety (101 pról.). Excessive love (a. 4). Against obedience: Disobedience (105). Against. gratitude: Ingratitude (107). Against just punishment. Cruel jad. 1 Excessive indulgence (108.2 ad 3). í Lie (110). Against the truth J Simulation and hypocrisy (ni). 1 Jactancia (112). Lyrical (or false humility) (1 13). friendship J Flattery (1x5). 1 Litigation or spirit spirit of contradiction (116). Against liberality. ...i x I Prodigality (119). Against epikeia: Legalistic Pharisaism (120, 1 ad 1). 64. STRENGTH AND ITS DERIVATIVES The fortress (II-II, 1 23) has: A principal act: martyrdom (124). It has no subjective parts (128), since it is a very special and totally determined matter. Integral and potential parts ': a) To undertake. J With respect to the end: Magnanimity (129). 1 To the media: Magnificence (134). f Against present evils . -j P ac * enc j a {jfy 1 j c | Long-suffering (a. 5). b ) To resist ... 3 t-. , - ■ - 1 , ■ . | Perseverance (137,1.2.4). fifc.11 the exercise of virtue. 4 " . - , \ T J 1 Constancy (a.3). Corresponding gift of the Holy Spirit: Fortitude (139,1). Corresponding Beatitude: Hunger and thirst for righteousness (a. 2). 1 They are the same virtues, which, if they refer to the dangers of death, constitute the ¡ntegial parts of fortitude, and if to other less difficult matters, they are its potential parts. C. I. NATURE DF. SUPERNATURAL LIFE opposite vices: a) Same fortress wing b) Magnanimity. c) To magnificence. . d ) To patience 2 . . . . . e) Perseverance . f Shyness (or cowardice) (123). i Impassibility (126). 1 Boldness (recklessness) (127). f Presumption (130). J Ambition (131). 1 Vanity (132). f Pusillanimity (133). J Stinginess (135.1). 1 Waste (a. 2). \ Insensitivity. I Impatience. J Inconstancy (138.1). i Pertinacia (a.2). 65. I.A TEMPLANCE AND ITS DERIVATIONS Temperance (II-II,i4i) has: A) Integral parts : a) Shame (or fear of reproach) (144). b) Honesty (or love of decorum) (145). B) Subjective parts (or species): a ) On nutrition . b) On generation I At mealtime: Abstinence (146). 1 In drinking: Sobriety (149). I Temporarily: Chastity (151). 1 Perpetually: Virginity (152). C) Potential parties : a) Continence, against touch dellections (155). b) Meekness, against anger (157). c) Clemency, against the rigor of punishment (157). "In self-esteem: Humility (161). On the desire for science: Studiousness (166). In body movements: Modesty Corel) Modesty ( 1 60) . pora! (168,1). In games and amusements: Eutrapelia (168,2). In clothing and ornaments: Modesty in the ornal to (169). Corresponding gift of the Holy Spirit: Fear (141,1 ad 3; cf. q.19). Corresponding Beatitude: Poor in spirit (19:12). opposite vices: Against temperance in general n Insensitivity (142,1). Intemperance (142,2-4). It is surprising that St. Thomas does not speak of these vicos in the Summa Theologica. 114 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Against abstinence Against sobriety Against chastity ( lontra la continencia Against meekness Against clemency Against humility Against studiousness Against bodily modesty . . . Against eutrapelia Against modesty in ornamentation Gluttony (148). Drunkenness (140). Lust (153-4). Incontinence (156). Anger (158). Cruelty (159). Pride (162). Curiosity and negligence (167). Affectation and hardiness. Foolish joy and excessive austerity (168,3-4). Excessive luxury and disgracefulness (169). Such, according to the Angelic Doctor, is the marvelous procession of infused virtues that always accompanies sanctifying grace. With them all the powers and energies of man are elevated to the order of grace. In each power, and in relation to each specifically distinct object, there is a supernatural habit, which disposes man to act according to the principle of grace and to develop supernatural life through this operation. However, in spite of so much profusion and richness, the supernatural organism is not yet complete. The infused virtues are not enough to give the powers of the soul all the perfection possible in the supernatural order. With them we can, no doubt, follow perfectly the dictates of reason enlightened by faith; but above this criterion, supernatural in its essence, but human in its mode, we can and must be ready to follow the direct and immediate dictates and motions of the Holy Spirit himself. Such is the raison d'être of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we are going to study immediately. II. The gifts of the Holy Spirit Given the great importance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Christian perfection, we are going to study them as broadly as the nature of our work allows. The order of our study will be as follows: C. I. NAHJRAr.EZA OF I.A SOBRENATURAL LIFE 115 i. Introduction 66 . Gift in general is "all that which a person gives to another out of his own liberality and with benevolence" L We say "out of his own liberality" to signify that the gift excludes, on the part of the giver, any reason of debit, not only of justice, but even of gratitude or of any other kind. And we add "with benevolence" to reflect the intention of the giver to benefit the one who gratuitously receives his gift. The exclusion of any obligation of justice or gratitude, or - which is the same thing - its absolute gratuitousness, is absolutely necessary for the reason of gift; otherwise it would not be distinguished from reward or recompense. Likewise, it must not carry with it the demand for some compensation or reward on the part of the gratuitous recipient with respect to his generous benefactor. It is not a do ut des operation, but a completely gratuitous giving that demands nothing in return. It is something irreddibilis, as St. Thomas says, quoting the Philosopher 1 2 3 . However, the notion of gift does not exclude gratitude on the part of the recipient, as is evident from everyday experience; it only excludes the demand for such gratitude. Moreover, sometimes it also requires the good use of the gift, which depends on the nature of the gift or the intention of the donor, as when he gives it, for example, so that the recipient may be perfected by its use. Such, above all, are the gifts that God gives to his creatures. 67 . The gifts of God. - The first great gift of God is the Holy Spirit himself, who is the very love with which God loves himself and loves us. The liturgy of the Church says of him that he is the gift of the Most High God: "Altissimi donum Dei. "3 The Holy Spirit is the first gift of God, not only insofar as he is Love in divinis, but also insofar as he is in us by mission or sending. In other words: the Holy Spirit is the first gift of God, not only personally, but also essentially. Let us explain this a little. Introduction. 2. Existence. 3 . Number. 4. Nature. 5. Specific distinction of the infused virtues. 6. Do you support a dual mode of operation? 7. Necessity of the gifts. 8. Mutual relationships. 9. Relations with the infused virtues. 10. Relationships with the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the beatitudes. 11. Duration. 12. Synthesis of the general doctrine on the gifts. God's love can be considered in three ways: a) Essentially, and in this sense it applies equally to the three divine persons. b) Notionally, and thus considered, it is nothing other than the "active spiration", common to the Father and the Son, which gives rise to the Holy Spirit by way of origin. c) Personally, and thus means the "passive spiration", which is none other than the Holy Spirit Himself. In this way, the gift - says Billuart 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 - can be considered in three different ways; 1 This definition is equivalent to that given by Father Gardiel: "Donner, c'est accorder n quelqu'un, gratuitement et bénévolemcnt, la propriété d'une chose" (cf. OTO, art. Dois col. 1728). 2 1-11,68. r obi.3. Cf. Aristotle, Tapie. IV, 4; 125318. 3 Hymn Veni Creator. 4 Cf. vol.2 p.138 (ed. 1004). P. It. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATCK OF LIFE OVER MORALS a) Essentially, that is, the thing itself that is given freely. b) Notionally, that is, in terms of the passive origin of the giver of the gift. c) Personally, that is, insofar as it is appropriate to a person as a proper name. Of course, we say that the Holy Spirit is the first gift of God personally (alluding to the third member of the first series) and essentially (first member of the second series). From this first great gift proceed all the other gifts of God, since, in the last analysis, all that God gives to his creatures, both in the supernatural order and in the natural order itself, are but totally gratuitous effects of his free and infinite love. In a broad sense, therefore, all that we have received from God are "gifts of the Holy Spirit. But this generic expression can have several specific meanings, which must be determined. Four are the main 5 : 1) In the broadest sense, gifts of the Holy Spirit are all those gifts of God that do not include that first gift which is the Holy Spirit himself. Such are, first of all, the natural gifts given by God to creatures. 2) In the improper sense are those gifts which, without necessarily including that first great gift or supposing the soul to be in the obligatory possession of grace and charity, nevertheless belong to the supernatural order. Such are principally: a) Free thanks given. b) Current preventive graces. c) The servile fear of God, d) Supernatural attrition. e) Faith and hope reports. 3) In the proper sense, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are all those which include the first great gift of God and presuppose the soul or constitute it in the friendship and grace of God. Such are: a) Sanctifying grace. b) Charity. c) Faith and hope informed by charity. d ) The infused moral virtues. e) The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. 4) The latter are properly the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" in the strictest and most formal sense, and are the only ones that we will study at length in the following pages. 5 This division is based on the following doctrine of St. Thomas: "Even though all natural and gratuitous gifts have been given to us by God out of love, which is his first gift. However, Love itself is not given to us in all the gifts, but only in the gift that is a likeness and participation in that love, that is, in the gift of charity" (1 Sent. d.i8 a. 3 ad 4). a; Existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit 68, The existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit can only be confirmed by revelation, since they are supernatural realities that go beyond and completely transcend mere natural reason.6 St. Thomas starts from this assumption in the special question he devotes to the gifts in the Summa Theologica. 6 St. Thomas starts from this assumption in the special question he devotes to the gifts in the Summa Theologica, saying that in regard to them we must follow the manner of speaking of Sacred Scripture in which they are revealed to us: "in qua nobis traduntur" 7 . Let us look, then, first of all, at the scriptural foundation of the existence of the gifts. Then we will briefly examine the doctrine of Tradition, the Magisterium of the Church and the sentences of theologians, who gradually elaborated the theology of the gifts on the basis of the revealed data interpreted by Tradition. a) Sacred Scripture. - The text of Isaiah (n, i-3) is classic: "And a rod shall grow out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall shoot forth from his roots, upon which shall rest the spirit of the LORD, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of understanding and of the fear of the LORD. And he shall pronounce his decrees in the fear of Yahweh." This text is clearly messianic and properly speaks only of the Messiah. But, nevertheless, the Holy Fathers and the Church herself extend it also to Christ's faithful by virtue of the universal principle of the economy of grace that St. Paul enunciates when he says: "For those whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). From this it follows that whatever perfection there is in Christ, our Head, if it is communicable, is also found in his members united to him by grace. And it is evident that the gifts of the Holy Spirit belong to the communicable supernatural perfections, taking into account, moreover, the need we have for them, as we shall see in their place. Therefore, since grace in necessary things is at least as prodigal as nature itself, we must rightly conclude that the seven spirits which the prophet saw resting on Christ are also the patrimony of all those who remain united to him by charity. 6 "Pagan wisdom did not know the gifts of the Holy Spirit of which St. Thomas speaks: their knowledge is attained only by divine revelation" (John of St. Thomas, De donis Spiritus Sancti, version by Fr. I. Menéndez-Reigada, c.i p.27). ? Cf I-II,68,i 8 Moreover, the text of Isaiah offers many exegetical difficulties. If we were to disregard the interpretations of the Holy Fathers, of theologians and of the Church itself - who have elaborated the doctrine of the gifts to the point of making it entirely clear - we would be left in the dark with only scriptural data. 118 F. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES In addition to this text, which the Holy Fathers and the Church herself have interpreted as a clear revelation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, many other texts of the Old and New Testament 9 are usually cited by the authors. We prefer to omit them, not only because we do not plan to carry out an in-depth investigation into the true meaning of these texts, but also because it seems evident to us that on the basis of these texts - at least the great majority of them - one can only make speculations and conjectures devoid of any serious foundation. It must be recognized that the doctrine of the gifts in Sacred Scripture rests almost exclusively on the text of Isaiah; although this text, explained, confirmed and brought to full light by the Holy Fathers, the Magisterium of the Church and the elaboration of scholastic theologians, gives us a very firm foundation on the existence of the gifts, not only in Christ, but also in every Christian in grace. It seems to eminent theologians that this double existence is formally revealed in Sacred Scripture;10 and those who do not dare to say so much recognize that it is, at least, a most certain and proximate fidei conclusion. b) The Holy Fathers - Both the Greek and Latin Fathers frequently speak of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, although with different names: dona, muñera, charismata, spiritus, virtutes, etc. Among the Greek Fathers, St. Justin, Origen, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus the Blind of Alexandria stand out. Among the Latins, the primacy goes to St. Augustine, followed closely by St. Gregory the Great; but we also find very good things about the gifts in St. Victorinus, St. Hilary, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome. We cannot stop to collect the texts 11 ; but in them almost all the questions relative to the theology of the gifts are outlined, which the main places cited are the following: a) From the Old Testament: Gen. 41,38; Ex. 31,3; Num. 24,2; Deut. 34,9; Jud. 6,34; Ps. 31,8; 32,9; 118,120; 118,144; 142,10; Sap. 7:28; 7:7; 7:22; 9:17; 10:10; Eccl. 15:5; Is. 11:2; 61:1; Mich. 3:8. bj From the New Testament: Le. 12,12; 24,25; lo. 3,8; 14,17; 14,26; Act, 2,2; 2,38; Rom. 8,14; 8,26; i Cor. 2,10; 12,8; Rev. 1,4; 3,1; 4,5; 5,6. 10 It seems to Father Aldama, S.I., that it is not a matter of a conclusion drawn on the basis of a premise of faith and another of reason, but of a consequence that follows from two formally revealed truths, namely, the existence of the gifts in Christ as Messiah (Is. 11:2) and the affirmation of St. John that He is full of grace and truth and in that fullness we all participate (lo. 1:14-16). Here are his words: "The consequent sense presupposes a deduction made on the basis of a premise of reason. And that is not the case here. It is rather a question of two truths equally revealed in Sacred Scripture. On the one hand, the exuberant treasures of the spiritual organism of the Messiah are described to us; on the other hand, we are told that we participate in the fullness of his graces, we would say in the life of that organism in action. When the Holy Fathers compare both truths, when they bring them closer to each other, the fullness of the revealed meaning opens to our eyes in magnificent perspective and we realize that the word of God has really taught us the existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit not only in Christ, but also in Christians. In other words, we are not dealing with a consistent sense, but with a full sense (sensus plenior). This solution seems to us to harmonize better with the data of the patristic tradition" (The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Problems and Controversies in the Present Theology of the Gifts, in RET, January-March 1949" P-5) 1 1 1 The reader who wishes to know more deeply the scriptural and patristic foundation on the existence of the gifts will profitably consult Fr. Gardeil in DTC, art. Dons du Saint Sprit col. 1728$; Paris, De donis Spiritus Sancti in genere, apud Marietti, 1930; Ferre ko, Los dones del Espíritu Santo (Manila 1941); Touzard, in "Revue Biblique", April 1899, etc. c. 1. nature of supernatural life 110 Later on, scholastic theologians will gradually move on to St. Thomas, in whom we find a complete and finished synthesis. c) The Magisterium of the Church. - We will subdivide it into three parts: i. a , councils; 2. a , liturgy, and 3. a , other documents. i. a. Councils. - Only in one council has the Church spoken clearly of the gifts of the Holy Spirit: in the Roman synod celebrated in 382 under Pope St. Damasus. As to whether or not the Council of Trent spoke of them, nothing can be affirmed with certainty; it is a question still to be resolved. Here is the text of the Roman Synod: "It was said: First of all it is necessary to deal with the septiform Spirit that rests in Christ. Spirit of wisdom: Christ virtue of God and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1.24) Spirit of understanding: I will give you understanding and instruct you in the way in which you shall walk (Ps. 31:8). Spirit of counsel: And his name shall be called the angel of great counsel (Is. 9:6; LXX). Spirit of strength: God's virtue or strength and God's wisdom (1 Cor. 1.24) Spirit of knowledge: By the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus (Eph. 3.19). Spirit of truth: I am the way, the life and the truth (lo. 14,6). Spirit of fear (of God): The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. iio,io> 12). In the above text: a) we speak of the gifts of the Holy Spirit properly speaking; b) we enumerate, with Isaiah, the seven gifts 13 , and c) each one of them is explained by Sacred Scripture itself insofar as they are most fully suited to Christ. Here are the words of the Council of Trent that lend themselves to different interpretations 1 4 : "To this disposition or preparation follows justification itself, which is not only remission of sins (can. n), but also sanctification and renewal of the interior man, by the voluntary reception of grace and gifts, from which man is converted from unjust to just, and from enemy to friend, in order to be heir according to the hope of eternal life (Tit. 3,7)" 15. 12 "DIctum est: Prius agendum est de Spiritu septiforme, qui in Christo requiescit, Spiritus sapientiae: Christus Dei virtus et Dei sapientia (i Cor. 1,24). Spiritus intellectus: Intellectum dabo tibí, et instruam te in via, in qua ingredieris (Ps. 31,8). Spiritus consilii: Et vocábitur nomen eius magni consilii angelus (Is. 9,6; LXX). Spiritus virtutis (ut supra): Dei virtus et Dei sapientia (1 Cor. 1:24). Spiritus scientiae: Propter eminentiam Christi scientiae Iesu apostoli (Eph. 3,19)- Spiritus veritatis: Ego via et vita et veritas (lo. 14,6). Spiritus timoris (Dei): Initium sapientiae timor Domini (Ps. 110,10)" (Denz. 83). 13 With the variant of saying spiritus veritatis instead of pietatis, and spiritus virtutis instead of foititudinis, which is entirely equivalent. 14 See, for example, Ferrero, O.P., in RET (1945) p.43-44; and Aldama, S.I. in "Estudios Eclesiásticos* (January-June 1946)^.241-44. 15 "Hanc dispositionem seu praeparationem iustificatio ipsa consequitur, quae non est sola peccatorum remissio (can.n), sed et sanctificatio et renovatío interioris hominis per voluntariam susceptionem gratiae et donorum, unde homo ex iniusto fit iustus et ex inimico amicus, ut sít heres secundum spem vítae aeternae (Tit. 3,7)* (Denz. 799). C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 120 p. n. rRTNCinos fundamentals From these words it seems to us that the following can be reasonably inferred: (a) the council does not speak particularly of the gifts nor does it name them expressly; but it is evident that in the word donorum they are alluded to at least remotely and generically; b) it is probable that the Fathers of the council were trying to allude in this text to the gifts of the Holy Spirit properly speaking, taking into account that at the time of Trent the notion of the gifts was familiar to the Fathers of the council and to the whole Church, as is evident from the liturgy 16 ; and c) from the words of the council it is clear that these "gifts" (whatever they may be) are infused and received together with grace. 2. a Liturgy. - Much clearer is the Magisterium of the Church through the liturgy. In the hymn Veni Creator we are told of the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit: "Tu septiformis muñere I "You, septiform in gifts, digitus Paternae dexterae..." j finger of the right hand of God..." In the precious sequentia of the Pentecost Mass, the Holy Spirit is asked for his seven sacred gifts: "Da tuis fidelibus in Te confidentibus sacrum septenarium". "Give to your faithful who trust in you the sacred septenary." And in the vespers hymn the allusion to the gifts returns: "Te nunc Deus piissime vultu precamur cernuo illapsa nobis caelitus largire dona Spiritus". "We beseech Thee, most gracious God, with humbled face, infuse us with the heavenly gifts of the Spirit." When administering the sacrament of confirmation, the bishop, with his hands extended over the confirmands, exclaims: "Send down upon them from heaven thy septimal Holy Spirit the Paraclete, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness; fill them with the Spirit of thy fear" 17 . commandments of the Christian life and by them we can know whether the Holy Spirit dwells in us" 18 . b) All Catholic catechisms in the world speak of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as the patrimony of all the faithful. c) Finally, Pope Leo XIII, in his admirable encyclical on the Holy Spirit Divinum illud munus of May 9, 1897, took up and made his own the testimony of the Catholic tradition on the existence, necessity, nature and marvelous effects of the gifts: "The just man who lives by the life of grace and who operates by means of the virtues, like so many other faculties, has absolute need of the seven gifts, which are more commonly called gifts of the Holy Spirit. By means of these gifts, the spirit of man is elevated and made fit to obey the inspirations and impulses of the Holy Spirit with greater ease and alacrity. Likewise, these gifts are of such efficacy that they lead man to the highest degree of sanctity; they are so excellent that they will remain in their fullness in heaven, although in a more perfect degree. Thanks to them the soul is moved and led to the attainment of the evangelical beatitudes, those flowers which springtime sees opening as the forerunner signs of eternal beatitude..."! 9 . As can be seen, in the aforementioned text the pope makes the traditional doctrine on the gifts his own and proposes it with his ordinary magisterium to the whole Church. It is therefore of great dogmatic value. d) The scholastic theologians. - On this specific point of the mere existence of the gifts, the opinion of the theologians is of interest to us only as witnesses of Tradition, since they could not create a doctrine that deals with supernatural realities. The theology of the gifts underwent a slow and laborious elaboration by the scholastic theologians through the centuries. But their existence was universally admitted by all, with very rare exceptions, which confirm the general rule. Today, the doctrine of the existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit has so established itself in all Catholic schools that there is not a single theologian who denies it. They argue at length about their nature and their functioning, but their existence - we repeat - is universally admitted by all. where the Church, at the solemn moment of the administration of a sacrament, collects and applies to each of her faithful the famous messianic text of Isaiah. 3. a) Other ecclesiastical documents. - a) The Catechism of the Council of Trent - which enjoys so much authority among theologians - says that "these gifts of the Holy Spirit are for us as a divine fountain from which we drink the living knowledge of the 1 1 1 * * * * * * 6 For the same reason, Suarez's statement "non est verisi mile , ibi Ioqui Concilium de specialibus donis Spiritus Sancti" (cf. De gratia 1-16 c.io n .4) seems to us to be a bit exaggerated. in fine). _ . . 17 "Emitte in eos septiformem Spiritum tuum Sanctum Paraclítum de caelis: Spintu sapientiae et intellectus, Spiritum consilii et fortitudinis, Spiritum scientíae et pietati- - adimple eos Spiritu timoris tui* (Pont. Rom., De s. sacram. Confirm. confer .). General conclusion on the existence of the gifts. - The testimony of the whole of Tradition, supported by a solid foundation 18 Catechism of the Council of Trent p.i. a c.9 § 3. 19 Cf. Leo XIII, encyclical Divinum illud munus, towards the end. Here is the Latin text of the paragraph quoted by us: "Hoc amplius homini iusto, vitam scilicet viventi divinae gratiae et per congruas virtutes tanquam facultates agenti, opus plañe est septenis illis qua,e proprie dicuntur Spiritus Sancti donis. Horum enim beneficio instruitur animus et munitur ut cius vocibus atque impulsioni facilius promptiusque obsequatur; haec propterea dona tantae sunt tantae efficacitatis ut eum ad fastigium sanctimoniae adducant , tantaeque excellentiae ut in caeIfsti regno eadem, quamquam perfectius perseverent. Ipsorumque ope charismatum provocatur animus et effertur ad appetendas adipiscendasque beatitudines evangélicas, quae, perinde ac flores verno tempore erumpentes, indices ac nuntiae sunt beatitatis perpetuo mensuras*. This text speaks to us: i.°, of the necessity of the gifts: opus plañe est; 2°, of their nature: they make us docile to the Holy Spirit; 3°, of their effects: they can lead us to the summit of sanctity". I'. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES in Sacred Scripture, leads to an absolute certainty about the existence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in all the faithful in a state of grace. Moreover, there is no lack of theologians of great authority who affirm that this existence is a truth of faith20 . For, although the Church has not expressly defined it, taking into account, nevertheless, the constant doctrine of the Fathers throughout the long patristic period, the sentiment of the Church in her liturgy and in the administration of the sacraments, the unanimous consent of theologians and the unanimous sentiment of all the faithful of the world who have learned it this way since they were little children in the catechism, seem to give sufficient grounds to think that it is - in effect - a truth of faith proposed by the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. And those who do not dare to say so, affirm that it is, at least, a most certain theological conclusion and "próxima fidei". Number of gifts 69. This is another question discussed among exegetes and theologians. Two are the main difficulties that give rise to these hesitations: a) in Sacred Scripture the number seven is classically used to signify a certain indeterminate fullness, and b) in the Masoretic text of Isaiah not seven, but six gifts are enumerated; the gift of piety is missing. Modern exegetes are inclined to think that the text of Isaiah refers to an indeterminate fullness: it is the fullness of ruling qualities, which belong to the Messiah as King 21 . The Holy Fathers and the scholastic theologians insist, on the contrary, on the septenary number, and on the basis of these seven gifts they establish their classifications and parallels with the infused virtues. In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas devotes an ingenious article to justify this number 22 . What to think of all this? In our opinion, the following: i. It is certain that in Sacred Scripture the number seven is often used to signify fullness, and perhaps it has this meaning. 20 Among them, John of St. Thomas, the best commentator of the Angelic Doctor on the doctrine of the gifts. Here are his words : "Ex quibus colligitur non solum esse de fide haec .septem dona seu spiritus qui ¡n Christo fuerunt, supematuralia fuisse, quia Isaias expresse et ad litteram loquitur de Christo, sed etiam de fide esse quod in nobis dantur haec dona et quod supematuralia sint *. Cf. Ioannis a Sancto Thoma, Cursus Theologicus t.6 d.18 a. 2 n.4 p.583 (ed. Vives, 1885). Aldama, S.I., is of the same opinion: "Prout iacet, thesis dicenda est de fide divina et catholica: cum satis affirmetur in liturgia et in magisterio ordinario, ut videbimus" (cf. Sacras Theologiae Svmma (ed. BAC) vol.3 p.726 (2nd ed. 1953). 21 Here is how Touzard explains it: "The symbolism of the seventh chiffre is ancient, and, according to the remarks of the commentators, the use of this chiffre in the passage that occupies us, has for the purpose of highlighting the fullness of divine infiuence in the ramean drawn from the brisé trunk of Isaiah" ("Revue Biblique" [1899] p.250). For his part, Fr. Ceuppens makes the same observation: "In tribus ergo documenlis (i.e. the Masoretic text, the Syriac version Pessita and the "Targum" of the Jews) septem terminl dantur quibus sex tantum dona exprimuntur. Ñumerus septenarius apud Hebraeos fuit semper numerus consecratus ad multitudinem vel plenitudinem designandam; unde non impossibile videtur Isaiam septem admisisse términos ad donorum plenitudinem significandam" ("Angelicum" [1928] P.52Ó-7). 22 1 - 11 , 68 , 4 . c. 1. nature of supernatural life 123 The meaning of the text of Isaiah; but no decisive argument can be drawn from this against the septenary number of gifts. In effect: there are two kinds of plenitude. One is completely indeterminate, which identifies the term "plenitude" with an indefinite number, which we do not know what it is. And there is another plenitude which, adhering to a concrete and determined number, expresses with it all the possible realities in that order of things. Now then: the unanimous interpretation of the Holy Fathers, the clear and explicit teachings of the Church in her liturgy, in the administration of the sacraments and in the pontifical encyclicals, and the almost unanimous consent of scholastic theologians, oblige us - it seems to us - to interpret the fullness expressed by Isaiah in this second sense. Just as the sacraments are seven, no more and no less, and in them is contained the fullness of the graces that God grants to men ex opere operato, so the gifts of the Holy Spirit, being seven distinct habits, no more and no less, contain the fullness of the motions of the divine Spirit that are to be communicated to us through them.23 The gifts of the Holy Spirit, being seven distinct habits, no more and no less, contain the fullness of the motions of the divine Spirit that are to be communicated to us through them. 2° As for the fact that only six gifts are listed in the Masoretic text, nothing can be said against the existence of the gift of piety. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain its omission in the Masoretic text;24 but whatever they may be, it is certain that the gift of piety is found in the Vulgate, which has the weight of a declaration of the Church that it contains no dogmatic errors,25 in the version of the Seventy, in the patristic tradition, in the official teachings of the Church, and in the unanimous opinion of scholastic theologians. To disregard or disregard the enormous weight of all this because of certain obscurities in the Masoretic text seems to us frankly excessive. Some exegetes sometimes forget that Sacred Scripture is not the only source of divine revelation and that there are very many things formally revealed in Sacred Scripture that did not appear in full light except through the interpretations of the Holy Fathers and the Magisterium of the Church. This is the case of the gift of piety. Whatever the text of Isaiah may be, St. Paul wonderfully describes this reality that theology knows as the gift of piety when he writes to the Romans: "For those who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you have not received the spirit of servanthood to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry out, 'Abba, Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom. 8:14-16). Aldama (in RET, January-March 1949, p. 26, and in Sacrae Theologiae Summa vol. 3 p. 730 (2nd ed. BAC, 1953), seems to us to be entirely satisfactory. 24 See, for example, Ferrero, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Manila 1941), where several of these hypotheses are presented. One of them is this: "A distinction must be made between the primitive Hebrew text, which we do not know, and the Massoretic text, which we have today. The LXX, prior to the Massora, may well have preserved and transmitted to posterity the original Hebrew text without the defects that later could have infiltrated the Masoretic text" (p.64). 25 Cf. Denz. 785-1787. P. TT. PRTXCTPIOS FtTND IMENTALEÍ" For all these reasons, it would seem rash to depart from the sentiments of Tradition regarding the gift of piety and the septenary number of gifts. 4. Nature of the gifts 70. Here is the definition of the gifts, which makes known to us their essence or intimate nature: The gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernatural habits infused by God into the powers of the soul to receive and readily second the motions of the Holy Spirit himself in the divine or superhuman way. We will explain the definition word by word. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, in the proper and strict sense of the word, as we have explained above 26 . They are supernatural habits. This is a common doctrine among theologians, with very few exceptions 27 . Here are the proofs: 1. a In the famous text of Isaiah (11:2) we are told - according to modern scientific exegesis 2S - that the gifts are conferred on Christ in the form of habits, as is clear from the term requiescet, which expresses habitual permanence 29 . Therefore, similarly, they are conferred on the members of Christ also in a permanent or habitual way. Faith itself teaches us the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit in every soul in grace (1 Cor. 6:19), and the Holy Spirit is never without his gifts 30 . 2. a The Holy Fathers are in agreement in affirming that the gifts of the Holy Spirit constitute a specific group of graces or habitual gifts. St. Augustine and St. Gregory expressly affirm this in expounding their doctrine of the connection of the gifts with charity 31 . 3. a St. Thomas explains the theological reason in the following way 32 : "As we have already said, the gifts are perfections of man by which he disposes himself to follow well the movement of the Holy Spirit. And it is evident from what has already been said that the moral virtues perfect the appetitive faculty insofar as it in some way participates in reason, that is, insofar as it is naturally apt to be moved by the rational empire. Thus the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for man in his relation to the Holy Spirit the same as the virtues are for the appetitive faculty in its relation to reason, that is, insofar as it is naturally apt to be moved by the rational empire. 27 Such are. principally, Hugo of St. Victor, Vazquez, Brancato de Laurea, the Abbé de Bellevuc, and, in a certain sense, Cardinal Billot, who, while admitting that the gifts are habits, confuses them practically with the inspiration of actual grace. 28 Cf. Fr. Ceuppens, O.P., De donis Spiritus Sancti axmd Isaiam, from the journal Anqelicum 5 (1028) p.537. 29 "Et reouiescet super eum..." ("v shall rest upon him..."), 2 0 Cf. I-II, 68,3 sed contra. 31 St. Thomas relies on a text of St. Gregory (cf. 1-11,68,3 ail i). 32 Cf. 1-11,68,3. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE with reason. Now the moral virtues are habits that dispose the appetitive faculty to obey reason promptly, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are certain habits by which man is perfected to obey the Holy Spirit promptly. Infused by God. This is clear and evident if we take into account that we are dealing with supernatural realities, which the soul could never acquire by its own strength, since they infinitely transcend the purely natural order. Therefore, either the gifts do not exist, or they must necessarily be infused by God. In the powers of the soul. They are the subject where they reside, as well as the infused virtues, whose supernatural act comes to perfect the gifts by giving them the divine or superhuman modality proper to them. To receive and second with ease. It is proper and characteristic of habits that they perfect the powers precisely in order to receive and second with ease the motion of the agent that moves them. The motions of the Holy Spirit himself, who moves them and acts directly and immediately as the motive and principal cause, unlike the infused virtues, which are moved or acted upon by man himself as the motive and principal cause, although always under the prior motion of an actual grace. A contemporary theologian writes about the different motive between virtues and gifts 33 : "We have already said that habit is in our powers a docility which makes us lend ourselves to the regulating and motive influence of the directing principle of action. Thus, moral virtue makes our affectivity lend itself to the commands of practical reason. The gifts will be habits that make us docile to the divine motion. But how do they differ concretely from the infused virtues? Are not the infused virtues, being infused habits, already denote the motion of actual grace, to which, when we exercise them, we do nothing but cooperate? It will then be said that the gift disposes us to receive in a connatural way a special motion of God, a divine instinct, which takes the form of an operating grace before which we do nothing more than allow ourselves to be moved toward an operation that transcends, in a certain sense, the whole human mechanism of deliberation and choice that virtue, even infused virtue, carries with it. Divine motion vitally received, thanks to the reality of habit, which passively disposes us to receive the divine influence at the very moment in which we act". In the divine or superhuman mode, as we shall see at length below. Let us now look at the main difficulties that can be formulated against the gifts of the Holy Spirit as habits. Their solution will help us to better understand their nature. ( 33 ) P. Mennessier, O. P., Habits and virtues: "Initiation -eological", xol.2 (Barcelona 1959) p.203-204. 128 P. II. Fundamental PRINCIPLES First difficulty. - It is not necessary to multiply entities without necessity. But for man to be moved by the inspiration or instinct of the Holy Spirit, actual grace is sufficient. Therefore, the gifts are not habits, but simply actual graces. Response. - The greater is conceded, but the lesser is distinguished. Actual grace on the part of the motor principle is sufficient, I grant; on the part of the soul, I subdistinguish; actual grace is sufficient where the motion is not preduced to the mode of habit, I grant; where it is produced to the mode of habit, I deny. And for the same reason, and in virtue of this distinction, I deny the consequent and the consequence. And I explain. It should be noted that the motion of grace can be considered for our case in two ways: i. a , inasmuch as it proceeds or comes from the Holy Spirit, and thus every motion of the Holy Spirit in man can be called and is an actual grace; and 2. a , inasmuch as that motion is received in the soul, and so we must still distinguish: a) inasmuch as it is a certain impulse or illumination generically considered which may occur even in sinners; and b) inasmuch as it is a special motion for which the soul must already have some disposition in order to receive it and move promptly and easily under its sway. And this still in two ways: a) to move in the human way, according to the rule of reason enlightened by faith (and for this we have the habit of the infused virtues); and b) to be moved in the way of the same motion, that is, in the divine or superhuman way, and for this we need the habit of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thus we can see how unfoundedly Cardinal Billot identifies the motion of the gifts with that of simple actual grace. With the greatest respect for the authority of the distinguished cardinal, we must reject his strange theory, among others, for the following reasons: a) Actual grace is required for every act of virtue, even the most imperfect (it is, so to speak, like the previous supernatural divine motion); but the motion of the gifts is not required for every act of virtue, as is obvious and as we will demonstrate in its place; therefore they are two perfectly distinct things. b) Actual grace is also given to sinners so that they may be converted. But the motion of the gifts presupposes the soul in grace, from which it is inseparable, as all Tradition teaches. Therefore, the two cannot be confused. Having rejected this theory, let us continue to examine the difficulties against the gifts of the Holy Spirit as habits. Second difficulty. - As we know, the last disposition already corresponds to the form. Therefore, the ultimate disposition to receive the motion of the Holy Spirit will correspond to the motion itself. Therefore, the gifts are not required as habits. Answer. - We must distinguish: the ultimate disposition to receive the motion of the Holy Spirit will correspond to the motion itself in act two, I concede; in act one, I subdistinguish: the disposition produced by the Holy Spirit will be in the form of a habit by infusion, I concede; in the form of an act, I deny. And I explain. To understand this and to grasp its full scope, it must be borne in mind that potency relates to act in four ways: i." Radically: and in this sense it is nothing other than the very nature of the agent subject - in our case, the human soul - , in which the same power or faculty is founded or rooted. c. i. nature of supernatural life 127 2. a In order to the remote first act: and so it is nature itself endowed with the potency or faculty (for example, the soul, endowed with understanding and will). 3. a In order to the first proximate act: and so is nature itself, endowed not only with powers or faculties, but also with acquired or infused habits and dispositions to act promptly, easily and delightfully. 4. a In order to the second act: and so it is nothing other than the same operation of the faculty 34 . Now then: the disposition for this last operation is certainly had by the motion itself and is the last disposition. And only in this sense is it said that the last disposition already corresponds to the form. In the objection the number 3 is confused with 4. From this we can see how violent the motion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit would be without the habit of the gifts, as Cardinal Billot thought. It would not be possible at all - it does not escape the power of God to produce the fruits without the tree - but it would result for the soul in a frankly violent motion: it would make it leap from the remote first act (n. 2) to the second act (n. 4) without passing through the proximate first act (n. 3). Third difficulty. - When the motor virtue of the agent is infinite, no previous disposition is required for the movement. But the motor virtue of the Holy Spirit is infinite. Therefore, no previous habits are necessary in the soul for it to be moved by Him. Answer. - We have already said that the Holy Spirit could not at all move the powers of the soul directly without the habit of the gifts; but this is not the normal order of Providence, which always works gently and wants man to dispose himself freely to receive its divine inspirations. This question, moreover, must be resolved according to the existence of the gifts, which we have already put beyond doubt. It is not a question of knowing what the Holy Spirit could do, but only what he has actually done. The reason for the infusion of supernatural habits - as we have already said in speaking of the infused virtues - is none other than to make supernatural acts connatural to the adopted children of God. God does not want virtuous acts of the supernatural order to be less perfect - as regards the way they are produced - than works of the natural order which proceed from acquired habits, and which through them are done promptly, easily, and delightfully. Let us not forget that man, even when moved by God in the supernatural order, is also moved by his free will, as St. Thomas says; and although under the motion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit he conducts himself in a much more passive manner than under the infused virtues, he remains always endowed with free will and never entirely ceases to be an agent even under the very action of the Holy Spirit; and therefore he needs to be perfected with the habitual qualities of the gifts. St. Thomas admirably expounds this doctrine in answering an objection that we are going to formulate below. Here it is. Fourth difficulty. - Man receives from the gifts of the Holy Spirit a perfection that enables him to be moved by the Holy Spirit himself; but insofar as he is moved by the Holy Spirit, man becomes, in a certain sense, a mere instrument of the Holy Spirit; therefore, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not habits, because it is not appropriate that the instrument be perfected by a habit, but only the principal agent. 34 (X Ziouara, Ontolügia 44,10. 33 Cí. obi, 2 . 128 P. n. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Answer. - This reason is valid for the completely inert instrument, which is not meant to move, but only to be moved (like the brush and the garlopa). But man is not such an instrument, but is so moved by the Holy Spirit that he also moves himself inasmuch as he is endowed with free will; and for this reason he needs the habitus 36 . It follows that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are neither purely active nor purely passive habits, but rather passive-active. In relation to the divine motion they are receptive or passive habits, but in relation to the vital reaction of the soul they are active habits. In short; just as man by the acquired virtues is disposed to be moved easily, promptly and delightfully by simple natural reason in order to naturally good acts, and by the infused virtues to be moved by reason enlightened by faith to supernatural acts in the human way, so by the gifts of the Holy Spirit the just man is connaturalized - so to speak - with the acts to which he is moved by special instinct of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way.37 The human being, in the same way, by the gifts of the Holy Spirit is connaturalized - so to speak - with the acts to which he is moved by special instinct of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way. Let us now look at another very important question to determine the nature of the gifts: their difference with the infused virtues. 5. If the gifts are distinguished from the infused virtues St. Thomas, 1-11,68, i; cf. 55,3 and 4; 63.3; 9.4 and 6; In III Sent. d.34 q.i a.i c. et ad 2: cf. ad 4 et 5, etc.; Gardeil: DTC, t.4 art. Dons; Dom Lottin: "Recherches de Théol. Ancienne et Médiévale* (1929) p.41-97, and "Revue d'Ascétique et de Mystique* 11 (1930) P.269S; J. BoNNEfoi, Le Saint-Esprit et ses dons selon S.Bonaventure (Paris 1929); Biard, Le dons du S. E. d'aprés S.Thomas et S.Paul (Avignon 1930); Dr. Carolo Weis, De septem donis Spir. Sancti (Vienna 1895); P. Paris O.P., o.c., p.19-25 and 58f: P. Aldama, S.I., The distinction between the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the 16th and 17th centuries: "Gregorianum" (1035) p. 562-76; I.G. Menéndez-Reigada, O.P., Unidad especifica de la contemplación cristiana (Madrid 1926) p.i8s, and Diferencias generales entre virtudes y dones: "Ciencia Tomista" (July-December 1946) and "La Vida Sobrenatural* (July-August 1944); P. Ferrero, O.P.: RET (iQ43) P-4X7-33 and (1945) P-39s and 56 is. 71. Here is a truly capital question in the theology of the gifts that must be carefully examined. The order of our study will be as follows: after exposing the doctrine of St. Thomas, we will point out the principal coincidences between the virtues and the gifts and their irreducible differences. The doctrine of St. Thomas - Until the time of St. Thomas, the opinion of theologians was rather confused in this matter. They could not agree as to whether the gifts were really distinct from the virtues or whether they were only distinguished from them by a distinction of reason 38 . But with the marvelous synthesis of St. Thomas, it can be said that the real distinction, specific in 36 Here are the words of St. Thomas: "Ad secundum dícendum, quod ratio illa procedit de instrumento, cuius non est agere, sed solum agi. Tale autem instrumentum non est homo, sed sic agitur a Spiritu Sancto, quod etiam agit, inquantum est liberi arbitrii; unde indiget habitu" (I-II, 68,3 ad 2). 37 "Per dona nobis, ut ita loquar, connatural izantur actus ad quos movemur ex speciali mstinctu Spiritus Sancti sicut per v ir tutes morales adquisitas, vel infusas, actus honcsii ordinis naturalis vel supernaturalis fiunt nobis connaturales. Sed ptopter lianc eausam virtió*** illae habent rationem habitus; ergo et similiter dona Spiritus Sancti" (Gonet, Clypeus Theol. t.3 tr. de virt. et donis d.6 a.i p.i). 38 Cf. Dom Lottin, Les dons du Sainl-Espril...: "Recherches de Thcologie Anciennc et Médiévale" (January 1929) p.41-97. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 129 The theory of the Angelic Doctor will prevail more and more until it takes over completely in Catholic theology. It is true that some dissenting voices will still be heard, especially from the Scotus school around its leader; but the theory of the Angelic Doctor will prevail more and more until it completely takes over the theological field without distinction of schools or nuances. Today there are so few exceptions that it can be said that this is the unanimous judgment of all Catholic theologians. The Angelic Doctor studies this question in his commentary on the Sentences, in the Summa Theologica and in other secondary places 40 . The doctrine is exactly the same - despite some variation in the formulas, as we shall see later - but there is no doubt that it is in the Summa Theologica that he gives us his definitive thought. Let us look, then, first of all at the doctrine he expounds in it 41 . The Angelic Doctor begins by collecting the erroneous opinions on the nature of the gifts formulated by some ancients. Here are those opinions: 1. * Gifts are not distinguished from virtues. 2. "The gifts perfect the reason, and the virtues perfect the will. 3. a The virtues are ordered to do good; and the gifts, to resist temptations. 4. a The virtues are ordered simpliciter to do good; and the gifts, to conform us to Christ principally in his passion. St. Thomas rejects all these erroneous interpretations for the following reasons; To 1. a : Why then are certain virtues also called gifts and others not? (e.g., there is a gift of fear, and no virtue of that name). Sign that they are different things. At 2. a : That might be true if all gifts were intellectual and all virtues affective. But this is not the case. At 3. a : The virtues also offer resistance to contrary temptations. This distinction is not valid. A. 4. a : Christ himself urges us to be conformed to him according to humility, meekness and charity 42 , which are virtues - not gifts - that shone forth principally in his sacred passion. Therefore, this criterion of distinction is not valid either. Having rejected the errors, St. Thomas goes on to expound the true doctrine. Here it is: In the first place, the argument of authority that he puts forward in the sed contra is very curious. He quotes St. Gregory, who in the Morals distinguishes perfectly the seven gifts of the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues. The first would be signified by 39 Father J. A. de Aldama, S.I., studies the opinion of theologians on this question during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here is the conclusion reached by the illustrious Jesuit: "Therefore, the real distinction between the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit is, without doubt, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sententia communior theologorum". Cf. "Gregorianum" (1935), p. 576. 40 Cf. 1-11,68,1 ; III Sent. d.34 q.i a.i; In Isaiam c.ii; Ad Gal. c.5 lect.8. I-II,68,r. 42 Mt. 1 1,29 * "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart"; and Ió. 13:34: "Love one another as I have loved you". Perfection Te.nl. P, II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. t. t. ÑATURAI.E 7 A OF. t* VIDA SOBRENATUR AI, 13 l the seven sons of Job; the second, by his three daughters, and the third, by the four corners of the house 43 . As can be seen, St. Gregory's exegesis could not be more naive and picturesque, but there is no doubt about his conviction that the gifts are distinguished from the virtues, which is what St. Thomas wants to prove on the authority of St. Gregory. In the body of the article he begins by warning that, if we look only at the name of gifts, we can find no difference with the infused virtues, because they too are gifts (generically) that we have received gratuitously from God. "Therefore," continues St. Thomas, "in order to distinguish the gifts from the virtues, we must follow the way of speaking of Sacred Scripture, which speaks of them not as gifts, but as 'spirits'. Thus says Isaiah, 11:2: "Requiescet super eum spiritus spiritus sapientiae et intellectus," etcetera. By which words we are manifestly given to understand that these seven spirits there enumerated are in us by divine inspiration; and every inspiration signifies a certain motion from without. It is therefore necessary to consider that in man there is a double motor principle: one interior, which is reason, and the other exterior, which is God. And it is evident that everything that moves must be proportioned to its motor; and this is precisely the perfection of the motive as such, the disposition that allows it to be well moved by its motor. Therefore, the higher the motor, the more perfect the disposition in the motive power is required to receive its action; and thus we see that the disciple needs to be better prepared to be able to grasp a higher doctrine from his master. Now then: it is manifest that the human virtues perfect man inasmuch as it is proper to man to be governed by his reason in his interior and exterior life. It is therefore necessary that there be in man certain higher perfections that dispose him to be divinely moved; and these perfections are called gifts, not only because they are infused by God, but because by them man is made capable of receiving promptly the divine inspiration, according to the words of Isaiah (50:5): "The Lord has opened my ears . . and I do not resist, I do not draw back"; and the Philosopher himself says that "those who are moved by divine instinct should not be guided by human reason, but should follow the interior inspiration, which proceeds from a higher principle" than human reason. And for this reason some say that the gifts perfect man for acts superior to those of the virtues" 44 . This is the Saint's article. In reality, nothing needs to be added to such a clear and luminous doctrine. But for the sake of completeness, given the importance of the matter, we will investigate more slowly the profound reasons that support the specific distinction between virtues and gifts. 72. In order to better understand the differences between the virtues and the gifts, it will help us to know what their common elements are; that is, in what ways they agree with each other. 45 Cf. St. Gregory, A Jarales I c.27 (al. 12 in vet. 280: ML 75,544 C). Coincidences between the virtues and the gifts. - The main ones are the following: a) They agree in gender. Both of them are operative habits: they say essential order to the action and for it they must be specified. b) They have the same efficient cause: God in the supernatural order. They are infused habits "per se", totally supernatural. c) They have the same subject "in quo": the human faculties. In them reside the virtues and gifts. d) They have the same material object ("circa quam" matter): all moral matter, which is common to virtues and gifts. e) They have the same final cause (remote end): the supernatural perfection of man, incipient in this world and consummated in the next. Such are the principal coincidences between virtues and gifts. But beside these coincidences - none of which compromise the specific difference between one and the other, since they are all extrinsic, with the exception of the genus and the material object, which are not specific elements - we have the following irreducible differences: 73. First difference: the motive cause. - The efficient cause, insofar as habits are concerned, is the same: God, author of the whole supernatural order. But the motive cause is completely different. In the virtues it is human reason itself (enlightened by faith, if it is a matter of infused virtue, and always under the prior motion of God, who in the supernatural order represents an actual grace); in the gifts, on the other hand, the motive cause is the Holy Spirit himself, who moves the habit of the gifts as his direct instruments. Therefore, we can use the habit of the infused virtues whenever we please - presupposing the actual grace, which is denied to no one -, while the gifts act only when the Holy Spirit wants to move them 45 . 74. Second difference: by the formal object 46 . - As is known, the formal object is the properly specific object of an act or of a habit. An act or habit can have in common with other acts and habits the two extrinsic causes (efficient and final) and even the material cause (which is a generic, non-specific element), without there being a specific difference between them; but if they differ by their formal object, the specific difference is very clear, even if they agree in everything else. This is precisely what happens with the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The one and the other have - as we have already said - the same efficient cause (God, author of the supernatural order), the same final cause (the sanctification of the soul, and ultimately, the glory of God) and the same material cause, since the gifts have no matter of their own, but have as their mission to perfect the act of the virtues. "5 The specific difference derived from this argument between the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit is so clear and manifest, that it has been admitted even by Fr. Chrysogonus, in spite of favoring his theories so little. Here are his words: "The difference between the gifts and the virtues is based on the different motor principle to which the one and the other habits refer. While the virtues dispose us to follow the dictates of reason, the gifts condition us to follow the dictates of the Holy Spirit. This difference of principle is what demands a difference of disposition and of formal reason in the acts, even though the material object is the same. It is manifest that the habits that dispose one to receive and follow the influence of the Holy Spirit must be specifically different from those that dispose one to the dictates of reason, even if it is illuminated by faith. Cf. Fr. Chrysogonus, Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism p. i9 (i." ed.). 46 Cf. P. Menéndez-Reigada, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Christian Perfection c.3 note G, 132 í'. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE virtues on their respective subjects. And yet, the specific difference is made very clear by the formal object, which is completely different. Let us take a look at it. The formal object is twofold: a) that by which the act is constituted in its own nature, unmistakable with any other, under a determined reason (obiectum "quo", ratio "sub qua"); and b) that which is terminating of the act or habit under the same reason of being ( obiectum "quod"), For example: the act of stealing has as its formal constitutive object ( obiectum quo ) to take what belongs to another, which is its formal cause and what essentially constitutes the theft; and as its formal terminating object ( obiectum quod), the thing belonging to another. Whether this thing is money or any other object, that is the material object. Let us apply these elementary notions to our case. a) Formal terminating object (obiectum formale "quod"), - The formal terminating object of human acts, insofar as they are moral, is the honest good ( bonum honestum), as opposed to the useful good and the delightful good, which, as such, cannot be the norm of morality. In this respect, virtues and gifts do not differ, because both tend toward this honest good in a general way. Whether we act by virtues or by gifts, we always practice that honest good. Of course, this good has two very different aspects, depending on whether it is governed by the rule of reason enlightened by faith or by the rule of the Holy Spirit himself. But this falls squarely within the formal object quo, or ratio sub qua, which is the properly specific differential element, as we shall see. b) Formal constitutive object ("obiectum quo"), - The formal object quo, or ratio sub qua, is totally different in the virtues and the gifts. In the infused virtues, the proximate and immediate rule of their acts is human reason enlightened by faith; in such a way that an act is good if it conforms to this dictum and bad if it departs from it. In the gifts, on the other hand, the proximate and immediate rule of their acts is the Holy Spirit himself, who governs them and moves them directly as his instruments, giving them direction and thus causing the act to be produced not for human reasons, but for divine reasons, which escape and transcend the sphere of human reason, even when illumined by faith. The act of the gifts springs from a completely different formal motive and, for this reason, necessarily argues a specific distinction from that of the virtues. Now, as is well known, habits are specified by their acts, and these by their formal objects. To specifically distinct formal objects correspond specifically distinct acts; and to these correspond specifically distinct habits. This is elementary in Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. Third difference: human mode and divine mode 47 - This difference necessarily follows from the two preceding ones. The operation must have the same mode as the motive cause that impels it and the norm or rule to which it conforms. Since the infused virtues have man as their motive force and human reason enlightened by faith as their norm or rule, they must necessarily imprint on their acts the human mode that corresponds to them. On the other hand, and for the same reason, the gifts, having the Holy Spirit himself as their motive force and their norm or rule, must necessarily imbue their acts with the mode corresponding to that rule and that motive force, that is, the divine or superhuman mode. 47 For these last differences cf. P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigaoa, Diferencias generóle entre dones y virtudes: *La Vida Sobrenatural" (July-August 1944). 48 We underline this word with all deliberation. We will prove in its place that things are so because they have to be so. This is not a fado modality in most cases, but a de iure requirement, determined by the very nature of things. Two consequences of exceptional importance in ascetical and mystical theology can be deduced from this third difference: a) the radical imperfection of the infused virtues due to the human modality of their action and the indispensable need that the gifts of the Holy Spirit come to their aid to provide them with their divine modality, without which the infused virtues will never be able to reach their full perfection and development; and b) impossibility of an operation of the gifts in the human way, since their divine modality is precisely an element of specific differentiation from the infused virtues. An operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the human mode involves a real contradiction. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We will come back to this at length. 76. Fourth difference: use at our discretion or at divine discretion. - Another difference that follows from the previous ones. We can use the virtues whenever we want, as experience shows (e.g., we can make an act of faith, hope, charity, or any other infused virtue whenever we want). Of the gifts, on the other hand, we cannot use them when we want, but only when the Holy Spirit himself wants us to. The reason for this is very clear. All those habits of which human reason (even if enlightened by faith) is the rule and motor, are subject to our free will as regards their exercise, because they are our acts in their entirety.49 But the gifts are habits that confer on the soul only the facility to allow itself to be moved by the Holy Spirit, who, as we have already seen, is the only motive cause of them. But the gifts are habits that confer on the soul only the facility to allow itself to be moved by the Holy Spirit, who, as we have already seen, is the sole motive cause of them, without the soul being able to do anything other than cooperate with that motion - albeit in a conscious and free manner - by placing no obstacle and seconding with docility the impulse of the Holy Spirit, who moves the gifts as the principal cause, limiting man to the role of a simple instrument, albeit conscious and free. In order to act the gifts, we can do nothing else but dispose ourselves - restraining, for example, the tumult of the passions, the affection for creatures, the crowd of distractions and phantasms of the imagination that hinder the action of God, etc. - so that the Holy Spirit himself can act on them when he pleases. In this sense, we can say that our acts are the dispositive cause of the action of the gifts. This is what St. Teresa meant when she writes with such precision and accuracy: "The first prayer that I felt, in my opinion, supernatural, which I call that which cannot be acquired with industry or diligence, even if one tries very hard, although one is prepared for it and must do a great deal for it.... 50 It is necessary - in fact - that the subject be disposed so that the gifts act in him; not with a proper and formal disposition, which is given by the gift itself, but by removing the impediments that may be in him (sicut removens prohibens, vel causa "per accidens"), so that this docility to the Holy Spirit can become real (passing to the act) and not be only potential (by the possession of the simple habit of the gifts). And, in a certain sense, our acts can also be a meritorious cause of the performance of the gifts, even in a remote way, inasmuch as with our supernatural acts we can merit the increase of grace, of the infused virtues. 49 Although always, of course, under the prior divine motion: natural, in the case of acquired virtues, and supernatural (actual grace), in the case of infused virtues. 50 St. Teresa, Relación r." to Fr. Rodrigo n.3. P. II. PRINCIPLES funjuameniai.es 135 and of the gifts of the Holy Spirit themselves insofar as habits. And the more the gifts grow in perfection, the more easily they will act and with greater intensity, and the better they will overcome the resistances or indispositions they meet in their path, just as a great fire easily kindles in a log, even if it is green or wet. But whatever degree of habitual perfection the gifts have reached in us, their action will always be completely beyond the reach of our free will. The Holy Spirit will act them when He wills and as He wills, without our ever being able to do so on our own. The difference between virtues and gifts is evident from this chapter. 77- Fifth difference; active state and passive state. - This difference is also born of the first, and is nothing more than a consequence of it. In the exercise of the infused virtues, in fact, the soul is in a fully active state. Its acts are produced in the human way and it is fully aware that it is the one who acts when and as it pleases: it is simply the motive cause of its own acts, although always, of course, under the divine motion - which is never lacking - in the form of an actual grace. The exercise of the gifts is completely different. The Holy Spirit is the only motive and principal cause that moves the habit of the gifts, the soul passing to the category of a simple instrument, although alive, conscious and free. The soul reacts vitally upon receiving the motion of the gifts - and in this way freedom and merit are saved under the action of the gifts - but only to second the divine motion, the initiative and full responsibility for which belongs entirely to the Holy Spirit himself, who acts as the only principal cause. Therefore, the more perfect and cleaner the action of the gift, the more the soul succeeds in seconding with greater docility this divine motion, adhering strongly to it without twisting it or diverting it with movements of human initiative, which would only hinder the sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit. It follows from this that the soul, when it feels the action of the Holy Spirit, must repress its own human initiative and reduce its activity to docilely seconding the divine motion, remaining passive in relation to it. This passivity - let it be well understood - is so only with respect to the divine agent; but in reality it is transformed into a very lively activity on the part of the soul, although solely and exclusively to second the divine action, without altering or modifying it with human initiatives. In this sense it must be said that the soul also works instrumentally what is worked in it, produces what is produced in it, executes what the Holy Spirit executes in it. It is simply a matter of a received activity,51 of an absorption of natural activity by supernatural activity, of a sublimation of the powers to a divine order of operation, which has absolutely nothing to do with the sterile inaction of quietism. Such are the main differences between the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. As the reader will have observed, the fundamental differences are the first two: they are the ones that establish a radical and specific difference between one and the other. The other three, although very clear and interesting for our object, are nothing more than logical consequences and inevitable requirements of those two fundamental ones: the different motive cause and the different rule to which they obey (formal object <■ quo "). (I 51 "ín donis Spíritus Sancti mens humana non se habet ut movens, sed magis ut mota " 1-11,52,2 ad i). C I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE And now let us move on to study another question which we have already hinted at above and which we judge to be of decisive importance for the correct solution of the main controversial questions in ascetical and mystical theology: that of the alleged double operation in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 6. Do the gifts of the Holy Spirit admit a twofold MODE OF OPERATION? 78. State of the question. - The approach to this problem is not entirely new. There are already obscure antecedents in some theologians and mystics of antiquity 52 . Chrysogonus 5i , who cites in his favor a text of Cardinal Billot 54 . The opinion of two or three theologians would be of no great importance in the face of the unanimous feeling of all the others. But the serious aspect of the case is that an attempt has been made to place this doctrine under the protection of the Angelic Doctor. It is therefore necessary to examine it carefully in order to put things back in their proper place. Our study will have two parts. In the first we will examine the thought of St. Thomas in order to demonstrate that the double mode of the gifts not only never passed through his imagination, but that it is completely incompatible with Thomistic principles. In the second, we will address the question itself in order to demonstrate that such an operation of the gifts in the human mode would be perfectly useless (if it were possible); it is philosophically impossible and theologically absurd. 79. a) The thought of St. Thomas. - The thought of St. Thomas on this question is so clear and transparent that it is hard to understand how anyone could have tried to disfigure it 55 . It is not 52 Very few, of course. Father Chrysogonus, in making an inventory of his patrons, can cite only three names besides Cardinal Billot: Nicholas of Jesus-Mary, Joseph of Jesus-Mary and Dionysius the Carthusian (cf. La perfection et la mystique... p.67). With the exception of the text of Joseph of Jesus-Mary - in which two modes are attributed to the gift of wisdom - the other two texts cannot be argued in favor of this opinion: they do not have the meaning that Father Chrysogonus attributes to them, as the impartial reader who examines them without prejudice will be able to see. And Joseph of Jesus-Mary himself, in contrast to this obscure text, has an infinity of texts in which he clearly states that the gifts work in the superhuman or divine way, as opposed to the human way of the virtues, and this is supported by the testimony of St. Thomas, so dear to him (cf. Jiménez Duque, Acerca de la Mística: RET [April-June 19473 P- 234-5). As for" Cardinal Billot's authority in these matters, it is certainly very little. The cardinal himself, with a humility that further brightens his indisputable personality, simply acknowledged that he had not made a profound study of these questions: "Son Eminence a trés simplement reconnu qu'elle n'avait jamais fait une étude approfondie de ces questions; elle avait noté du reste, dans son traité "De virtutibus infusis*, qu'elle ne voulait en dire que quelques mots en parlant des dons" (cf. P. Garrigou-Lagrange, Perfection chrétieme et contemphtion i. a ed. t-2 append.i p.48), 53 Father Chrysogon repeats this doctrine in all his mystical works. See, for example, Compendium of Ascetics and Mysticism i. a ed. p. 21-24; St. John de la Crurr; his scientific and literary work t.i p.i 15-17; La perfection et la mystique passim, etc. 54 Cf. Billot, De virtutibus infusis q,68 th.8 p.173 (4th ed. 1928). 53 Father Chrysogonus, in his booklet La perfection et la mystique selon les principes de Saint Thomas, makes a great effort to attribute this doctrine to St. Thomas, in order to draw out P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. EN C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE It is not necessary to make a laborious exegesis of obscure and difficult texts to make his thought clear; it is enough to simply quote his words without comments or comments of any kind. In a clear, categorical, categorical manner that leaves no room for the slightest doubt or ambiguity, St. Thomas has constantly affirmed throughout his doctrinal magisterium that one of the most characteristic notes of the specific distinction between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the infused virtues is precisely their distinct mode of action. In the Sentences, above all, this doctrine acquires such prominence that it constitutes in itself the fundamental distinction between the virtues and the gifts. Let us listen to his own words: 1. "The gifts are distinguished from the virtues in this: that the virtues perform acts in the human way, and the gifts in the superhuman way" S6 . 2 . "(The gifts) are superior to the virtues in that they act in a superhuman way" 57 . 3. "And since the gift does not surpass the virtue except by reason of the manner..." 58. 58 4. "Gifts work in a higher way than virtue" 5 ®. Therefore, since the gift elevates to an operation that is above the human mode, it is necessary that in relation to the matter of all the virtues there be some gift that has a more excellent mode in that matter" 60 , 6. "By the gift man is raised to the superhuman mode" ®l. 7. "Therefore, since the gifts are to work in a superhuman way, it is necessary that the operations of the gifts be measured by a rule other than human virtue, which is the same divinity participated in by man in his own way, so that he no longer works humanly, but as made God by participation" 62. 8. "The gifts, as we have said, differ from the virtues in that the gifts work in a higher way" S3 . It is not necessary that the gifts be more perfect than the virtues in terms of all the conditions, but in terms of the way of acting that is upon man" 64 . The "Bulletin Thomiste", in reporting the publication of the booklet of Father Chrysogonus, misinterpreted this false interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas, based on truncated texts. The "Bulletin Thomiste", in reporting the publication of Father Chrysogonus' booklet, took this false interpretation of St. Thomas' thought, made on the basis of truncated texts, very badly. Here are the actual words of the Bulletin in their original French text: "II we find it utterly impossible for us to approach this opuscule or Fr. Crisogono maintains that, according to St. Thomas, there are two specifically different ways to reach Christian perfection: the ordinary or ascetical way, the extraordinary or mystical way. We will find in the answers given (in particular in those of M. Dalbiez and Fr. Garrigou, directly visited by Cr.Garrigou) the necessary elements to appreciate the intemperance with which our Spanish theologian searches through the doctrines - still I-, and through the texts - which is not forgiven" (cf. "Bulletln Thomiste", April-June 1933, p.858 n.1079). 56 "Dona a virtutibus distinguuntur in hoc quod virtutes perficiunt ad actus modo humano, sed dona ultra humamim modum" (III Sent. d.34 q.i a.i). 57 "(Dona) sunt supra virtutes inquantum ultra humanum modum perficiunt" (ibid., ad 1). 58 "Et ideo cum donum non sit supra virtutem nisi ratione modi..." (ibid., ad 5). 89 "Dona enim perficiunt ad modum altiorem quam virtus" (ibid., q.l 3.2). 60 "Unde cum donum elevet ad operationem quae est supra humanum modum, oportet quod circa materias omnium virtutum sit aliquod donum quod habeat aliquem modum excellentem in materia ilia" (ibid., q.i a. 2 c). 61 "Per donum elevatur homo supra humanum modum " (ibid., q.l a. 3 sed contra). 92 "Et ideo cum dona sint ad operandum supra humanum modum, oportet quod donorum operationes mensurentur ex altera regula quam sit regula humanae virtutis, quae est ipsa divinitas ab homine participata suo modo, ut iam non humanitus, sed quasl Deus factus participatione, operetur" (ibid-, q.l a. 3 c). 63 "Dona a virtutibus, ut dictum est, differunt, inquantum dona altioii modo operantun (ibid., q.3 a.i q. "3 sol.i). "4 "Non oportet dona oportet quantum ad omnes conditiones esse perfectiora virtutibus sed quantum ad modum operandi qui est supra hominemr (ibid., d.35 q.2 a. 3 q.3 sol. 2 ad 2). 10. "The gift in THIS SURPASSES virtue, in that it works in a superhuman way; which way is caused by a measure higher than human measure. As the reader can see, it is impossible to speak with more transparent clarity. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, what specifically distinguishes the gifts of the Holy Spirit from the infused virtues is precisely their different way of acting, which is intrinsically demanded by their different formal object and the rule and motor to which they obey. The infused virtues move the soul in the human way, following the rule of reason enlightened by faith; the gifts, on the other hand, move it in the superhuman way, following the impulse of the Holy Spirit: "they are distinguished in this". Can there be a clearer and more categorical affirmation that, according to the mind of St. Thomas, there is not and cannot be an action of the gifts in the human way, since what distinguishes and separates the gifts from the infused virtues is precisely the superhuman way of their acting: "they are distinguished in this; the gift in this surpasses virtue?" It is true that all these texts are from the commentary on the Sentences, which St. Thomas wrote in his youth, and that this formula of the distinction between the virtues and the gifts because of their different modalities does not appear with such insistence in the Summa Theologica, his most mature and definitive work. Someone wanted to see in this a change of thought in the Angelic Doctor, but mistakenly. The doctrine of the Summa is exactly the same as that of the Sentences, although better elaborated. In the Summa he insists more on the specific difference between virtues and gifts by reason of the motor principle and the rule to which they obey; but he maintains intact the distinction by the modality established in the Sentences, a distinction which is, on the other hand, but an inevitable consequence of the different motor principle and the rule to which they obey. In the Summa, more theological than in the Sentences, St. Thomas insists on the causes more than on the effects, but without renouncing the latter, which inevitably follow from the former. The formula of modality does not abound as much as in the Sentences, but it does not disappear completely in the Summa. Here is some evidence: In the special question he devotes to the gifts in his Summa Theologica, he writes: "The gifts exceed the common perfection of the virtues not in terms of the kind of acts - as advice exceeds precepts - but in terms of the way of acting, according as man is moved by a higher principle" 67 . 65 "Donum in hoc transcendit virtutem, quod supra modum humanum operatur; qui quidem modus ex mensura altiori quam sit humana mensura causatun (ibid., d.36 a. 3 c). 66 Father Joseph de Guibert, S.I., in the "Revue d'Ascétique et de Mystique" (October, 2000). 1922). - Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., answered him in an article that appeared in "La Vie Spirituelle" (March 1923), which can be found in appendix n.2 of his celebrated work Perfection chrétienne et contemplation. Fr. Garrigou fully demonstrates that the Saint did not change his mind, but confirms and amplifies in the Summa the same doctrine as in the Sentences.- One may profitably read on this same subject Dom Lottin: "Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale" (1929) p.53-60.- A very well done summary of the Guibert-Garrigou controversy was made by Fr. Joret, O.P., in "Bulletin Thomiste" (1925) p.245-48. " . 67 "Dona excedunt communem perfectionem virtutum non quantum ad genus operum, eo modo quo consilia praecedunt praecepta, sed quantum ad modum operandi secundum quod movetur homo ab altiori principio" (1-11,68,2 ad 1). XI. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES This is clearly the same doctrine of the Sentences, even ■ as regards the materiality of the formulas. The gifts are more perfect than the virtues, not as regards the kind of their works, but as regards the way of acting, required by the different rule to which they obey and the driving force that impels them. Nor is this the only place in the Summa where the terminology of the Sentences appears. Speaking, for example, of the gift of fortitude, and after saying that with the virtue of the same name man works "according to his proper and connatural way," he adds textually: "But over and above this, the Holy Spirit moves man to bring to completion the work he has begun and to avoid the dangers that threaten him. This certainly transcends human nature" 68, In the answer to the question "Utrum convenienter enumerentur beatitudines," St. Thomas writes; "From this pursuit of the passions of the irascible, virtue retracts, so that man does not overindulge in them, according to the rule of reason; but the gift, in a more excellent way, namely, so that man may be entirely free from them according to the divine will. "69 Tell us if these formulas of the Summa Theologica are not entirely equivalent to those of the Sentences 70 . But if any imprudent doubt could remain about the definitive thought of St. Thomas because the formulas of the Sentences are not found so profusely in the Summa, here is a contemporary text of the Prima secundae of the Summa (where St. Thomas puts the special question of the gifts), and perhaps later than it 71 . In the disputed question De caritate, written during his magisterium in Paris, around the years 1270 to 1272 72 , that is, shortly before his death 73 , he writes textually: 68 "Sed ulterius a Spiritu Sancto movetur animus hominís ad hoc quod perveniat ad finem cuiuslibet operis inchoati, et cvadat quaecumque pericula imminentia: quod quidem excedítam naturam humanam* (11-11,139, 0* 69 "A sequeJa autem passionum írascibilís retrahit virtus, ne homo in eis superfluat, secundum regulam rationis: donum autem excellentiori modo, ut scilicet homo secundum voluntatem divinam, totaliter ab eis tranquillus reddatur* (I-II,6g,3). 70 The matter is so clear that Father De Guibert himself had to acknowledge it expressly: "The fundamental article of I-II q.68 a.i expressly indicates the principle that establishes the continuity between these two series of formulas: agir sous la motion directe du Saint Esprit est pour l'homme une maniére d'agir plus parfait que d'agir sous la motion de la raison (méme éclairée par la foi), et voilá pourquoi les dons correspondent á une maniére d'agir plus par faite, plus haute que les vertus morales, mémes infuses" (cf, "Revue d'Ascétique et de Mystique", October 1922, p.406). De Guibert (p.405) that in the commentary on the Sentences (III d.34 q.i a.2 and d.35 q.2 a.4) we already find the manner of speaking that will later become more frequent in the Summa, and which focuses not only on the effect, but also on its cause. J. A. de Aldama, S.I., affirms without hesitation the perfect concordance between the Sentences and the Summa Theologica in his interesting article The gifts of the Holy Spirit; problems and controversies in the current Theology of the gifts, in RET (January-March 1949" p. 17-22). 71 According to the eminent critic P. Mandonnet, St. Thomas wrote the Prima secundae around the years 1269-70. Cf. Fr. Bacic, O.P., Introductio compendiosa in opera St. Thomae Aquinatis p.51. - Walz, San Tommaso d'Aquino, appendix "Cronologia della vita e degli scripti". 72 Cf. Fr. Bacic, o.c., p.36.- Fr. Walz places the writing of the question De caritate between 1266-69. In any case, it would be contemporary with the Prima secundae. The Saint's magisterium in Paris lasted from January 1269 to mid-i272. 73 St. Thomas died on March 7, 1274. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE "...the gifts perfect the virtues by elevating them above the human mode" 74 . Here is the same doctrine of the Judgments and under the same material formula 75 . There is not the slightest doubt about the thought of St. Thomas. For him, the most characteristic and fundamental effect of the action of the gifts is the superhuman mode, in direct opposition and contrast with the human mode, which is proper and characteristic of the infused virtues. Both the gifts and the virtues are supernatural entitatively or quoad substantiam, and in this they coincide, but they differ in their mode of acting. The virtues act in the human or connatural way, following the rule of reason; the gifts, in the divine or superhuman way, following the impulse of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the infused virtues are supernatural quoad substantiam, but not quoad modum operandi; the gifts, on the other hand, are supernatural not only quoad substantiam, but also quoad modum operandi. This is the very clear teaching of the Angelic Doctor. Those who continue to defend the possibility that the gifts of the Holy Spirit act in a human way must renounce invoking St. Thomas in support of their thesis 7S . b) The question itself. - But, even disregarding the argument of authority - even as decisive in mystical theology as that of St. Thomas 77 - and examining things in their proper 74 "... dona perficiunt virtutes elevando eas supra modum humanum" (De caritate a.2 ad 17). 78 Lately, the idea of a substantial change in the thought of St. Thomas from the Sentences to the Summa Theologica has been insisted upon again (cf. A. San Cristóbal-Sebastián, Las dos exposiciones de Santo Tomás sobre los dones: RET, July-September and October-December 1952). We sincerely believe that the arguments adduced do not change the state of the question as we left it exposed in the preceding pages. We willingly concede that in the Summa Theologica the distinction between virtues and gifts does not appear with as much insistence as in the Sentences, but it does not disappear completely - as we have just seen - and this is enough for us not to be able to speak of substantial changes in the conception or scheme of the gifts. St. Thomas in full maturity improves and perfects the doctrine he taught in his youth, insisting on the rule and motor of the gifts more than on their modality, which, after all, is but an effect and obligatory consequence of those higher principles. But both doctrines complement each other and point to a perfectly homogeneous doctrinal current, which is already being perfected and acquiring firmer and more vigorous characters in the magnificent synthesis of the Summa Theologica. Marceliano Llamera, O.P., has magnificently refuted the argumentation of St. Christopher-Sebastian in RET (January-March and April-June 195*0), setting the record straight. Aldama, S.I., in RET (January-March 1949" p. 18-19). 7 <► As for certain texts of St. Thomas that Fr. Chrysogonus quotes, see the following works, where they are examined and made clear in a totally opposite sense to Fr: P. Garrigou-Lagrange, Les dons ont-ils un mode humainl : "La Vie Spirituelle" (November 1932): item P. Garrigou-Lagrange, A propos du mode supra-humain des dons du Saint Esprit: ibid. October 1933. R. Dalbiez : "Etudes Cannélitaines" (April 1933) p.247ff., magnificent study, where the main text of St. Thomas as written by the Saint and as offered by Father Chrysogonus, skilfully mutilated in two columns - J. Perinelle, in "Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques" (November 1932) D.692, brief, but substantial criticism of Father Chrysogonus - P. I. G. Menénéndez, in the "Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques" (November 1932) D.692, brief but substantial criticism of Father Chrysogonus - . P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigada, El modo normal de obrar los hábitos infusos: "Ciencia Tomista" (January-June 1946) p. 83-98. -P. Llamera, O.P., The supernatural life and the action of the Holy Spirit: RET (October-December 1947) p.423-31. It is a mistake to think that St. Thomas is only the Prince of dogmatic or moral Theology. He is also, indisputably, the Prince of Mystical Theology. Not only because these subdivisions have been introduced by theologians who came after him - St. Thomas knew only "Theology", thus, without further ado, which unitarily embraced all Dogmatics and all Morals and all Mysticism under one and the same formal object (1, 1,3) - but, above all, because the supreme Magisterium of the Church has declared it to be so: "asceticae mysticaeque theologiae capita si quis pemosse volet, is Angelicum in primis doctorem adeat oportebit*. Cf. Pius XI, encyclical Studiorum ducem: AAS 15 (1923) P-320. P. II. PRINCIPLES fundameniai.es C. I. NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE objectivity, it seems clear to us that we can in no way admit an action of the gifts in the human way. And we will tell you why. 8 o. i. It would be useless and superfluous. - In the first place, this action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the human mode - if it were possible - would be totally useless and superfluous, or it would multiply the entities without necessity. Because one of two things is possible: either this action in the human way is confused with the human way of the virtues, or it is not. If the former, it is useless and superfluous, as is clear and evident; if the latter, we have a multiplication of entities without necessity. Why do we want an operation of the gifts in the human mode when we have at our disposal, with the help of simple ordinary grace, the human mode of the infused virtues? What could this operation of the gifts in the human mode add to the infused virtues? The supernatural entity? The infused virtues already have that in themselves. The human way of acting? The human way of acting? The human way of acting also has the virtues. For if they can add nothing to them - since it is impossible to distinguish in the gifts other formalities than the quoad substantiam and the quoad modum, which in this case would coincide with the quoad substantiam and quoad modum of the infused virtues - who does not see that this is multiplying the entities without any need and that in good philosophy it is necessary to reject these unnecessary multiplications? Nor is it worth saying that, even if the human mode were identified with that of the virtues, there would still - according to St. Thomas - be two specific differences between the virtues and the gifts: the different formal object and the principle that actuates them or the rule to which they conform 78. This observation is not valid, because, far from invalidating our argument, it confirms it and makes it stand out even more strongly, since the impossibility that the gifts can have a human way of acting arises and stems precisely from having a formal object, an acting principle and a rule of action that are absolutely divine, different specifically from the formal object, the acting principle and the rule of action of the infused virtues, as St. Thomas expressly says and as we say with him. On this point, the thought of the Angelic Doctor is very clear and unmistakable, and it is certainly astonishing and marveling that the testimony of the Saint is invoked to prove precisely the opposite of what that testimony affirms with transparent clarity. Here are the words of the Angelic Doctor without comments or mutilations; and precisely in the Sentences, which is where the Saint stresses less the distinction between the formal object and the rule or motor. 78 "Or Saint Thomas, dans !a Somme, teaches two other differences between the gifts and the truths: premiérement, celle qui nait de la diversité des objets forméis, et secondement, celle qui nait du principe qui Ies actué ou de la régle à laquelle s'accommode cette opération Par conséquent bien qu'il existe une opération à mode humaine réalisée par les dons, elle ne se ne se confondon pas avec celle des vertus parce qu'il subsiste encore de deux différences spécifiques qui les distinguent* (cf. P. Chrysogonus, La perfection et la mystique... p.35-6). The mode is indicated to each thing by its own measure. And so the mode of action is taken from that which is the measure or rule of action. Therefore, since the gifts are to work on the human mode, it is necessary that the operations of the gifts be measured by a rule distinct from human virtue, which is the same divinity participated in by man in his own way, so that he no longer works humanly, but as made God by participation. "79 The thought of St. Thomas is very clear. The gifts have a superhuman mode of action precisely because the mode of an action is taken from the rule to which it conforms. And since this rule is no longer human reason (as in the virtues), but the Holy Spirit himself, it follows that the gifts necessarily move man to the superhuman mode: so that he no longer acts humanly, but as made God by participation. An action of the gifts in the human way is absurd and unintelligible, since the way of an action depends on the rule and measure to which it must conform. As the reader can see, the cause of the error suffered by the supporters of the human mode of the operation of the gift is in imagining that the mode of the gifts is something accidental that does not affect their intimate nature. They do not realize that it is an essential mode, imposed by the formal object constitutive of the very essence of the gifts, which is - as we have already seen - the divine rule to which it conforms. St. Thomas says it expressly, and anyone who has an elementary notion of what the gifts are must say it. Let us listen to the Angelic Doctor: "The gift in this surpasses virtue, in that it works in a superhuman way; which way is caused by a higher measure than the human measure. To this measure, which is God himself, the human soul is united by charity" 80 . Therefore, to deprive the gift of this essential divine mode is to destroy it. If its formal raison d'être consists in conforming to a divine rule, it cannot be deprived of the mode that results from this conformity without incurring a contradiction. Either the act conforms to that divine rule, or it does not. If it is adjusted, we have the divine mode of the act, which is nothing other than conformity with that rule. If it does not conform, it cannot be an act of the gifts, because it lacks nothing less than its formal constitutive ("obiectum formale quo, vel ratio sub qua") 81 . This argument has no further explanation, and it alone would be enough to settle the question. But, for the sake of completeness, let us continue examining the reasons that make it impossible to claim that the gifts act in a human way. 79 "Dicendum quod modus unicuique rei ex propria mensura praefigitur. Unde modus actionis sumitur ex eo quod est mensura et regula acttonis. Et ideo cum dona sint ad operandum supra humanum modum, oportet quod donorum operationes mensurentur ex altera regula quam sit regula humarme virtutis, quae est ipsa Divinitas ab homine participata suo modo, ut iam non humanitus, sed quasi Deus factus participatione operetun (III Sent. d.34q.i a.3 resp.). 80 "Donum in hoc t ranscendit virtutem quod supra modum humanum operatur: qui quidem modus ex mensura altiori quam sit humana mensura causatur. Huic autem mensurae quae Deus est, mens humana per caritatem innitítur" (III Sent. dist.3 a. 36 c). 8 1 This is precisely the argument that they opposed to Father Chrysogonus from a review of his Order: We cannot consider as valid the first argument of Father Chrysogonus. The suprahuman mode of the gifts, in the thought of Saint Thomas, comes from the suprahuman rule that is the special inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a rule that constitutes the formal object of the act of the gifts. The three are inseparable" (cf. "Ktudes Carmélitaines", aít. by R. Dalbiez [April 1933] P-249). 142 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 1. 2. It is philosophically impossible. - Secondly, if the gifts of the Holy Spirit could have an operation in the human way, this operation would be specifically distinct from his operation in the divine way, as is obvious and proclaimed by Father Chrysogonus himself. Now, everyone knows - it is elementary in scholastic philosophy - that two specifically distinct operations argue, by ontological necessity, for two specifically distinct habits, since habits are distinguished and specified precisely by their operations, just as these are distinguished and specified by their objects.82 Therefore, if the gifts of the Holy Spirit could have an operation in the human mode, this operation would be specifically distinct from their operation in the divine mode, as is obvious and proclaimed by Father Chrysogonus himself. Therefore, if the gifts of the Holy Spirit - which are habits, as we have already seen, according to St. Thomas and Fr. Chrysogonus himself - could have an act in the human way, specifically distinct from its act in the divine way, it would inevitably follow that one and the same habit would have two specifically distinct acts, which is unheard of and unintelligible in scholastic philosophy. This would be as stupendous as if with bodily eyes alone we could see and hear indistinctly. To admit this doctrine it would be necessary to renounce the most elementary and inconclusive principles of our perennial philosophy 83 . The cause of this second confusion suffered by the partisans of the double donal operation consists in not distinguishing well the material object from the formal object of habits.84 It is clear that one and the same habit can fall, not on two, but on many specifically distinct material objects. For the act of stealing it is indifferent whether one has stolen a loaf of bread, a watch, or a sum of money, although they are specifically distinct objects, because they constitute only the material object of the act; the formal aspect of these objects consists in their being something else's, which is what specifically constitutes the theft. Thus a single habit can very well produce many materially distinct acts even in kind if they are considered in their physical being, but by no means if they are considered formally and in their moral being. The formal object must always be one, since it is precisely this object that specifies the habit. To feed the hungry and to clothe the naked are very different acts in their physical being, with specifically different material objects, but both proceed from the same habit, which is the virtue of mercy, which has as its formal object to help the indigent, and thus they are acts of the same moral species in spite of having such different material objects. The material object does not say order to the habit, but only the formal object or reason 85. Let us listen to the Angelic Doctor explain this doctrine: 82 St. Thomas says it expressly and it is a current doctrine in scholastic philosophy, as everyone knows: "Diversitas vero obiectorum secundum speciem, facit diversitatem actuum secundum speciem et per consequens habituum" (cf. 1-11,54, i ad i; ibid., a. 2; 1,77,3, etc.). "ID. Baedomero Jiménez Duque, in an article that appeared in RET (October-December 1941, p.963-83), rejects the argument of the double operation of the gifts with the following words: "To affirm this principle of a habit, such as the gifts, we believe that we must deny more than half of the philosophical and theological principles of Thomism". We are in complete agreement. 8" St. Thomas frequently warns against this confusion: "In distinctione potentiarum vel etiam habituum, non est considerandum ipsum obiectum materialiter, sed julio obiecti differens specie vel etiam genere" <1-11,54,2 ad 1 ). "3 Cf. P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigada, El modo normal de obrar los hábitos infusos: "Ciencia Tomista" (January-June 1946) C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE "Just as a faculty, being one, extends to many objects insofar as they agree in the same formal reason, in the same way the habit extends to many objects insofar as they are related to something unique, either to a special reason of the object, or to a nature, or to the same principle, as we have already said. If, then, we consider habit in order of the objects to which it extends, we shall find in it a certain multiplicity. But since this multiplicity is ordered to something unique - the formal reason for habit - it follows that habit is a simple quality, not composed of several habits, even when it extends to many objects. For habit does not extend to many things unless it is in order to something unique, from which it receives its i unit" 8" But this is not the end of the disadvantages of this pilgrim theory. Let us see what results from it by transferring it to the field of theology, that is, by examining the nature and purpose of the gifts as instruments of the Holy Spirit. 82. 3. 0 It is theologically absurd: Let us put the argument in form. A performance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that destroys the nature and purpose of the gifts is theologically absurd. But the performance of the gifts in the human way would destroy their own nature and finality. Therefore, it is theologically absurd. La.mavor is an obvious conditional. Let's try the minor. According to the doctrine of St. Thomas - on this point admitted by all schools - the gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernatural habits which, moved directly and immediately by the Holy Spirit himself as his instruments, have the purpose of perfecting the act of the infused virtues. Up to this point there is no discussion among the authors of the different schools. Now then: the operation of the gifts in the human way would totally destroy these two things: the nature and the purpose of the gifts. 86 "Sicut potentia, cum sit una, multa se extendit, secundum quod conveniunt in uno aliquo , id est, in generali quadam ratione obiecti, ita etiam habitus ad multa se extendit, secundum quod habent ordinem ad aliquod unum, puta ad unam specialem rattonem obiecti, vel unam naturam, vel unum principium, ut ex supradictis patet. Si igitur consideremus habitum secundum ea ad quae se extendit (objetos materiales), sic inveniemus in eo quamdam multiplicitatem. Sed quia illa multiplicitas est ordinata ad aliquid unum, ad quod principaliter respicit habitus (formal object), inde est quod habitus est quaíitas simplex non constituía ex pluribus habitibus, etiamsi ad multa se extendat. Non enim unus habitus se extendit ad multa (material objects) nisi in ordine ad unum, ex quo habet unitatem (formal object)" (1-11,54,4). Although it seems unlikely, Father Chrysogonus quotes twice this same text of St. Thomas, which he considers "capital" to prove the double mode of the gifts ( í). His confusion between the material and the formal object of habits is evident (cf. La perfection et la mystique... p.77 and 79), We must also note the difference between potency and habitus by reason of their formal object, for when St. Thomas speaks of potency, he assigns to it a "general" or generic reason; and when he speaks of habitus, he points to a "special" or specific reason; words - the latter - that Father Chrysogonus omits in the French translation of this text in order to draw the conclusion that, if potency can have several specifically distinct acts, there is no reason to deny this same possibility to habitus (cf. p. 77). The reason is completely different. The object of potency is generic, and a genus must always embrace diverse species; but the object of habit is specific or "special", with atomatic species, since habit is not a composite quality, and, therefore, neither it nor its proper acts can ever be divided into diverse species (cf. P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigada, article cited in "Ciencia Tomista", January-June 1946). 144: P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES , i a) It would destroy their nature. - If the gifts of the Holy Spirit could have an operation in the human mode, parallel to that of the infused virtues, it would follow logically and inevitably that in that human mode we could act at our discretion the gifts of the Holy Spirit, with the help of simple ordinary grace, since the human mode - even in the supernatural order - is connatural to us: it does not transcend the rule of reason nor the powers of the soul elevated by grace to that supernatural order. And so, with no other help than that of simple ordinary grace, we could perform an act pertaining to the gift of wisdom or that of understanding in the human way with the same simplicity and ease with which we perform an act of faith, of hope or of supernatural charity. Now then: if a habit with two specifically distinct operations was something unintelligible in philosophy, an act of the gifts of the Holy Spirit produced by man himself with the help of simple ordinary grace would be a real enormity in Theology. All theologians without exception - whatever school they belong to - proclaim the absolute impossibility of our being able to act the gifts of the Holy Spirit on our own; a special intervention of the Holy Spirit is required in every case independently of all human initiative. This is demanded by the very nature of the gifts, which are direct and immediate instruments of the divine Spirit himself, not of the soul in grace like the infused virtues. But there is still more. If the gifts could have a human mode, in that human modality, they would cease to be the direct instruments of the Holy Spirit that the whole theological tradition has known - they could not be, because the mode depends on the rule and the motor, as we have shown above - to become instruments of man, or, if you will, of the soul in grace, like the infused virtues. Tell us if this is not to destroy completely the very nature of the gifts as the whole Tradition has known them. But it is not only their nature that would be destroyed, but, as a logical and inevitable consequence, the very purpose of the gifts would also disappear. Here is why. b) It would destroy their purpose. - According to the Angelic Doctor - we have already indicated it and we will see it extensively in its corresponding place - the purpose of the gifts is to perfect the act of the infused virtues, providing them with the "divine atmosphere" they need for their full growth and development. Now then: an operation of the gifts in the human way would be completely incapable of achieving this end, especially with regard to the theological virtues, in whose perfect development Christian perfection consists principally. For the theological virtues, as the Angelic Doctor says,87 are in themselves more perfect than the gifts, and if they need them to attain their full development and perfection, it is because the infused virtues (both theological and theological) are more perfect than the gifts. "" I-It.68.8. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 145 It is necessary that this human ballast and sediment, which inevitably mixes in their operations in the ascetic manner (in which the virtues remain as if abandoned to themselves), disappear and be replaced by the divine, totally supernatural mode, which the gifts will communicate to them, making them act mystically. Only then will the infused virtues produce perfect acts, entirely divine, as their strictly supernatural nature corresponds and demands, without any mixture or mortar of human elements and resemblances. But if the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in coming to the aid of the theological virtues, were to lend them a human mode, we would have made absolutely no progress in perfecting these virtues. Their acts would continue to be as imperfect and unhealthy as before. How could an operation of the gifts in the human mode perfect the act of the theological virtues, if this mode would be absolutely identical to that which these virtues already have when handled by man, being, moreover, superior to the gifts? Who does not see that this is absurd and contradictory? Are we right or wrong in describing this theory as theologically absurd? Whichever way you look at it, then, it is clear and evident that the gifts of the Holy Spirit have and can have only one mode of operation: the divine or superhuman mode, which demands their very nature as direct and immediate instruments of the Holy Spirit himself. And now we are going to study another very interesting question, namely: the necessity of the gifts for Christian perfection and even for eternal salvation itself. 7. Need for the gifts of the Holy Spirit We will establish the following three propositions: 1. a The gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for the perfection of the infused virtues. 2. a They are necessary for eternal salvation itself. 3. a They are not necessary for each and every healthful act. The most important proposition in Mystical Theology is the first one, which we are going to examine carefully 88 . 88 Cf. the magnificent study of Fr. Menéndez-Reigada, Necesidad de los dones del Espíritu Santo (Salamanca 1940), from which we mainly draw inspiration for these conclusions, and where the reader will find ample information on this subject. I'. IT. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 3 46 First proposition: The gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for the perfection of the infused virtues. j 83. The general argument is very simple. The gifts are necessary for the perfection of the infused virtues if the latter have certain defects that they cannot correct by themselves, but only under the influence of the gifts. But this is precisely the case with the infused virtues. Therefore... The major premise of this conditional syllogism is evident. If the virtues cannot by themselves correct certain imperfections that accompany them and these imperfections disappear under the influence of the gifts, it is clear and evident that the gifts are necessary for the perfection of the virtues. On this conditional there is no room for discussion. The one to be demonstrated is the minor premise. First of all, let us not forget that the infused virtues are habits. It is necessary, then, to examine the motives of imperfection that can be found in habits in order to see if any of these motives are found in the infused virtues. There are five main reasons for imperfection that can be found in a habit: i. When the habit does not reach all its material object. Such is the case of a student of theology who has not yet studied any treatise of theology. He knows something of theology, he has the habit of it, but incompletely and imperfectly. 2. 0 For the lack of intensity with which the habit achieves its object (e.g., the student who has gone through the whole panorama of a subject, but only loosely and superficially). 3. 0 Because it is not deeply rooted in the subject (e.g., he/she has not practiced it very much). These three imperfections are found in the virtues, but they can correct them by themselves. They do not need the help of the gifts to extend to new objects, to increase the intensity of the acts or to multiply them. 4. 0 Because of the intrinsic, essential imperfection of the habit itself. Such is the case, e.g., with the virtue of faith (it is obscure, or de non visis) and with hope (it is de non possessis). Neither the virtues nor the gifts can correct this defect; it would be to destroy the habit itself as such. 5. 0 Because of the disproportion between the habit and the subject where they reside. And here we have precisely the case of the infused virtues. It is known, in fact, that the infused virtues are supernatural, divine habits, and the subject in which they are received is the human soul, or more exactly, its powers or faculties. Now then: since, according to the well-known aphorism of the schools, "quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur," the infused virtues, when received in the soul, are lowered and degraded, they come to acquire our human mode - by their accommodation to the natural psychological functioning of man - and are as it were drowned in that human atmosphere, which is almost \ C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 147 unbreathable for them. And this is the reason why the infused virtues, although they are much more perfect in themselves than their corresponding acquired virtues, do not make us act as easily as the latter, precisely because of the imperfection with which we possess the supernatural habits. We see this very clearly in a sinner who repents and confesses after a disordered life; he easily returns to his sins in spite of having received with grace all the infused virtues. Now, it is clear and evident that if we possess imperfectly in the soul the habit of the infused virtues, the acts that proceed from it will also be imperfect, unless a superior agent comes to perfect them. This is the purpose of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Moved and regulated, not by human reason, like the virtues, but by the Holy Spirit himself, they provide the infused virtues - especially the theological virtues - with the "divine atmosphere" they need to develop their full supernatural potential. This necessity can also be seen in the formal motive that impels the act of the infused virtues. As long as the object or formal motive does not go beyond the rule of human reason, even when enlightened by faith, it will always be an imperfect motive, even if the same work is practiced materially that would be practiced under the motion of the gifts, since they will lack that divine modality, which comes from the superior motive or rule characteristic of the gifts. And it is not that the infused virtues are imperfect in themselves. On the contrary, they are in themselves most perfect realities, strictly supernatural and divine. The theological virtues are even more perfect than the gifts of the Holy Spirit themselves, as St. Thomas says 90 . But we possess all of them imperfectly - as the same Angelic Doctor also says 91 - precisely because of that human modality, which is inevitably attached to them by their accommodation to the natural psychological functioning of man when they are governed by simple reason enlightened by faith. Thus the imperfection of the infused virtues is not in themselves - they are perfect in themselves - but in the imperfect way in which we possess them, because of their own transcendental perfection and our own human imperfection, which necessarily imprints on them the human way of simple natural reason enlightened by faith. Hence the need for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to come to the aid of the infused virtues, disposing the powers of our soul to be moved by a superior agent - the Holy Spirit himself - who will make them act in a divine way, that is, in a way totally proportionate to the most perfect object of the infused virtues. Under the action of the gifts, the infused virtues will be - so to speak - "in their own environment". Among all the infused virtues - for this same reason - the 8,) Cf. 1.11.68,3. This is the reason - as we have already said - for the perfect uselessness of an operation of the gifts in the human way, supposing it were possible. 1-11,68,8. "t 1-11,68,2. 148 P. 11. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.ES The theological gifts, in which Christian perfection consists principally when they reach their perfect development, are the ones that most need the help of the gifts. By their very nature they are in need of the divine way of the gifts. For these virtues give us a participation in the supernatural knowledge that God has of himself - faith - and of his own love - charity - , making us desire him as the supreme Good for us - hope -. These lofty objects, absolutely transcendent and divine, are necessarily constrained to a human modality while they remain governed and ruled by human reason, even if enlightened by faith. They are asking, claiming, demanding by their own divine perfection the divine regulation of the gifts. This is the argument of St. Thomas to prove the necessity of the gifts even for salvation. Here are his pro ¡as'words: "But for the supernatural ultimate end, to which reason moves inasmuch as it is in a certain way and imperfectly informed by the theological virtues, the motion of reason alone is not enough if the instinct or higher motion of the Holy Spirit does not also intervene, according to the Apostle's words (Rom. 8:14 and 17): "Those who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God; and if children, then heirs" 92 . And this argument holds true also for the infused moral virtues; for although these, by reason of their immediate object, do not transcend the rule of reason - since they do not refer immediately to the supernatural end, but to the means for attaining it - they are ordered in themselves to a supernatural end and receive from charity their form and their life in that transcendent order.53 They need, therefore, in order to be perfect, to receive a divine mode that adapts and accommodates them to the transcendence of that orientation to the supernatural end and makes them "heroic or divine virtues. They need, therefore, in order to be perfect, to receive a divine way that adapts and accommodates them to the transcendence of that orientation to the supernatural end and converts them into "heroic or divine virtues," according to the expression of St. Thomas taken from the Philosopher. For this reason, the gifts embrace the whole matter of the infused virtues, both theological and moral, about whose material object there can always be an act of the gifts perfecting that of virtue 54 . Let us complete this doctrine by rejecting the main objections that could be raised against it. First objection: How can the gifts perfect the theological virtues when they are inferior to them, as the Angelic Doctor expressly says? 95 92 "Sed in ordíne ad finem ultimum supernaturalem, ad quem ratio movet secundum quod est aliqualiter et imper fecte informata per vir tutes theologicas, non sufficit ipsa motio rationis nisi desuper adsit instinctus et motio Spiritus Sancti, secundum illud (Rom. 8,14 et 17): "Qui Spiritu Dei aguntur, hi filii Dei sunt.... et heredes" (1-11,68,2). 9 3 1 - 11 , 65 , 2 ; 11 - 11 , 23 , 7 - 8 . 94 "In omnibus viribus hominis, quae possunt esse principia humanorum actuum, sicut sunt virtutes ita etiam sunt dona" (1-11,68,4). Gf. I-IT.68,8, C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE Answer. - They cannot perfect them intrinsically or formally, but they can perfect them extrinsically, because of the imperfect subject in which the virtues reside. The gifts come to elevate the subject to the absolutely divine plane of the theological virtues, giving him their full and perfect possession. They come to eliminate the human atmosphere, which is suffocating them, and provide them with the divine atmosphere, which will allow them to grow and develop fully. What the gifts perfect is not so much the virtue itself as the power in which it resides in order to accommodate it and connaturalize it with the virtue itself under the action of a superior agent. From this we deduce, once again, the necessity of the gifts for Christian perfection. Without them, the infused virtues - especially the theological virtues - will not be able to develop their full potential and will remain rickety and sickly. This is not their fault, but because of the subject in which they reside, who does not allow them to grow and expand because of his selfish views and human reasoning. And in this sense it is precisely the theological virtues that most need the gifts, because of their very transcendental perfection, which postulates and demands a divine modality that only the gifts can provide. Second objection. - For the infused virtues to develop and perfect themselves, it is enough that they produce their acts with ever greater intensity and conatus. But this can be the effect of an actual grace independently of the gifts. Therefore, these are not necessary for the perfection of the virtues. Answer: The present grace, accommodating itself to the human mode of the infused virtues, will make them grow and develop within that line of human modality. But for them to emerge from this human mode - which will always be imperfect no matter how much it is developed - and to acquire the divine modality that corresponds to them as supernatural virtues, a new habit is required, capable of receiving the direct motion of the Holy Spirit, which will elevate the virtues to a divine mode, which human reason, even informed by faith, could never attain.56 The human mode of virtue, however imperfect it may be, will never be able to attain. Instance. - And is it that the Holy Spirit cannot produce directly in the virtues the divine mode without the habit of the gifts? Answer. - If we admit that the Holy Spirit wants to move the rational creature violently by making it leave its connatural mode without endowing it with the necessary dispositions to receive a superior mode gently and without violence, yes; otherwise, no. This is precisely the reason so often given by St. Thomas to prove the necessity of infused habits, as we saw above. This is precisely the reason so often alleged by St. Thomas to prove the necessity of infused habits - as we saw above -: the gentleness and softness of divine Providence, which moves all beings according to their proximate dispositions, natural or supernatural. For the rest, this objection must be resolved on the basis of the existence of the gifts as infused habits, which we have already demonstrated in its corresponding place. Let it therefore be established that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for the infused virtues to reach their full perfection. Cf. John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus t .6 q.70 d.18 a. 2 § 44.49.50 (ed. Vivés, Paris 1885, p.596-98), where these and other objections are masterfully examined and resolved. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE and development. Incidentally, this judgment is commonly admitted by all schools of Christian spirituality 97 . Let us now examine another question that is more difficult to prove, but much less important in mystical theology, namely: whether the gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary even for eternal salvation. Second proposition: The gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for salvation. 84. The Angelic Doctor, as is well known, expressly asks himself this question in the Summa Theologica: "If the gifts are necessary for man for salvation" The answer is affirmative. To prove this, St. Thomas focuses precisely on the imperfection with which we possess the infused virtues, as we have just seen in the previous thesis. Let us listen, first of all, to the Angelic Doctor and then we will make a brief gloss or commentary: "The gifts are, as we have already said, certain perfections that dispose man to follow with docility the divine inspirations. Hence, in all those things in which the instinct of reason is not sufficient, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and, consequently, his gifts are necessary. Human reason is perfected by God in two ways: first, by a natural perfection (such as the acquired virtue of wisdom), and second, by a supernatural perfection, that of the the theological virtues. And although this second perfection is superior to the first, nevertheless, we possess the first in a more perfect way than the second, because man fully possesses his natural reason, while only in an imperfect way do we know and love God. Now, anyone who perfectly possesses a nature, a form, or a virtue can act by himself in this order of operation, though always, of course, under the motion of God, who works interiorly in every natural or free agent. But he who possesses only imperfectly any principle of activity (nature, form, or virtue) cannot act by himself unless he is moved by another. In the physical order, the sun, which is perfectly lucid, can illuminate by itself; but the moon, which imperfectly possesses the nature of light, illuminates only insofar as it is illuminated by the sun. In the intellectual order, the physician, who perfectly knows his art, can act by himself; but the student of medicine, who is not sufficiently instructed, needs the direction and assistance of his teacher. Thus, for things which fall under the dominion of reason, and in relation to their connatural end, man can act by the judgment of his reason; and if, even in this order, man were aided by a special inspiration of God ( per specialem instinctum ), this would be the effect of a superabundant mercy, beyond what is necessary (hoc erit superabundantis bonitatis). Hence, as the philosophers say, not all those who have the acquired moral virtues also have the heroic and divine virtues. But, in order to the supernatural ultimate end, human reason, which moves us to it insofar as it is somehow and imperfectly informed (ali 97 See even Fr. Chrysogonus himself, Compendium of Ascetics and Mysticism p.2r (l." ed.), where he expressly says that the gifts have for their mission .to perfect the acts of the virtues". 9 * MI.68.2. qualiter et imperfecte) by the theological virtues, is not sufficient by itself, but needs the instinct and motion of the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul: "Qui Spiritu Dei aguntur, hi filii Dei sunt.... et heredes" (Rom. 8:14 and 16); and in the psalm it is said: "Spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terram rectam" (Ps. 142:10); because no one can reach the inheritance of that blessed land unless he is moved and led by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in order to attain that end, the gift of the Holy Spirit is necessary for man, This is the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor. To many it has seemed excessive, but it is because they confuse the question of ture with that of fado. In fact, many are saved without the acts of the gifts, though not without their 10 ° habits; but this is entirely per accidens and in no way compromises the general thesis. Of course, in the development of the Christian life, the more or less intense action of the gifts is morally and sometimes physically necessary to preserve grace and, consequently, for salvation. Such is, e.g., the case of martyrdom: either one makes a heroic act of fortitude by fearlessly giving one's life for the faith (which is hardly conceivable without the gift of fortitude, perfecting virtue in its most difficult act), or one commits a mortal sin, apostatizing. And in a similar way there are many other cases in which one either performs a heroic act or loses grace (e.g., the case of St. Thomas when he was tempted by the evil woman in the castle of Rocaseca). The reason for this necessity is the one pointed out by St. Thomas himself: the insufficiency of reason, even when enlightened by faith, to lead us smoothly to the supernatural end. But, in addition, there is another very clear reason that is taken from the corruption of human nature as a consequence of original sin. The virtues do not reside in a healthy nature, but in one badly inclined by sin. And although the virtues, insofar as it depends on them, have in themselves sufficient strength to overcome all the temptations that oppose them, they cannot, without the help of the gifts, overcome the serious temptations that can come unexpectedly and suddenly at a given moment. In these unforeseen situations, in which the fall or resistance is a matter of an instant, man cannot avail himself of the slow and laborious discourse of reason, but must move quickly, as if by supernatural instinct, that is, under the influence and motion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Without that motion of the gifts, the fall is almost certain, given the vicious inclination of human nature wounded by original guilt. Of course, such embarrassing and difficult situations are not frequent in the life of man. But it does not follow from this that do 99 1-11,68,2 100 Here are some of these cases: a) Baptized children who die before the use of reason. They are saved without the acts of the virtues or of the gifts, although not without their habits; b) Those who repent at the hour of death and die immediately; and c) Those who live a lukewarm life (without manifest performance of the gifts) and die in a state of grace. We already know that the virtues can, without the gifts, produce imperfect acts. If there are no difficult occasions that require the help of the gifts, this will be enough to be saved, but always quasi per ignem, as St. Paul says (i Cor. 3:15). P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES The Holy Spirit's gifts are not necessary for salvation, but they are not necessary for each and every salutary act. And this is precisely the doctrine which we shall take up in our third proposition. Third proposition: The gifts of the Holy Spirit are not necessary for each and every healthy act. 85. This question seems to have arisen in modern times through a false interpretation of the doctrine of St. Thomas in the ad secundum of this same article that we have just commented on. Here are the words of the Saint himself: C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 153 It is therefore quite clear that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not necessary for each and every salutary act, although they are necessary throughout life for perfect acts and for overcoming certain serious and unforeseen temptations that could compromise our salvation, as we have seen in the previous conclusion. Having finished the study of the necessity of the gifts, let us now see what their mutual relationships are. 8. Mutual relationships among the gifts of the Holy Spirit "To the second, it must be said that man is not perfected in such a way by the theological and moral virtues in order to the supernatural end that he need not always be moved by a certain superior instinct of the Holy Spirit, as is evident from the reason already given" 101. From the simple reading of this text it seems to follow that the Angelic Doctor requires the action of the gifts for every salutary act. But it is clear that it cannot have this meaning if - as is elementary in good exegesis - one attends to the context and to the unequivocal doctrine of the saint in the parallel places. St. Thomas means that man is not perfected in such a way by the theological and moral virtues that he does not need, at times, to be inspired by the interior master. It is well known that the word "always" can have two very different meanings: always and at every moment (semper et pro semper), and always, but not at every moment (semper sed non pro semper). Undoubtedly, St. Thomas uses it here in this second sense. Let us agree that the wording of the text of the Summa is obscure and difficult to translate; but the thought of the Saint is clear, especially considering the context of the article and the general doctrine of the Summa t02. Here are the proofs: 1. * St. Thomas says in this article that the gifts are necessary, because without them we know and love God imperfectly. Therefore, without them we know and love him even imperfectly. Therefore, they are not necessary for every wholesome act. 2. a In ad tertium, the Saint says that without the gifts, human reason cannot repel natural stupidity quantum ad omnia. Therefore, if it cannot do so "in regard to everything," it follows that it can do so "in regard to something. Therefore, gifts are not necessary for every act of virtue. The thought of St. Thomas is, therefore, clear considering the context of the article. On the other hand, it is certain that one can make a supernatural act of faith with an actual grace, without any help from the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Such is the case of a Christian in mortal sin, who has lost the gifts of the Holy Spirit together with charity, and who, nevertheless, can still make acts of supernatural faith under the influence of an actual grace t° 3 . 1 0 1 "Ad secundum dicendum, quod per virtutes theologicas et morales non ita perficitur homo ¡n ordine ad ultimum finem quin semper indigeat moveri quodam superiori instinctu Spiritus Sancti, ratione iam dicta* (1-11,68,2 ad 2). 102 Among the authors in favor of the necessity of the gifts for every salutary act are: Lehmxuhl, Theol. Mor. t.r n.689 (ed. 1885); Cardinal Manning, Delta mis sione dello Sp. Santo (ed. 1878) c.7; Gaume, Catech. Pierrot: "L'Am du Clergé" (1892, 1898 and 1900), which was refuted by Fr. Froget, O.P., in "Revue Thomiste" (1902). 103 Cf. on this question P. Gardeil: DTC. art. Don: col. 1770. 86. St. Thomas studies the mutual relations between the gifts in three articles of this question 68 of the Prima secundae; in 4, where he asks if the gifts are suitably enumerated in the famous text of Isaiah; in 5, where he speaks of the connection of the gifts; and in 7, when he asks if the dignity of the gifts responds to the order in which Isaiah enumerates them. Let us look briefly at the doctrine of these articles. Article 4. If the gifts of the Holy Spirit are properly enumerated. - The answer is affirmative, based on the authority of Isaiah (11:2). In the body of the article, the Saint establishes a parallelism between the moral virtues and the gifts, to conclude that in all the faculties of man that can be principles of human acts, we must place their corresponding gifts next to the virtues. But it should be noted that St. Thomas changes his thinking in the Secunda secundae with respect to the classification of the first four gifts i° 4 , and assigns gifts, in addition, to the theological virtues, something unknown in the Prima secundae, where the classification is made only by analogy with the intellectual and moral virtues 105 . Here is the definitive classification, taking up both places: j 1 ) To penetrate the truth : Understanding. In the reason U) Ca) Of divine things: Wisdom. gar rec J ^ , £> e [ as created things: Science. tamen- 1 c) Practical conduct: Advice. P 1) In order to others (God, parents, homeland): Piety. In appetitive virtue 2) In order himself b) Against fear of dangers: Fortitude. Against disordered concupiscence: Fear. 1 04 Cf. 11 - 11 , 8 , 6 , where St. Thomas expressly warns that on this question he has changed his thinking: "Sed díiigenter intuenti.... Et ideo oportet alíter eorum distinctionem accipere". 105 This does not mean, of course, that in the Prima secundae the gifts are not considered related to the theological virtues; on the contrary, we are told that "omnia dona pertinent ad has tres virtutes, sicut quaedam derivatíones praedictárum virtutum" (1-11,68,4 ad 3); but they are left out of the classification. That is why the Saint corrects himself in the Secunda secundae. V. II. PRINCIPLES pundamenxai.es C. I, NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE his article is closely related to article 7, where the Saint speaks of the dignity of the gifts compared to one another. Let us look at it briefly. If the dignity of the gifts corresponds to the enumeration of Isaiah. - The answer is with distinction on the authority of St. Augustine. Isaiah's enumeration, as read in the Vulgate, is as follows: 1) Wisdom. 2) Understanding. 3) Tip. 4) Strength. 5) Science. 6) Mercy. 7) Fear. St. Thomas says that the prophet puts wisdom and understanding as the first simpliciter; but he puts counsel and fortitude before knowledge and piety by reason of the matter circa quam, but not by reason of the principles and acts. By reason of their proper acts, the gifts are to be classified as follows: A) Wisdom "j J 2) Understanding. .. I Correspond to the virtu In the contemplative life .< ) C(encia f intellectual des. [4) Council J . fS) 1 Correspond to the virtu In active life jó) Moral strength . Attending to the matter circa quam, the order is that of Isaiah, with the following distribution: About hard things f 1) Wisdom, j 2) Understanding. 1 3) Counsel. [ 4) Fortaleza. rs) Science. About common things 4 6) Piety. [7) Fear. Article 5: If the gifts of the Holy Spirit exist in mutual connection. - Affirmative solution on the authority of St. Gregory. St. Thomas proves this by saying that just as the virtues perfect the faculties of the soul to be governed by reason, so the gifts perfect them to be governed by the Holy Spirit. But since the Holy Spirit is in us through grace and charity, it follows that he who is in charity possesses the Holy Spirit together with his gifts. Therefore the gifts are all in connection with charity, just as the moral virtues are all united in prudence. It is not possible without charity to possess any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nor to fail to possess them all together with it. This leads us, as if by the hand, to examine the question of the relationship between the gifts and the theological and moral virtues. ^9. Relationship of the gifts with the theological and moral virtues. 87. St. Thomas examines these relationships in article 8, where he asks whether virtues are to be preferred to gifts. The saint answers with distinction. The gifts are more perfect than the intellectual and moral virtues, but the theological virtues are more perfect than the gifts. The reasoning to prove this is very simple. The gifts are with respect to the theological virtues - by which man is united to the Holy Spirit as the motive principle - what the moral virtues are with respect to the intellectual virtues, by which reason, which is the motive principle of the moral virtues, is perfected. Therefore, just as the intellectual virtues are more perfect than the moral virtues, whom they govern and rule, so the theological virtues are more perfect than the gifts of the Holy Spirit, whom they regulate 106 . But if we compare the gifts with the other intellectual and moral virtues, the gifts are more perfect, since they perfect the faculties of the soul in order to follow the impulse of the Holy Spirit, while the virtues perfect human reason or the other faculties in order to follow the impulse of the same reason. It is evident that a more perfect motor corresponds to more perfect dispositions in the motive 107 . The following should be noted from this article: a) The gifts are to the theological virtues what the moral virtues are to the intellectual. bj The theological virtues are more perfect than the gifts because they have God himself as their immediate object, while the gifts refer only to docility in following the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. But the gifts are far superior to the intellectual and moral virtues, because with them we are regulated by the Holy Spirit himself, while with the former we are regulated by our own reason. c) Through the gifts, the faculties of the soul are perfectly prepared and disposed to follow the impulses of the Holy Spirit. d) The intellectual and moral virtues precede the gifts in the order of generation or disposition, because, man being well disposed to follow the dictates of reason, he prepares and disposes himself to receive the divine motion of the gifts (ad 2). Let us now look at the relationship of the gifts with the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the evangelical beatitudes. 106 Cf. ad 3 of a. 4 of this same can. 68. 107 1 - 11 , 68 , 8 . P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE io. Relationship of the gifts with the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the evangelical beatitudes. St. Thomas studies at length the evangelical beatitudes and the fruits of the Holy Spirit, devoting two entire questions to them after the one on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We are going to limit ourselves to a few brief indications, sufficient for our purpose, but which do not dispense us from the attentive reading and meditation of the beautiful text of the Summa. Let us begin with the fruits, which are more perfect than the gifts, but not as perfect as the evangelical beatitudes. i. The fruits of the Holy Spirit 88 . When the soul corresponds docilely to the interior movement of the Holy Spirit, it produces acts of exquisite virtue that can be compared to the fruit of a tree. Not all acts that proceed from grace are rightly considered fruits, but only the more seasoned and exquisite ones, which carry with them a certain softness and sweetness. These are simply the acts that proceed from the gifts of the Holy Spirit 109 . St. Thomas says it expressly in a beautiful and poetic language, very rare in the Sama: "So, then, our works, insofar as they are the effect of the Holy Spirit, who works in us, have the reason of fruit; but insofar as they are ordered to the end of eternal life, they have the reason of a flower. Therefore it is said in Scripture (Eccl. 24:23): "And my flowers bore tasty and rich fruit" (Eccl. 24:23). They are distinguished from the gifts as the fruit is distinguished from the branch and the effect from the cause. And they are also distinguished from the beatitudes in the degree of perfection; the latter are more perfect and finished than the fruits. Therefore all the beatitudes are fruits, but not all the fruits are beatitudes nl . The fruits are completely contrary to the works of the flesh, since the flesh tends toward sensible goods, which are inferior to man, while the Holy Spirit moves us to what is above us 112 . As for the number of fruits, the Vulgate lists twelve 1I3 . But in the original Pauline text only nine are cited: charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance 108 Cf. 109 Although not exclusively. They can also come from the virtues. According to St. Thomas, the fruits of the Holy Spirit are all those virtuous acts in which the soul finds spiritual consolation: "Sunt enim fructus quaecumque virtuosa opera, in quibus homo delectatur* (I-ÍI,7o,2). uo 1-11,70,1 ad 1. 1 - 11 , 70,2 112 1-11,70,4. 11 3 Gal. 5:22-23: "Fructus autem Spiritus est: caritas, gaudium, pax, patientia, benignitas, bonitas, longanimitas, mansuetudo, fides, modestia, continentia, castitas*. 114 . As St. Thomas, in agreement with St. Augustine 115 , says very well, the Apostle did not intend to enumerate them all; he only wanted to show what kind of fruits are produced by the works of the flesh and which others are produced by the works of the Spirit, and for this purpose he cites a few by way of example. Nevertheless," adds St. Thomas, "all the acts of the gifts and virtues can be reduced, in some way, to the fruits enumerated by the Apostle 11 6 . 2. The Gospel Beatitudes 89. Even more perfect than the fruits are the beatitudes of the Gospel. They mark the culminating point and the definitive crowning - here on earth - of the whole Christian life. Like the fruits, the beatitudes are not habits, but acts l17 . Like the fruits, they proceed from virtues and gifts 1IR . But they are such perfect acts that they must be attributed to the gifts rather than to the virtues 11 9 , By virtue of the ineffable rewards that accompany them, they are already in this life like a foretaste of eternal beatitude 12 °. In the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord reduces them to eight: poverty of spirit, meekness, meekness, tears, hunger and thirst for justice, mercy, purity of heart, peace and persecution for righteousness' sake.121 But we can also say that this is a symbolic number that recognizes no limits. But we can also say that it is a symbolic number that recognizes no limits. St. Thomas devotes two admirable articles to the exposition of these eight beatitudes and their corresponding rewards 122 . Here is now, in a brief schematic overview, the correspondence between the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the evangelical beatitudes, as established by St. Thomas 123 . VIRTUES GIFTS BEATITUDES f Charity .... Wisdom Theological (acercal p and I Understanding. of the end) "l | Science (Hope. . Fear The peaceful. The pure of heart. Those who weep. Poor in spirit. Prudence ... Council Morales (about J Justice Piedad . .) . . . . strength . . . Fortaleza (^Temperance. Fear (secondarily) . The merciful. The meek. Hungry and thirsty. Poor in spirit. Cf. Biblia Nacar-Colunga (BAC), Epistle to the Galatians 5.22. 115 1-11,70,3 ad 4; cf. a, 4 c. 1 1 6 1-11,70,3 ad 4. ni 1 - 11 , 69 , 1 115 1-11,69,1 ad 1. 119 1-11,70,2: "Sed beatitudines dicuntur solum perfecta opera: quae etlam ratione suae perfectionis, magis attribuuntur donis quam virtutibus* (cf. 69,1 ad 1). 120 1 - 11 , 69 , 2 . 121 Mt. 5:3-10. i* 2 Cf. 1-11,69,3 and 4. 123 Cf. 1-11:68-69; 11 - 11 , 8 . 9. 19.45.52. 121. 139-141 ad 3. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES c. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE The eighth beatitude (persecution for righteousness' sake) is not included in the above table because, being the most perfect of all, it contains and embraces all the others in the midst of the greatest obstacles and difficulties 124 . And with this we move on to examine the last question about the gifts in general: their duration. ii. Duration of the gifts 90. It means: if the gifts end with this life or if they will also remain in the homeland. St. Thomas responds with distinction. Considered in terms of their essence - that is, insofar as they perfect the faculties of the soul to follow the motions of the Holy Spirit - the gifts will remain in the homeland in a most perfect way, since there we will be completely docile to the motions of the Holy Spirit and "God will be all in all," as St. Paul says.125 But if we consider the matter of the gifts, they will disappear in part, because in heaven there is no longer any such matter, nor is there any reason for it to exist. But if we consider the matter of the gifts, it will disappear in part, because in heaven there is no such matter, nor is there any reason for it to exist. Thus, e.g., the gift of fear will be reduced to reverential awe before the greatness and immensity of God; and the same will happen mutatis mutandis with the other gifts in the matter corresponding to the active life, which will have ceased forever in the homeland.26 The gift of fear will be reduced to reverential awe before the greatness and immensity of God; and the same will happen mutatis mutandis with the other gifts in the matter corresponding to the active life, which will have ceased forever in the homeland. From this article it should be noted mainly: I. That man is moved all the more perfectly by the gifts, the more perfectly he submits himself to God. In the homeland we will be moved most perfectly by them, because we will be most perfectly submitted to God. The active life ends with the present life 127 . Therefore, the works of the active life will not be in the homeland matter of the gifts, but all of them will preserve their own acts in regard to the contemplative life, which is the blessed life 12 8. * # * And with this we end our study of the gifts in general. But before moving on to another subject, let us summarize in a very brief synthesis all that St. Thomas teaches about them in the Summa Theologica. 124 1-11,69,3 ad 5. 125 1 Cor. 15:28: "... ut sit Deus omnía ¡n omnibus". * 2 * 1 - 11 , 68 , 6 . 127 MI, 68.6 obi. 3. 128 1-11,68,6 ad 3. 151 ) - 12. Synthesis of St. Thomas' doctrine on gifts 91. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are seven (a.4) supernatural habits (a.3), really distinct from the virtues (a.i), by which man is suitably disposed to follow in a prompt, direct and immediate way the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in a manner superior to his connatural human manner (a.i; a.2 ad 1) and in order to an object or end which the virtues (hic et nunc ) alone cannot attain (a.2), which is why they are necessary for salvation itself (ibid.). They are more perfect than the intellectual and moral virtues, but not as perfect as the theological virtues, from which they are derived (a.4 ad 3) and by which they are regulated (a.8). They are connected with each other and with charity, in such a way that he who is in charity possesses them all and without it possesses none (a.5); they will endure in the homeland to the most perfect degree (a. 6). The gifts of wisdom and understanding are the most perfect; the others can be classified in different ways according to their proper acts or to the matter they deal with (a.7). The habitual and perfect regime of the gifts is produced when the soul submits itself habitually and perfectly to God (a.6). The gifts produce certain exquisite acts, called fruits of the Holy Spirit (q-7o), and certain works, even more perfect, which correspond to the evangelical beatitudes (q.69). # # # We reserve the detailed study of each of the gifts in particular for the third part of this work, with a more practical and vital orientation. Suffice it to say here that with them the organism of the supernatural life is complete: they are the last habits that are instilled in the soul. Everything is now ready to be set in motion. We have sanctifying grace, as the principle and basis of the supernatural organism; the infused virtues, as powers; and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as instruments of perfection in the hands of the supreme Artificer. In order to have a complete vision of the whole marvelous ensemble of our supernatural life, we need only take a look at the active principle that sets this organism in motion - actual grace - and penetrate into the Sancta satwtorum, that is, into the deepest and most recondite part of our soul, to fall on our knees before the august presence of the Most Holy Trinity, center, crowning, principle and lin of our whole supernatural life. This is what we are going to see, at least briefly, in the following two articles. s V. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE ARTICLE 3 Current graces In approaching the question of the present graces, we must warn, first of all, that we are not going to enter into the whirlwind of disputes that have divided the main theological schools for centuries on their nature and functioning. We will limit ourselves only to those brief indications that are of most interest to mystical theology. The points we are going to examine are four: nature, necessity, division and offices or functions of the present graces. This is sufficient for our plans. 92. 1. Nature. - Current graces may be defined as saying that they are those that "dispose or move in the manner of a fluid and transient quality to work or receive something in order to eternal life". Ordained by their very nature to infused habits, they serve to dispose the soul to receive them when it does not yet have them or to set them in motion when they already exist in it. They are received in the very powers of the soul, elevating them at times to produce supernatural acts indeliberately - as happens with operating grace - and at other times to produce them in a deliberate way (cooperating grace). They cannot be reduced to any particular species, since they are fluid and transitory qualities communicated by God and impressed in the powers of the soul as transient movements or passions. They are reduced in each case to the species of the habit or act to which they move (e.g., faith, hope, etc.). From these notions it is easy to deduce the main differences between the usual graces and the current ones: 1) The habitual graces (sanctifying grace, infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit) are permanent qualities (habits) that produce their effect as such in a continuous and unfailing manner in the subject in which they reside (the essence of the soul or its powers and faculties). The actual ones, on the other hand, are fluid and transient motions whose final effect is frustrated many times. 2) Habitual graces are limited to disposing for action (radically or proximately, depending on whether it is a matter of grace itself or of the virtues and gifts). The actual graces, on the contrary, push and produce the action itself. 3) The virtues and gifts have a limited field, which affects certain powers and certain objects and operations. The actual graces, on the other hand, extend to the whole supernatural life and to all its operations. 93. 2. Necessity. - Actual graces are absolutely necessary in the dynamic supernatural order. It is impossible for the purely natural effort of the soul to be able to put into exercise the infused habits, since the natural order cannot determine the operations of the supernatural order. Nor is it possible that these habits can act by themselves, because any habit can never act except by virtue of and by the action of the agent who caused it; and, in the case of infused habits, only God who produced them can set them in motion. Therefore, the action of God is imposed with the same absolute necessity with which, in Metaphysics, the influence of a being in act is demanded so that any power can produce its own. By no means could God develop and perfect sanctifying grace, infused in the very essence of our soul, on the basis of actual graces alone, without infusing in the powers any supernatural operative habit. But, on the other hand, he could not develop it without actual graces even if he endowed us with all kinds of infused operative habits, since those habits could never pass into act without the prior divine motion, which in the supernatural order is nothing other than actual grace. Every act of any infused virtue and every act of the gifts of the Holy Spirit presupposes, therefore, a prior actual grace that has set that virtue or that gift in motion.2 Precisely, actual grace is nothing other than the divine influence that has moved that infused habit to operation. The actual grace is precisely nothing other than the divine influence that has moved that infused habit into operation. 94. 3. Division. - Theologians have devised a long list differential between the current graces. Here are the main classes with their corresponding characteristics: 1) Operating AND cooperating grace. The first is that in which the movement is attributed to God alone: our soul is moved, but does not move. Cooperating grace is that in which the soul is moved and moves at the same time. Thus speak St. Thomas and St. Augustine 3 . 2) Exciting and adjuvant grace. The first one impels us to act when we are distracted or inactive. The second helps us to act when we are already determined to do so. 1 Although we have already said several times-according to St. Thomas-that this would be unnatural and violent. We speak now only of the absolute power of God, not of what he has in fact accomplished in our souls. 2 Although, of course, not every actual grace infallibly produces an act of virtue. It can be a sufficient grace that man resists (e.g., the sinner who hears a sermon and does not pay attention). 3 I-II,ii 1,2: "In illo ergo effectu in quo mens nostra est mota et non movens, solus autem Deus movens, operatio Deo attribuitur: et secundum hoc dicitur gratia operans . In illo autem effectu in quo mens nostra et movet et movetur, operatio non solum attribuitur Deo, sed etiam animae: et secundum hoc dicitur gratia cooperans". Here is the same doctrine expounded by St. Augustine: "For He truly begins to work so that we will (operating grace), and when we already will, He cooperates with us to perfect the work (cooperating grace).... Therefore, in order that we may will, He begins to work without us, and when we will and willingly work, He cooperates with us. However, if He does not work so that we will, or does not cooperate when we already will, we can do nothing in order to do good works of piety" (cf. De gratia et libero arbitrio c.17, ed. BAC, n.so p.269). This division, which is the fundamental one, is of great importance in Asceticism and Mysticism. Cooperating grace is proper to the infused virtues; therefore, the soul is aware that it moves itself, helped by God, to these acts of virtue. Under operative grace, on the other hand, which is proper to the gifts and contains the cooperating graces, the soul feels itself moved by God, limiting itself to allowing itself to be led by Him. From this comes the passivity - always relative, as we will see in its corresponding place - proper and characteristic of the mystical state. Theol. of perf. 162 P. XI. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE ig;: 3) Prevenient, concomitant, subsequent grace. The first precedes the act of man by moving or disposing the will so that it wills. The second accompanies the act of man, concurring with it to the same effect. The third is said in relation to a previous effect produced by another grace 4 . 4) Internal and external grace. The first helps the potency intrinsically and formally concurs in the production of the act. The second influences only externally, moving the potency by means of the objects that surround it (e.g., by the examples of Christ or of the saints). 5) Sufficient and efficacious grace. Sufficient grace impels us to act. The efficacious one infallibly produces the same act. Without the first we cannot act and with the second we act freely, but infallibly. The first leaves us without excuse before God, the second is an effect of his infinite mercy 5 . As can be seen, all these divisions can easily be reduced to the operative and cooperating graces. For the exciting and prevenient graces are really operative graces, the adjuvant and subsequent graces coincide with the cooperative graces, and the sufficient and efficacious graces are reduced to one or the other according to the case. And they are all fluid qualities that move the powers of the soul to indeliberate or deliberate supernatural acts. 95. 4. Offices and functions. - Three are the functions or offices of the actual graces: to dispose the soul to receive the infused habits, to act upon them, and to prevent their disappearance. A word about each of them. In the first place, they dispose the soul to receive the infused habits when it lacks them because it has never had them or because it has culpably lost them. The actual grace brings with it, in this case, repentance for one's faults, fear of punishment, trust in divine mercy, etc. In the second place, they serve to act them when they are already possessed in union with habitual grace or without it (faith and hope reports). This action, supposing union with habitual grace, brings with it the perfecting of infused habits and, consequently, the growth and development of the whole supernatural life. Finally, the third function of actual grace is to prevent infused habits from disappearing from the soul through mortal sin. It implies the strengthening against temptations, the indication of dangers, the dampening of passions, the inspiration of good thoughts, etc. As can be seen, actual grace is of inestimable value. Strictly speaking, it is grace that gives efficacy to the habitual, to the virtues and to the gifts. It is God's impulse, which sets in motion the organism of our divine life from the innermost depths of our soul. For let us not forget: our soul, adorned with grace, is a temple. In it has its seat and permanent abode the One and Triune God whom faith teaches us. Here is the last question we will examine before concluding this chapter. 4 I-H,iii,3. 5 Salmanticenses, Pt gratia d.s n.180. ARTICLE 4 The indwelling of the Holy Trinity IN THE SOUL S.Th., 1,43; Suárez, De Trinitate 12,5; Terrien, La gracia y la gloria I.4 (Madrid 1943); Froget, De ['habitat ion du Saint Esprit dans les ames justes (Paris 1900); Gardeil, La structure de l'dme et Vexpérience mystique 2 (1927) 6-87; Galtier, L'habitation en notis des Trois Personnes (Rome 1950); Retailleau, La sainte Trinité dans les dmes justes (Angers 1932); Philipon, La doctrine spirituelle de Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity c.3; M. Cuervo, La habitation de la Trinité dans les dmes justes (Angers 1932); M. Cuervo, La habitation de la Trinité dans toute âme en grâce (Angers 1932); Philipon, La doctrine spirituelle de Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity c.3M. Cuervo, La indwelling of the Trinity in every soul in grace (Salamanca 1945)*; M. Cuervo, La indwelling of the Trinity in every soul in grace (Salamanca 1945)*. Let us examine the three fundamental questions: existence, nature and purpose of the divine indwelling in our souls. 96. 1. Existence. - The indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in the soul of the just is one of the truths most clearly manifested in the New Testament. With an insistence that clearly shows the sovereign importance of this mystery, the sacred text returns again and again to impress upon us this sublime truth. Let us recall some of the most distinguished testimonies: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode in him" (lo. 14:23). "God is charity, and he who lives in charity abides in God and God in him* (1 lo. 4,16). "Do you not know that you are temples of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, and that temple is you" (1 Cor. 3:16-17). "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you and which you have received from God, and that therefore you do not belong to yourselves?" (1 Cor. 6:19). "For you are the temple of the living God" (2 Cor. 6:16). "Keep the good deposit by the power of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us" (2 Tim. 1:14). As can be seen, Sacred Scripture employs various formulas to express the same truth: God dwells within the soul in grace. Preferably this indwelling is attributed to the Holy Spirit, not because there is a special presence of the Holy Spirit that is not common to the Father and the Son,2 but by a very convenient appropriation, since this is the great work of God's love for man and it is the Holy Spirit who is the essential Love in the bosom of the Most Holy Trinity. 1 p on }0 is known, although in the Old Testament there are some traces and vestiges of the Trinitarian mystery - especially in the doctrine of the "Spirit of God" and of "Wisdom" - nevertheless, the full revelation of the mystery of the intimate life of God was reserved for the New Testament. 2 Some theologians, such as Lessio, Petau, Tomassino, Scheeben, etc., thought so; but the vast majority affirms the contrary doctrine, which is clearly deduced from the data of faith and the doctrine of the Church (Denz. 281-703)- Cf. Terrien, Grace and Glory 1.6 c.6 and append.5; Froget, De l'habitation du Saint Esprit dans les dmes justes append, P-442f; Galtier, L'habitation en nous des Trois Personnes p.i.* c.l (Rome 1950). P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES AI,ES The Holy Fathers, especially St. Augustine, have beautiful pages commenting on the ineffable fact of the divine indwelling in the soul of the just. 97. 2. Nature. - Much has been written and discussed by theologians about the nature of the indwelling of the divine persons in the soul of the just person. We are going to collect here the principal opinions held by theologians, without pretending to settle a question that only secondarily affects the object and purpose of our work. Here are these opinions: i. a Inhabitation consists formally in a physical and friendly union between God and man brought about by grace, by virtue of which God, one and triune, gives himself to the soul and is personally and substantially present in it, making it a participant in his divine life. Here is how Father Galtier, who is one of its devoted supporters, explains this doctrine. Grace is like a seal in fluid matter. And just as the permanent application of the seal is indispensable for the permanence of the sigillation in fluid matter, otherwise the sigillation would disappear, so for grace to remain in the soul - which is like the assimilative sigillation of the soul to the divine nature - it is necessary that this divine nature always remain physically present - 1 . This interpretation is rejected by many theologians because it does not seem to transcend the common mode of existence that God has by essence in all created things. 2.* Other theologians, from the 14th century onwards, interpreted the thought of the Angelic Doctor as if he had placed the formal cause of indwelling in supernatural knowledge and love alone, independently of the presence of immensity, that is, in the intentional presence alone. Suarez wanted to complete this doctrine with that of supernatural friendship, which establishes charity between God and the soul, and which claims and demands, according to him, the real - not only intentional - presence of God in the soul; in such a way - he says - , that by the force of that friendship God would really come to the soul even if he was not already in it by any other title (verbigracia, by the presence of immensity) 3 4 . But this Suaretian explanation has not satisfied the majority of theologians; for friendship, since it belongs to the affective order, it is not understood how it can formally make the divine persons present. Love as such cannot make the beloved physically present, since it is of a purely intentional order. 3. a A sector of the Thomistic school, beginning with John of St. Thomas,5 interprets the Angelic Doctor in the sense that, presupposing first of all the presence of immensity, sanctifying grace, by reason of the operations of knowledge and love proceeding from faith and charity, is the formal cause of the indwelling of the divine persons in the soul of the just. According to this sentence, knowledge and love do not constitute the presence of God in us, but, presupposing this presence by the general presence of immensity, the special presence of the divine persons consists in their supernatural knowledge and love, that is, in the operations proceeding from grace. 3 Cf. P. Galtier, L' habitat ion en nous des Trois Personnes (Ro roso) p. 217-240. 4 Cf. Suirez, De Trinitate 12,5,13. J Cf. loANNfc'S to S.Thoma, Cursus Iheologicus in I q.43 J.17. C. I. NATURE PF. I,A VIDA SOBREN A TUR AI, 165 This theory, much more acceptable than the previous one, seems to have against it, however, an insurmountable difficulty. If the operations of knowledge and love coming from sanctifying grace were the formal cause of Trinitarian indwelling, one would have to deny the fact of indwelling in infants baptized before the use of reason, in the sleeping or simply distracted just, and in every holy soul that ceased to think and love, at a given moment, in the divine persons. To this difficulty, the partisans of this theory reply that even in these cases there would be a certain permanent presence of the Trinity by the possession of the supernatural habits of faith and charity, capable of producing this presence. But this answer does not satisfy many theologians, inasmuch as the possession of these supernatural habits would only give us the faculty or power to produce the indwelling by reducing them to the act, but it would always be true that in the meantime we would not have indwelling properly so called. 4. a Finally, other theologians® advocate the union of the first and third of these theories in order to adequately explain the fact of divine indwelling. According to them, the divine persons become present in some way through the efficiency and conservation of sanctifying grace, since this grace truly gives us a physical and formal participation in the divine nature as such - something that does not occur in the efficiency and conservation of purely natural things - and, by the same token, it gives us a participation in the mystery of the intimate life of God, while preserving intact the most certain theological principle that in the operations ad extra God works as one and not as triune. Since the Trinity is already present in some way in the soul through grace, the just person enters into contact with it through the operations of knowledge and love that flow from grace itself. By the production of grace, God is united to the soul as a principle; and by the operations of knowledge and love, the soul is united to the divine persons as the end of those same operations. Hence Trinitarian indwelling is an ontological and psychological fact; in the first place ontological (by the production and conservation of grace) and in the second place psychological (by supernatural knowledge and love). As can be seen, there are many opinions, and perhaps none of them gives us an entirely satisfactory explanation of the mysterious way in which the real presence of the divine persons is realized in the soul of the just person. In any case, for the life of piety and advancement in perfection, more than the way in which it is realized, the fact of the indwelling is of interest, on which all Catholic theologians are in absolute agreement. 98. 3. Purpose. - We are now dealing with a very interesting subject of extraordinary importance in the life of piety and of decisive consequences in mystical theology7 . There are three main purposes of the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity in the justified soul: 1) to make us participants in his intimate divine life; 2) to become the driving force and rule of our acts; and 3) to become the fruitive object of an ineffable experience. Let us examine all this slowly. 6 Gf. S. Gonzalez, De gratia n.212: "Sacrae Theologiae Summa" (vol.3 p.6n 2. a ed. BAC, 1953). Menéndez-Reigada, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Christian Perfection c,T note B, whose words are sometimes quoted verbatim. P. 11. 1'RINCIMÜS FUNDAMENTALS C. I. nature of OVERNATURAL LIFE i) The Most Holy Trinity, dwelling in our souls, makes us participate in his intimate divine life. When we say that God dwells in our souls as in a temple, we express a truth that is immediately supported by two famous texts of St. Paul;8 but we must be very careful not to imagine that the presence of God in us is similar to that of Christ sacramentalized in the material temple or in his tabernacle, that is, in an inert way, with nothing more than a purely local relationship with everything that surrounds him. Nothing of the sort. The presence of God in our souls through grace is infinitely superior to this. We are living temples of God and in a vital way we possess the divine persons. In order to take a look at this ineffable mystery, it is necessary to remember that grace is like the "seed of God "9 that engenders us and gives birth to a new life; to the divine life participated in, with which we are not only called children of God, but we are actually children of God10 . This doctrine of our divine sonship is constantly inculcated in the inspired pages, no less than that of indwelling, to which it is closely related. For what does God do - in fact - by dwelling in the soul? Nothing other than to communicate to it his own divine life, to beget it as his daughter, which is to give it a participation in his nature and his life. And this generation does not take place, as in human generations, by a transient act, by virtue of which the child begins to be and to live independently of the father, although it takes its origin from him, but it supposes a continuous and uninterrupted act of God as long as the soul is preserved in his friendship and grace. For just as, if the Creator God were to withdraw for a moment his conserving action from created beings, they would all ipso facto return to the nothingness from whence he took them, so, if God were to withdraw for a moment his conserving action of grace in the soul of the just, grace would be extinguished and the soul would cease to be a child of God. Through grace, the soul is continually receiving its supernatural life from God, just as the embryo in the mother's womb receives life from the mother at every moment and lives from her. For this reason Christ came into the world, "that we might live through him," as the Apostle John says;12 and Christ himself tells us in the Gospel: "I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly. Now we can understand what St. Paul meant by his mysterious expression: "It is no longer I who live; it is Christ who lives in me" 14 . 8 Gf. i Cor. 3,16-17 and 6,19. 9 Cf. 1 lo. 3,9. 10 Cf. 1 lo. 3,1. 11 Cf. 1:104. 12 1 lo. 4,9. 13 lo. 10,10. 14 Gal. 2.20. Our adoptive divine generation has, then, some resemblance to the eternal generation of the Word in the bosom of the Father, and our union with God through grace is somehow similar to the union existing between Him and the Father through the Holy Spirit. No theologian would ever have dared to say this if we did not have before us the very words of Christ in his sublime priestly prayer on the night of the supper: "But I do not pray for these alone, but for as many as will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us and that the world may believe that you have sent me. And I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may be consummated in unity" ls . The Son is one with the Father by his unity of nature, and we are one with God by physical and formal participation in his same divine nature, which is what grace is and nothing else. The Son lives of the Father, and we live participatively of God. He is in the Father and the Father in Him 16 and we are also in God and God in us 17 . Here we see how through grace we are introduced into the Trinitarian life, which is the very life of God, and how He dwells in us, communicating that same divine life to us. And it is the three divine persons who dwell in us, for it is not the property of any one of them in particular to beget us as children of God, but it is an action entirely common to all three. The three divine persons are in the justified soul, engendering it supernaturally, vivifying it with their own life, introducing it through knowledge and love into the depths of their intimate relations. There the Father really begets the Son, and from the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit really and truly proceeds, realizing within the soul the sublime mystery of the triune unity and the one trinity, which is the very life of God. 2) By the grace of the indwelling, the Holy Spirit unites with the Holy Spirit. the soul as the driving force and rule of our actions. Life is essentially movement, dynamism, activity. We know the existence of a vital form and its nature precisely by the activity it develops. Since grace is a divine form, its action must also be divine; it is an intrinsic requirement of grace itself insofar as it is a formal participation in the very nature of God. To live in act the divine life is to act in a divine way. Now this is precisely the function and purpose of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as we have already seen in their corresponding place. Human reason enlightened by faith, which is the rule of the infused virtues, is an engine of little power, a rule that is too short for such lofty operations, which have to reach the very same 15 lo. 17,20-23, 16 lo. 14,10. * 7 1 ÍQ. 4 ,í 6. P. XI. 1'JiINCXPXOS fundamental God as he is in himself. It is true that the theological virtues have God himself as their immediate object, and precisely as he is in himself; but, as we saw at length in their place, as long as they are subject to the regulation of human reason (even if enlightened by faith) and have to accommodate themselves to the human mode that reason necessarily imprints on them, they cannot fully develop their immense divine potentialities for lack of a propitious environment or climate. This is the reason invoked by the Angelic Doctor to prove the necessity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, perfecting the infused virtues by communicating to them their divine modality, place them on the strictly supernatural plane and atmosphere demanded by the very nature of grace and the infused virtues. Human reason, under the influence and motion of the gifts, is rather acted upon than acts itself (potius agitur quam agitj, and acts become materially human, but formally divine. Only in this way do we come to live in all its fullness the divine life received by grace. Hence it is seen that the divine motion of the gifts is very different from the divine motion that sets in motion the infused virtues. In the divine motion of the virtues, God acts as first principal cause, but to man belongs the full responsibility for the action as second principal cause entirely subordinated to the first; therefore the acts of the virtues are entirely ours, since they start from ourselves, from our reason and our free will, although always - of course - under the motion of God as first cause, without which no being in potency can pass to the act in the natural order nor in the supernatural. But in the case of the gifts, the divine motion that sets them in motion is very different: God acts not as the first principal cause, but as the only principal cause, and man ceases to be the second principal cause, passing to the category of simple instrumental cause of the effect that the Holy Spirit will produce in the soul as the only principal cause. That is why the acts proceeding from the gifts are materially human, but formally divine, in the same way that the melody that an artist plucks from his harp is materially of the harp, but formally of the artist who handles it. And this in no way diminishes the merit of the soul that instrumentally produces that divine act by docilely seconding the divine motion, since it does not act as a dead or inert instrument - like the carpenter's plane or the writer's pen - but as a living and conscious instrument that adheres with all the force of its free will to the divine motion, allowing itself to be led by it and fully seconding it > 8 . As we have already seen in its corresponding place (cf. n.77), the passivity of the soul under the motion 1 8 St. Thomas says so expressly in answering an objection about the necessity of the gifts as habits. Here is the objection and his answer: Objection: "The gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect man insofar as he is moved by the Spirit of God, as we have already said. But man, moved by the Spirit of God, behaves with respect to Him as an instrument; it is the principal agent, not the instrument, that must be perfected by a habit. Therefore, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not habits. Answer: "The argument would be valid in the case of an instrument whose mission is not to act, but only to be acted upon. But man is not an instrument of this kind, but is so moved by the Holy Spirit that he too acts or is moved, inasmuch as he is endowed with free will. Therefore he needs a habit* (I-II 68,3 ad 2). St. Thomas repeats this same doctrine in many other places. See, for example, with respect to the humanity of Christ, instrument of the divine Word, who moved, however, of his own free will, seconding the action of the Word: 111 i8,í ad 2. C. I. nature OF supernatural life 169 The divine initiative of the gifts is only relative, that is, only with respect to the initiative of the act, which corresponds solely and exclusively to the Holy Spirit; but, once the divine motion has been received, the soul reacts actively and associates itself intensely with it with all the vital force of which it is capable and with all the fullness of its free will. In this way the divine initiative, the relative passivity of the soul, the vital reaction of the soul, the exercise of the free will and the supernatural merit of the action are mutually combined and complete. Thus, by the divine motion of the gifts, the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the soul, immediately rules and governs our supernatural life. It is no longer human reason that commands and governs; it is the Holy Spirit himself, who acts as the rule, motor and sole principal cause of our virtuous acts, setting in motion the whole organism of our supernatural life until it is brought to its full development. 3) By dwelling in our souls, the Most Holy Trinity becomes the fruitful object of ineffable experiences. It is a fact attested to by all the experimental mystics that there "in the deepest center of their soul" they experience the august presence of the Most Holy Trinity working very intensely in them. Let us listen to St. Teresa: "It happened to me... a feeling of God's presence came upon me at an untimely moment that I could in no way doubt was within me, or that I was all engrossed in Him" 20 . "And every day this soul is more and more frightened, because it never seems to be with her - she speaks of the divine persons - but she sees, as it is said, that they are in the interior of her soul; in the very interior, in a very deep thing, which she cannot say what it is, because she has no letters, she feels in herself this divine company" 21 . We could multiply indefinitely the texts of the experimental mystics 22 . This divine experience is so clear and unequivocal in contemplative souls that some of them came to know by it the mystery of the indwelling of the divine persons even before they had the slightest knowledge of it 2 h In reality, the experimental mystics do nothing but confirm with their sublime experiences the highest teachings of Theology. It is St. Thomas, the prince of Catholic Theology, who has 19 Cf. St. John of the Cross, Flame canc.i v.3. 20 St. Teresa, Life 10,1. 21 St. Teresa, Seventh Moradas 1,7. 22 Father Poulain brings a long series in his work Des gráces d'oraison c.5 n.2-48. 23 Such was the case, e.g., with the great mystic of our times, Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, who felt "inhabited" without yet knowing the ineffable mystery of divine indwelling, which was later explained to her by Father Vallée, O.P., whom she questioned about her sublime experience (cf. Father Philipon, La doctrine spirituelle de soeur Elisabeth de la Trinité c.i n.8 and c.3 n.i). 170 P. 11. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES He was a theologian when he wrote these astonishing words in the Summa Theologica: "Through the gift of sanctifying grace, the rational creature is perfected, not only to use freely that created gift, but also to enjoy the divine person itself "24 . And a few lines above, in the body of that same article, he had written: "We are not said to possess but that which we may freely use and enjoy, and it is only by sanctifying grace that we have the power to enjoy the divine person " 2S . Here, in all its sublime grandeur, is the most endearing purpose of the divine indwelling in our souls. God himself, one in essence and triune in persons, becomes the object of an unspeakable experience. The divine persons are given to us so that we may enjoy them, according to the astonishing terminology of the Angelic Doctor. And when this experimental enjoyment reaches the delicacies of transformative union, souls who have reached these heights no longer know or want to express themselves in the language of the earth; they prefer to remain silent and savor alone what they could in no way make others understand. Let us listen to St. John of the Cross: "From where the delicacy of the delight that is felt in this touch is impossible to say; nor would I want to speak of it, lest it be understood that it is no more than what is said, that there are no words to declare such high things of God as in these souls, of which the language itself is to understand it for oneself and feel it for oneself, and to silence it and enjoy it for the one who has it.... And thus it can only be said, and with truth, that it tastes of eternal life; that although in this life it is not enjoyed perfectly as in glory, with all that, this touch, because it is God's touch, tastes of eternal life" 21 . It is on these sublime heights that the soul experiences the divine indwelling in an ineffable way. What the soul already knew and believed by faith, it experiences here as with sight and touch. St. Teresa says it expressly: "So that what we have by faith, there Jo understands the soul, we can say, by sight, although it is not seen with the eyes of the body nor of the soul, because it is not an imaginary vision. Here all three persons communicate to it, and speak to it, and give it to understand those words which the Gospel says that the Lord said, that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit would come to dwell with the soul that loves Him and keeps His commandments" (lo. 14,23) 2S . 24 1.43.3 ad 1 . 23 1,43.3 c. 26 The Saint speaks of what he calls "substantial touches of God," the supreme expression and culminating point of the mystical experience of divine indwelling. 27 St. John of the Cross, Flame canc .2 n. 21 . 28 St. Teresa, Seventh Moradas 1,6. C. I. NATURE OF SUPERNATURAL LIFE 171 This experimental knowledge of God, although substantially the same, is infinitely superior in its mode to that which we have of Him through reason enlightened by faith. Following the text we have just quoted, St. Teresa exclaims: * How different it is to hear these words and believe them, than to understand by this way how true they are!" 29 The reason for this inequality and difference between the knowledge of faith and experimental knowledge is very clear. Here is how a contemporary theologian puts it: "The mystical or experimental knowledge of God has as its real object God himself, whom faith manifests to us in an ideal way, one in substance and triune in persons. Faith tells us that in God there are three distinct persons in one essence. With it we have a supernatural knowledge of God as he is in himself, but this knowledge does not go beyond the ideal order. But then comes the mystical experience, with which this same ideal object becomes palpable, and the object of faith and the object of experience are totally identified. I hold in my hand a fruit which I am told is very tasty, but which I have never eaten; and I know it is so because the one who tells me so does not deceive me: that is God known by faith and possessed by charity ffides ex audttuj . But I put that same fruit in my mouth and begin to taste it, and then I know by experience that what I was told of its softness and sweetness was true: that is God known by mystical experience. * * # We do not want to end this point without drawing a very important consequence that sheds a great light to resolve correctly one of the most controversial questions in ascetic and mystical theology. It seems to us that from all that we have just said it is clear that the mystical experience is the normal end of the divine indwelling in our souls. Every soul in grace carries mysticism in potency, and every potency is asking to be reduced to act. If it does not yet experience the presence of God in it (and this and nothing else is what constitutes the most characteristic phenomenon of mysticism as a psychological fact, as we shall see in its place), it is not because it does not possess in itself all the infused elements indispensable to feel that experience, nor because God - who is dwelling in it with bowels of love - has forbidden it the passage, but only because she has not yet finished detaching herself completely from the things of the earth, has not yet removed the obstacles that impede that ineffable experience, has not yet definitively taken flight toward the heights, has not yet surrendered herself fully and totally to God so that he may work those marvels in her. The sublime Reformer of Carmel says it very clearly: 29 St. Teresa, Seventh Moradas 1,7. 30 P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigada, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit... c.x. note B p.117. P. II, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 2 . DEVELOPMENT D1U. SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM 173 "Behold, the Lord invites all; for it is the same truth, let there be no doubt about it. If this invitation were not general, the Lord would not call us all, and even if he did call us, he would not say, 'I will give you something to drink'" (Lk. 7:37). He could have said, "Come, all of you, and you will lose nothing; and those whom it seems good to me, I will give you to drink. But since he said, without this condition, to all, I am sure that all those who do not stay on the way will not lack this living water" 31. After this very explicit testimony of the great Mystical Doctor - which is, in the end, nothing more than a splendid confirmation from the experimental field of the theological principles and demands regarding the indwelling of the different persons - is it not true that it is almost ridiculous to ask if we are all called to mysticism, if it is part of the normal unfolding of grace, if it is licit to desire it, if there is only one path to union with God or can there perhaps be two, etc., etc., etc.? Let us hear a contemporary theologian ask these interesting questions: "Is this stupendous phenomenon (that of indwelling), whose reality is guaranteed by the divine Scriptures, mystical or ascetical? Is it the patrimony of a few or the common heritage of all the children of God? The fact of the mission of the divine persons unifies all the phases of the Christian life, from baptism to spiritual marriage. And a little further on, the same author adds: "The great gift, the true gift of God, before which the others pale and are as if they were not, the gift of the divine persons, is not exclusive of the mystical state or of the ascetical state, nor is it exclusive of the mystical state in its higher forms - of these higher states only the warning is exclusive, but not the gift itself -; the divine persons are given to those who live in the state of grace. This is what St. Thomas teaches. * * # # And with this we have finished this chapter. We have examined in it the organism of the Christian life, and we have seen that it is formed, as its fundamental basis, by sanctifying grace, which informs the very essence of our soul. From this same grace emanate in the powers of the soul the supernatural habits (virtues and gifts), which God himself, dwelling in the tilma, sets in motion by means of actual graces. Habitual and actual grace, infused virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, divine indwelling: this is the rich inheritance of the justified soul. We must now examine how this marvelous organism grows and develops as it moves toward its perfection. 3 1 St. Teresa, Way of Perfection 19,15; cf. St. John of the Cross, Flame cauc.2 v.27 32 Fr. Sabino Lozano, O.P., Vida santa y ciencia sagrada c.6p. 68 (2.* ed., Salamanca 1940). 53 O.c., p.72; cf. 1 , 43.3 and 6 . CHAPTER II The development of the supernatural organism Leaving for another place the detailed study of the means for advancing in the Christian life in its march toward perfection, we will here gather together the fundamental laws of its development. Can the life of grace grow and develop in us? What is the efficient cause of this development? What are the laws that govern it? How does it come about? These are the questions we are going to answer in the form of conclusions. Conclusion i. a : Grace is called to grow and develop in our souls. 99 . The argument to demonstrate this is very simple. Sanctifying grace is a "seed of God" 2 that the sacrament of baptism sows in our souls. It is given to us in the form of a germ, a seed, a supernatural embryo. Then by its very nature it is called to grow and develop. There is no need to insist on something so clear that everyone admits. More interesting, though no less easy to prove, is to point out the efficient cause of this increase. Conclusion 2. a : The efficient cause of the increase of our supernatural life is God alone. 100. It is clear that every living being that has not yet reached its full development can, under normal circumstances, grow and develop until it does so. In the natural order, our corporeal organism grows by its own development, that is to say, by evolving with its natural forces and increasing by the incorporation of new elements of the same order. Our supernatural life cannot grow in this way. Grace is a grafting being, and cannot grow except in the way it is born. It is born by divine infusion, and, for the same reason, it cannot grow except by new divine infusions. In vain would our natural faculties tend their springs and push forward; they would be utterly powerless to determine, even with the help of actual grace, this interior movement of unfolding which is produced, for example, by physical exercises in our members. 1 Cf. 1.2 of p. 3. a: "Positive aspect of the Christian life". 2 Cf. 1 lo. 3,9. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Only from outside can the soul receive new degrees of divine being, and it is God alone who can produce them in it 3 . We can see this same thing from another point of view. Habits cannot be acted upon - hence, neither developed nor perfected - except by the same principle that caused them. But the graces, the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernatural habits caused or produced by God alone. Therefore, only He can act or develop them. God's action, then, is the efficient principle of the development of the supernatural life. The soul in grace can merit this increase under certain conditions, as we shall see; but the increase itself can only be caused by God 4 . Of course, the action of God as the direct and immediate cause of the increase or development of infused habits is not, however, arbitrary 5 6 . It is subject to laws and conditions that the divine free will has willed to determine. Let us see what they are. Conclusion 3. a : Ordinarily, the increase of grace occurs. in two ways: "ex opere operato", through the sacraments, and "ex opere operato", through the sacraments, and "ex opere operato", through the sacraments. opere operantis", for supernaturally meritorious actions and for the impetratory efficacy of prayer 6. 101. Let us examine separately each of the elements of this conclusion: the sacraments, merit and prayer. 102. a) The sacraments. - That the sacraments instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ confer grace ex opere operato, that is, by their own intrinsic virtue independently of the dispositions of the subject 7 8 , is a truth of faith. It was expressly defined by the Council of Trent: "If anyone should say that by the sacraments of the new Law grace is not conferred ex opere operato, but that faith alone in the divine promise alone is sufficient to obtain grace, let him be anathema. "8 Let us gather together in the form of very brief conclusions the fundamental points of the general theology of the sacraments. 1." It is of faith that the sacraments of the new Law contain and confer grace to all who receive them worthily: "omnibus non ponentibus obicem", says the Council of Trent 9 . 3 Cf. Beaudenom, The Sources of Piety (Barcelona 1943) p. 192-3. 4 Cf. 1-11,92,1 ad 1. 5 However, God can increase the grace in a soul without submitting to any law, although ordinarily He always does so in accordance with those that He Himself has Uberrimely willed to establish in His Church. 6 Cf. Ce 12. 695 698 849 for the sacraments: 803 834 842 and 1044 for good works, and 11-11,83,15-16 for prayer. 7 Provided, of course, that he does not hinder grace (cf. Denz. 849-50); that is, provided that he has the indispensable dispositions to be able to receive the sacrament fruitfully. In the sacraments of the living, the state of grace is indispensable - at least - and in the sacraments of the dead, supernatural attrition. 8 Denz. 851. * Denz. 849 y 850. C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM 2. * Baptism and penance confer of themselves the first infu. sion of grace; the other five confer of themselves the second infusion^ that is, an increase of the former. Therefore, the first two are called sacraments of the dead (they suppose the soul dead through sin), and the other five sacraments, of the living (they suppose it already with supernatural life). 3. a Sometimes, however, the sacraments of the dead produce per accidens the second infusion (increase of grace), and the sacraments of the living produce per accidens the first infusion (production of grace where it does not yet exist). Such occurs in those who are baptized or confess and. justified by charity or perfect contrition, and in those who claim in good faith, at least with supernatural attrition, a sacrament of vivci^ without knowing that they are in mortal sin 10 . 4. a The sacraments, other things being equal, produce greater , lesser infusion of grace according to the greater or lesser dignity of the sacramer, to 11 . The reason is that a nobler cause corresponds to a nobler effect. We say, however, in equal conditions because Uk sacrament of inferior dignity received with extraordinary fervor can produce greater grace than a sacrament of greater dignity received with little devotion. * 5. a The same sacrament produces the same amount of grace in all those who receive it with identical dispositions. But it is produced 12. '...the greater if the recipient's dispositions are also greater. These last two conclusions are very important in practice. Sometimes too much emphasis is placed on the effet ex opere operato cf the sacraments, as if this were their only effect or if everything depended exclusively on it. We must not lose sight of the fact that the effect ex opere operato is combined in the reception of the sacraments with the effect ex opere operantis, that is, with the dispositions of the one who receives them 13 . Hence, in practice, the quality of preparation and the intensity of fervor in receiving the sacraments are of great importance. The example of the fountain and the cup is classic: the quantity of water that is received depends not only on the fountain, but also on the size of the cup that receives it. Now then: the vessel of our soul is ensancf ' with the intensity of fervor or devotion. 7 Let us now consider the increase of grace through the merit of good works. ' 10 111,72,7 ad 2; In 4 Sent. d.9 q.l a. 3 q.*2; ibid., d.23 q.i a. 2 q.*i ad 2. 1 1 That some sacraments are more worthy than others was expressly defined by the Council of Trent. Cf. Denz. 846. 12 111 , 69 , 8 . -From this doctrine the Salmanticenses deduce that not only the one who receives a sacrament with a greater intensive disposition receives greater grace, but also the one who receives it with a more perfect disposition, even if it is less intense. From this, if two persons who are in the grace of God receive, e.g., absolution, one of them atriríAn rnmn niatrn v la nt-ro mn /'r "rvfrí/'íAr> Ano oam .,-.,-1., - t\*. more ycrieuLd than attrition, although intense (.cr. salmanticenses. De üacramentis m comm^h d.4 n.127). Vi 13 Let us not forget that the Council of Trent, speaking of justification from sin, speaks of the (supernatural) dispositions of the one who receives it as a fundamental element in determining the degree or measure of that justification: "... iustitiam in nobis recipieriVj unusquisque suam, secundum mensuram, quam Spiritus Sanctus partitur singulis prout \V.... iustitiam in nobis recipier\Vj unusquisque suam, secundum mensuram, quam Spiritus Sanctus partitur singulis prout \V (1 Cor. 12:11) et secundum propriam cuiusque dispositionem et cooperationem" (cf. Denz. 7 lV And if this occurs in the first justification, a fortiori it will occur in the sacraments of viv V which presuppose already in the soul all the elements necessary for supernatural merit V condigno . ^ * P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 10 . 3 . h) Supernatural merit. - This is a very important question in the spiritual life. St. Thomas studies it extensively in several places in his works. In the Summa Theologica he devotes an entire question divided into ten articles 14 . 14 We are going to gather here the fundamental points in the form of brief conclusions. 1. ® Merit is the value of a work that makes it worthy of reward: "actio qua efficitur ut ei qui agit, sit iustum aliquid dari", says St. Thomas 15 , 2. a There are two kinds of merit: that of condign, which is based on reasons of justice, and that of congruous, which is not based on reasons of justice nor on pure gratuitousness, but on a certain convenience on the part of the work and on a certain liberality on the part of the one who rewards it. And so, e.g., the laborer has a strict right (de condigno) to the wages he has earned by his work; and the person who has done us a favor is entitled (de congruo) to our grateful reward. 3. a The merit of condigno is subdivided into merit of strict justice ("ex toto rigore iustitiae") and not of strict justice ("ex condignitate"). The first requires perfect and absolute equality between the act and the reward; therefore, in the supernatural order this merit is proper and exclusive to Jesus Christ. The second presupposes only equality of proportion between the good act and the reward; but, God having promised to reward these meritorious acts, this reward is due in justice 17 . 4 . a In turn, the merit of congruity is subdivided by some theologians into fallible congruity, if it orders the award on the basis of convenience alone, and infallible congruity, if to this convenience is added God's promise to grant the award 18 . Other theologians reject this subdivision. 5. a Man cannot by his natural powers alone produce meritorious works for eternal life 19 . No one can merit supernaturally, except by virtue of a first gift of God: merit presupposes grace 20 . But insofar as it proceeds from grace, meritorious works are ordered to eternal life by the merit of righteousness 21 . 6 . a It is of faith that the just can merit by his good works the increase of grace - and, consequently, that of the infused habits (virtues and gifts) that he carries with him - , eternal life and the increase of glory. This was expressly defined by the Council of Trent against the Protestants: "If anyone should say that the good works of a man so justified are gifts of God that they are not also merits of justi n 1-11,114. 13 S.Thom., In 4 Sent. d.15 q.l a. 3 ad 4. 1" I-II,H 4 . " MI. 114,1. 18 Cf. ZüBiZAftRETA, Theol. Dog. Schol. vol.3 n.304 1* l-n.109,5. 20 1-11,114,2. "1 1-11,114,3. C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM The same person, being justified by the good works he does by the grace of God and the merits of Jesus Christ (of whom he is a living member), who truly deserves the increase of grace, eternal life and the attainment of the same eternal life (provided he dies in grace) and the increase of glory, is anathema. 7. a Merit always presupposes freedom; where freedom is lacking, there can be neither merit nor demerit. But every free act, if it is related to God, can be meritorious. "Our acts," says St. Thomas, "are meritorious insofar as they proceed from free will moved by God through grace. Whence every human act that falls under free will, if it is related to God, can be meritorious. "23 8 . a It does not matter for merit - at least per se - the kind of work that is executed, but the motive and the way of doing it: "Opus meritorium a non meritorio non distat in quid agere, sed in qualiter agere" 24. From whence it follows that a materially insignificant work done with ardent charity, just to please God, is of itself much more meritorious than a great undertaking done with less charity or for a less perfect motive. Whence: 9. a Supernatural merit is evaluated, first of all, by the virtue of charity. The intensity of the love of God with which an action is performed determines the degree of its merit. The merit of the other virtues depends on the greater or lesser influence that charity has in the production of their acts. "Eternal life consists in the fruition of God. But the movement of the soul toward the fruition of the divine good is the very act of charity, by which all the acts of the other virtues are ordered to this end insofar as the other virtues are governed by charity. And for this reason the merit of eternal life belongs in the first place to charity; and to the other virtues secondarily, insofar as their acts are governed by charity" 25. St. Thomas adds yet another reason. Works done at the impulse of charity are more voluntary, because they proceed from love; therefore, they are more meritorious. "It is also manifest that what we do out of love we do with the utmost voluntariness. From where it is seen that, also on the part of the voluntariness that is demanded for merit, this belongs principally to charity. "26 22 Denz. Cf. Col. 3:23-24 and 1 Cor. 3:8. - Item. I-II, 114,8. 23 11 - 11 , 2 , 9 . 24 S.Thom., De veritate q.24 a.i ad 2. 23 1-11,114,4 24 1-11,114,4, P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM a For the effective growth or increase of charity to be realized, a more intense act than the habit presently possessed is necessary. Let us listen to St. Thomas: "Not by any act of charity does charity itself increase; though any act of charity disposes to the increase of charity, inasmuch as by an act of charity a man becomes more ready to continue to act for charity; and, this ability and readiness growing, a man breaks forth into a more fervent act of love p < : which strives to grow in charity: and then indeed increases ci rity. "27 This more intense act presupposes, naturally, a previous more intense actual grace as well. Note the singular practical importance of this doctrine. Properly understood, it is one of the most effective ways to combat lukewarmness and laziness in the service of God. Without increasingly fervent acts, we can have our supernatural life practically paralyzed - at least for this chapter of supernatural merit, since for that of the sacraments other laws apply - even if we live in grace and practice a multitude of good works with laziness and lukewarmness. An example will clarify these ideas. With the growth of grace and other infused habits something similar to the growth of a thermometric scale occurs. For a thermometer that is reading 25 degrees to read 28, 30 or 35 it is absolutely necessary that the surrounding air or environment be heated to 28, 30 or 35 degrees. If there is no heat rise in the environment, the thermometer will never read any rise at all. The same thing happens with the increase of habits. Since this increase in reality consists in nothing more than a greater radication in the subject (cf. n. 106), it is impossible for any increase to take place without a more intense act, which is - to use another very clear simile - like a hammer blow stronger than the previous one, which drives deeper into the soul the nail of the habit itself. So, should it be said that remiss acts (i.e., those performed with laziness and lukewarmness, with less intensity than at other times) are of no use in the supernatural life? It is necessary to answer with distinction. With regard to the essential growth of the degree of grace presently possessed and of the degree of essential glory (beatific vision) in heaven, these acts are completely sterile and useless: they do not increase the degree of grace (they do not make the thermometer rise) nor, consequently, the degree of essential glory in heaven, which corresponds to the degree of grace on earth. But, nevertheless, they serve for two things: 1. a , so that the soul does not end up cooling off 28 , thereby predisposing itself to mortal sin, which would snatch grace from it; and 2. a , to obtain in heaven some increase of accidental glory: a reward "de bono creato, non de bono infinito," as Báñez explains. 21 11-11,24,6. 28 Note that this cooling refers only to the dispositions of the soul, not to the degree of grace previously attained, which never diminishes, unless a mortal sin occurs that totally destroys it (lowering the thermometer to zero). But, if this catastrophe of mortal sin does not occur, the degree of grace already acquired never diminishes. If a more intense act of virtue does not occur, the degree of grace will not rise, but neither will it fall. It happens something similar to the thermometers used in medicine to take the temperature of the sick: they go up (when the fever increases), but they do not go down (unless the sudden shock of mortal sin comes). Elsewhere (cf. n. 260) we explain more fully this doctrine of St. Thomas, of exceptional importance in practice, which is required by the most elementary principles of the Thomistic metaphysical and theological system 29 . 11. a No one can merit for himself the first grace 3 °, nor the final perseverance 31 , nor to get up again after a serious fall that may occur 32 . But he can merit for others the first grace, although only with the merit of congruence 33 . The reason for the first three affirmations is the well-known theological aphorism that "the principle of merit does not fall under merit". This is evident for the first affirmation: without grace one cannot merit grace, since, otherwise, the supernatural would be demanded by the natural, which is absurd and heretical 34 . As for final perseverance, it is an infallible effect of predestination to glory, which is totally gratuitous. And the third is also evident, because the reason for merit depends on the supernatural divine motion, which will be cut off and interrupted by that future sin. The reason for being able to merit the first grace for others is purely congruent. Since the just man and friend of God fulfills his divine will, it is reasonable according to the laws of friendship that God should fulfill that of man in the salvation of another. 12. s No one, even if he is just and perfect, can merit for himself the actual effective graces with strict merit, but we can all merit them with congruent merit: infallibly, with prayer clothed with the due conditions, and fallibly, by good works. The reason for the former is the well-known aphorism already quoted that "the principle of merit does not fall under merit," and those actual conserving graces of grace belong to grace itself as the principle of merit 35 . The reason for the latter is the divine promise that we are infallibly granted everything we need for our health, if we ask for it with humble, trusting and persevering prayer 36 . We will return to the infallible efficacy of prayer. 29 Cf. 11-11,24,6 and the main commentators of St. Thomas; above all, Báñez, who is the best and most profound on this question. 50 1-11,114,5. 31 1-11,114,9 32 1-11,114,7. 3 3 1-11,114,6. 34 Cf. Denz. 1021 1023 1024 1026 1671, etc. 35 Cf. 1-11,114,9.- On this article John of St. Thomas warns, n.i: "Principium meriti non potest cadere sub meritum: sed auxilíum et motio divina, qua aliquis movetur a Deo, ut non succumbat tentationibus, nec gratiam interrumpat per peccatum, tenet se ex parí e principii meriti quia auxilium et motio est principium operandi, et ín hoc solum consistit quod moveat ad opus; igitur non potest cadere sub meritum*. Item n.4: 'Conservado est continuatio primae productionis..., unde qui mereretur auxilia continuativa gratiae, seu perseverantiam, consequenter mereretur ipsain continuationem principii meriti, quod est gratia secundum quod se tenet ex parte Dei moventís ad conservandum.... Quod probat non pos se sub meritum cadere motionem divinam, non quamcumque, sed quatenus est conservativa gratiae quae est principium meriti*. Item cf. Salmanticenses, ibid-, n. 89-109. 3" Mt. 7,7; lo. 16,23, etc. P. II. PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL HEALTH C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM Simple good works do not have that special promise given to prayer, and therefore their merit is of only fallible congruence. God will grant them, if he wills, out of pure mercy, since neither the works merit them by themselves, nor has he obliged himself to give them to us by a formal promise. 13. a The difficulty of a work does not increase its merit, unless indirectly and per accidens, inasmuch as it is a sign of greater charity in undertaking it. Merit is always derived from the goodness of the work itself and from the motive that impels us to do it. "It is more important for the reason of merit and virtue that which is good than that which is difficult. Hence, not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious, but only that which, in addition to being difficult, is also better "37 . The reason is because the principle of merit is in charity. That is why it is more meritorious to do easy things with great charity than to carry out very painful works with lesser charity. Many lukewarm souls carry a great cross with little merit, while the Blessed Virgin, with her most ardent charity, deserved more for the simplest and easiest acts than all the martyrs together in the midst of their torments. 1 4. a Temporal goods can also be worthy of condignity insofar as they are useful for attaining eternal life 38 . 15. a The conditions necessary for merit are those contained in the following schematic table: nerator, which is not necessary for the merit of fallible congruent, although it is necessary for the infallible. 16. a The merits mortified by mortal sin revive, in order to the eternal reward, when the sinner recovers grace. But, according to the most probable sentence - which is that of St. Thomas 41 - they do not always revive in the same degree that they had before, but according to the present dispositions of the subject when he recovers grace: in a lesser, equal, or greater degree. Note the great practical importance of this doctrine. It is pure illusion - as well as grave imprudence - that the sinner suffers when he sins calmly thinking that, after sinning, he will recover through penance all that he has lost. Apart from the fact that God can deny him the grace of repentance - without which it will be absolutely impossible for him to get out of sin, just as he who has thrown himself into a well cannot get out of it unless he gets a cable from above - it is almost certain that he will rise from his sin in a degree of sanctifying grace inferior to that which he possessed before, because it is very difficult that with his strength broken by sin he can make an act of repentance as intense as the greater one he had before (which supposes a present grace as intense also, of which he became unworthy by the abuse committed in sinning), with the result that he will have brought upon himself a supernatural loss of incalculable value. Let us now see in what way an increase or development of our supernatural organism can be produced by the impetratory value of prayer. For the merit of condign : f 1 ) a) On behalf of the work . . 4 2) 3 ) 4 ) Positive act (the omission of a bad act is not sufficient, except for a positive act of repudiation) 39 . Honest (morally good). Free (without it the human and voluntary act is lacking). Supernatural (coming from grace and charity). f>) b) On behalf of the one who me-j rece 1 l 2) 3) Let it be a viator (in the other world it can no longer be deserved). Righteous and a friend of God (by grace). Let him perform his act in the gift or service of God (cf. I-II,2i,4). c) On behalf of God . J Acceptance of the work in order to the award by di' ' ' ' 1 vina ordination and pledge. 104. c) Prayer. - St. Thomas assigns four values to prayer: satisfactory, meritorious, impetratory and that of producing a certain spiritual refection. Here we are interested in emphasizing, above all, its impetratory value or efficacy; but first let us say a word about the other three. 1) Satisfactory value. - That prayer has a satisfactory value is evident from the fact that it always presupposes an act of humility and submission to God, whom we have offended by our sins, which are rooted in pride. It springs, moreover, from charity, the source of all satisfaction. And, finally, prayer done well is in itself a painful thing, at least for imperfect souls, because of the effort of attention and the tension of the will that it involves. The Council of Trent spoke expressly of the satisfactory value of prayer 43 . For the merit of congruo .■ - The same as for that of condign, except the state of grace on the part of the deserving 40 (the influx of actual grace suffices) and the promise on the part of God remu 37 11 - 11 , 27.8 ad 3 .-Cf. I-II,H4,4 ad 2; II-II, 123,12 ad 2; 155,4 a <3 2; 182,2 ad 1; 184, 8 ad 6. 3 " I4i.ii4.ro, 39 1-11,71,5 ad i : "Meritum non potes t esse sine actu; sed peccatum potest esse sine actu". 40 S.Th., Suppl. 14,^. 2) Meritorious value: Like any other act of supernatural virtue, prayer receives its meritorious value from charity, from which it springs radically by means of the virtue of religion, of which it is its own act. As a meritorious act, prayer is subjected to the virtue of religion. 41 Til, 5 c et ud Cf. In III Sml. ti. 31 ti. a. 4 ti.*;) sol. 3 ad 4. 41 II-H.83.12.- ín IV Sent. d.is q.4 a.7. 43 Denz. 905 y "23. 182 i'. II FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM 183 It is subject to the conditions of other virtuous works and is governed by the same laws. In this sense, it can merit as worthy everything that can be merited with that kind of merit, assuming the proper conditions 44 . 3) Spiritual refection. - The third effect of prayer - says St. Thomas - is a certain spiritual refection of the soul. This effect is produced by prayer by its presence alone: praesentialiter efficit 45 . 45 But for it to be produced in fact, attention is absolutely necessary; this spiritual delight is incompatible with the voluntary wandering of the mind. Therefore, ecstatic prayer - in which the soul's attention is maximized by the concentration of all its psychological energies on the contemplated object - brings with it the greatest delectation that can be attained in this life. And it is natural that this should be so. Prayer nourishes our intelligence, stimulates our sensibility in a holy way, stimulates and fortifies our will. It is a true refectio mentis which by its very nature is called to fill the soul with softness and gentleness. 4) Impetratory value. - This is the one we are most interested in highlighting here as an element of growth and development of our Christian life independently of merit. Let us first look at the main differences between the meritorious and the impetratory value of the sentence 46 . a) Prayer, as a meritorious act, has a relation of justice to the reward; on the other hand, its impetratory value has a relation only to God's mercy. b) As meritorious, it has intrinsic efficacy to obtain the prize; as impetratory, its efficacy rests solely on God's promise. c) Meritorious efficacy is based, above all, on charity; impetratory efficacy is based, above all, on faith. d) The object of merit and of impetration is not always the same, although sometimes they may coincide. The just person deserves and does not always attain; the sinner can attain without having deserved. Let us now examine the question of the infallible efficacy of prayer. Conclusion 4. a : Prayer, clothed with the proper conditions, infallibly obtains what it asks for by virtue of God's promises. 105. This thesis seems to be a matter of faith because of the clarity with which the divine promise is made manifest to us in Sacred Scripture. Here are some of the most significant texts: 44 11-11,83,7 ad 2; a, 15 ,-ln IV Sent. d.15 11.4 a.7 i|.M. <5 11-11,83,13. 44 Cf. 11-11,83,15-16. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For he who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened" 47 . "And whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer in faith ye shall receive" 4 *. "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son: if ye shall ask me any thing in my name, I will do it. "49 "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, say what you will, and it shall be given to you* 50 . "... that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give it to you" 51 . "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father, he will give it you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full" 52 . "And the confidence we have in Him is that, if we ask Him for anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that he hears us inasmuch as we ask him, we know that we obtain the petitions we have asked of him" 53 . It is impossible to speak more clearly and with more pressing insistence. The divine promise is most certainly recorded in the very sources of revelation. Now, what are the conditions required for prayer to infallibly attain its object, fulfilling in fact the divine promises? St. Thomas points out four, and to these can be reduced all the others that the authors point out: that he should ask for something for himself, necessary for salvation, piously and with perseverance. Here are his own words: "Consequently, one always obtains what one asks for, provided these four conditions are met: asking for oneself, things necessary for salvation, piously and with perseverance "54 . Let us examine each of these conditions in detail. i. a For himself. - The reason is that the granting of a divine grace always requires a willing subject, and the neighbor may not be willing. On the other hand, he who prays for himself, if he does it conveniently, is already disposed by that fact alone to be heard. Otherwise, it would not be true prayer. We do not mean by this that prayer for others is always ineffective. But we cannot be infallibly sure of this because we do not know with certainty the dispositions of our neighbor. We can ask God to dispose him by an effect of his infinite mercy; but this he has promised to no one, and we cannot, therefore, infallibly obtain it. 47 Mt. 7:7-8. 48 Mt. 21:23. 45 lo. 14,13-14. 50 lo. 15.7. 51 lo. is, 16. 52 lo. 16,23-24. 53 t lo. 5,14-15. 84 11-11,83,15 ad 2. 184 I. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 2. "Things necessary for salvation. - Everything that is in some way necessary or convenient for our salvation falls under the infallible impetratory object of prayer. In this sense, we can impetrate by means of prayer the development or increase of the infused virtues,55 of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which can also be the object of merit) and even those things that cannot be merited in any way.56 Such are, for example, the actual graces efficacious for not falling into grave sin or for any other salutary act and the sovereign gift of final perseverance, that is, death in the grace of God, infallibly connected with eternal salvation (cf. I-II, 114:9 ad 1). The holy Church, guided and led by the Holy Spirit, continually asks in her liturgy for these sovereign graces, which no one can strictly merit. 3. a Piously. - In that single word St. Thomas includes and summarizes all the conditions required on the part of the praying subject, which are various; namely: a) Humility: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (Iac. 4,6). b) Firm confidence: "But let him ask in faith, not wavering in anything" (Iac. 1:6) 57 . c) In the name of Christ: "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father, he will give it you in my name" J 8. d) Attention: voluntary distraction is an irreverence that does not go well with the request for alms. Some authors head these subjective conditions with that of the state of grace, without which, they say, one cannot pray piously. But they are wrong. St. Thomas raised this same objection and solves it masterfully. Here are his words: "The sinner cannot pray piously in the sense that his prayer is informed by the supernatural habit of that name, which he absolutely lacks. But he can be pious in his prayer in the sense that he can ask for something pertaining to piety; just as he who does not have the habit of righteousness can nevertheless desire some just thing. And even if his prayer is not meritorious, it can nevertheless be impetratory, because merit rests on justice, but impetration on pure grace or liberality" (11-11,83, 16 ad 2; cf. III, Suppl. 72,3 ad 4). So, although the state of grace is undoubtedly very convenient for the infallible efficacy of prayer, it is not absolutely necessary. It is one thing to demand a day's wages due in justice, and quite another to ask for alms; for the latter, they do not do 33 The Holy Church asks in a most beautiful prayer for an increase in the theological virtues: "Da nobis. Domine, fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum..." (dominica 13 post Pentecost.). 36 In this sense, the field of impetration is much broader than that of merit. 37 The Lord used to demand this firm trust before granting a grace or performing a miracle, as is repeatedly recorded in the pages of the Gospel. lo. 16:23; cf. 14:13-14; 15:16; 16:24. That is why the holy Church dares not ask for anything linen in the name of her divine Spouse: "Per Dominum nostrum lesum Ch natura". C. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM 185 other titles than need and misery are lacking. What is always necessary is the prior thrust of actual grace, which can be given and is given in fact in sinners themselves. 4. a With perseverance. - In fact, this is one of the conditions required on the part of the subject who prays, which St. Thomas undoubtedly emphasizes and sets aside because of its great importance. The Lord repeatedly inculcated in the Gospel the need to persevere in prayer until we obtain what we ask for. Recall the parables of the importunate friend who asks for three loaves of bread 5S> , that of the wicked judge who does justice to the importunate widow 60 , the moving episode of the Canaanite woman who insists despite the apparent repulse 61 , etc., etc.; and, above all, the sublime example of Christ himself: "And he spent the night praying to God" 62 ; and in Gethsemane: "Filled with anguish he prayed with more earnestness" 63 . These are the conditions for the infallible efficacy of prayer. In fact, in practice we obtain very many things from God without fulfilling all these conditions by a superabundant effect of divine mercy. But, by meeting these conditions, we will infallibly obtain - by the divine promise - even those graces that absolutely no one can merit. We shall make great use of this doctrine elsewhere. We have thus seen the laws that govern the development of the Christian life, based above all on the sacraments, supernatural merit and the impetratory efficacy of prayer. Let us now see how this development takes place. Conclusion 5. a : By the worthy reception of the sacraments, by the practice of supernaturally meritorious works, and by the impetratory efficacy of prayer, infused habits grow all at once; and this growth is verified by a greater inherence or radication in the subject. 106. The reason for the simultaneous growth of all the supernatural habits - sanctifying grace, virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit - is because, all of them being in intimate connection with grace and charity, the growth of the latter determines and drags along the growth of the whole supernatural organism, in the likeness - says St. Thomas - of the simultaneous growth of the fingers of a hand 64 . 55 Le. 11:5-13. Le. 18:1-5. 61 Mt. 15:21-28. Le. 6,12. 63 Le. 22.44. "1-11,65; 66,2; 68,5, ele.- Note the singular importance of this doctrine in ascetical and mystical theology. The growth of grace and charity brings with it the growth of all the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit insofar as habits. It is impossible, then, for charity to reach a state of relative perfection without the gifts having developed to the same degree, and, consequently, without their acting with ever greater frequency and intensity, normally introducing the soul into the full mystical state. But we will return to this in its proper place. 186 1*. II. FUN'DAMENIAL PRINCIPLES C. 3 . CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 187 The reason that growth consists only in a greater inherence or rooting of these habits in the subject is because the very nature of grace, virtues and gifts demands it. Inherent forms such as these - supernatural habits - can only grow in intensity. The subject participates more and more in this form by a greater rootedness in it, which determines a greater facility and intensity in the operations that proceed from it 65 . Two important consequences can be deduced from this doctrine. The first is that it is impossible for an infused virtue to be perfect in isolation, that is, without the others also being perfect. United among themselves, rooted in grace, from which in a certain sense they flow and to which they are ordered, and all of them having charity as their form, as some of them develop by the more intense practice of their proper act, they carry with them the whole supernatural organism: grace grows, which is their principle; charity, which is their form; and all the other virtues and gifts, inseparably connected with grace and charity. Of course, even if the development of one virtue or gift drags along with it all the other supernatural habits, it does not follow that it also increases the facility in the exercise of those other virtues or gifts. This facility always depends on the repetition of the acts corresponding to a given virtue. The other virtues, even if perfectly developed as supernatural habits, will encounter in practice - or at least can encounter - certain difficulties, coming from some extrinsic impediments or from the contrary dispositions left by the preceding vicious acts 6(> . That is why a saint can encounter certain resistance and difficulty in the practice of a virtue that he never had occasion to exercise despite possessing with perfection the supernatural habit of the same 67, The second consequence - derived from the first - is that for the habitual development of grace and virtues it is not necessary to practice all of them. Even those virtues that are not exercised for lack of material or opportunity, are developed at the same pace and with the exercise of the others. A holy beggar, e.g., will not be able to practice the virtue of magnificence, which requires the expenditure of great riches in the service of God or of his neighbor for God's sake; and yet he can have and has in fact perfectly developed the habit of it and is ready to practice it at least in praeparatione animi, as the theologians say, that is, as soon as he has occasion and possibility to do so. 1 - 11 , 52 , 2 ; 11 - 11 , 24 . 5 66 "It sometimes happens that one who has a habit finds it difficult to act and, therefore, does not feel delight or pleasure in the act, because of some impediment of extrinsic origin. Thus, he who has a habit of science finds it difficult to understand because of sleep or some illness. Similarly, the habits of the infused moral virtues sometimes experience difficulty in acting, because of the contrary dispositions that remain from previous acts. This is a difficulty that does not arise in the acquired moral virtues, because the repeated exercise of the acts by which these virtues are acquired also causes the contrary dispositions to disappear* (I-II, 65,3 ad 2). _ ... 67 "When it is said that certain saints did not have some virtues, it means that they found difficulty in the acts of these virtues, for the reason already stated, even though they had the habits of all the virtues" (1-11,65,3 ad 3). The ordinary and the extraordinary in the development of the Christian life 107. Let us conclude this quick overview of the development of the Christian life by specifying what should be understood as ordinary and normal and what should be understood as extraordinary and abnormal in this development. We understand by normal development of sanctifying grace the simple unfolding of its intrinsic virtualities, the simple expansion and growth of its dynamic elements (infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit) under the corresponding divine motion. Everything that the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit can attain by their simple and mere action under the corresponding divine motion, evidently enters into the normal development of sanctifying grace. On the contrary, we must consider as abnormal and extraordinary everything that is not demanded by the intrinsic virtualities of grace in its twofold static and dynamic aspect. Such, it seems to us, is the sense in which all authors of asceticism and mysticism take these expressions, regardless of the school to which they belong. Precisely those who deny the universal call to mysticism allege, in order to prove it, that mysticism is "outside the requirements of grace. 68 Therefore, everything that is within the demands of grace will be completely ordinary and normal in its development. For the time being, we do not intend anything more than to fix the terminology. We will show in due course that mysticism is perfectly within the demands of grace, and is, therefore, the normal and ordinary path to holiness for all souls in grace. Let us now turn to the nature of Christian perfection and the various problems connected with it. CHAPTER III Christian perfection Having examined the nature and organism of the supernatural life and having specified the fundamental laws of its development towards perfection, let us now see in what this perfection consists. Here is the order we will follow: after a brief introduction on the concept of perfection in general, we will explain the nature of Christian perfection, its obligatory nature for all Christians, 68 This is what Father Chrysogonus expressly says: "By its very nature of being extraordinary, Mysticism does not really have a fixed time to begin. Since no state of the soul demands it, because by definition (!) it is outside the demands of grace..." (Compendium of Asceticism v Mysticism p.3. a c.i a.i p.159 I a ed.). 1,88 189 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES its main degrees, its possibility and its relationship with the formidable problem of predestination. At the same time we will be examining the complementary questions that come our way. i. Perfection in general 108. a) Etymological sense. - The word perfection comes from the Latin verb perficere (to make to the end, to make completely, to finish, to finish), from which comes perfectum (that which is finished, finished) and perfectio (quality of perfection). A thing is said to be perfect when it has all the being, all the reality that suits it according to its nature. The blind man is imperfect, because he lacks one of the organs required by his human nature; but not having wings does not mean in man an imperfection, because his nature is not made to fly. b) Real meaning. - The etymological meaning of the word has already put us on the track of its true and authentic real meaning. But to better specify our ideas it is necessary to recall here two very fruitful philosophical principles: 1. This means that the ideas of actual reality and perfection are synonymous. Therefore, God, who is pure act, that is, being in all its actual fullness, is perfection by essence. He is, in reality, the only perfect being. All other beings - a mixture of potency and act - are only perfectible. What remains of potency is perfectibility; and since no potential aspect will ever disappear from them, it follows that absolute perfection is impossible for the created being. It is the exclusive patrimony of God, in whom everything is pure act, without shadow or vestige of any potentiality. 2. Insofar as it is said of someone that he is perfect insofar as he attains his own end, which is the ultimate perfection of things. - This is the principle invoked by St. Thomas in the first article of the question which he devotes in the Summa Theologica to investigating the nature of Christian perfection L When a being has attained his end and rests in it, he can be said to have reached his full perfection. As it approaches it, it possesses only a relative or progressive perfection. There is a substantial perfection, in act one, which is that which a being possesses when it is complete in its substantial principles according to its own specific nature. And there is another accidental perfection, in second act, which is that which embraces, in addition, all the accidental perfections. The latter is "perfection" in the proper or strict sense. Both occur in the spiritual life, as we shall see. We will return to these principles, which will shed much light on questions concerning Christian perfection. C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION Nature of Christian perfection St. Thomas, II-II, i 84 ; De perfectione vitae spirit. (op.18); Passerini, De statibus t.i in q.184; Vallgornera, q.4 d.i; Tanquerey, Ascetic Theology n.296-320; GarrigouLagrance, Perfection.... c.3; and Three Ages.... 1,8-14: Fonck, art. Perfection in DTCt.12 C0I.1219S; De Guibert, Theologia spiritualis n.40-125; Mercier, The Lower Life conf.3. 109. Let us look first of all at the teaching of St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica. The Angelic Doctor begins by asking whether the perfection of the Christian life consists especially in charity 2 . As can be seen, he goes directly to the heart of the matter, dispensing with all kinds of prenotandos and secondary questions. The answer, as is well known, is affirmative. It is proved in the first place by the authority of St. Paul: "But above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfection" (Col. 3:14); for charity, says the Angelic Doctor, in a certain sense binds all the other virtues together in perfect unity. In the body of the article he establishes the proof of reason, which could not be simpler. If a being attains his perfection when he reaches his own end, it must be concluded that Christian perfection consists especially in charity, since it is precisely this virtue that unites us directly with God as the ultimate supernatural end. Having briefly expounded the doctrine of the Angelic, let us try to expand it a little more. Let us proceed by conclusions, in the scholastic manner. Conclusion 1. a : Christian perfection consists especially in the perfection of charity. go o. Let us first of all clarify the meaning of the question. We do not mean to say that Christian perfection consists entirely and exclusively in the perfection of charity, but that it is the principal element, the most essential and characteristic of all. In this sense it must be said that the measure of charity in man is the measure of his supernatural perfection; in such a way that he who has attained the perfection of love of God and neighbor can be called "perfect" in the truest sense of the word ( simpliciter ) , whereas he would be so only relatively (secundum quid ) if he were so only in some other virtue 3. The latter, moreover, is impossible in the supernatural order, given the connection of the infused virtues with grace and charity 4 . Value of the thesis. - Understood in this way, the present conclusion seems to many theologians almost of faith (próxima fidei) because of the evident tes 2 11-11,184,1. 3 "Simpliciter ergo in spirituaii vita perfectus est qui est in caritate perfectus. Seundum quid, autem. perfectus dici potest, secundum quodeumque quod spirituaii vitae adiungitur" (S.Thom., De perfectione vitae spiritualis 1). "Et ideo secundum caritatem simpliciter attenditur perfectio christianae vitae. sed secundum secundum alias virtutes secundum quid" (ÍI-II.184,1 ad 2). < Cf, 1-11,6.5. 1 Cf. 11-11,184,1. !>. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 191 The doctrine of the Holy Scriptures and the unanimous consent of Tradition 5 * . In fact, it is admitted without discussion by all schools of Christian spirituality. Proof of thesis. 1. Through Sacred Scripture. - This is one of the truths most inculcated in the inspired pages. Christ himself tells us that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on the love of God and neighbor.6 The texts of St. Paul are very explicit and abundant. Here are some of them: "But above all these things put on charity, which is the vineyard of perfection" 7 . "Love is the fulfillment of the Law" 8 . "Now these three things remain: faith, hope, charity; but the most excellent of these is charity" 9 . "Rooted and grounded in charity so that you may understand in union with all the saints..." 10 "The end of the Gospel is charity" 11 . Faith itself receives all its value from charity: -> "For in Christ neither circumcision is of any value, nor is the foreskin of a man of any value, but faith working through charity 12 13 . The other virtues are nothing without it 13 , etc., etc., etc. The scriptural proof of our thesis is, therefore, absolutely certain and firm 14 * . 2. By the Magisterium of the Church. - This same doctrine, amply commented upon and developed by the Holy Fathers 15 , has been sanctioned by the Magisterium of the Church. In the Bull Ad Conditorem of John XXII, we read the following words: "For since the perfection of the Christian life consists principally and essentially in charity, which is called by the Apostle the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14) and which in some way unites and binds man to his end..." 16 As we shall see below, the pope takes up the doctrine of St. Thomas using his own words. 5 Cf. De Guibert, Theologia Spiritualis n.50. * Mt. 22:35-40; Me. 12,28-31. 7 Col. 3 , 14 . * Rom. 13:10. * 1 Cor. 13:13. 10 Eph. 3,17-18. 11 1 ad Tim. 1,5. 17 Gal. 5,6. 13 Cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-3. 14 For a more abundant scriptural proof: Prat, Théologie de S. Paul II P.404S. (ed. 14): and Van Roey, De virtute caritatis q.i c.3. 1 3 See numerous testimonies in Rouet de Journel, Enchiridion asceticum (ed.3). n.89 687 734 787 789 1262 1314 etc. _ 1 " "Cum enim perfectio vitae christianae principaliter et essentialiter in caritate comistat, quae ab Apostelo "vinculum perfectionis* dicitur (Col. 3,141 et quae unit seu iungit aliquali ter hominem suo finí..." (cf. De G t "BErt, Documenta Eclesiástica christianae perfectionis itvdium spectantia 0.266). 3. 0 By theological reason. - The proof of reason is given by St. Thomas, who says that the perfection of a being consists in attaining his ultimate end, beyond which nothing can be desired; but it is charity that unites us with God, the ultimate end of man; therefore, Christian perfection will consist especially in it. Let us listen to his own words: . "It is said of any being that he is perfect when he attains his own flit, which is the ultimate perfection of things. Now charity is the means that unites us to God, the ultimate end of the human soul; for, as St. John says, he who lives in charity abides in God, and God abides in him (1Lo 4:16). Consequently, the perfection of the Christian life is derived from charity "17 . The fundamental reason that St. Thomas has just given us is clarified and complemented by examining the very nature and effects of charity. It alone unites us entirely with God as the ultimate supernatural end. The other virtues prepare and begin this union, but they cannot complete and consummate it, since the moral virtues limit themselves to removing or lessening the obstacles that impede our passage toward God and bring us closer to him only indirectly, by establishing order in the means that lead us to him.18 As for faith and faith, the moral virtues are limited to the virtues of charity. And as for faith and hope, they certainly unite us to God - as the theological virtues that they are - but not as the last absolute end, that is, as the supreme Good infinitely lovable in itself - the most perfect motive of charity - but as the first principle, from which comes the knowledge of truth (faith) and perfect beatitude (hope). Charity looks to God and unites us to Him as an end; faith and hope look to Him and unite us to Him as a principle 19 . Faith gives us a knowledge of God that is necessarily obscure and imperfect (de non visis) and hope is also radically imperfect (de non possessis), while charity unites us with Him already from now on in a most perfect way, giving us the real possession of God 20 and establishing a current of mutual friendship between Him and us 21 . Therefore, charity is inseparable from grace, while faith and hope are compatible, in a certain way, with mortal sin itself (faith and hope are inseparable).22 Charity, finally, supposes the mutual friendship between Him and us. Charity, finally, presupposes faith and hope, but surpasses them in dignity and perfection 23 . It is therefore beyond doubt that charity constitutes the very essence of Christian perfection. Charity presupposes and encompasses all the other virtues, which are worthless without it, as St. Paul expressly says 24 . However, it is necessary to understand this doctrine correctly in order not to incur in unfortunate confusions and errors. From the fact that the per '7 Il-H.184,1. 18 1 - 11 , 03.3 ad 2 1" 11-11,17,6. 2" 1-11,66,6. 21 11 - 11 , 23 , 1 .- Cf. lo. 14,23; Cant. 2,16; 6,2; 7,lo. 22 11-11,24,12 c et ad 5. - Cf. 1-11,65,4. 23 11-11,23,6. 24 Cf. 1 Cor. 13. 192 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES If Christian perfection consists especially in charity, it in no way follows that the role of the other virtues is purely accidental or that they in no way form part of the very essence of perfection. Specialiter does not mean totaliter, nor is the metaphysical essence to be confused with the physical essence of a thing 2S . The metaphysical essence of Christian perfection is saved by the simple perfection of charity; but for its physical essence, total or integral, all the other infused virtues are required in the same degree of perfection as charity. We must not forget, in fact, that the moral virtues, and a fortiori faith and hope, have their own excellence even when considered in themselves independently of charity (though not without its companionship). For, although all the acts of the Christian life can and should be governed by charity, very many of them, nevertheless, are acts elicited by the other infused virtues; and it is evident that there can be a diversity of degrees of perfection in the manner of producing the elicit act of some virtue even apart from the greater or lesser influence that the prevailing charity may have had on it. In fact, when the Church wishes to judge the sanctity of a servant of God whose beatification is sought, she does not look only at charity, but also at the exercise of the other virtues to a heroic degree. This means very clearly that the infused virtues are all integral parts of Christian perfection. Let us specify this in a new conclusion. Conclusion 2.*: Christian perfection consists integrally in the elicit act of charity and in those of the other infused virtues insofar as they are governed by charity and insofar as they are of precept 26 , i. We must distinguish among the Christian virtues what is of grave precept, what is of light precept, and what is of counsel. Insofar as they are of grave precept they are per se in essential connection with charity, in such a way that without them charity itself would cease to exist because of the mortal sin that the transgression of a grave precept supposes. Insofar as they are of mild precept (e.g., not to tell a little lie), they are required not for the very essence of charity, but for its perfection, since that perfection is incompatible with the voluntary venial sin that the transgression of a mild precept supposes. But in what they have of pure counsel they are only in accidental connection with charity and perfection, since without these acts of pure counsel the substance of charity and even of perfection itself can remain intact. 2° The act of the infused virtues can be considered in two ways: a) in itself (elicit act), and b) insofar as it is governed by charity. An act of humility practiced solely as such an act of humility is an elicit act of that virtue; and that same act practiced for love of God is an elicit act of the virtue of humility and, at the same time, an act governed by the virtue of charity. The essence of a thing - as we have already said - can be taken in two senses; a) in the abstract, by the most formal principle: metaphysical essence, and b) in the concrete, physically, totally, integrally. 4." Perfection can be considered habitually (in act first). In scholastic philosophy, as is well known, the metaphysical constitutive of a thing is understood to be that property or predicate which is conceived as the first and noblest of that thing and as the source or principle of all other perfections. And by physical constitutive is understood the set of all the properties and perfections that correspond to that thing in the real order. 2b Cí. Passerini, O.P-, Dc stalibus hominum in 11-11, 184,1. C. 3 . THE CHRISTIAN l'ERl liCTION 193 and actually (in act two). The first is substantial or radical perfection, the second is accidental or simpliciter perfection, which is the one that properly concerns us here. For the first, the simple state of grace is sufficient; for the second, a notable degree of development of the active principles that emanate from grace is required. All this being assumed, we say that actual perfection (that is, perfection simpliciter, or in second act) consists essentially (in the sense of physical, integral essence), not only in the elicit act of charity itself (metaphysical, most formal essence), but also in the acts of the other infused virtues; not in themselves (in this sense they belong only secondarily and accidentally), but insofar as they are governed by charity (that is, insofar as they are performed for love of God) and insofar as they are of precept (not of simple counsel). ¿n Proof of the thesis. - Here are the main arguments: 1. Because Christian perfection cannot be considered as a simple form, but as a moral whole made up of all the conditions that make up the life of a Christian. It is evidently a matter of a fullness, which presupposes the submission or perfect rectification of our whole moral life. And since this total rectification is not achieved by charity alone, which refers only to the end, but also presupposes the full rectification of the means that are ordered to that end, submitting and rectifying the disordered passions that hinder and obstruct the act of charity, it follows that the acts of all the other infused virtues - which refer precisely to those means 11 - become part of the very essence of Christian perfection, whether considered in a physical or integral way. 2. Christian perfection - as St. Thomas teaches 28 - consists essentially in the precepts, not in the counsels. But since, besides candor, there are many other precepted virtues, it must be concluded that they too must be included in the essential concept of Christian perfection. In fact, there is in the infused virtues a multitude of precepts, some of them severely (e.g., the virtue of fortitude commands us to suffer martyrdom rather than deny the faith) and others slightly (e.g., the virtue of truthfulness forbids us to tell a little lie). Only with the fulfillment of these duties does the existence or perfection of charity become possible. Because the initial, indispensable, substantial lock is incompatible with any mortal sin, and the perfect lock is incompatible with or positively excludes venial sin. This necessarily supposes the exercise of all the aspects of the infused virtues that are gravely or slightly precepted. It excludes only virtuous acts of pure counsel, although these too are very useful, and in some ways even necessary, as we shall see in their corresponding place. 3. 0 For only in this way can the expressions of Sacred Scripture be justified which attribute an essential role to the acts of the other virtues, such as faith, the keeping of the commandments, obedience, patience, humility, etc., and the practice of the Church in the beatification of the servants of God, which responds to heroism in all the Christian virtues and not only in the candad. However, we must never lose sight of the fact that the acts of the other infused virtues are part of the essence of Christian perfection, and not of the virtues of the other virtues. 27 Or to the same lin, but considered as a principle (faith and hope). Gf. 11-11,17,6. 2 " 11-11,184,3. Theol. t i¿ i a P er¡cc. 194 I*. 11. WilNC LIMOS ÍMLMIAMIÍM II.LÍS in themselves - in this sense they belong to it only secondarily and accidentally - but insofar as they are governed by charity, which is the form of all the other virtues 2 ". Indeed, the proper function of charity as the form of all the other virtues consists in directing and ordering to the ultimate supernatural end the acts of all of them, even those of faith and hope, which without it would be in formless, even though they retain their own specific form. Let us listen to the words of St. Thomas himself: "In moral realities, the form of an act comes primarily from its end: the reason for this lies in the fact that the principle of moral acts is the will, whose object and whose form, so to speak, is the end. Now then: the form of an act always follows the form of the agent who produces that act. It is necessary, then, that, in the moral realm, that which gives an act its ordering to the end also gives it its form. Now it is quite clear, after what has just been said (in the preceding article), that charity orders the acts of all the other virtues to their ultimate end. And in this it gives form to the acts of all the other virtues, and therefore it is said to be the form of the other virtues, since we speak of virtues only in relation to formed acts" 30. Now then: in what way does charity exercise this empire over the other infused virtues in order to achieve the supernatural end? Is it a mere external thrust, as if from without, or does it intrinsically communicate to them something of its own virtuality? Of course, we must reject the doctrine that makes charity the intrinsic and essential form of all the other virtues. It is impossible for it to be so, since then all the virtues would be essentially one with charity, if we do not want to admit the absurdity of the same virtue having two distinct substantial forms.31 But neither should we think that the impulse of charity toward the supernatural end is purely external to the acts of the other virtues. By virtue of this impulse, it is derived from charity and passively received in the acts of the other virtues in a real and intrinsic way, by which both those acts themselves and the virtues from which they spring 32 are perfected and dignified 33. 29 Cf. 11-11,23,8. -When we say that charity is the form of all the virtues, we do not mean that it is the intrinsic and essential form (as Durand and some Scotists imagined), but only the extrinsic and accidental form, as St. Thomas teaches (effective, he says in ad i of this article). We can distinguish in the infused virtues three different informative principles: one radical, which is habitual or sanctifying grace, which is like the root of all other infused habits; another essential or intrinsic, which is the specific form proper and determined of each particular virtue; and another extrinsic or accidental, which is charity, which orders and orients them to the supernatural end. It is only in this third sense that charity is said to be the form of all the other virtues. *0 II-H.23,8. j i "Caritas," says St. Thomas expressly, "dicitur esse forma aliarum virtutum non quidem exemplariter aut essentialiter, sed magis effective: inquantum scilicet omnibus formani imponit secundum modum praedictum" (11-11,23,8 ad i). And Cajetan comments profoundly: "Non solum caritas informat effective quia imperat et ordinat, hoc enim commune est omni imperanti et ordinanti; sed quia participatio passiva imperii et ordinationis suae est velut forma constiluens actus alios in esse virtuoso simpliciter" (ibid.). 3 2 Ca charity, in fact, informs not only the act of the other virtues, but also the virtue itself as a habit: "Caritas non solum actum fidei, sed ipsa fidem informat*," says St. Thomas expressly in De veritate (i 4,5 ad 9). Properly it informs the act; but by derivation (ex consequenti) it informs the very habit of virtue, which is in itself an operative habit. . . ... 33 See how the distinguished Salmanticenses explain it: "Cum aliquis actus attmgit ahqueni finem, nequít non dicere verum ordinem, sive habitudinem realem ad talem finem finem; ergo quando actus virtutis inferiores ordinatur ad finem caritatis illumque attingit, nequit non im 195 C. 3 . CHRISTIAN PERFECTION Of course, if there were no matter that could be directed to the end, the directing form would have nothing to inform and could not be exercised as such. Charity would have to limit itself solely and exclusively to its own act. Therefore, we must conclude that Christian perfection is not a simple form, but a moral fullness, constituted principally by the act of charity and secondarily by the precepted acts of the other infused virtues under the impulse of charity, which orients and directs them to the ultimate supernatural end. Having established these premises, we can now draw a new and very interesting conclusion. Conclusion 3. a : Christian perfection will increase to the extent that charity produces more intensely its own elicit act and that of the other virtues prevails in a more intense, actual and universal way. 1 1 2 . There are two parts to this new conclusion, which we will examine separately. First. - Christian perfection will increase to the degree that charity produces more intensely its own elicit act. We dispense here with the much debated question of whether infused habits grow only through the most intense act or also through the remissive acts. According to St. Thomas, it is evident that they grow only by the most intense act; he expressly affirms this with regard to charity 34 . But even in the contrary sentence our conclusion is absolutely true; for if any act of charity is capable of increasing the habit of charity, a fortiori the more intense acts will increase it. And since we have already seen that Christian perfection consists especially in the perfection of charity, it is obvious that the more intensely this virtue produces its elicit act, the greater will be the development and increase of Christian perfection itself. In this sense it is most certain that the degree of holiness coincides with the degree of love. The greater the love of God and neighbor, the greater the degree of sanctity. But, apart from its elicit act, which constitutes the quintessence of Christian perfection, charity, as the form of all the other virtues, must reign and order the acts of all of them to the ultimate supernatural end. That is why we must add the second part of our conclusion, which sounds like this: Second. - Christian perfection will be all the greater as charity prevails over the other infused virtues in a more intense, actual and universal way. portare verum ordinem et realem habitudinem ad talem finem finem : cumque huiusmodi ordo non conveniat actui virtutis inferior is ex propria ratíonc, sive ex parte virtutis pjroximae a qua elicitur. opus est quod illum participet ex iníluxu caritatis, cui per se convenit illum finem attingere.... Insuper actus virtutis inferioris ratione ordinis ad Deum ultimum finem consequitur valorem adaequatum ad merendum vitam aeternam de condigno. Sed hic valor non est ens rationis, nec denominatio extrínseca, sed aliquod praedicatum reale; ergo ordo, quem actus virtutis inferioris habet ex motione caritatis ad eius finem est aliqui^ reale : cumque talis ordo non pertineat ad speciem praedicti actus, sequitur esse aliquid sibi intrinsece superadditum" (De caritate d.7 n.49). 34 "Not by any act of charity does charity itself increase; though any act of charity disposes for the increase of charity, -inasmuch as by an act of charity man becomes more ready to continue to work for charity; and, as this ability and readiness grows, man breaks forth into a more fervent act of love by which he strives to grow in charity: and then charity increases in fact" (TT-TT,24,6), P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 3 . CHRISTIAN PERFECTION a) In a more intense way. - This is a simple application and corollary of the doctrine we have just stated in relation to the elicit act of charity itself. b) More actual. - Whether the virtual influence of charity is required for the merit of some supernatural act, or whether the merely habitual influence of charity suffices - a question debated among theologians - it is evident and admitted by all that the most perfect and complete influence is the actual one. Hence, to the extent that the prevailing influence of charity on the other virtues is more actual, the more perfect will be the elicit acts of those virtues, since the motive of charity is more perfect and meritorious than that of all the other virtues. There is an abyss - in order to its supernatural perfection - between an act, e.g., of humility, which is done solely for the proper and specific motive of that virtue, and that same act, which is done for love of God, the most perfect motive of charity. c) More universal. - It will never be possible for the actual influence of charity to fall upon all the human acts of a man who is a wayfarer. The Council of Trent defined that no one can absolutely avoid all venial sins during his whole life unless by a special privilege, which does not seem to have been granted to anyone outside the Blessed Virgin is. Then there will undoubtedly be some acts-those venial sins-that will in no way be informed by charity. But, as the acts informed or governed by it become more numerous and extend to a greater number of virtues, the integral perfection of the Christian life will increase and become more and more perfected. Conclusion 4. a : The perfection of the Christian life is identified with the perfection of the double act of charity; but primarily in relation to God, and secondarily in relation to one's neighbor. 113. It is elementary in theology that there is but one virtue, one infused habit of charity, by which we love God for himself and our neighbor and ourselves for God 3S . All acts proceeding from charity, whichever term they fall under, are specified by one and the same formal object quo, namely, the infinite goodness of God in itself considered. Whether we directly love God in himself, whether we directly love our neighbor or ourselves, if it is a matter of true love of charity, always the formal motive is the same: the infinite goodness of God. We cannot give true charity to our neighbor or to ourselves if it does not proceed from the supernatural motive of love of God; and we must distinguish this formal act of charity from any inclination toward the service of our neighbor born of a purely human compassion or any other form of love produced by some purely natural motive. This being so, it is evident that the growth of the infused habit of charity will determine a greater capacity in relation to its double act. The capacity to love God cannot be increased in the soul without a correlative increase, and to the same degree, of the capacity to love one's neighbor. This truth constitutes the central argument of the sublime First Epistle of the Apostle John, where the intimate connection and inseparability of both loves is made manifest. However, in the exercise of love there is an order and hierarchy demanded by the very nature of things. By virtue of that order, the pei 3 5 cf. Denz. 83335 11-11,23,5; 25 , 12 : 26 , 1 - 4 . The primary condition of charity consists primarily in the love of God, infinitely lovable in itself, and secondarily in the love of our neighbor and of ourselves for God. And even between ourselves and our neighbor we must establish an order, which is taken from the greater or lesser relationship with God of the goods in which we participate. Thus we must love our own spiritual good more than the spiritual good of our neighbor, but we must love the spiritual good of our neighbor more than our own bodily good. The reason for this hierarchy or scale of values is because - as St. Thomas explains - God is loved as the principle of the good on which the love of charity is founded; man loves himself with the love of charity insofar as he participates directly in that same good, and his neighbor is loved with that same love insofar as he is a partner and sharer in that good. It is therefore evident that we must love first of all God, who is the source and fountain of this good; secondly, ourselves, who participate directly in it; and lastly, our neighbor, who is our partner and companion in the participation of this good.37 But since the body participates in the goodness of the good, we must love our neighbor with a love of charity insofar as he is our partner and companion in the participation of this good. But since the body participates in the beatitude only by a certain redundancy of the soul, it follows that, as far as participation in that beatitude is concerned, the soul of our neighbor is closer to our soul than our own body; hence we must put the spiritual good of our neighbor before our own bodily good 38 . Conclusion 5. a : Christian perfection consists in the perfection of. affective and effective charity; primarily affective, and secondarily effective. 1 1 4. It is necessary, first of all, to distinguish carefully between the two ways of exercising charity. Here is how St. Francis de Sales explains it: "Two are the principal exercises of our love for God: one affective and the other effective or active, as St. Bernard says. By the first we become attached to God and to all that pleases Him; by the second we serve God and do what He commands. The former unites us to the goodness of God, the latter makes us do His will. The one fills us with complacency, benevolence, aspirations, desires, sighs, spiritual ardors, so that our spirit is infused with God and mingles with Him; the other puts in us the firm purpose, the determined spirit and the unwavering obedience to fulfill the commands of His divine will and to suffer, accept, approve and embrace everything that comes from His good pleasure. The one causes us to take pleasure in God; the other, to please him" 39 . Now then: presupposing what we have stated above, that Christian perfection will be all the greater to the degree that charity produces more intensely its own elicit act and that of the other virtues prevails in a more intense, actual and universal way, it is evident that perfection depends primarily on affective charity, and only secondarily on effective charity. For: a) Without the influence of charity informing the soul in some way, the internal or external acts of any acquired virtue, no matter how per 33 11-11,26,4. Cf. 184,3. 3" n-II,26,5. 33 St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God 6:1. 198 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES t.A PERFECTION CHRISTIAN! The only thing that can be said about them is that they have no supernatural value, they are of no use in order to eternal life. b) Supernatural acts proceeding from any infused virtue performed with a weak and remiss affection of charity have an equally weak and remiss meritorious value no matter how hard and painful they may be in themselves. Let us not forget that, as St. Thomas teaches, the greater or lesser difficulty of an act does not per se add any value to the essential merit of the act - which depends exclusively on the degree of charity with which it is done - , although it may add to it per accidens by the greater impetus of charity which it will ordinarily carry with it 40 . c) On the other hand, acts of any infused virtue, however easy and simple they may be in themselves, performed with an affection of the most intense charity, have a great meritorious value and are of the highest perfection. Thus, the smallest action of Christ, the simple cooking and sweeping of the little house of Nazareth performed by Mary, had a value incomparably superior to the martyrdom of any saint. d) This also follows from the fact that Christian perfection consists especially in the proper or elicit act of charity itself (affective charity) and only integrally in the acts of the other virtues governed by charity (effective charity). . All this on its own or quoad se. Nevertheless, quoad nos, the perfection of divine love is best manifested in the exercise of effective charity, that is, in the practice of the Christian virtues for the love of God, especially if great difficulties, temptations or labors have to be overcome for this purpose. Affective love, although more excellent in itself, lends itself to great illusions and falsifications. It is very easy to tell God that we love him with all our strength, that we would like to be martyrs, etc., etc., without prejudice to immediately failing to keep silent - which costs much less than martyrdom - or to maintain, with a stubbornness bordered on self-love, a point of view incompatible with that fullness of love so emphatically formulated. On the other hand, the legitimacy of our love for God becomes much less suspect when it impels us to practice quietly and perseveringly, in spite of all obstacles and difficulties, the painful and monotonous duty of each day. Christ himself teaches us that the tree is known by its fruits (Mt. 7:15-20) and that those who merely say, "Lord, Lord!" will not enter heaven, but those who do the will of their heavenly Father (Mt. 7:21). And the same is evident in the parable of the two sons (Mt. 21:28-32). Conclusion 6. a : For its full expansion and development, as Christian perfection demands, charity needs to be perfected by the gift of wisdom. 1 1 5. This is a simple application of the general doctrine of the necessity of the gifts for the perfection of the infused virtues. As is well known, without the influence of the gifts, the infused virtues act according to the rules of simple natural reason enlightened by faith, that is, in our poor human way. Now then: being in themselves supernatural and divine habits, the infused virtues are demanding, by their very nature, a divine or superhuman exercise, which is the atmosphere and environment that gives them their own divine and superhuman nature. "o "Plus facit ad rationem merjti et virtutis bonum quam difficile. Unde non oportet quod omne dífficilius SÍ! magis meritorium : sed quod sic est difftcilius ut etiam sit inelius" (11-11,27,8 ad 3; cf. III S.enl. d.30 a.3 et 4 ad 3; De uirlulibus 2,8 ad 4). corresponds to them in their own right as supernatural habits. As long as the gifts of the Holy Spirit do not provide them with that divine mode which characterizes them, and which the infused virtues abandoned to themselves lack (because of the need in which they find themselves to submit to the control and rule of simple natural reason enlightened by faith), it is quite impossible for them to attain their full expansion and development, This is true of all the infused virtues, but in a very special way it is true of charity. Because, being a most perfect virtue, the most divine and excellent of all, it demands with imperious exigency the divine atmosphere of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to give of itself all that it can give. The rule of poor human reason, even if it is enlightened by faith, is totally insufficient to give it this divine modality. For natural reason itself is at an infinite distance from the supernatural order and is absolutely impotent, not only to produce it - which is absurd and heretical - but not even to demand or claim it in any way.42 The soul is elevated to the supernatural order, and even if it is elevated to the supernatural order, it is absolutely impotent. And even if the soul is raised to the supernatural order by grace and natural reason is enlightened by the lights of faith, the exercise of the infused virtues is still carried out in the human way, under the rule and control of human reason itself, which, acting (under the ordinary motion of grace) as the motive cause of the virtuous habit, must necessarily imprint upon it its own human modality. For the divine modality that charity demands to be produced, it is necessary that human reason, under the motion of the Holy Spirit through his gifts, ceases to be the rule and motive cause of the habit and becomes a passive subject or receiver that docilely receives and allows to act without resistance, in all its cleanliness and integrity, the divine modality of the gifts that proceeds from the rule and the motor to which they are adjusted, which is none other than the Holy Spirit himself. Only under the influence of the gift of understanding, which without destroying faith - because it is not yet a matter of the beatific vision - gives it a most intense penetration and depth in the supernatural mysteries (quasi intus legerej 4} - -, and, above all, under the gift of wisdom, which makes it taste divine things by a certain mysterious connaturality and sympathy - per quandam connaturalitatem 44 - , will charity reach its full expansion and development to the extent required and demanded by Christian perfection. From this follows, as an inevitable corollary, the necessity of mysticism for Christian perfection, since the essential characteristic of the mystical state consists precisely - as all schools admit - ■ in the action and predominance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way. A purely ascetical perfection or holiness does not and cannot be given on the basis of the human exercise of the infused virtues. It is necessary that this human modality be substituted by the divine modality of the gifts; and this is mysticism in the rigorous and technical sense of the word. 4f Tai is the express doctrine of St. Thomas. Recall, for example, the following text, so clear and expressive: "Dona a virtutibus distinguuntur in hoc quod virtutes perficiunt ad actus modo humano, sed dona ultra humamim modurm (III Sent. d.34 q.i a.l). 42 Gf. the doctrine of the Church against Pelagians and semi-Pelagians (Denz. lors i "6s T74S) . 44 11 - 11 , 8 , 1 . 44 11 - 11 , 45 , 2 . I*. II. 1'UINCIPLES I'TIN DAMKNTAI.KS Conclusion 7. Charity can grow indefinitely in the horrible wayfarer; therefore, Christian perfection cannot find an insurmountable limit in this life. he laughed. In three ways," says St. Thomas in passing to the demonstration of this thesis 43, "the increase of a form can come to an end. The first is on the part of the form itself, when it has a limited capacity, beyond which it cannot advance without itself disappearing; thus, for example, if we ceaselessly modify the color gray, we will necessarily arrive at the color white or black. The second is on the part of the agent, when it has not sufficient force to continue to increase the form in the subject. And thirdly on the part of the subject itself, when it is not susceptible of further perfection. Now then: for none of these three reasons can a term be assigned to the increase of charity in this life. Not on the part of charity itself, since in its own specific reason it is nothing other than a participation in infinite charity, which is the Holy Spirit himself. Nor on the part of the agent who produces the increase, who is God himself, whose power is infinite and therefore inexhaustible. Nor, finally, on the part of the subject where charity resides - the human will - whose capacity for obedience in the hands of God is also inexhaustible, and thus, as charity grows, so does the soul's capacity for further growth. Therefore charity finds no limit to its development as long as we remain in this world, and can, by the same token, grow indefinitely 4. Here are these principles: i.° Answering an objection, he warns, in the Summa Theologica, that the precept of love is violated by anyone who, satisfied that he possesses the substantial perfection of charity in its lowest degree, despises its higher degrees and its total perfection 71 . 2. 0 But it is still too little to simply not despise perfection. To fulfill the precept fully, it is necessary to want to attain it. Let us listen to St. Thomas: "The perfection of charity is twofold. There is an external perfection, which consists in exterior acts as a sign of interior dispositions, for example, voluntary virginity and poverty, and to this perfection (which is the proper matter of the counsels) they are not bound. But there is an internal perfection of charity, which consists in the interior love of God and neighbor...; and to this perfection all are obliged to strive, even though they are not obliged to do so. fi7 "Non e-st transgressor praecepti qui non attingit ad medios perfectionis gradus, dum modo attingat ad infimum" (II-II, 1 84,3 ad 2). 68 If he were to exclude it positively and out of contempt, there is no doubt that even the laity would gravely violate the precept of Christian perfection (cf. IT-IT, 186,2 ad 2). 69 This is a common doctrine, as stated by Suárez in the following words: "It can hardly happen that a man, even a secular one, has the firm intention of never sinning. mortally, without, by itself, doing some work of supererogation and having the forma! or virtual purpose of doing it" (cf. Suarez, De Religione t.4 l.i c.4 n.12). 70 Cf. P. Lemonnyer, O.P., in the French translation of the Summa Theologica, tome La me hame p.5505; and P. I. G. Menéndez-Reigada, O.P., in De dirección espiritual P.I 57 S-. 71 11-11,186,2 ad 2. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION do not yet possess it. Indeed, if anyone were no longer willing to love God more than he loves him, he would in no way fulfill the precept of charity" 7J . 3. 0 Is it, then, obligatory to aspire always to the most perfect and to practice it in reality? Let us see the answer of the Angelic Doctor: "A distinction must be made. The better good can be considered as a matter of action or as an object of love. We are not bound to the better good on the plane of action, but we are bound to it on the plane of love. The reason is very simple. Every rule of action wants a certain and precise matter. But if someone were obliged to practice the better good, he would be obliged to the indeterminate. Therefore, as far as external acts are concerned, since we cannot be obliged to the indeterminate, we are not obliged to the better good either. On the contrary, on the plane of love, we are obliged to the better good in its entirety. As we can see, we are advancing little by little. In the first quotation, St. Thomas warned us that we cannot despise perfection; in the second, that we must desire it; and in the third, that we must love the better good. But will everything be reduced to this? Will the aspiration to the most perfect be limited to a simple affective and sentimental tendency, to a pure romanticism "on the plane of love", to a "I would like", without ever reaching the energetic and resounding "I want"? Let us listen again to St. Thomas: "The will cannot be called perfect if it is not such that, when the opportune occasion presents itself, it is reduced to the act. But, if the occasion does not present itself, the defect of perfection that would come from the external act is simpliciter involuntary, provided that the will is firmly disposed to act if it could" 74 . This very luminous principle of St. Thomas gives us the definitive key to the true solution of the problem we have posed. The interior will is not true will if, when the occasion arises, it is not translated into works. Consequently, it would be wrong to say that one interiorly loves the best or most perfect good if, when the occasion arises to practice it, one abstains from doing it without reasonable reason. The reason given by St. Thomas to prove that we are not bound by what is most perfect on the level of action is - as we have seen - that no one is bound by what is uncertain and indeterminate. There are so many things that we could do at every moment that are more perfect in themselves than what we are in fact doing! For because they are so many, so uncertain and so indeterminate, they cannot practically bind us, nor is there any fault in omitting them, using that time for an action in itself less than what we are doing. 72 Cf. St. Thomas, In Epist. ad Hebraeos 6,r. 73 S.Thom., In Evang. Matthaei 19,12. 74 Mi, jo, 4: "Non est perfecta voluntas nisi sít talis quae, opportunitate data, operetur. SI vero possibilitas desit, volúntate exsistente perfecta ut operaretur si posset, defectus perecí ionis quae est ex actu exteriori est simpliciter involuntarium". perfect. But here, for the time being, a better good is presented to us totally devoid of its uncertainty and indeterminacy. Taking into account all the circumstances of place, time, condition of the subject, obligations of the state itself, etc., it frankly presents itself to us as being done and as the best for us hic et nunc. In this case it is no longer a question of what is most perfect objectively or materially, which is something indeterminate and uncertain, but of what is most perfect subjectively or formally, which is already completely determined and concrete. Since the most perfect thing presents itself in this determined and concrete form, we are obliged to practice it, on pain of incurring in a positive resistance to grace. And to resist grace positively without rational motive - and there will never be one if it is a question of true inspiration of the Holy Spirit - cannot but involve for a Christian some fault, at least of the imperfection type, if we do not want to admit a true venial sin. In the majority of cases it will be, of course, a question of culpable negligence and, consequently, of a true venial sin. And in cases where this is the case, it is clear that this suffices to justify the doctrine of the obligatory nature of the most perfect when it presents itself as viable and convenient hic et nunc, taking into account all the internal and external circumstances of the subject. Otherwise, it would have to be said that the Holy Spirit authorizes us to commit culpable negligence. This leads us to examine briefly the concept of "imperfection", with which we will end this subject of the obligatory nature of Christian perfection. D) Concept of imperfection izi. As is known, there are two opinions that dispute the field among theologians. The first sentence affirms that there are no positive imperfections distinct from venial sin, that is, that all positive imperfections are true venial sins. The second affirms that venial sin and imperfection (even positive) are two different things, that is, that there are imperfections that are not in themselves venial sin 75 . Such would be, principally, the omission of a good act not precepted (simple advice) and the remiss, lazy way of fulfilling a precept (that is, with less intensity of fervor than one could have had). What is there to think about all this? It seems to us that the integral truth can be achieved in a harmonious synthesis that gathers the valid elements of both opinions. Let us explain how. In theory, it seems to us that one cannot deny a certain difference between venial sin and imperfection, even positive imperfection. If possessing, e.g., the habit of charity with an intensity of 30 degrees, we do an act of only 20 degrees of intensity, we have acted remissly, and we have therefore committed an imperfection, but it is not licit to say that we have 75 Defending, among others, the first sentence are Passerim, Biliuarl, Hugueny, Vermeersch ( etcetera; and the second, Lugo, Salmanticenses, Garrigou-Lagrange, Gathrein, Richard, etc . 210 r. ir. fundamental principles committed a venial sin. Venial sin is bad, and the act we have done is good, even if it is less good than it could have been. Nor is it true to say that we are obliged to practice that which hic et nunc appears to us as more perfect, and that, consequently, by failing to do it or practicing the less perfect without reasonable reason, it ceases to be good for us. No. In this case, together with the imperfection coming from the less perfect act there may be a venial sin of imprudence, laziness, lack of charity towards oneself, etc., but the imperfect good act will not cease to be good, even if imperfect. When we pray the rosary or another voluntary prayer, we are performing a good action, even if it is accompanied by venial sins coming from voluntary distractions. Otherwise, we would have to say that the supervening venial sin totally corrupts the good deed by making it bad; in which case it would be better not to pray (since it is a matter of voluntary prayers), than to pray imperfectly, which seems absurd. We must not confuse what is less good in itself with what is evil in itself, nor must we confuse what is less good for us hic et nunc with what is evil for us hic et nunc. The lesser good is not an evil, just as the lesser evil is not a good. Good and evil are not to be confused, nor are precepts and counsels 76, However, in practice it will be very difficult to say where the least generosity ends and where negligence and laziness begin. In most cases there will in fact be true negligence, true imprudence, true laziness and true lack of charity towards oneself and, consequently, true venial sin. Of course, this adjacent venial sin will not compromise the goodness (though lesser) of the imperfect good act, but it is something that is inseparably added to it, and, for the same reason, there is an obligation to avoid it. But if, in disregarding this obligation, we nevertheless practice the imperfect good deed, this deed will not cease to be good as such, even if it is less good than it could be and is accompanied by certain venial sins, which proceed not from the deed itself - that would be contradictory - but from the bad dispositions of the subject. There is an obligation to avoid imperfection because of these attached sins, but not because of the imperfection itself, which in itself is not an evil, but a good, although a lesser good. In short, and taking up now the conclusion that emerges from all that we have just said in these last two questions, it seems to us that the most perfect hic et nunc for us obliges us only under imperfection, but not under venial sin, although in itself that imperfection is or may be accompanied by some venial sins, proceeding from 76 The transgression of a grave precept is mortal sin; the transgression of a light precept is venial sin; and the transgression of a simple counsel is imperfection. To identify imperfection with venial sin would be tantamount to suppressing in the practical order all kinds of counsels, which would be pure abstract entelechies. 77 Here is how Cardinal Mercier distinguishes mortal sin from venial sin and imperfection: "Mortal sin is the repudiation of the end. Venial sin is the slippage of a will that, without departing totally from the end, deviates from it. Imperfection does not oppose the end, nor does it turn away from it, but is only the negation of progress in the direction of the end. Venial sin fails to do a good that could and should be done; it is, therefore, the deprivation of a good, and, by the same token, it is an evil, since evil, according to its definition, is the deprivation of a good. Imperfection is the non-acquisition of a good, the simple absence of a good, the negation of a good; strictly speaking, therefore, it is not an evil. That man has no wings is no (physical) evil, but is simply the absence of a good. That man has no eyes is the deprivation of an organ he should have, and this is already a (physical) evil. These same notions apply to the moral order" (cf. Cardinal Mercier, La vida interior p-79, ed. Barcelona 1930). C, I.A CHRISTIAN PERFECTION the bad dispositions of the subject, and there is an obligation to avoid it because of these other sins, but not for its own sake, since, in the final analysis, imperfection is not an evil, but a good, albeit a lesser good. In this way, it seems to us that the two sentences can be harmonized, gathering what each one has of truth and rejecting its extremes and exaggerations. No one is authorized to commit imperfections; they must be avoided at all costs. But not because imperfection is an evil (in theory it is not), but because it is almost always accompanied by other evils (venial sins attached), which must be avoided. 4 . The degrees of Christian perfection Having examined the nature and obligatory nature of Christian perfection, let us now see what its degrees are. First of all, it is necessary to keep in mind that, since Christian perfection consists formally in nothing other than the perfection of charity, the degrees of one and the other must fundamentally coincide. It is therefore necessary to examine what are the fundamental degrees in the development and expansion of charity. When the Angelic Doctor raises the question of the different degrees of charity, he starts from the classical division based on the three fundamental ways or stages of the spiritual life: purgative, illuminative and unitive. St. Thomas modifies the terminology a little, but it is to replace it with another completely equivalent one in order to relate it more closely to the virtue of charity. For him - as for St. Augustine - charity can be found in three fundamental degrees: incipient, proficient and perfect. We are going to point out the characteristics of each of them, establishing our thesis beforehand. Thesis: In the development of charity there are three fundamental degrees: incipient, proficient and perfect 78. 122 . In the argument sed contra, St. Thomas quotes the well-known text of St. Augustine: "caritas cum fuerit nata, nutritur; cum fuerit nutrita, rohoratur; cum fuerit roborata, perficitur".79 These are exactly the three degrees corresponding to the beginners, the profitable and the perfect. In the body of the article, the Angelic Doctor returns once again to the analogy, so dear to him, with the natural order. In the physical-psychological growth and development of human life, three fundamental stages can be distinguished: infancy, adolescence and maturity, which are characterized by the appearance and exercise of new and ever more perfect activities. Something similar happens with the growth of charity. Although an infinite number of moments can be distinguished in it, they can all be framed within the framework of three fundamental stages, characterized by three different ones 7 * 11 - 11 , 24 , 9 . 79 Cf. S.Aucust., In Ep. i lo. tr.5 n.4: ML 35,2014. 212 II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 213 fundamental concerns of the consciousness. Let us listen to the very words of the Angelic Doctor: "In the first degree, man's fundamental concern must be to turn away from sin and to resist his lusts, which move against charity. And this belongs to the incipient, in whom charity must be nourished and fostered so that it does not become corrupt. In the second degree, man must be concerned primarily with advancing in the good. And this corresponds to the proficient, who must see to it that charity increases and strengthens in his soul. In the third degree, the end, man must seek to be intimately united to God and to enjoy Him. And this belongs to the perfect who "desire to die in order to be with Christ" (cf. Phil. 1:23). As we see what happens in the bodily movement, in which the first thing is to leave the starting point, the second to approach the end and the third to rest in it. This is the magnificent doctrine of the Angelic, admirable in its precision and exactness. However, we must never lose sight of the fact that - as St. Thomas himself well points out 81 - these stages are no more than schematic points of view, which are limited to characterizing, by the most typical and outstanding notes, the infinitely varied aspects of the Christian life. The curve of the supernatural life is very sinuous and its stages have an infinite number of nuances and transitions that vary greatly in each individual. We must never imagine that these three fundamental degrees are like so many departments closed up tight, so that the beginners never have any participation, even fleeting and transitory, in the graces of the second and even the third degree.82 It often happens that God gives them the grace of the first three degrees of the supernatural life. It often happens that God gives to the beginners themselves particular graces that are like lightning bolts of the unitive way and arras of the perfection of charity. And in a similar way, on the path of the proficient or the profitable, there can be shocks and setbacks provoked by a badly inclined nature, or more or less intense excursions toward the life of perfect union. Finally, in the same age of the perfect, it may be necessary to return to the struggle against evil inclinations and to exercise oneself in the practice of certain virtues that were not as deeply rooted as one might have thought. Human psychology is too complex to be pigeonholed into too concrete and rigid categories. In the third part of our work we will describe at length these fundamental stages and the main phenomena that accompany them. 11-11,24,9. s 1 11-11,24,9 ad 1, ad 2 et ad 3. 8 2 The famous text of St. Teresa is well known in this regard: "You must not understand these dwellings one after the other, like something piled up, but set your eyes on the center, which is the room or palace where the king is.... Let her walk in these dwellings up and down and to the sides, for God has given her so great a dignity.... That is why I say that they should not consider a few pieces, but a million" (St. Teresa, Moradas primeras c.2 n.8 and 12). 5. If Christian perfection is possible in this life 123. Another question must now be examined, which is intimately connected with the preceding ones. The doctrine that charity can grow indefinitely in this life is certainly sublime and expands to infinity the aspirations of the generous and ardent soul, but it seems to involve a very serious drawback. For if, however much it develops, it never finds its limit in this life, it seems that we must conclude that Christian perfection is impossible, since it is impossible to imagine a degree of charity so perfect that it cannot be more perfect. This objection did not escape the insight of the Angelic Doctor. He himself raises and resolves it in two different places in the Summa Theologica; in the first, in relation to charity 83 , and in the second, in relation to man 84 . We are going to recast the doctrine of the two articles, which is fundamentally the same. This will give us the opportunity to round out the doctrine of the limits of perfection and to specify to what extent or in what sense we can speak of perfection here on earth. Let us first look at the solution, and then examine the objections. In the argument against the second article, St. Thomas establishes the thesis of the possibility of perfection with an irrefutable proof of authority. The divine law cannot command impossibilities; but Christ in the Gospel commands us to be perfect like our heavenly Father (Mt. 5:48); therefore it is indisputable that perfection can be attained in this life. In the body of the article, collecting and improving the doctrine of the previous place, he resolves the question on the basis of some luminous distinctions. Let us listen to his words: "The perfection of the Christian life - as we have already said - consists in charity. But perfection is important and presupposes a certain universality, since - as the Philosopher says - the one who lacks nothing is perfect. Now then, we can consider the perfection of charity in three ways. In the first place absolutely, which supposes the totality of love, not only on the part of the one who loves, but also in relation to the object loved, that is, that God is loved as much as he is lovable; and this perfection of charity is impossible for creatures, being the exclusive privilege of God, in whom the good is found integrally and essentially. In the second place, there can be a perfection of charity that responds to absolute totality only on the part of the one who loves, inasmuch as his affection tends to God always in action and with all his strength. And this perfection is not possible in this life, but it will be possible in the homeland. And there is, finally, a third perfection that does not respond to the totality either on the part of the loved object or on the part of the one who loves in the sense that we have just explained (a tendency that is always present), but only to*. 83 11-11,24,8: "Utrum caritas in hac vita possit esse perfecta". ** 11 - 11 , 184 , 2 : "Utrum aliquis in hac vita possit esse perfectus". 214 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES the exclusion of all things that impede the movement of divine love, according to Augustine: "venenum caritatis est cupiditas, perfectio nulla cupiditas". And this is the perfection that can be attained in this life. And this in two ways: by excluding everything that is contrary to charity, such as mortal sin, which is the minimum degree of perfection for charity to subsist and, therefore, is necessary for salvation itself, and by excluding, in addition, everything that prevents the will from directing itself to God with all its strength ("sed etiam omne illud quod impedit ne affectus mentís totaliter dirigatur ad Deum"), without which charity is not perfect, although it can exist in the incipient and proficient" 8 L This is the doctrine of the Angelic, which, for the sake of clarity, will be summarized in the following schematic outline: Christian perfection can be considered according to the totality a) Absolute, on the part of the one who loves and the object loved: Exclusive perfection of God. i) Absolute, with the maximum intensity always present: The blessed. b) On the part of the lover . . . . 1 2 ) Relative, by exclusion of) the impediments (1...) Thus, according to the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, to be perfect in this life requires the exclusion of everything that impedes the totality of the affective tendency toward God: "omne illud quod impedit ne affectus mentís totaliter dirigatur ad Deum". At first glance, it might seem that the Angelicus is content with too little; but if we penetrate the meaning of his words, it becomes very clear that we are dealing with a sublime perfection. This totality of the affective tendency toward God excludes not only venial sin, but also deliberate imperfections, that is, the voluntary reluctance to act. It demands to act with the soul in its maximum tension. Not in a constant and ever-present way, which is not possible in this life, but by the habitual tendency to practice what is most perfect, excluding - as far as human frailty permits - voluntary imperfections and the remiss way of acting. Of course, it by no means follows that "from the moment that there is the slightest voluntary imperfection it cannot be said that there is *5 II-II,lS4,2. c. I. HRISTIAN PERFECTION 215 absence of defects, and, consequently, it cannot be said that there is no perfection". Undoubtedly, not so much is required. This would make Christian perfection in this life quite impossible, given human wretchedness and frailty. Even in the highest summits of perfection, there is room for weakness and voluntary negligence, as can be fully verified in the lives of the saints. Even theologians who admit the confirmation in grace of souls who have reached transformative union usually make the reservation that this confirmation refers only to mortal sins, not to venial sins, much less to voluntary imperfections. "In many things we all offend," the Apostle James tells us; and St. John adds: "If we were to say that we have no sin, we would deceive ourselves, and the truth would not be in us" 87 . And the reason is because, even if the faculties and powers of the transformed soul are habitually, and as far as their being is concerned, ordered to God, they cannot be so perfectly ordered to God that they are never distracted or diverted toward created goods, thereby committing imperfections and venial sins, since only the beatific vision totally exhausts the soul's capacity, preventing it from the slightest deviation or distraction. It is as impossible to avoid the slightest imperfection in heaven as it is on earth to avoid them all. It is an inevitable consequence of having or not having exhausted the soul's capacity for the unfailing and perfect possession of the infinite Good. This is precisely the foundation of the intrinsic impeccability of the blessed 88 . Of course, these imperfections and venial peccadilloes do not cause the transformed soul to descend from the sublime state in which it finds itself, because they are transitory acts that leave no trace in the soul, since they are quickly consumed by the fire of charity in which they burn. They are like drops of water falling into a great fire, which would be consumed in an instant and would give occasion for the flame to be fanned even more, because the act of charity, when it notices something that is contrary to it, comes out with greater impetus to destroy it 89 . Let us now look at the objections that St. Thomas raises and resolves in the article concerning the perfection of charity 90 . This will complete this doctrine with new nuances and details. First objection. - It seems that charity cannot be perfect in this life. Thus speaks Father Chrysogonus (cf. Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism, p. 41), who, in examining the negative element of perfection - the absence of voluntary imperfections - says that this element "must be identical in all perfect souls. The absence of defects either does not exist or, if it does exist, it must be total, absolute, universal. If between two perfect souls there can be a difference in the degree of charity without any of them ceasing to be perfect, in the absence of voluntary defects there can be no difference: all perfect souls must be equally exempt from consented defects; the slightest defect existing in one of them would destroy perfection, because there would no longer be an absence of defects". We cannot subscribe to these words. While we are in this life, it is a matter of faith that we cannot avoid all venial sins, unless by a very special privilege, as the Blessed Virgin had (Denz. 833), much less, therefore, all voluntary imperfections. And one of two things: either we must conclude that perfection is not possible in this life (contrary to the traditional thesis, which is also that of Father Chrysogonó himself), or we must admit that certain voluntary imperfections (and even true venial sins) are not incompatible with the state of perfection. In fact, the greatest saints had them, with the sole exception, by very special privilege, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. 87 Tac. 3.2; 1 lo. 1.8. 88 Cf. I-TI.4,4; Suarez, De beatitudine d.io sect.i; Billuart, De ultimo fine <1.2 a. 4 § 2. 8<> Cf. P. 1. G. Menéndez-Reigada, De dirección espiritual p.78-79. 90 Cf. IÍ-11,24,8 . 216 P. II. Fundamental PRINCIPLES 217 But St. Paul himself tells us that it was not yet so (Phil. 3:12-13); therefore, the perfection of charity is not possible in this life. Answer. - The Apostle refers to total and absolute perfection, which is proper to the homeland (ad 1). Second objection. - In this world we cannot live without sin, as the Apostle says (1Lo. 1:8); therefore, the perfection of charity, which is contrary to sin, is not possible. Reply. - This is what the Apostle says of venial sins, which do not contravene the habit of charity, but only the act; and thus they are not repugnant to the perfection of the way, but only to the perfection of the homeland (ad 2). From where it follows once again that, according to St. Thomas, venial sins - and a fortiori voluntary imperfections - are in no way incompatible with the perfection that is possible to attain in this life: "et ita non repugnant perfectioni viae, sed perfectioni patriae". Third objection. - What is already perfect cannot grow any more; but charity in this life can grow indefinitely; therefore charity cannot become perfect in this life. Answer. - The perfection of this life is not perfection simpliciler. Vot that can indefinitely grow (ad 3). The present objection - in fact - starts from a false assumption. Neither St. Thomas nor any theologian has ever considered the perfection that can be attained in this life as an absolute perfection, but only a relative one. The first is not possible in this world - and in one of its aspects (on the part of the beloved object) neither in the other, since it is proper and exclusive to God - ; but relative perfection is possible even in this life, since it does not exclude, but necessarily supposes the possibility of new advances and progress on the path of union with God. 6 . Christian perfection and predestination 124. Let us now raise another serious question closely related to the previous ones. We have seen that Christian perfection cannot consist in the absolute perfection of charity on the part of the beloved object, since God is infinitely lovable, and can never be loved as much as he deserves. Nor can it consist in the last degree of charity possible in this life, since there is no such degree, since, as a participation in the same divine charity, it has no possible end, being able to increase indefinitely, as we have already seen. Nor can it consist in a degree that corresponds to the capacity of the soul, since, as St. Thomas 91 teaches, each new increase of charity enlarges the capacity of the soul, whose obediential power in the hands of God is, moreover, inexhaustible. 91 11-11,24, 7 ad 2: "Capacitas creaturae ratíonalis per caritatem angelar, quia per ipsam por dilatatur.... et ideo adhtic ulterius manet habilitas ad maius augnientum". C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION Therefore, if the degree of charity that constitutes perfection is determined neither by the nature of charity, nor by its relation to the object, nor by its relation to the subject, who is it that determines this degree for each soul? There is no other possible answer than this: the free will of God. It is simply one of the most arcane aspects of divine predestination. God distributes his graces among his creatures in very different degrees, with no other counselor than his omnipotent will: prout vult, says the Apostle Paul 92 . They are unfathomable mysteries that escape poor human reason at all 9 L But insofar as we can reach these things, the deeper reason for this at first sight bewildering inequality was hinted at by St. Paul in his marvelous vision of the Mystical Body of Christ when he wrote to the Ephesian faithful: "To each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ..... He has appointed some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God as perfect men, to the measure of the fullness of Christ. There is no doubt about it. According to the Apostle Paul, the unequal distribution of graces has, above all, an overall purpose; it is done in view of the totality of the Mystical Body of Christ. Here we touch upon one of the most unfathomable mysteries of our faith: our predestination in Christ. It could be said that the God of predestination has taken into account only one immense reality in the realization of human predestination: Christ in his twofold personal and mystical aspect. Everything else disappears and vanishes before God's gaze, if it is permissible to use this language. And precisely because everything is subordinated and oriented to Christ, it is necessary that there be among its members a very ordered disorder, a very harmonious dissonance - if we may be allowed these paradoxes - in order to obtain the supreme beauty, the grandiose symphony of the total whole 95 . If to this we add that the formation of the Body of Christ is not yet the ultimate purpose of creation, but that the total Christ - the Head and the members - is subordinated and oriented to the glory of God, the supreme purpose, the alpha and omega of God's plans in his operations ad extra 96 , we will have taken up in its essential lines the ma 92 i Cor. 12:11: "Haec autem omnia operatur unus atque idem Spiritus, dividens singuiis prout vult". St. Thomas expounds the same doctrine in relation to charity: "Et ideo quantitas caritatis non dependet ex conditione naturae vel ex capacítate naturalis virtutis, sed solum ex volúntate Spiritus Sancti distribuentis sua dona prout vult" (11-11,24,3; cf. 111,7, io). 93 Cf. Rom. 11:33: "O altitudo..." 94 Eph. 4,7 y 11,13. Spanish text of the Nacar-Colunga version. Cf. all of c.12 of Epistle i to the Corinthians. 93 Cf. 1,47,1 ; I-II,ii2,4. 96 Read these two verses of St. Paul: "All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's" (1 Cor. 3:22-23). - When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one to whom he has subjected all things, so that he may be all things to God" (1 Cor. 15:28). 218 V. II. 1 'KINL'H'ÍOS laiNDAMl .N f.U.KS 219 The only one that can give us a finalistic idea - even if it is remote and obscure to our poor intelligence - of the distressing problem of the inequality with which God distributes his graces among the children of men. Only when we contemplate God face to face in the beatific vision will we see marvelously harmonized in the eminence of the divine essence the initiative of God and the freedom of man, the inalienable rights of the Creator and the meritorious cooperation of the creature. 7. What Christian perfection always entails But since we have to start from the assumption of inequality in the distribution of graces, can we somehow find out what is the degree determined by God for each particular soul? Not at all. Since there is no title on the part of the creature or of grace itself that demands a certain degree of perfection, it follows that it is quite impossible to ascertain it even conjecturally. It depends solely and exclusively on the free will of God, which can only be known to us by divine revelation. However, leaving these unshakable principles intact, we can make four very important statements: 1. a Christian perfection always supposes an eminent development of grace. 2. a It also supposes the perfection of the infused virtues. 3. a Always requires passive purifications. 4. a It necessarily implies a more or less intense mystical life. We will demonstrate each of these four statements: 1. a Christian perfection, to which we are all called, involves always an eminent development of grace. It seems to us that this first affirmation can be fully demonstrated by the data of divine revelation itself. That "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" of the Gospel 97 is a very high ideal, inaccessible to man because it is a matter of a rigorously infinite exemplarity. And this dazzling ideal, without limits or possible boundaries, the Lord presents it absolutely to all men. Christ pronounced these words in the Sermon on the Mount, addressing all those who were to believe in Him, without exception. There is yet another scriptural argument drawn from the Sermon on the Mount. Christ begins his sermon by offering to all the lofty ideal of the "beatitudes" 9S , which - as we have seen, according to 97 Mt. 5:48. 98 Mt. 5:1-10. C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION with St. Thomas 99 - presuppose an eminent perfection, as the crowning and finishing touch of the whole edifice of our sanctification. Therefore, the holiness that Christ proposes to all of us as an ideal to be achieved supposes an eminent development of grace until we reach the highest perfection of the Gospel beatitudes. Apart from the argument drawn from Sacred Scripture, it is clear that it must be so by analogy with natural life, which requires a complete development of all its potentialities in order to be called perfect. In the supernatural order, as in the natural, rickets is what is abnormal and defective. Now then: how do these data of revelation and natural reason fit in with the other data that St. Paul gives us about the different degrees of perfection to which God has predestined us "according to the measure of the gift of Christ"? 1 ° Supposing - to make things more sensitive - that the eminent development of the initial grace received in baptism is found in degree 50, those who are predestined by God "according to the measure of the gift of Christ" for degree 20, or 30, or 40, should we say that they are not called to perfection, since perfection is found by hypothesis in degree 50, and they will only reach in fact those 20, 30 or 40 to which they are predestined in Christ? To resolve this difficulty, it is necessary to distinguish carefully between calling and predestination. In fact, calling is not the same as predestination, just as the antecedent will of God and the consequent will are not the same. The antecedent will corresponds to the call, the consequent will is that which produces predestination. And here we have the key to the solution of the problem, as we shall see immediately. It is a fact that God has not predestined us all to one and the same degree of perfection, just as He has not predestined us all to glory. Predestination is unfailing on the part of the creature, since it is a consequence of the consequent will of God, to which nothing resists; and it is a fact of daily experience that very many Christians die without having attained Christian perfection, and some of them even die impenitent and with manifest signs of reprobation Does this mean that they were not called by God to perfection or to eternal life? Not at all; to affirm this would be a manifest error with respect to perfection and close to heresy with respect to eternal life. The Apostle Paul expressly tells us that God wills the salvation of all men: "omnes homines vult salvos fieri et ad agnitionem veritatis venire" 1 01 , and this same teaching has been taken up by the Councils 102 and is the unanimous doctrine of all Catholic theologians. As for the universal call to perfection, without being expressly defined, it is clearly stated in the very sources of revelation - as we have seen - and is also unanimously admitted by all schools of Christian spirituality. 99 Cf. I-II.fiq. 1 00 Eph. 4,7. 101 1 Tim. 2.4* 1 Tim. 2.4 102 Here are, for example, the words of the Charisian Council (853) against Gothescalcus and the Predestinarians: "God omnipotent wills that all men without exception be saved (R Tim. 2:4), even if not all are saved. Now that some are saved is the gift of him who saves; but that some are lost is the merit of those who are lost" (Denz. 318. Cf. n.794s 1096 1380 1382 etc.). It does not appear clearly that the councils have expressly defined it, but it is a most certain and unanimous doctrine among Catholic theologians, and it could not be denied, at least, without manifest rashness, and probably without true error in the faith, 220 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES How, then, can we explain the undeniable fact - attested by daily experience - that many Christians die without having attained perfection, and some even with manifest signs of eternal damnation? The key to the solution lies in the distinction we have given above 'between calling and predestination and between antecedent will and consequent will of God. Disregarding the problem of predestination to glory (which is not the object of our study, and which, moreover, is solved by the same principles that we are about to establish) and limiting ourselves to that of the universal call to Christian perfection, the solution seems to us to be the following: It is true that we are all called to the highest degrees of holiness and perfection in a remote and sufficient way by the antecedent will of God ("remóte et secundum voluntatem Dei antecedentem*, according to the technical language of the schools). But in a proximate and efficacious way, as an effect of the consequent will of God - to which predestination corresponds concretely, with all the individual circumstances - each one of the predestined has the degree of perfection indicated to him by God to which he must attain according to the degree of glory to which he is destined 103 . In fact, in practice, only those predestined to the summit of perfection will infallibly reach that degree, since the consequent will of God is unfathomable for the creature 1(M . The rest - that is, those not predestined to the summit of perfection - will in fact resist that remote and sufficient call, and will fall behind along the way. In other more scientific terms: "de iure, remóte, sufficienter et secundum voluntatem Dei antecedentem", we are all called to Christian perfection and we are all given the most sufficient graces to obtain it certainly if we do not put obstacles to grace and freely cooperate with the divine action; but "de facto, proxime, efficaciter et secundum voluntatem Dei consequentem", we are not all predestined to Christian perfection. It is one thing to be called and quite another to be in fact chosen; the Gospel says it expressly 105 , It is the unfathomable mystery of divine predestination and election that no created intelligence will ever be able to decipher in this life 10<5 . But this tremendous mystery in no way compromises our conclusions: we are all called to Christian perfection, which consists in an eminent development of the initial grace received in baptism. In fact, the majority of Christians - we see it every day - die without having reached Christian perfection. Does this mean that they were not called to it? Not at all. They were not called in a proximate and efficacious way according to the consequent will of God, because in this case they would have attained it infallibly, since to the consequent will of God correspond the actual efficacious graces, which are unattainable by creatures, although without compromising their freedom. But they were undoubtedly so with a remote and sufficient call according to the antecedent will of God, as is very clearly shown by revelation and the unanimous consent of all schools of Christian spirituality. According to this antecedent will-which, as theologians explain, is a will that is not only a will, but also a will that is not only a will of God, but also a will of God's will, which, as theologians explain, is the will of God. And. therefore, having reached that degree, it cannot pass to a higher one* (T.6 ?.q). 104 Cf. 1,19,6 c. et ad i. 105 "Multi enim sunt vocatl, pauci vero electi" (Mt. 20:16 and 22:14.- Cf. Rev. 17:14). cough "Quare hunc trahat, et illum non trahat, noli velle diiudicare, si non vis errare". St. Augustine, Super lo . 6,44 tr.26: ML 35,1607). C. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION God called those Christians who die imperfectly to an eminent perfection of grace and charity, even if in different degrees. The antecedent will - we repeat - is a serious will, "with all the seriousness that is in the face of a crucified God" 1 ° 7 , to which corresponds a flood of actual graces sufficient to reach that degree of eminent perfection. God is not to blame for the fact that these imperfect Christians have voluntarily resisted these sufficient graces and have not reached de facto the eminent degree of Christian perfection that they could have reached de iure with them. It would be completely immoral to demand that God sanctify us all by hook or by crook, whether or not we cooperate with his divine action. And let the same be said with regard to the other, even more dreadful problem of our eternal salvation. God sincerely desires that all men be saved, and, consequently, he gives all men sufficient graces for this, even the most brutalized savage lost in a tropical jungle. But God cannot and must not save - allow us this bold expression - anyone who stubbornly insists on resisting his grace by abusing the august privilege of his freedom. A universal salvation of all men without exception (good and bad) would inevitably lead to one of two terrible consequences: either that the human will is not free and therefore not responsible, or that it is authorized to mock God I08 . Let it be clear, then, that we are all called to Christian perfection, just as we are all called to eternal salvation. Many will not in fact reach perfection, and others will not even be saved; but the fault will lie solely with them for having voluntarily resisted the sufficient graces, to the good use of which the efficacious graces were bound, which would have led them to the summit of perfection or to the port of salvation i 09. The problem, then, does not arise in relation to the greater or lesser number of those who will in fact attain Christian perfection, but only to the de iure demands of grace itself. The fact that many do not emerge from infancy in no way compromises the general call to virility, both in the natural and in the supernatural order. And Christian virility (or, what is the same thing, Christian perfection) always supposes an eminent development of sanctifying grace in relation to the initial degree that we all receive equally in baptism, as St. Thomas DO teaches. If this eminent degree is not reached, eternal salvation will be possible, but in no way perfection, in the sense that theologians and the Christian people in general ordinarily give to this word. Let us now look briefly at the other three statements. 107 Cf. Gar-Mar, Suggestions p.2. to "Dreadful Prayer". 1 0 8 Cf. Sertillanges, O.P., Catechism of Unbelievers I.5 c.3 p.374 (Spanish ed., 1934)*. 109 There are innumerable places in Sacred Scripture where we are told that God does not will the perdition of anyone, but that this depends solely on the perverse will of man. See, for example, the following texts: "As I live, says the Lord, Yahweh, I do not rejoice in the death of the wicked, but that he turns from his way and lives" (Ezek. 13:1 1); "For the Lord is gracious and compassionate; he forgives sins and saves in the time of trouble" (Eccl. 2:13); "Turn again to the Lord" (Eccl. 2:13); "Turn again to the Lord" (Eccl. 2:13); "Turn again to the Lord" (Eccl. 2:13); "Turn again to the Lord" (Eccl. 2:13). 2:13); "Turn to me and you will be saved* (Is. 45*22); "Who (God) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4); "He patiently waits for you, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance* (2 Petr. 3:9), etc..., etc. 110 m-69.8.-This is, of course, the baptism of infants (who all receive it with identical dispositions), not the baptism of adults, in which it is possible to receive greater or lesser initial grace according to the dispositions of the one who receives it (under the influence of greater or lesser actual graces). Perhaps it would be better to look for the initial point of reference in the minimum degree of grace indispensable for justification in order to include in it also those who receive justification outside of baptism. i>. ii. fünu amen fünu amen i' ai.es 2. a Christian perfection always supposes the perfection of infused virtues. 126. This is an obvious corollary of the very nature of perfection, which consists precisely - as we have seen above - in the full development of the infused virtues, especially charity, which is the first and most important of all. Therefore, either there will be no Christian perfection, or it will have to be based on the perfect development of the infused virtues. This is so clear and evident that it seems useless to insist on it, considering that no one disputes it. 3. a Christian perfection always requires passive purifications. 127. According to St. John of the Cross and the facts of daily experience in dealing with souls, "no matter how much the beginner in mortifying all his actions and passions in himself exercises all these actions and passions, he can never completely, nor by far, until God does it in him passively by means of the purification of the said Night" 1 1 1 . We will return to this at length when dealing with the necessity of passive purifications, where it will be fully demonstrated. 4. a Christian perfection also necessarily implies a life of mystique. 128. This proposition is but a consequence of the two preceding ones. The argument to prove it could not be simpler. Apart from the fact that passive purifications, according to the unanimous opinion of all schools, are of a mystical order, the infused virtues, as we have seen above and will see still more extensively, can attain their perfection only under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit acting in a divine or superhuman manner. Thus it is this action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit acting in the divine or superhuman way that constitutes the very essence of mysticism. Therefore, the perfection of the virtues - and, consequently, Christian perfection - is impossible outside of mysticism. The proof of the minor of this syllogism alone will constitute the next chapter. 1 1 1 1 San Jetan de la Cruz, Noche obscura l.i c.j a. 5. C. 4 . NAT L' l{.AI" ¡bid., p. 4 . C. 4 . NATURE DF, THE MYSTIQUE \ 229 takes its origin from them. In the first case it is an active love, sought after, excited by our efforts; in the second it is a passive love that has sprung up as if spontaneously, that seems to have been given to us already. This experience is explained theologically by saying that in the first case there was simply an actual cooperating grace, and in the second, an operating grace: the soul was totally moved by the Holy Spirit and did not have to do anything else but consent to this motion. Was there not previously an infused light passively received to direct this love? Yes, it seems the most frequent; it is a mystical intuition that makes us look to God as our ultimate end, as our all. But this is not necessary. According to St. John of the Cross, an ordinary act of our virtue of faith can be sufficient. The soul would then experience a touch of love in the will without having experienced the touch of knowledge in the intelligence". And a little further down he adds: "At least, the feeling of divine reality always seems to exist in the mystical life "20 . R. P. Gerest. - The mystical life seems to be characterized by the action of God on the soul and its faculties through faith, love and prayer. In this way, all the activity of the soul and its powers is employed in receiving and utilizing this divine domination in order to follow its direction and to translate it into all the acts of life to the point of being able to truly say: I am no longer the one who lives, but God in me" 21 . R. P. Arintero. - The great restorer of mystical studies in Spain tells us in his Mystical Questions that the intimate constituent of the mystical life "is the predominance of the gifts in the supernatural psychology, that is, to proceed most of the time under the highest motion and direction of the Holy Spirit "22 . And in his magnificent Mystical Evolution he had already written that mysticism is nothing other than the conscious life of grace, that is, "a certain intimate experience of the mysterious divine touches and influences and of the real life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit 2} . Albino Menéndez-Reigada. - For His Excellency the Bishop of Córdoba, "the mystical is the action in us of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the operation of the Holy Spirit in us through his gifts, or the perfect incorporation with Christ as a member of his Mystical Body". And a little further on he adds completing his thought by picking up the experimental element : "One could perhaps define mysticism by saying that it is such a predominance of grace in actions as to make its own supernatural and divine mode more or less perceptible in them "24 . R. Ignacio Menéndez-Reigada. - Ignacio Menéndez-Reigada, who was professor of Mysticism in the Faculty of Theology of San Esteban de Salamanca, places the essence of mysticism in the very life of grace lived in a conscious way. It is characterized principally by the "action of the gifts of wisdom and understanding, by which man begins to be aware that he possesses God and is united with Him, experiencing in himself the life of God "25 . 20 Gf "La vie spirituelle" (suppl. to November 1929) p. [99 and 101J. 21 Gf. "La vie spirituelle" (suppl. to April 1930) p. [4ij. 22 Mystical Questions 6." a.z p.635 (ed. 3."). 23 Mystical evolution p.l." c.l p.18 (ed. BAG). 24 Cf. "The Supernatural Life" (November-December 1944) p. 44 1-2. 25 Cf. RET (January-March 1946) p.99. 230 231 ¡'. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES R. Sabino Lozano. - For the director of The Supernatural Life, "mystical life and life predominantly of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the same thing "26 . R. Marceliano Llamera. - He summarizes his thought in the following points, which he rightly considers "the general mystical notions of Thomistic Theology": Mystical life is the gift activity of grace; that is, the life of grace under the rule of the Holy Spirit through his gifts. Divine flowering of the gift tree. 2. The constitutive of the mystical life is the performance of the gifts. 3. A mystical act is any act of giving. 4. Mystical state is the permanent or habitual gift activity in the soul. Or the situation of the soul in permanent or habitual gift activity. 5. Distinctive or characteristic of the mystical life is the superhuman way of acting; and of the mystical state, the predominance of this superhuman way. The mystical symptomatology has as more general and appreciable manifestations: a) The passivity of the soul acted by God. b) The very varied experience of the life of God in the soul. 6. A mystical soul is radically every Christian soul in a state of grace; and in fact, every soul that lives a gift life. 7. Every soul is called, by general law, to the mystical life and can and should aspire to it. 8. In particular, the main sign of the call or introduction of a soul into the mystical state is the passive incapacitation to practice the spiritual life in its own way. 9. In the habitually ascetic life, especially if it is fervent, there are frequent, more or less notable, ascetic interventions. In the habitually mystical life, there are ascetic intervals, more or less prolonged. And, of course, all the virtues of the ascetical life are practiced in it, with more perfection, especially interior, as if directed by the Holy Spirit. 10. Mystical contemplation is a prolonged loving intuition of God infused by the Holy Spirit through the gifts of intelligence and wisdom. 1 1 . Normal or ordinary mystical graces are those that act on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, without exceeding the possibilities of his activity. Extraordinary graces are those that exceed or are received outside of the gifts' activity. These extraordinary graces, although unnecessary, in general, are not always gratuitously given or for the good of others, but are sanctifying for the soul that receives them, and perhaps necessary or at least convenient for it for particular reasons. 12. Actual gift grace. The driving force of the mystical life is the actual gift of grace that acts and governs it 27 . 133 . Carmelites: R. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene. - The wise Belgian Carmelite, former professor of the International College of St. Teresa in Rome, believes that mysticism is characterized, above all, by infused contemplation: "It is agreed in our days to recognize that infused contemplation, understood in its full breadth, is the salient and characteristic fact of the domain of mysticism. "28 25 Holy Life and Sacred Science c. 2 p.14 (2.* ed.). 27 Gf. The supernatural life and the action of the Holy Spirit: RET (October-December 1947 p. 473-5, p. 473-5, p. 474). 473-5, 28 Cf. "Etudes Carmélitaines" (April 1933) p.r.- In another review article, Father Gabriel repeats once again his cherished thesis: "In it - in contemplation - there is no other C. 4. NATURE OF MYSTICISM Gabriel is convinced that mysticism enters into the normal and ordinary development of the life of grace; and he wrote a remarkable article in La vie spirituelle to demonstrate that this is the genuine and authentic thought of St. John of the Cross 29 . R. Jerome of the Mother of God. - Mysticism consists for him in an experiential knowledge of God that is explained by infused love. But with certain restrictions. Here are his words: "Is this experiential knowledge the distinctive element of every mystical state? In my opinion, no. It does not seem to be the constitutive property of this state, but one of its consecutive properties, a proprium in the philosophical sense of the word. And I say the same of the "feeling of the presence of God": it does not constitute the essential note of the mystical state even if in one form or another it accompanies contemplation.... For contemplative souls, God is always, but especially during the times when they are elevated to contemplation-whether it is tasty or arid-the reality. This is why I prefer to the expression "feeling the presence of God" this other expression: "feeling the reality of God "30 . R. Chrysogonus of Jesus in the Sacrament. - He does not specify in a total and complete way the concept that he had formed of mysticism in any part of his works. But, by gathering two or three texts, we can reconstruct his thought. Here are some of them: "Mysticism as practice is the development of grace accomplished by operations whose mode is outside the demands of grace itself, that is, by extraordinary means. "31 "...mysticism is a mode of the development of grace and is essentially constituted by infused knowledge and love..." 32 "Infused contemplation is an affectionate intuition of divine things resulting from a special influence of God on the soul" 33 . R. Claudius of Jesus Crucified. - "Experiential mystical theology is an intuitive knowledge and love of God infused in denial and obscurity of all natural light of the understanding, and by which the latter perceives a being and goodness unspeakable, but real and present in the soul, a being and goodness above all being and goodness. "34 R. Lucinius of the Blessed Sacrament. - For Fr. Lucinio the mystical experience is a simple effect of the superhuman way of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here are his own words: The mystical life is nothing other than an intense activity of the theological virtues, precious virtues that put our soul in contact with God, accompanied by a delicate influx of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And he adds: "We can therefore conclude by saying that the mystical life is the life of perfect love that transforms the soul in God and that is connaturally accompanied by the flowering of contemplation" (cf. Che cosa é la vita mística: "Vita cristiana" [January-February 1948! p.io-ir and 16). 29 Cf. L'union de transformation dans la doctrine de Saint Jean de la Croix: "La vie spirituelle" (suppl. to March 1925) p. [127-44], See also in the same review his article L'union transformante, which appeared in May 1927, p. 223-54. The simple statement of the titles of the three parts into which he divides his precious article, suggests very well the fundamental thought of the same. Here are these titles: i.° The transforming union, the center of perspective in the doctrine of the Saint (St. John of the Cross). 2. 0 The transforming union, perfect expansion of grace, of virtues and of gifts. 3. 0 The transforming union, diversely participated. 30 Gf. "La vie spirituelle* (suppl. to September 1929) PI282]. 31 Compendium of Ascolic and Mysticism p.3. H prcámb. p.155 (1,* cd.). 32 Ibid. p.3.® a.i p.160. 33 Ibid. p.3." a. 2 p.164. *Towards a clear and precise definition of Mystical Theology: RET vol.i (1940) p.598. í*. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. NATURE OF MYSTICISM 233 "That the superhuman way of acting the gifts is the characteristic note of mysticism is not only said by the Carmelite doctors. It is a common thesis "35 . The Teresian Congress of Madrid. - As the authentic representative and spokesperson of the Carmelite mystical school, the authority of the famous Teresian Congress, held in Madrid in March 1923, has always been invoked. Here are the approved conclusions of theme 5, in which the doctrine of the school concerning contemplation is gathered: 1. a Infused contemplation is the mystical operation par excellence. 2. a This contemplation is the experiential knowledge of divine things produced by God supernaturally in the soul and the state of greatest approximation and union between the soul and God that can be attained in this life. 3. a Consequently, in the order of means, it is the ultimate ideal and the last stage of Christian life in this world in souls called to mystical union with God. 4. a The state of contemplation is characterized by the growing predominance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and by the superhuman way in which all good deeds are performed through him. 5. a Since the virtues find their ultimate perfection in the gifts, and the gifts attain their perfect perfection in contemplation, it follows that contemplation is the ordinary path to holiness and to virtue that is usually heroic 36 . 35 Cf. "Revista de Espiritualidad" (1946) p. 556.- Note the singular importance of this statement. Lucinio affirms that the superhuman way of acting of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the typical and characteristic note of mysticism. And he says that this is not a doctrine only of the Carmelite doctors, but that it is a common thesis. We believe that this is indeed the truth. And it seems to us, moreover, that this "common thesis" could very well be the point of convergence and the fundamental basis of an "entente" between the various schools of Christian spirituality, which would be so beneficial in practice for all. It is a great pity that, while admitting something so basic and fundamental, we cannot agree on many other things that, in our opinion, are but corollaries and inevitable consequences of this capital question. Lucinio and presented by him as a "common thesis," the fundamental theological basis on which the Thomistic mystical school rests and rests. For if mysticism is nothing other than the simple action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the superhuman mode, since we believe we have demonstrated that this superhuman mode is the only one possible in the gifts, everyone who possesses the gifts already possesses the principles of mystical experience; And since the gifts will normally act in all Christians in grace, there will come a time when all of them - if they do not oppose grace - will normally enter the mystical state, which is characterized precisely by the predominant action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman mode. From this follows the "unity of the spiritual life "* and the "universal call to mysticism," the main theses of the Thomistic school of mysticism. Gf. "El Monte Carmelo" (May 1923) p.211. We repeat here what we have just said in the previous note. We cannot explain the irreducible divergences that still exist between the Carmelite and Thomistic mystical schools after such clear and explicit conclusions, in which we all agree. We do not know if the previous conclusions gather or not the authentic feeling of the Carmelite school, although we have to believe that they do when they themselves affirm it. But we certainly do know that they contain the authentic spirit of the Thomistic school in its fundamental theses. If we except the restriction insinuated in the third conclusion by alluding to "the souls called to mystical union with God" (which seems to imply that not all of them are), in everything else the Thomistic school is in complete agreement with these conclusions, to the point that none of us who are honored to belong to it could express them with greater force or precision. We have always firmly believed that mysticism (or, if you will, contemplation, which is its operation "par excellence", as the Teresian Congress says) is an "experimental knowledge of divine things produced by God supernaturally in the soul; that it is the ultimate ideal and the last stage of Christian life in this world"; that "the state of contemplation is characterized by the increasing predominance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and by the superhuman way in which all good actions are performed by means of them"; and, finally, the Thomistic school has tenaciously defended the absolute necessity of mysticism for Christian perfection, based precisely on the fact that "the virtues find their ultimate perfection in the gifts, and these in contemplation reach their perfect performance"; and, finally, the Thomistic school has tenaciously defended the absolute necessity of mysticism for Christian perfection, based precisely on the fact that "the virtues find their ultimate perfection in the gifts, and these in contemplation reach their perfect performance". Jesuits: R. P. De Maumigny. - He defines infused contemplation as "a simple and loving look at God by which the soul, suspended by admiration and love, knows him experimentally and tastes, in the midst of a profound peace, a beginning of eternal beatitude" 37. R. P. Poulain. - The mystical states that have God as their object attract attention above all by the impression of recollection, of union that they make us experience. Hence the name of mystical union. The real difference with the recollections of ordinary prayer is that, in the mystical state, God does not content himself with helping us to think of Him and to remind us of His presence, but gives us of this presence an experimental intellectual knowledge; in a word, He makes us feel that we really enter into communication with Him. However, in the lower degrees (stillness), God does this only in a rather obscure way. The manifestation is all the more distinct as the union is of a higher order" 38 . R. Fr. De la Taille. - Maurice de la Taille places the essence of mysticism in an experience of the divine. For him, contemplation comes from love: it is a loving gaze. But what distinguishes this love from the love implicit in every act of faith? It is not its greater perfection or intensity. The love of the contemplative may be less than that of the simple faithful. But this contemplative love is a love that is "consciously infused .... The mystic is conscious of receiving from God a love already made ftout fait).... The soul knows and feels that it is invested by God with this love. And for this reason... it feels the presence of God in itself... The soul receives the gift from the very hand of the Giver, who is there present, by the same token, in a way that the soul experiences" 39 . R. P. Kleutgen: He believes he finds the essence of mysticism in a mysterious union with God, in which the soul is elevated, by an extraordinary effect of grace, to a higher contemplation of God and divine things, which it comes to know not only by faith, but experientially 40 . R. P. Bainvel. - "The mystical state is constituted by the awareness of the supernatural in us " 4 1 . R. P. Maréchal. - "Basing ourselves on the unanimous statements of contemplatives - the only witnesses of their inner experiences - , we believe that high contemplation implies a new element, qualitatively distinct from normal psychological activities and ordinary grace; we mean the active, non-symbolic presentation of God in the soul with its psychological correlative: the immediate intuition of God by the soul" 42 . From which it follows - as the Teresian Congress admirably says - "that contemplation is the ordinary path of holiness and of the habitually heroic virtue. We repeat: we do not know if in these conclusions the thought of the Carmelite mystical school is well reflected, but it is unquestionable that they admirably reflect that of the Thomistic school. | It is a great pity that, admitting all these fundamental points, we still insist on maintaining our inexplicable discrepancies! 37 The practice of mental prayer tr.2 p.i.® c.io (2. a ed. p.332). 38 Des grdces d'oraison c.S n.3. 39 Quoted by Bainvel in his "Introduction" to the 10th ed. of Father Poulain's Des grdces d'oraison n.25 p.56. 40 Quoted by Fr. Claudio, Carmelite, in RET vol.i (1940) p.591-2. 41 Cf. "Revue Ascétique et Mystique" (January 1923) p.45. 42 Eludes sur la Psychologie des Mystiques t.i p.253. 235 234 r. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES R. De Guibert. - According to the Gregorian professor, in mystical contemplation "the soul experiences the presence of God in itself. The indwelling and action of God was previously known to it indirectly through the testimony of faith; now it experiences that it is truly given.... This direct and experimental perception of God present is general, confused, does not bring new concepts, does not teach new things, but is constituted by a profound and intense intuition at once simple and very rich; the will is not attracted with several distinct affections, but is caught and as it were paralyzed in a single simple act, by which it adheres all of itself to God. All this the soul receives passively; with no effort it could obtain this gift, nor foresee in any way when it will receive it, nor retain it when it fades away, nor produce it again when it has already enjoyed it...". 43 R. P. De Grandmaison. - "Man has the feeling or sensation of entering, not by an effort, but by an appeal, into immediate contact, without image, without speech, though not without light, with an infinite Goodness" 44 . R. P. Valensin. - According to the professor of the Faculty of Theology of Lyon, mysticism, "from the psychological point of view, brings with it, together with an ineffable feeling of the presence of God, a recollection in God that can go as far as the absorption of the powers of the soul, migrating, so to speak, from the region of shadows and images towards divine realities". And then he adds these luminous words: "In order to define the essential characteristic theologically, it is necessary to go back from the effects to the cause and to clarify the very nature of this cause not only by the light of experience alone, but also by the light of doctrine. From this theological point of view, the prayer of which we speak will be called mystical, in the sense that the soul penetrates with it into what is most profound and mysterious in the intimate relationship of the Son of God with the adorable Trinity, which helps him to pray in the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus to the Father and to outline from here below the union that will cause his beatitude. Thus, mystical theology, defined by its formal object, will be presented as the science of the divine being living by his grace in the Christian and raising him, with the human collaborations that he arouses, to his perfection, while the name of ascetical theology should be reserved for the science of those collaborations supernaturalized by the initiatives of the Spirit of God. And since the problem of essences is metaphysical, we will therefore say of mysticism - understood as we have just done - that it is the ontology of the spiritual life. And we will add - to better draw the boundaries - that asceticism will be the logic, and asceticism the methodology "45 . R. P. Pacheu. - "It is an experimental possession of God, a communication which God makes of Himself to His privileged souls, and in which the soul receives this pure divine favor, gratuitous, without being able to elevate itself whatever its application or personal effort may be." In this state, the soul is called "passive", not because it is idle, deprived of knowledge, dumbfounded; on the contrary, it is in an acre 43 Theologia spiritualis ascetica et mystica q.7 sect.i." 11.382. 44 Religion personnelle (Paris 1927) c.5 § 2 p.159. 43 Cf. "La vie spirituelle" (sup. March 1930) p. [139-40], C. 4 . NATURE OF MYSTICISM prodigious increase of life, his acts of knowledge and love surpass the ordinary acts of his faculties. But "it receives, it takes nothing of its own accord; it does not enter, but is introduced; it does not work, but is put into action, non agit sed agitun 4. IT. PRINCIPLES rnNDAMr.NTAI.ltS 243 They even go so far as to resign themselves to going to hell so long as there they can continue to love and glorify God. It can be seen that the only mystical element that never fails - not even in these terrible nights - is the superhuman action of the gifts, which is precisely the most intense in these purifying states. On the other hand, the feeling or experience of the divine is totally lacking, which is replaced by a diametrically opposite psychological state. In any case, it is true - and we readily admit it - that, if we exclude these nights and some other isolated purifying phenomena, the experience of the divine is the most ordinary and frequent effect of the superhuman action of the gifts. Let us examine the nature of this experience, and then we will specify why sometimes it occurs and sometimes it does not, in spite of the fact that in both cases the gifts of the Holy Spirit act in their divine or superhuman modality. "... an experience..." - This is one of the most radical differences between the mystical and the ascetic state. The ascetic lives the Christian life in a purely human way, having no other awareness of it than that which reflection and discourse give him. The mystic, on the other hand, experiences in himself - outside of the exceptions noted - the ineffable reality of that life of grace. "The mystics are the witnesses of the loving presence of God in us" (De Grandmaison). How beautifully and with what admirable precision St. Teresa says it! Speaking in the Seventh Abodes of the most lofty communication of the Most Holy Trinity to the transformed soul, writes the distinguished reformer of Carmel: "So that what we have by faith, there the soul understands, we may say, by sight, although it is not seen with the eyes of the body nor of the soul, because it is not an imaginary vision. Here all three Persons communicate to it, and speak to it, and give it to understand those words which the Gospel says that the Lord said, that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit would come to dwell with the soul that loves Him and keeps His commandments (lo. 14:23). Oh, blessed God, how different it is to hear these words and believe them, than to understand by this way how true they are! And every day this soul is more and more astonished, because it never again seems to her that they are with her, but she sees, as it is said, that they are in the interior of her soul; in the very interior, in a very deep thing, which she cannot say what it is, because she has no letters, she feels in herself this divine company" 76 . It is true that mystical communications are not always as high as this, but they always produce - apart from passive purifications or nights of the soul - an experimental feeling of the life of grace. Hearing and believing: this is what is proper and characteristic of the ascetic. To understand in an ineffable, experimental way: this is the privilege of the mystic. The reader is reminded of the admirable case of Sister Elizabeth of La Salle. i" Seventh Moradas 1,6-7. C. 4. NATURAI.TZA OF MYSTICAL I.A. Trinity, who came to experience God's indwelling in the soul before he had ever heard of it 77 . "... passive..." - This is another typical note of mystical experience. The mystic is clearly aware that the experience he is enjoying has not been produced by him. He is merely receiving an impression produced by an agent totally foreign to him. He is under the passive influence of an experience that has not been produced by him 78 , nor will he be able to retain it for a second longer than the mysterious agent that is producing it 79 . In fact," writes Father Joret in this regard, "read attentively the descriptions left to us by the favored persons of heaven, and you will soon discover, among so many variable elements, this constant background of their contemplation. This always appears first and foremost as an experience felt through a kind of psychological passivity of love that dominates and involves their whole life. The mystics have the impression, more or less sensible, of an intervention in a certain way foreign to them, and which rises, nevertheless, from the depths of their being to unify them in a tendency towards God and in a certain fruition of Him, which establishes peace in their soul" 80 . This is a psychological fact admitted by all schools as a typical note of the mystical experience: the passivity of the soul. Already in the most remote treatise on mysticism properly speaking that we possess, the classic De divinis nominibus, by the Pseudo Areopagite, we find the famous expression patiens divina, which will be repeated later by all theologians and teachers of the spiritual life as a typical and characteristic note of the mystical states.81 The expression patiens divina is found in the most remote treatise on mysticism properly speaking that we possess, the classic De divinis nominibus, by the Pseudo Areopagite. Of course, this is a relative passivity, that is, only in relation to the principal agent cause, which is the Holy Spirit; but it is not a pure passivity, since the soul reacts vitally under the motion of the Holy Spirit - "the will consents," says St. Teresa in the text we have just quoted - cooperating with his divine action in a completely free and voluntary way. In this way freedom and merit are saved under the action of the gifts. "... of God or of his divine action in the soul..." - Sometimes the soul feels God himself dwelling within it in a very clear and unmistakable way, as in the text of St. Teresa cited above 77 Cf. Fr. Piiilipon, The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity c.i n.8 and c.3 n.i. 78 "The will consents only to those mercies that it enjoys" (Saint. Teresa, Life I7"0 79 "She does not dare to fidget or move, because it seems to her that the good would go from between her hands; sometimes she does not even want to resolve herself. The poor thing does not understand that, since she herself could not do anything to attract that good to herself, she can no less detain it more than the Lord wills" (St. Teresa, Life 15,1). 80 La contemplaron mystique d'aprés Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Desclée, Lille-Bruges 1927). P-I03- , . 81 Gf. De divinis nominibus c.2: MG 3,648. In the Latin translation we read the following text : "... partirn etinn etinn diviniore quadam inspiratkme hausit ista non díscendo tantum, \®£um f-tiam divina pa tiendo assecutus, necnon eorum (si dictu fas sit) coinpfissíone, ad iMam quae doceri nequit fidem mysticain atque unionem informatus" (col. 647). 244 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 245 above. Others are his divine action 82 , which is beautifying and perfecting it with marvelous primitives. It could be said that he feels in the depths of his spirit the touch of the finger of the Divine Artist, who is drawing in him the features of Christ's physiognomy. The soul effortlessly remembers that verse of the Veni Creator Spiritus in which it speaks of the finger of the right hand of the Father - digitus paternae dexterae 83 - which is the Holy Spirit, who is tracing in it the divine features of the adorable silhouette of Christ. Let us now see why the gifts of the Holy Spirit produce this passive experience of the divine and why they cease to produce it in the passive trials or nights of the soul. The reason for the former is very simple. The mystical experience is produced by the gifts because of their divine or superhuman modality. And precisely because the infused virtues, even the theological ones, act in the ascetic state under the regime of reason, that is, in the human mode, it is impossible for them to produce under that regime the experience of the divine. Let's explain these ideas a little. It is the constant doctrine of St. Thomas-followed in this by all schools-that the union of the soul with God, essentially initiated by sanctifying grace, is activated and perfected by acts of supernatural knowledge and love, that is, by the exercise of the infused virtues, principally faith and charity.84 The union of the soul with God, which is essentially initiated by sanctifying grace, is activated and perfected by acts of supernatural knowledge and love, that is, by the exercise of the infused virtues, principally of faith and charity. Now then: the infused virtues, as is well known, although they are strictly supernatural in their essence, are not supernatural in their mode of action. Not because they do not in themselves demand and claim a divine modality, which is the only one proportionate and suitable to their strictly supernatural nature, but because of the imperfect participation with which the soul in grace possesses them, as St. Thomas explains 85 and as we have already explained in its corresponding place. This imperfect participation proceeds from the human rule, to which the infused virtues, left to themselves, are obliged to submit. The infused virtues, left to themselves, that is, detached from the influence of the gifts, are obliged to act in the human way, following the rule of reason, which governs and manages them, although always, of course, under the influence of an actual grace that God denies to no one.86 Hence, it is up to us - with the help of this actual grace - to exercise these virtues and to perform acts of faith whenever we please. 86 Hence it is in our power - with the help of this actual grace - to exercise these virtues and to perform acts of faith when it pleases us, espe 82 Ultimately, God himself as well. For, as is well known, in God there is no real distinction between being and acting (cf., e.g., 1-11,3,2 ad 4). 83 In the Dominican liturgy we read dextrae Dei tu digitus. 84 "Unió nostra ad Deum est per operationem; inquantum scilicet eum cognoscimus et amamus..." (111.6,6. ad 1). "Gratía coniungit nos Deo per modum assimilationis; sed requiritur quod uniamur ei per operationem intellectus et affectus" (De caritate 2 ad 7). 8 s 1-11,68,2. 8 6 Actual grace, as we saw in its place, is a gift of God which, insofar as it is efficacious, no one can strictly merit. But God's mercy offers it to us "to help us in the fulfillment of the duty of each moment, just as air enters unceasingly into our lungs to enable us to repair our blood" (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrance, The Three Ages 1 . 1 p. 104). c. 4. nature of mysticism of hope, charity, or any other of the infused virtues. These acts, though supernatural or divine in their essence, are produced in our connatural human way, and therefore do not and cannot give us a passive experience of the divine. The soul has no other consciousness of these acts than that which results from reflection and discourse after they have been performed or from the mere psychological warning present while it is performing them. Mystical experience escapes its possibilities at all. The nature and functioning of the gifts are quite different. As we have already seen in studying them in themselves, the gifts are supernatural not only as regards their essence (quoad substantiam), but also as regards the way they operate (quoad modum oper andi), since they are not subject to the motion of human reason - like the infused virtues - but are moved directly and immediately by the Holy Spirit himself. And if in their essence they are inferior to the theological virtues - although they are superior, even in this sense, to the moral virtues - in their mode of acting they are superior to all the infused virtues, since the proper and characteristic mode of the gifts - the only one that fits them, as we have already amply demonstrated in their place - is the divine or superhuman. Now then: this divine mode is an element completely foreign to our human psychology. It is not a mode that is connatural to our way of being and acting, but is entirely distinct and transcendent. And therefore, when an act of the gifts is produced, the soul perceives this strange element as something completely foreign to it, that is, as something that it has not produced by itself, nor does it have the faculty to retain it for a second longer than the mysterious agent who has produced it wishes to retain it. And this is the passive experience of the divine that we have been looking for. The intensity of this experience always depends on the intensity with which the gift has acted. For this reason - as we will see later - the imperfect mystical acts that begin to occur in the ascetic state do not usually produce anything other than a "rafaguilla or gustillo" - as someone has rightly said - that can hardly be qualified as a true mystical experience. The explanation is clear: the gift has acted, but imperfectly, with little intensity, because the imperfect disposition of the subject does not allow otherwise. It has produced an experience of the divine, but so weak and imperfect that the soul hardly notices it. If it is one of the intellective gifts, there will be a transitory act of infused contemplation, but to a very incipient degree and, therefore, almost imperceptible. Let us listen to St. John of the Cross explaining this beautifully: 81 1-11,68,8; cf. a.4 ad 3. 8 8 It is necessary that the gifts act in order to be able to perceive them. It is not enough to possess them as habits. The entitative realities are not perceived, but only the dynamic ones. This is why our soul perceives its own essence only through the acts of the understanding, nor the habits that modify its powers except through its own acts (cf. 1:87-1-2). And this is the reason why we do not perceive sanctifying grace, although it is most divine in itself, because it is an entitative reality; nor the infused virtues, because they act in our human way, detached from the influence of the gifts. 246 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES "Although it is true that at the beginning when this state begins, this loving news is almost never seen, and this is for two reasons: One, because at the beginning this loving news is usually very subtle and delicate and almost insensitive; and the other, because, having been accustomed to the other exercise of meditation, which is totally sensitive, the soul does not see or almost feel this other insensitive novelty that is already pure of spirit, especially when, because it does not understand it, it does not allow itself to rest in it, seeking the other more sensitive; with which, although the inner peace of love is more abundant, it does not allow itself to feel and enjoy it. But the more the soul becomes accustomed to letting itself be at ease, the more it will always grow in it and the more it will feel that general loving knowledge of God, which it likes more than all things, because it gives it peace, rest, taste and delight without work" 89, Such, in fact, is the nature of the mystical experience. At first, it is subtle and delicate, almost insensitive, due to the imperfect action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; then, little by little, this action intensifies in degree and multiplies in number, until it finally imposes itself and predominates in the life of the soul. It is then that the soul has entered the full mystical state, the essential characteristic of which is precisely the predominance of the acts of the gifts in the divine way over the simple exercise of the infused virtues in the human way, which was the typical and characteristic note of the ascetical state 90 . The gifts of the Holy Spirit, if there is no reason to the contrary on the part of God or the dispositions of the soul, tend to produce an experience of the divine by virtue of that divine modality which is foreign to our human psychology. But there are exceptions, both on the part of the divine motion and on the part of the soul's dispositions, and this is exactly what happens in the passive purifications or nights of the sense and of the spirit. The divine motion of the gifts has as its purpose in these nights to purify the soul of all its sensible attachments (in the night of the sense) and even of the spiritual delights produced by contemplation (in the night of the spirit). A type of motion is therefore imposed that not only fails to provide the experience of God (always full of softness and delight), but gives the opposite feeling, that is, of absence and abandonment of God, which will produce a torture of great purifying value. In these cases, the gift will be limited to producing its essential and primary effect, which is to dispose the soul for the superhuman exercise of the virtues, ceasing to produce its second, accidental and secondary effect - which is the experience of the divine - , by a logical and natural requirement of the purification that God intends to do in the 89 Ascent 11,13,7. 90 We fully agree with the following words of Fr. Lucinio, C.D., which we have already quoted in part: "That the superhuman way of acting the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the characteristic note of Mysticism is not only said by Carmelite doctors. It is a common thesis. In reality, by this supernaturalness the mystic experiences the divine realities that God passively and without industry on his part gives him to taste, while before, as it happens to the majority of Christians, it was not possible to have experience of the same divine things because of the connaturality in which they were mixed with his normal activity. For this reason, the mystic has a very different perspective of predestination (as can be seen in St. John of the Cross) from the one we all have, who, if we felt the gifts, would feel the grace* ("Revista de Espiritualidad* [1940] p.556). c. 4. nature of mysticism 247 soul. The Holy Spirit is master of his gifts and can do with them as he wishes. And sometimes he acts them in all their fullness (so to speak), producing their two effects, the essential (divine or superhuman modality) and the accidental (felt experience of God), and at other times he limits himself to exercising them only in their essential aspect, leaving the accidental aspect completely suspended and even producing in the soul a diametrically opposite effect. If to this difference on the part of the divine motion we add the dispositions of the soul in the period of the passive nights, it will be quite clear why it does not perceive in those states the divine motion of the gifts. For - as St. John of the Cross admirably explains in the text we have just quoted - at the beginning of the first lights of contemplation (night of sense), the soul is not accustomed to that "very subtle and delicate and almost insensible" light which is communicated to it in pure spirit; and since, on the other hand, it finds itself unable to exercise the discursive exercise of meditation to which it was accustomed, it remains apparently without the one and without the other, that is, completely in darkness; until, allowing herself to be soothed and limiting herself to keep her spirit in a simple loving gaze, she perceives, more and more strongly, the divine motion of the gifts, which will finally give her, when she emerges completely from the night of sense, a frank and unequivocal experience of the divine. In the night of the spirit something similar happens. God intends to carry the purification of the soul to its ultimate consequences before admitting it to the transformative union or spiritual marriage. And for this purpose he increases extraordinarily the power of the infused light. The poor soul, blinded by so much light, is unable to see more than the accumulation of miseries and imperfections with which it is completely filled, and which before receiving this extraordinary light it was incapable of perceiving; just as "like water in a glass, which, if the sun does not hit it, is very clear; if it hits it, you see that it is all full of specks," according to the beautiful simile of St. Teresa 91 . The contrast between the holiness and greatness of God and his misery and littleness is so great that it clearly seems to him that it will never be possible to unite light with darkness, holiness with sin, everything with nothingness, the Creator with the poor creature. This causes him a dreadful torture, which constitutes the substantial background of the night of the spirit 92 . The poor soul does not realize that it is precisely the intensity of contemplative light that produces that state. It sees nothing but ineffable grandeurs on the one hand and misery and corruption on the other. She believes herself to be irretrievably lost and separated from God. And yet she continues to practice to a heroic degree, in a more superhuman way than ever, the infused virtues, especially the theological virtues, by which she lives substantially. The gifts are acting in her soul very intensely, producing their essential effect, which is that divine or superhuman modality with which the soul exercises the virtues. 91 Life 20.28. I 9 2 St. John of the Cross, Night 11,5,5 248 r. ii. fundamental principles ceasing to produce, as a logical consequence of the purification and dispositions of the soul, its accidental and secondary effect, which is none other than the felt experience of God. The gifts of the Holy Spirit tend to produce, if there is nothing on the part of God or the soul to prevent it, a passive experience of the divine: this is their accidental or secondary effect. But there can be, on either or both sides, reasons or obstacles that prevent them from having this accidental effect, while maintaining intact their primary and essential effect, which is the divine or superhuman modality with which the Christian life is lived by means of them. 3. Complementary issues From all that we have just said, some important consequences can be deduced, which must be gathered here in order to understand the true nature of mysticism. Here are the main ones briefly presented: 1. a "Mystical act" is not the same as "mystical state". 137. In fact, as we have just seen, the mystical experience is produced by the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit because of his divine modality, which is completely foreign to our human psychology. Consequently, there is a mystical act - more or less intense or manifest - whenever any gift of the Holy Spirit acts in the soul. For the action of this gift in the divine mode - which is the only possible one, as we have already seen in its corresponding place - will give the soul, if there is nothing to prevent it, in a more or less intense but very real way, the passive experience of the divine, which is what constitutes, from the psychological point of view, the most frequent and ordinary phenomenon of mysticism. But it is evident that some isolated act of the gifts is not enough to constitute the soul in the mystical state. A state is in itself something fixed, stable, permanent, habitual, which cannot be compensated with only some weak, transitory and passing acts. There is no mystical state until the action of the gifts is so intense and frequent that it begins to predominate over the simple exercise of the infused virtues in the human way. Of course, the expression mystical state must be understood correctly, because in some sense it could be false. Precisely because it is a simple predominance of the regime of the gifts, this expression can never be understood in an absolute way, but only in a relative way. It is not a question of a properly habitual psychological situation, but only of a predominant way of acting. The mystical state understood in a permanent and habitual way, without any kind of intermittency, never occurs. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are not acting continuously and uninterruptedly in any mystic, no matter how elevated he may be. The gifts act in the soul of the mystic in an increasingly intense and frequent way, but never in a permanent and uninterrupted way. The reason is clear: for them to act, a special motion of the Holy Spirit is needed in each case - only He can move them directly and immediately - equivalent to the motion of the actual graces, which are in themselves transitory and passing. C. 4 . NATURE OF MYSTICISM 249 For this reason, when theologians and experimental mystics speak of the mystical state, they understand the word state in a broad sense, making it equivalent to a habitual state of simple predominance of the gifts. What is meant by this is that ordinarily, habitually, the acts of the gifts predominate in the soul of the mystic over his private initiative, which would put into exercise - with the help of grace - the infused virtues in the human way. Understood in this sense, this expression is exact and true, and has the advantage of immediately suggesting to us the idea of a soul that lives already, more often than not, under the rule and motion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So, reducing to precise and brief formulas the distinction between act and mystical state, we could give the following definitions: a) We call mystical act the simple performance, more or less intense, of a gift of the Holy Spirit in a divine or superhuman way. b) We understand by mystical state the manifest predominance of the action of the gifts in the divine way over the simple exercise of the infused virtues in the human way. Forgetting this simple distinction has given rise to most of the errors that many authors of spirituality have made, especially in recent times. 2.® "Mysticism" is not the same as "infused contemplation". 138. There are many authors who speak indistinctly of both things as if they were one and the same reality; but, precisely speaking, they are two distinct and even separable things in a certain sense. There cannot be infused contemplation without mysticism, since it is contemplation - contemplation - the mystical act par excellence; but there can be mysticism without infused contemplation. The reason for this apparent antinomy is very simple. All theologians agree in affirming that infused contemplation is produced by the intellective gifts - especially those of wisdom and understanding - not by the affective gifts. This is common doctrine and admitted by all ® 3 . Now, in practice, it is perfectly possible for one of the affective gifts (that of piety, for example) to act in the soul and produce in it a mystical act, without producing infused contemplation, since this comes only from the intellective gifts. And there is no objection to these acts of the affective gifts multiplying and intensifying to the point of introducing the soul into the "mystical state" without producing in it - at least in a clear and manifest way - the usual regime of contemplative prayer 94 . Such is, it seems to us, the case with the 93 See, for example, the repetition of this doctrine by Father Chrysogonus himself. Speaking of the actual grace that sets the intellectual gifts in motion to produce contemplation, he writes: "This actual grace is received in the habits of the gifts of understanding, science, and wisdom, which in receiving it act according to their extraordinary operation, as befits that grace and divine influence which they receive. That operation of the gifts, which is performed in a superhuman way, is the very act of infused contemplation* ( Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism p.165). 94 See on this very subject the remarkable article by M. Jacques Maritain Une question sur la vie mystique et la contemplation, published in "La vie spirituelle" (March 1923, p. 636-50), and the wise warnings given by Father Garrigou-Lagrange. Here is a paragraph from that article, in which the professor of the Institut Catholique de Paris admirably summarized the same doctrine we have just expounded: "The notion of life or mystical order has a greater extension than that of contemplation, at least if we are talking about contemplation itself, fruit of the gift of the Sacredness. For if all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are interrelated and largely connected with charity (which is superior to God's), however, the exercise of such a gift can shine even more brightly. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES angelic St. Therese of Lisieux, who was perfectly mystical, for she was "fully possessed by the Holy Spirit even though she did not usually enjoy the sweetness of contemplation. In her, as everyone knows, the gift of piety, which is precisely one of the affective gifts, not the intellectual one, and is therefore incapable of producing contemplation, stood out in an extraordinary way. However, it should be noted that this is not the norm in the lives of the saints. They do not usually enter the mystical state - at least in a full and perfect way - without actually receiving infused contemplation. The reason is because the gifts of the Holy Spirit - as we have already seen, according to St. Thomas - are in intimate connection with charity, and together with it they grow all at once like the fingers of one hand.95 Consequently, although acts of the Holy Spirit can perfectly well be given to the saints, they can also be given to the saints. Therefore, although non-contemplative mystical acts can perfectly well occur through the action of one of the affective gifts, it is very difficult, and we might even say morally impossible, for the soul to enter into the full mystical state without the intellectual gifts ever acting, producing infused contemplation. Otherwise, it would seem that these intellectual gifts would have no reason to exist and no purpose in these souls if they were to remain always idle and without ever acting. And so we see how in fact, in practice, even in those saints in whom the affective gifts have clearly predominated, infused contemplation has often taken place. St. Therese of Lisieux herself - not to leave the cited case - confessed to her older sister, Sister Agnes of Jesus, that she had enjoyed several times the prayer of quietude - the second degree of infused contemplation, according to St. Teresa of Jesus 96 - and that she knew by experience what is the "flight of the spirit", a very high contemplative phenomenon, of ecstatic order, as the distinguished Mystical Doctor explains 97 '. 3. a Asceticism and mysticism mutually interpenetrate each other, in such a way that there is never a pure ascetical state or a pure mystical state. The ascetic sometimes proceeds mystically, and the mystic, ascetically. We call, however, the ascetic state that in which ascetic acts predominate, and the mystical state that in which mystical acts predominate. 139. This is another clear consequence of the doctrine set forth above. The gifts of the Holy Spirit can act, and do act, in fact, in the full ascetical state, transitorily producing a mystical act, although perhaps only weakly and in an almost insensitive manner, especially in the beginning of the spiritual life, because the imperfect disposition of the chez l'iin ou chez I'autre, et une áme en qui apparaíssent avant tout tout les Dons qui se rapportent à l'action (Conseil, Forcé, Crainte.,.) sera entrée dans l'ordre mystique sans étre parvenue pour cela à la contemplation proprement díte, qui dépends príncipalement des Dons d'Intelligence et de Sagesse* (p.639-40). We are in complete agreement. " 1-11,68,5; cf. 66,2. 06 Cf. St. Teresa, Relation to Father Rodrigo Alvares n.4. 97 Cf. Moradas sextas c.$, and Relación al P. Rodrigo n.n.- Here are the texts referring to St. Therese, as can be seen in the Ñovissima verba, annotation belonging to the July n.n.409 of the Obras completas (3.* ed. Burgos 1950): "She reminded me-says Sister Inés de Jesús-some of her steps of mental prayer on summer nights during the rigorous silence, and told me that she understood by experience what is "flight of spirit". She told me of another similar grace received at the hermitage of St. Magdalene, in the monastery garden, in July 1889, which was followed by several days of quietude. Note that in July of J.S69 the Saint was still in the middle of her novitiate year. r. 4, N VTtTR AT.F.Z \ f>F. THE MYSTIC soul that receives it 98 . On the contrary, mystical souls, even those who have reached the highest summits of transformative union, sometimes need to proceed in the manner of ascetics because they do not experience at some given moment the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit. St. Teresa speaks beautifully of the latter when she says that "there is no state of prayer so high that it is not often necessary to return to the beginning", and when she warns her nuns that even souls who have reached the sublime heights of the Seventh Abodes of their interior castle, "sometimes Our Lord leaves them in their natural". Let us hear Fr. Arintero expound this same doctrine: "In short, as we have already said in the Mystical Evolution, what really constitutes the mystical state is the predominance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (and their consequences; the mature and seasoned fruits of the beatitudes) over the simple ordinary living faith, with its corresponding works of hope and charity, while that of the latter over the former characterizes the ascetic state. But sometimes the good "ascetic", moved by the divine Spirit, can proceed mystically although he does not realize it; just as, on the contrary, the mystics, however elevated they may be, when for some time the Spirit withdraws from them - although he leaves them rich in great affections and fruits, which give all their acts more intensity and value - must and do proceed in the manner of ascetics.... Thus, the soul that still walks along the most ordinary paths sometimes produces true mystical acts, just as a mystic often produces ascetical acts; and these acts increase until, little by little, purified and enlightened, they become habitual. And when this happens, when she habitually produces acts of virtue and, having already denied herself, almost ordinarily allows herself to be moved without resistance by the touches and breaths of the sanctifying Spirit, who, like a finely tuned musical instrument, handles her at will, drawing from her divine melodies, then we can say that she is already in the full mystical state, even if at times or at seasons she still has to descend to the ascetic" 101 . 98 Let us see how Father Garrigou-Lagrange explains this doctrine. After having explained why the gifts of the Holy Spirit generally intervene in the ascetical life in a latent and not very intense way (namely, through venial sins, which hinder the action of the Holy Spirit; through lack of recollection, etc.), he writes: "However, sometimes in the ascetical life and in beginners, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not always present in a latent and intense way.), writes the famous professor of the Angelicum: "However, sometimes in the ascetic life and in beginners, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the superhuman way of acting are sufficiently manifested, whether it is a matter of the inferior gifts, for example, the gift of fear or of knowledge, to make us see the gravity of sin, or whether it is a matter of passing illuminations of the gift of understanding or of wisdom, to manifest to us the greatness of God or of his commandments. So there are isolated mystical acts of brief duration that do not constitute a state; in this way there are acts of infused contemplation in what many have called acquired contemplation. But usually in the ascetical life the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the superhuman way of working remain latent. However, it should not be said that the gifts do not then work in a "superhuman way"; this way exists, but remains hidden. We have said that it is like when a light breeze accompanies the work of the rowers: one is more conscious of working than of being moved" (Perfection chrétienne et contemplation p. 770-1). 99 St. Teresa, Life 13, 15. i°o St. Teresa, Seventh Moradas 4,1. 101 P. Arintero, Cuestiones místicas 6. a.3 p.663,4 (3" a ed.): Here is how the learned P. Joret, O.P. expounds this doctrine: "A being in which all its movements were only passive, has never existed outside the imagination of the quietists. Joret, O.P.: "A being in which all its movements were only passive has never existed outside the imagination of the quietists. The divine motions to which the soul lends its docility characterize the mystical state when they predominate, just as the predominance of virtuous actions produced by human initiative itself constitutes the ascetic state. But the soul that finds itself in the ascetic state 252 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 253 c- 5 This leads us hand in hand to the fourth consequence. 4. a Mysticism is so far from being an abnormal or extraordinary grace - like the graces "freely given" - that it begins, on the contrary, in the ascetic state, and all Christians participate more or less in it even when they are at the very dawn of the spiritual life. 140. This consequence, in reality, is nothing more than a corollary and confirmation of the previous one. If mystical acts sometimes occur in the simple ascetic and the higher mystic sometimes has to descend to ascetical acts, it follows that between asceticism and mysticism there is no insurmountable barrier for anyone. Rather, the passage from one to the other takes place in a completely normal and insensitive manner, since mysticism differs from asceticism only by the predominance of certain acts that already begin to occur, even if rarely and with little intensity, at the very beginning of the Christian life. Here is a text by Fr. Arintero expounding this doctrine: "Since the gifts, to a greater or lesser degree, are infused - as we have already seen - with the same sanctifying grace and grow with charity, all those who live in charity can, by means of them, sometimes act heroically and mystically. And so, although in a very slow state, mysticism begins at the very dawn of the spiritual life, and this, in reality, includes, in a certain way, the whole development of the Christian life and the whole path of evangelical perfection, even though its principal manifestations (which are the ones that usually attract attention and, therefore, are taken as typical of it) may be the most important ones, and, therefore, taken as typical) are almost all reserved for the unitive way, in which the soul already has the habit of heroism and of the divine, and in which, exercising itself with perfection in the most difficult practices of virtue, it already clearly works supra modum humanun" 102 . This doctrine, full of light and harmony, restores to the Christian life all the grandeur and sublimity that we admired in the time of the early Church, where the Christian spirit undoubtedly reached its maximum flowering and splendor. At the time of the apostles and the first centuries of Christianity, the "supernatural" - understood in the most impressive sense, as a synonym of heroic or superhuman - was the normal atmosphere in the Church of Jesus Christ. It was later that complications and divisions were introduced into what was in itself easy and simple. The ways of the Lord were altered and complicated and the saints became scarce. From the point of view of ascetical-mystical doctrine, the period of greatest confusion and disorder began in the first years of the seventeenth century and extended almost until the beginning of our century, when the reaction began to return to the great principles of true traditional mysticism. Nowadays, the truth has so far spread that there are very few spiritual authors of any authority and representation who still insist on presenting mysticism as a completely abnormal and extraordinary phenomenon, reserved by a sometimes works mystically, and, on the contrary, the mystical soul never ceases completely to work in the simple ascetic manner" (La contemplaron mystique d'aprés Saint Thomas d'Aquin P IO & Mystical Questions 6.* a,3 p.663 (3.* ed.). arcane providence of God for a small group of aristocrats of the spirit. The vast majority of authors affirm, on the contrary, that between asceticism and mysticism there is no insurmountable barrier for anyone. They are not two independent paths that lead each in its own way to the summit of Christian perfection, but only two stages of a single path of perfection, which everyone must travel by increasingly intense degrees until reaching sanctity. Mysticism begins, in a certain sense, at the very beginning of the Christian life, since in what is essential to it coincides with the simple working of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which all Christians have received at baptism and which habitually remain in all souls in grace. This is what we will look at a little more extensively in the next chapter. CHAPTER V Relationship between Christian perfection and mysticism I N 7 R O D U C T I O N 1. Approach and importance of the question 141. One of the most controversial questions today among the various schools of Christian spirituality is undoubtedly that concerning the relationship between mysticism and Christian perfection. There are two main sentences that have divided theologians on this very important question. The first advocates the unity of the way throughout the spiritual life, considering asceticism and mysticism as two stages of one and the same path that all must travel to reach perfection; in such a way that the ascetical stage serves as a basis and preparation for mysticism, in which alone can the full perfection of the Christian life be achieved. The second sentence, on the contrary, affirms the duality of ways - that of asceticism and that of mysticism - by either of which one can arrive indistinctly at the highest summits of Christian perfection; But in such a way that the ascetical way is the normal and common way according to the ordinary providence of God, and, therefore, it is the way that all must follow and practice, unless they are led by Him - by virtue of an arcane of His extraordinary providence - along the paths of mysticism, which thus becomes an entirely abnormal and extraordinary way. The exceptional importance of this question, not only in terms of theory and ideas, but also in practical and factual terms, cannot be concealed from anyone, since the solution to this question will depend on 254 r. u. rKiNr.mos mental fund c. £- relationship between perfection and mysticism The problem in the speculative order depends to a great extent - if we want to be logical - on the direction and channeling to be given to souls in their march towards sanctity x . Sense of the matter 142. First of all, it is necessary to point out the true meaning of the question, since not everyone understands it in the same way. a) There are those who believe that what we are trying to find out is whether there is one or several species of sanctity, determined by the evolution of one or several species of sanctifying grace. This is not the question. Sanctifying grace is one, both for those who affirm and for those who deny the unity of the spiritual life, since there is not and cannot be another mode of participation in the divine nature which, being a true formal participation under the concept of nature, is more perfect without ceasing to be accidental. It is not a question, then, of knowing whether there exists in the mystical way a sanctifying grace specifically distinct from that which corresponds to the ascetical way. In this sense, all theologians, whatever school they belong to, admit the unity of the spiritual life, since one is grace, one is faith and one is charity, which constitute this life from beginning to end. b) Nor is it a question of knowing if there exists in the mystical way, and only in it, a call to perfection unknown in the ascetical way. Or even more clearly: it is not a question of knowing whether all souls - whether mystics or not - are called to Christian perfection. All schools of spirituality answer this question in the affirmative, and in this they are all in agreement. What is discussed is whether this perfection falls exclusively under the domain of mysticism or whether it can also be attained without leaving the boundaries of the ascetical path. c) Finally, we are not trying to determine the de fado question - whether there are many or few who in fact walk the mystical paths - but only the de iure question, that is, whether the mystical states are part of the normal unfolding of sanctifying grace or whether they are the effect - on the contrary - of an abnormal and extraordinary providence, outside of the common paths open to all Christians in grace. Having discarded the false approaches to the question, let us now present the true approach to the problem. We make the following words of Father Chrysogonus our own, even though our conclusions will be quite the opposite of his: 1 However, these disputes and controversies should never be brought into the field of spiritual direction, and the director should limit himself to the application of the great principles common to all schools (cf. 11.527,2°). 2 Cf. P. Grtsogono, La perfection et la mystique selon les principes de Saint-Thomas (Bruges 1932). "We are all called to Christian perfection. Perfection, that is, the unfolding of grace and virtues in the soul, is the end of the spiritual life. To reach this perfection, is it necessary for the soul to experience mystical phenomena or can it attain it without having experienced any? In other words: are asceticism and mysticism two parts of the same and unique path that leads to the end of the spiritual life [ Ja perfection of charity - or are they two different paths that lead to the same end? As can be seen, the question does not concern the beginning or the end of the spiritual life. Neither in the one nor in the other can there be any specific difference, since grace and charity can only be essentially one and the same. The discussion refers to the necessary means to be employed so that the principle of the spiritual life, which is grace, may reach the end of this path, its perfect unfolding: the perfection of charity. For this very reason the expression used to designate the question that concerns us seems to us to be inappropriate. It would be more accurate to say that it is a question of the unity of the spiritual WAY rather than the unity of the spiritual life" 3 . 3. Conclusions Taking into account the principles that we have been laying down in the preceding pages, it seems to us that the main relations between Christian perfection and mysticism can be synthesized in the following conclusions: 1. a Mysticism enters into the normal development of grace. 2. a Full Christian perfection is found only in the mystical life. 3. a We are all called, at least remotely and sufficiently, to the mystical life. Let's examine each one in particular. Conclusion 1. a : Mysticism enters into the normal development of grace. sanctifying. I 43- Taking into account the principles established above, this conclusion appears quite clear and evident. There are three elements involved in it, and we have studied all three extensively in their corresponding places: grace, its normal development and mysticism. It will suffice to recall here what we have said and demonstrated in those places for the conclusion to impose itself on us. i. We have said that sanctifying grace is given to us in the form of a seed, a supernatural germ, which by its very nature demands and demands growth and development. This is so clear and evident that it is an undisputed and unanimous thesis in the different schools of Christian spirituality that if grace were infused into our souls already perfectly developed, the obligation that we all have to tend to the per 3 Cf. P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 257 fection. From where it would follow that asceticism and mysticism as sciences would neither exist nor have any reason to exist. 2° We also know - as we have seen at length - what mysticism consists in. It is simply the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a divine or superhuman way that ordinarily produces a passive experience of the divine. This point is also universally admitted by all, except for some differences of nuances that do not affect the substantial substance of things. Those who deny the universal appeal to mysticism will allege the possibility of a human modality in the gifts or some other subterfuge, but all substantially admit - as we have seen with all clarity in the lengthy passage of the previous chapter - that mysticism is produced by the divine or superhuman modality of the gifts. 3. 0 There is also perfect agreement among all schools as to what is to be understood by the normal development of sanctifying grace. Everything that is within the demands of grace evidently enters into the normal and ordinary development of grace. And everything that is outside and on the margin of the demands of grace will be something abnormal and extraordinary in the development of grace. On this we are all agreed 4 . Now, who can deny that the simple action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is perfectly within the demands of grace? Who would dare to say that the simple action of a gift of the Holy Spirit is an "abnormal" and "extraordinary" phenomenon in the life of grace? Would it be worth taking seriously and stopping to refute such an assertion? In fact, no one until now has dared to say such a thing. All schools of Christian spirituality recognize and proclaim that the simple action of a gift of the Holy Spirit cannot be classed among the extraordinary phenomena - as, for example, graces gratis datae are classed - but that it is something perfectly normal and ordinary in the life of grace 5 . And precisely because they realize the inevitable consequences that follow from such a clear and evident fact, those who deny the universal appeal to mysticism hasten to say that the gifts can act in two ways: one in the human way - which does not go beyond or transcend the boundaries of asceticism - and the other in the divine way, which is proper and characteristic of mysticism. Consequently - they conclude - , from the fact, admitted by all, that the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit enters into the normal and ordinary development of grace, it cannot be concluded that mysticism also enters - at least in a necessary way - into this normal development, because it can be a question of a 4 Cf. P. Chrysogonus, Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism p.i.* c.2 a.2. 5 How could it be otherwise, bearing in mind that, as St. Thomas teaches, Is a more or less intense participation in the gifts necessary even for salvation? Poulain himself - a determined opponent of the universal appeal to mysticism - admits the perfect normality of the action of the gifts in every soul in grace, and quotes Suarez (De gratia i,6 c.ro n.4) and Billot (De virtutibus infusis a. 63 p. 160-70) who teach that the gifts must act in every soul in grace.) and Billot (De virtutibus infusis a. 63 p. 160-70)" who teach that Jos gifts must act and do act throughout the Christian life (cf. Des gráces d'oraison VI, 19 bis). For this reason, theologians who deny the universal call to mysticism hasten to explain the intervention of the gifts in the ascetical life by their action in the human way, and in this way they try to avoid the tremendous difficulty that was coming upon them, and which would destroy their fundamental thesis. C. 5, RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM The human way of acting out the gifts, which can and does occur in the full ascetic state. This explanation - we are pleased to admit - would be irreproachable if it were true, but the reader already knows that it seems to us to be completely false and erroneous in every sense of the word. Indeed. As we have already demonstrated in the corresponding place, the gifts of the Holy Spirit do not have and cannot have an operation in the human way. It is not that they do not have it in fact; it is that they cannot have it in any way because it is incompatible with the very nature of the gifts. We have already seen at length that this operation of the gifts in the human way, besides being useless and superfluous (if it were possible), is philosophically impossible (it would destroy the very nature of the habits) and theologically absurd (it would destroy the very nature of the gifts). Therefore, either the gifts do not act - and then we are out of the question - or they necessarily act in the divine way, and then we are within the question and within mysticism, because this acting in the divine way will necessarily produce a mystical act - that is its very definition - although its intensity and duration may vary greatly. In the ascetic state, the gifts act rarely, imperfectly and with little intensity because the imperfect disposition of the souls in it does not allow otherwise. The superhuman mode of the gifts certainly occurs even in this case, but in a weak, imperfect, latent way, as Father Garrigou-Lagrange 6 likes to say. It all boils down to the soul, with the help of grace, disposing itself better and better so that the gifts intensify and multiply their action. They do not have to change species, they do not need any other element added to their intimate nature. It is enough that this exercise, latent and imperfect in the ascetical state, be intensified and multiplied so that the soul enters insensibly and gradually into the full mystical state, whose essential characteristic consists precisely in the simple predominance of the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine way over the simple exercise or predominance of the infused virtues in the human way, which is typical and characteristic of asceticism. This explanation, demanded by the very nature of things, seems to us to have no way back. As long as our adversaries do not prove to us that the simple action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is an "abnormal" and "extraordinary" phenomenon in the life of grace - and we are quite sure that they will never do so - we will rest secure in our conclusion as in an impregnable fortress. 6 See n.i3Q note. Theol. of Pcrfec. 258 p. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Conclusion 2. a : Full Christian perfection is found only in the mystical life. 144. Here is another conclusion that follows as a corollary to the theological principles that we have established above in the footsteps of St. Thomas. Let us recall some fundamental ideas: 1. * Christian perfection, according to all schools of spirituality, consists in the full development of the sanctifying grace received in baptism in the form of a seed or germ. 2. a This development is verified by the growth of the infused, theological and moral virtues, especially charity, which is the virtue par excellence, and whose perfection coincides with the very perfection of the Christian life. 3. a The mystical state is characterized by the predominant action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way over the predominant exercise of the infused virtues in the human way, which is what characterizes the ascetic state. 4. a The infused virtues, both theological and moral, cannot attain their perfection except under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, for without them they cannot escape from the human mode to which they are forced to submit in the ascetical state because of the rule and government of human reason, which dominates and controls them in that state. Only the divine modality of the gifts provides the infused virtues with the propitious atmosphere that they demand and require for their own excellence and perfection, especially the theological virtues, which are divine virtues in themselves, and which suffocate and suffocate in that human atmosphere so disproportionate to their nature. All this we have studied and demonstrated at length in its corresponding places. Now then: this being assumed, the conclusion imposes itself with the logical force of a syllogism. Here it is formulated in the scholastic manner with all precision: The infused virtues cannot attain their perfection except under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit acting upon them in a divine or superhuman way. Thus it is precisely this action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way that constitutes the very essence of mysticism. Therefore, the infused virtues cannot reach their perfection outside the mystical life. Now, since Christian perfection coincides with the perfection of the infused virtues, especially charity, if these virtues cannot attain their perfection except in the mystical life, it follows inevitably that Christian perfection is impossible outside of that mystical life. And this is exactly what we wanted to demonstrate. This second conclusion, obscured and forgotten during the last three centuries of the decadence of mysticism, has once again made its way with overwhelming force among the authors of Christian spirituality of our days. As we have already said, there are very few of any representation and authority who continue to maintain the doctrines of the decadence, and, certainly, none of them succeeds in C. 5. relations between perfection and mysticism 259 to oppose a single serious argument to the magnificent theological construction of the Angelic Doctor, which totally coincides with that of the great experimental mystics. Let us look briefly at the three great luminaries of experimental mysticism: St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Jesus and St. Francis de Sales, whose doctrines coincide completely with the principles of the Angelic Doctor, as demonstrated, among others, by Fathers Garrigou-Lagrange 7 and Lamballe 8 . 145. St. John of the Cross. - The thought of St. John of the Cross cannot be put in doubt, if - as is elementary in healthy criticism - one attends to the whole and totality of his system, frankly oriented towards mysticism as a normal and indispensable term to reach Christian perfection. To focus on an isolated text, ignoring the whole of his system and standing in front of it, may be very comfortable to defend any preconceived thesis, but it is not serious, not even respectful, for the genuine and authentic thought of the great mystic fontivereño. For anyone who reads the works of the Mystic Doctor without prejudice or passion, it is obvious that, according to him, no one can reach Christian perfection, "no matter how hard he tries", except on the basis of passive purifications, which are of a frankly mystical order according to all schools. We would like to transcribe here two texts of the Mystic Doctor that comment on their own: "For no matter how much the beginner in mortifying in himself exercises all these actions and passions, he can never fully, nor by far, until God does it in him passively by means of the purgation of the said night "9. "But from these imperfections, as from the others, the soul cannot be fully purified until God places it in the passive purgation of that dark night which we will say later. But it behoves the soul, as far as it can, to strive on its part to purify and perfect itself, so that it may deserve to be placed by God in that divine cure, where the soul is healed of all that it was unable to remedy. For no matter how much the soul helps itself, it cannot actively purify itself in such a way that it is prepared in the least for the divine union of perfection of love, if God does not take the hand and purge it in that dark fire for it as and in the way that we are to be told" 10 . As can be seen, the thought of St. John of the Cross is very clear for anyone who knows how to read. The need for mystical purifications in order to attain perfection cannot be expressed more forcefully. St. John of the Cross starts from the assumption of a soul that works and strives seriously to purify itself of its imperfections; that is, of a soul that has reached the summit of asceticism; and of this generous soul that does everything it can, the Saint says that it cannot dispose itself in the least for the divine union of perfection of love - and this "no matter how much the soul helps itself" - until God does it passively in it by means of mystical purifications. To want to circumvent the difficulty by saying that the Saint says this "only of those who are to be sanctified by the mystical way" - and this "no matter how much the soul is helped" - until God does it passively in it by means of mystical purifications. 8 Gf. Contemplation c. 2 . 9 Dark night 1.7.5. 10 Dark night 1,3,3. 260 )'. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 261 This is "twisting and tormenting the words of the Mystical Doctor".11 For St. John of the Cross, Christian perfection is absolutely impossible outside the mystical states.12 For St. John of the Cross, Christian perfection is absolutely impossible outside the mystical states. For St. John of the Cross, Christian perfection is absolutely impossible outside the mystical states 12 . Saint Teresa. - The same must be said of the Mystical Doctor, so much in agreement with St. John of the Cross. To St. Teresa, all that we can do ascetically in the ways of God 13 seemed to be "little straws" and "little considerations. And that mysticism is the normal term of the Christian life, and, for the same reason, is not reserved for a few aristocrats of the spirit, but is fully open to all souls in grace, she not only says it equivalently in a hundred places in her works 14 , but she herself takes care to expressly warn everyone that the purpose she pursues in writing her books - apart from the reason of obedience - is none other than that of "enticing souls in such a high good" 15 . As for certain apparent contradictions in which the great Saint incurs by affirming in some passages what she had apparently denied in others, Saint Teresa herself explains with all clarity and precision the true scope and meaning of her words. Here is the passage where she herself explains her own thinking and apparent contradictions: "It seems that I contradict myself in this last chapter of what I have said, because when I was consoling those who did not come here, I said that the Lord had different ways by which they went to Him, just as there were many dwellings. I will say it again now, because when His Majesty understood our weakness, He provided for us as He is. But he did not say, "Some come this way and others this way," but his mercy was so great that he did not prevent anyone from seeking to come to this fountain of life to drink. Blessed is he forever, and with what reason will he take it away from me!" 16 Note the singular importance of this passage for understanding the authentic and genuine sentiments of St. Teresa. It is the Saint herself who, realizing perfectly well that what she has just affirmed in the previous paragraph (that 11 Cf. P. Crisogono, San Juan de la Cruz, su abra científica y literaria t.i p.222-26. 12 Nor is it valid to oppose - as has been done many times - the famous text of the Dark Night (1.9,9): "because not all those who are exercised with purpose...", where the Saint seems to deny the universal call to mysticism. This text is not valid, because the interpretation to be given to it is given to us by St. John of the Cross himself in The Flame of Living Love (can. 2, n. 27) when he affirms that the reason why so few contemplatives are contemplatives is only the lack of generosity of souls, not the will of God, who would have wanted everyone to be contemplatives (cf. both texts in n. 129 of this work). Note, moreover, that the writing of the Flame of living love is later than that of the Dark Night. The Night was finished by the Saint in 1583, and the Flame was written during his first provincial vicariate (1585-87), while residing in Granada (cf. Life and Works of St. John of the Cross [BAC, 2.* ed.] p.537 and 1158). It is, therefore, in the Flame and not in the Night that we must look for the definitive thought of the Saint. 13 "But here a few straws put up in humility (and they will be less than straws if we put them up) ..." (cf. Life 15:7). (cf. Life 15:7) - "... the Lord himself gives it in a very different way from what we can gain with our little considerations, which are nothing in comparison with the true humility with light that the Lord teaches here, which makes a confusion that undoes" (Life 15:14; cf. 31:23). 1 4 Here is one of the most egregious of these places : rBehold, the Lord invites all: for it is the same truth, let there be no doubt. If this invitation were not general, the Lord would not call us all, and even if he did call them, he would not say, "I will give you something to drink. He could have said, "Come all of you, for you will lose nothing; and those whom I shall see fit, I will give you to drink. But since he said, without this condition, to all, I am sure that all those who do not stay on the way will not lack this living water (Way of Perfection 19:15). 1 5 "Your Majesty knows that after I have obeyed, it is my intention to beguile souls with such a high good* (Life 18:8). 1 6 Way of perfection 20, 1. C. 5. RELATIONS BETWEEN A.I. PERFECTION AND A.I. MYSTICISM The words of the Virgin Mary (the clearest and most expressive of the universal call to mysticism, symbolized in the "water" of contemplation), seemed to contradict what she had said earlier, "consoling those who did not come here," and she sets out to clarify and specify her thought, giving us the authentic interpretation to be given to her words. And having done so, and expressing himself with all care and accuracy, perfectly aware of what he is going to say, he tells us that the Lord invites us all to drink the clean and crystalline water of mystical contemplation: "... he did not say: Some should come this way and others that way; but his mercy was so great that he did not prevent anyone from seeking to come to this fountain of life to drink". The most exalted defender of the universal call to mysticism would not be able to express himself with greater energy and precision. Unless one arbitrarily sets oneself against the evidence itself, it cannot be denied that St. Teresa is decidedly in favor of the universal call to mysticism. 147. St. Francis de Sales. - Regarding St. Francis de Sales' see the beautiful demonstration made by Fr. Lamballe in his work already cited 17 , where the holy bishop of Geneva tells us in his charming language that "prayer is called meditation until it produces the honey of devotion; after that, it becomes contemplation.... Meditation is the mother of love, but contemplation is its daughter..... Holy contemplation is the end and term (la fin et le butj to which all these exercises tend and all are reduced to it" 1S . This sublime doctrine of St. Thomas, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Jesus and St. Francis de Sales is also that of St. Bonaventure - as an illustrious Franciscan has recently demonstrated 19 -, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Master Eckart, of Taulero, of Susón, of Ruysbroeck, of Blosio, of Blessed John of Avila, of Fr. Lapuente and, in general, that of all the mystical theologians prior to the 17th century, the period in which the disorientation and decadence began. In our days, we repeat, the genuine doctrines of the true traditional mysticism have made their way again, and the most prestigious figures of contemporary spirituality of all religious orders and theological schools are already spreading them throughout the world. To mention here only some of the best known names of true international prestige, we can mention the Benedictines Dom Columba Marmion, Dom Vital Lehodey, Dom Louismet and Dom Stolz; the Dominicans Fr. Gardeil, Garrigou-Lagrange, Arintero, Joret and Philipon; the Franciscans De Besse and Peralta; the Carmelites Gabriel de Santa María Magdalena, Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios and Bruno de Jesús María 20 ; the Jesuits Peeters, Gárate, De la Taille and Jaegher; the Redemptorist Schrijvers; the Augustinian 1 7 Contemplation - Cf. c.2 § 5: "According to Saint Francois de Sales, contemplation is the term to which all exercises of the spiritual life tend". 1 8 St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God 1.6 c.3 and 6. Ignacio Omaechevarría, O.F.M., The Mystical Theology of St. Bonaventure, a study published as a general introduction to t.4 of the Works of St. Bonaventure, BAG edition (1947). 20 The reader should note that the most outstanding figures of the Carmelite Order today are next to the Thomistic theses, which are also undoubtedly the genuine and authentic theses of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross. This means that the truth is making its way and that perhaps the day is not far off when the desired doctrinal unity among all Catholic mystics will be fully achieved. 262 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Cayré; Cardinal Mercier and Bishop Saudreau and even laymen like Maritain. In a word: almost all the great figures of Christian spirituality of our day have turned their eyes once again, after a three-century hiatus, to the sublime conceptions of the great mystics of Catholicism, who have always placed at the disposal of all fervent souls the paths that lead to mystical union with God. And finally, let's look at the third conclusion, which seems almost superfluous after what we have just said. Conclusion 3. a : We are all called, at least remotely and sufficiently, to mystical states. 148. To deny the universal call to mysticism, it would be necessary first to deny the universal call to perfection. If God does not want us all to be perfect, then it is evident that he does not want us all to be mystics either. But if the call to perfection is absolutely universal - and this is so clear that it is proclaimed by all schools without exception - it must be said that the call to mysticism is also universal. We believe we have fully demonstrated in the light of the Angelic Doctor's principles that Christian perfection is completely impossible outside the mystical states. However, although the question de iure seems to us beyond doubt, we have no objection to make some practical restrictions. Here, as elsewhere, if one wishes to remain in the temperate zone of truth and avoid extremist stridencies, which are almost always born of a too ideal consideration of things, which distances them a little from the sad and poor reality, one has no choice but to make a distinction between the legal order and the order of facts. Almost never do matters de iure coincide entirely with those de facto, especially in these matters, in which human misery and limitations play such a great role. It seems to us that the most serene doctrine, the most balanced, the most adjusted to the reality of things that has been proposed until today on this specific point of the universal call to mysticism is that of the distinguished professor of the Angelicum R. P. Garrigou-Lagrange' We believe that the magnificent chapter, a model of serenity and balance, which Fr. Garrigou to resolve this question in his work Perfection chrétienne et contemplation 21 could be accepted - with a little good will and sincere love of truth on the part of all - as a point of convergence and mutual understanding by all schools of Christian spirituality. A brief summary of the doctrine of that chapter is what we are going to offer the reader below. 21 Gf. c.5: L'appel á la contemplation ou à la vie mystique, especially the first three articles (p. 419-76 in the 7th French ed.). C. 5. RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 263 Garrigou begins by specifying the different meanings that can be given to the word "call". For one thing, it is not the same thing to be "called" to the mystical life as to be "elevated," led, chosen, predestined to it. The call is universal, as is the call to perfection, which cannot be achieved outside of mysticism. But since this call to perfection corresponds - as we have already seen at length in its place - to the antecedent will of God, which is often frustrated by man's fault, it follows that not all those called reach the mystical life de facto, but only those who, besides being called, have faithfully corresponded to the inspirations of grace and have been led to it by the infallible efficacious grace, which is the unfailing effect of the consequent will of God. The Gospel formula: "many are called, but few are chosen, "22 applies both to the call to eternal life and to the call to perfection. We are all called to the one and to the other according to the antecedent will of God, and we are all given graces sufficient to attain both if we wish; but God is not obliged to give us, nor does he in fact give us all, the infallible graces, which would in fact lead us infallibly to eternal salvation and to the very summits of Christian perfection. We have already said in the corresponding place that God cannot and must not (if it is lawful to speak thus) save us all, much less is he obliged to raise us to the summit of perfection, because of the inevitable absurdity and the great immorality that would follow. For if by corresponding to grace the same as by not corresponding, by living chastely the same as by wallowing in all kinds of filthiness, by keeping exactly the law of God the same as by breaking his commandments, etc., etc., God were obliged to give us all the graces efficacious to lift us up from our sins voluntarily committed and in fact infallibly attain eternal salvation and even an eminent place in heaven by having also attained Christian perfection, it would follow in a terribly logical way that man would be authorized to mock God. He can now sin with impunity, indulge in all sorts of disorders and break all the precepts of the Decalogue at will; a day will come when God will have to give him the efficacious graces to repent, he will in fact repent, will be saved eternally, and after having laughed at God will quietly occupy a seat near the throne of his infinite majesty. Who does not see that this is absurd and immoral and that God cannot do that without ceasing to be infinitely just and infinitely holy? Evidently, God cannot and must not save us all, much less make us all holy. God demands - must necessarily demand - that man freely correspond to grace, that he do everything he can to - at least - not put any obstacle in the way of the divine action, which wants to save or sanctify him. If he does so, he will infallibly obtain these things - the divine promise is expressed in Sacred Scripture - but if he persists in resisting grace and in sowing the way with obstacles, or at least in walking sluggishly and lukewarmly in the ways of God, can anyone wonder that God, in just and reasonable punishment, will deprive him of effective graces in view of his misuse of the sufficient graces that he had so lavishly and abundantly poured out upon him? And let it not be said that God has in fact knocked one of his persecutors off his horse precisely at the moment when he was persecuting him. God can make - if he freely wishes to do so - a display of mercy so 22 Mt. 20:16; 22:14, 264 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES He is not obliged to do this with any particular soul, despite the absence or even contrary dispositions on his part. But he is not obliged to do so with anyone in particular, nor is it even advisable for him to do so with many, because of the grave risk to which the fulfillment of his commandments would expose us if these graces were too frequent and ordinary. God can, if he wishes, inwardly dispose a sinner to repent and cease to be a sinner, but he is not obliged, nor is it even convenient, to do so with all or with many. Why, if he chooses to do so with only a few, does he choose the one in preference to the other? This very question occurred to St. Paul, and he himself, under the divine light of prophetic inspiration, gave us the splendid answer: "O man, who are you to ask an account of God? "23 And before St. Paul, Christ had told us in the Gospel parable: "Can I not do what I will with my goods? "24 This is the indecipherable arcane of divine predestination, which, according to the formula of St. Thomas, depends solely on the omnipotent will of God 2S . All this presupposes that in the call to the mystical life, as in the vocation to the Christian life, we can distinguish an exterior call (by the Gospel, preaching, spiritual direction, reading, etc.) and an interior call (by a grace of illumination and attraction).26 The call to the mystical life, just as in the vocation to the Christian life, can be distinguished. The external appeal will be general if it is addressed to all indistinctly, and particular or individual if it is addressed to a specific person. The latter is later and more concrete than the former, to whom it comes precisely to complete. Thus, for example, all pagans are called in a general way to the Christian life by the Gospel before this or that person is called in particular or individually (e.g., by the missionary of Christ). The vocation can be special, which is that which is directed only to a reduced group of men (e.g., the vocation to the priesthood); very special, if it is directed to very few souls and for very concrete works (e.g., to found a religious order), and unique (like the vocation of Mary to the divine maternity or that of St. Joseph to be the adoptive father of Jesus and virginal spouse of Mary). The interior vocation can be remote or proximate, and the latter can be sufficient and efficacious. If the virtues and gifts can only reach their full development in the mystical life, all those who possess those virtues and gifts, that is, all souls in grace, will be called to it, at least with a remote call. They will have the proximate call only when the three classic signs of which St. John of the Cross speaks, taking them from Taulero, are united in them.27 This proximate call will be sufficient if the soul has the virtues and gifts of the mystical life. This proximate call will be sufficient if the soul in fact resists it, and it will be efficacious if it causes the soul in fact to enter the mystical life 28 . The next vocation can be subdivided into early (as in "at the right time") and late (as in "at the right time"). 23 Rom. 9:20. 24 Mt. 20:15. 25 "... non habet rationem nisi divinam voluntalem".... "depends: ex sínipljci divina volúntate" (1,23,5 ad 3). 26 Gf. S.Thom., I Sent. d.41 q.r a.2 ad 3; and in Epist. ad Rom. c.8 Iect.6. 27 Cf. n.2i2; see St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 13; and Dark Night I,g. - As for Taulero, see the book that summarizes his doctrine: Las instituciones divinas c. 35 (p.214 in the ed. of P. Getino, Madrid 1922). 28 Note that this doctrine is valid whether the expressions sufficient and efficacious are taken in the Thomistic sense or in the Molinist sense. In the Molinist sense, the efficacy of grace will come exclusively from the creature (ab extrinsicum); in the Thomistic sense, it will have come from itself (ab intrinsicum). But in either case, the soul will in fact have entered the mystical life. It seems idle to point out that we use them in the purest Thomistic sense. C. 5 . RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND I.A. MYSTICISM 265 The company's vineyard workers, who are called in at the last minute, are either late 29 . Finally, a close and effective vocation to the mystical life can be further subdivided according to whether it refers to the highest degrees of the mystical life or only to its lower degrees, which in each case depends on divine predestination. For the sake of clarity, we will collect all these divisions and subdivisions in the following synoptic table, which must be read from the bottom up to follow the ascensional progress: The call to the mystical life can be: Interior Exterior. i To the supc Next (the three signs of Tau-J lero and St. John of the Cross) .... . Efficient (tempra-J riors. no or late). | To the lower grades. Enough: which many resist. "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Mt. 20:16). Remote : by the simple state of grace (grace is the germ of mysticism, as it is of glory). Individual (e.g., by the spiritual director). General (e.g., by Sacred Scripture). These elementary distinctions shed much light on the correct solution to the problem at hand. Many times, for example, the thought of St. John of the Cross, who seems to deny in a famous passage the universal call to mysticism, is erroneously interpreted. If we look at the context and the principles of his system, it is very clear that he denies only the proximate and efficacious call, but in no way the remote call, not even the proximate call that is sufficient. The fact that in fact these so-called souls "do not go forward" is due only to their lack of generosity and fidelity to grace, as St. John of the Cross himself explains very well in another passage no less famous than the previous one 30 . All this being assumed, it seems to us that in practice, in fact, the real solution to the problem we have posed is contained in the following propositions: 1. a We are all called to mysticism, as to the normal expansion of sanctifying grace, with a remote and sufficient call by the mere fact of being in the grace of God. Reason : The child is called to virility by the mere fact of being born. Grace is the germ of mysticism. 2. a If the soul is faithful and does not put obstacles in the way of God's plans, there will come a time when that remote calling will become 27 Cf. Mt. 20:6-7. 30 See n.129 for the two famous texts, of which the second - written at a later date - is the authentic explanation of the first, made by St. John of the Cross himself." 266 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 5. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 267 in the near future by the presence of the three famous signs taught by Taulero and St. John of the Cross (cf. n.212). Rationale: The gifts of the Holy Spirit, suitably developed as habits, are calling for his action in an ever more pressing way. 3. a This proximate sufficient call will become proximate efficacious if the soul, upon receiving the first call, faithfully corresponds to it and does not place any obstacle in the way of the divine action. Reason : God always gives effective grace to those who do not resist enough. 4. a The greater or lesser height that the soul will have to reach in the mystical life will depend jointly on the degree of fidelity or correspondence on the part of the soul and on the free determination of God according to the degree of sanctity to which He has predestined it. Reason: The degree of grace and glory has been determined by God for each one by divine predestination 31. It seems to us that these conclusions cannot be reasonably rejected by anyone. They faithfully reflect the thought of St. Thomas, which fully coincides with that of the greatest figures of experimental Christian mysticism. 4. Solution of objections Having established the fundamental theses of the Theology of Perfection according to the principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, we will now take up the main objections that have been formulated by his adversaries against the Thomistic theory. This will round out the doctrine and will show once again the solidity and harmony of the ascetic-mystical construction of the Angelic Doctor. There are five fundamental objections. The first concerns the mode of being and working of sanctifying grace; the second, the double action and modality of the gifts; the third, the relationship between supernatural merit and mysticism; the fourth, the number of mystical souls existing in practice; and the fifth, finally, the style of the Church in the canonization of the saints. Let us examine them one by one. Objection i.® Let us leave the floor to Father Chrysogonus, one of its principal defenders: "It is a universal law that every vital principle can reach its perfect development without departing from its proper mode of being and acting. 1 Note that this doctrine is true whether predestination takes place ante prae visa merita (Thomistic school) or after the foresight of merits (Molinist school). It is evident that it will be able to achieve its perfect development without departing from this human and natural way. Everything that departs from this way can be more or less convenient according to how it facilitates the development of grace, but it is never absolutely necessary" 32 . And that grace is in the soul in the human way is proven by Father Chrysogonus on the previous page with the following words of St. Thomas: "Grace is in the soul as a form which has complete being in it .... Now the complete form is in the subject according to the subject's condition. "33 Criticism. - First of all, let us examine the foundation on which Father Chrysogonus relies: the text of St. Thomas. Then we will look at the argument itself. We invite the reader to open the Summa Theologica at the place cited by Father Chrysogonus: Part 3, question 63, article 5. In it, St. Thomas asks if the character (which, as is known, some sacraments imprint on the soul) is indelible: "Utrum character insit animae indelebiliter". Let us consider objection 1. a, in the solution of which St. Thomas uses the words quoted by Father Chrysogonus: "It seems that the character is not in the soul in an indelible way. For an accident is so much more fixed in its own subject as it is more perfect. But grace is more perfect than character, which is ordered to it as to an ulterior end. Therefore, if grace is lost through sin, with much more reason the character will be lost". This is the objection. Let us now see the answer of St. Thomas: "Grace and character are not in the soul in the same way. Grace is in the soul as a form which has complete being in it, while character is in it as an instrumental virtue. Now, the complete form is in the subject according to the subject's condition; and since the soul is subject to mutation by virtue of its free will as long as its earthly pilgrimage lasts, so too will the being of grace be in the soul. On the other hand, when it is a question of an instrumental virtue, it is rather the manner of being of the principal agent that is considered. Therefore, the character is indelible in the soul, not by reason of its own perfection, but by reason of the perfection possessed by the priesthood of Christ, from which the character proceeds as an instrumental virtue". We cannot explain how Fr. Chrysogonus could have invoked this text to prove something totally foreign and strange to him. St. Thomas says in that text that grace - unlike character - is in the soul in an amisihle way, demanded by the intrinsic mutability of the soul itself, in which it resides as in its proper subject. Grace is in the soul as a certain complete form in its being; and since that kind of form necessarily follows the vicissitudes of the subject in whom it resides, therefore grace is subject to the mutable and whimsical condition of the soul, proce 32 Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism p. 12-13 (1.* ed). The underlining is by Father Chrysogonus himself. 33 111,63,5 ad 1. 268 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES This and only this is what St. Thomas says in this passage. Where is the allusion to the human mode and the non-demand for ultra-human modes, etc., etc., that St. Thomas brings up in this passage? This and only this is what St. Thomas says in this passage. Where is the allusion to the human mode and the non-demand of ultra-human modes, etc., etc., that Father Chrysogonus brings up? But in reality we have no interest in insisting on the true thought of St. Thomas in this text. Moreover, we would prefer that this text or any other text of St. Thomas have the meaning given to it by Father Chrysogonus, because this condition of grace obliged to develop in the human way, far from weakening it, greatly favors our thesis, as we will demonstrate immediately. Let us examine the argument of Father Chrysogonus. Fundamental principle: "It is a universal law that every vital principle can reach its perfect development without leaving its own way of being and acting". We are in complete agreement. Moreover, if we have anything to reproach Father Chrysogonus for, it is for having proclaimed this principle too weakly, with less force than it really deserves. For it seems to us that every vital principle not only can, but must, attain its perfect development without departing from its proper mode of being and acting; how could it be otherwise, especially if that mode were specifically distinct? Can plants grow and develop in the manner of animals, or can animals grow and develop in the manner of ideas? So we not only admit the principle invoked by Father Chrysogonus, but we proclaim it even more strongly than he does. But what can be deduced from this? Let us see by examining the consequence drawn by Father Chrysogonus. Consequence: "If, therefore, grace is and works in the soul in the way of the soul, that is, in a natural and human way, it is evident that it can achieve its perfect development without leaving this human and natural way". We believe that our objector suffered an involuntary distraction in writing these words. For he knew very well - as he himself says on the next page of the same book 34 - that grace does not work in the soul either in the human way or in the divine way simply because it does not work at all, since it is a purely entitative habit that is not and cannot be immediately ordered to action. Those who work are the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which reside not in the essence of the soul, like sanctifying grace, but in its powers or faculties; and these infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit are really distinct from grace, although they have their root in it, as we have already seen in their corresponding place. And, as is natural, the virtues and the gifts work in the manner of the agent who handles and regulates them, that is, the virtues, in the human manner, under the rule of reason enlightened by faith, and the gifts, in the divine manner, under the direct and immediate motion of the Holy Spirit Himself, as we have already shown in the corresponding place. Having made this clarification, let us continue examining the argumentation of Father Chrysogonus. According to the principle invoked by him, and which we have accepted and proclaimed even more forcefully, "every vital principle can (must, we say) reach its perfect development without leaving its own way of being and working", our adversary immediately deduces that grace must develop (through its operative powers) in our human way, since it is in our soul in our connatural way or hu 34 Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism p.14Grace is a remote principle of operation, as such it can neither work nor develop by itself. C. 5- RELATIONS BETWEEN I.A PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 269 The "every vital principle can reach its perfect development without leaving its own way of being and acting. Has the reader already noticed the great sophism enclosed in Father Chrysogonus' argument? Has he already perceived that in this syllogism four terms are shuffled and that the true conclusion deduced from its principle is precisely the diametrically opposite of the one he draws? It seems to us that Father Chrysogonus did not notice the true scope of his words. For it turns out that the absolutely certain principle he invokes not only does not in any way favor his thesis of the development of grace in the human way, but will be the unshakable rock on which we rely to prove precisely the opposite: grace postulates and demands by its very nature a mode of development that is entirely divine or superhuman. What is the proper mode of sanctifying grace? Will anyone dare to answer that it is the human mode? But have we not agreed in scholastic philosophy - it is one of its most elementary principles - that operation follows being: "operari sequitur esse"? And sanctifying grace, would anyone dare to say that it is a human form? Have we not agreed - in agreement with all the theologians of the world, since it is a truth clearly consigned in revelation - that grace is a divine form which gives us nothing less than a physical and formal participation in the very nature of God precisely insofar as it is divine? Does not St. Peter tell us that through it we become participants in the very nature of God: "divinae consortes naturae"? 3S . And if the being of grace is divine - and no one can deny it without manifest error in faith - and if the operation always follows and corresponds to the being to which it belongs - and no one can deny it without openly breaking with the most elementary principles of perennial philosophy - will anyone dare to say that a divine form can or should develop in the human way? In his argument, Father Chrysogonus confuses the operation that corresponds to grace itself with the operation that corresponds to the subject in which it resides. The operation that corresponds to the soul - which is the subject where grace resides - is certainly an operation in the human way, since the soul itself is human, and here, as everywhere, the operation must follow and correspond to being: "operari sequitur esse". But precisely for this reason the operation that sanctifying grace demands and postulates is an operation in the divine and superhuman way, because divine and superhuman is the very essence of grace, and the operation must always follow and correspond to the being from which it proceeds. So the principle invoked by Father Chrysogonus is very true. But he has not noticed that this principle does not say that "every vital principle can reach its perfect development without leaving the proper mode of the subject where it resides", but "without leaving its proper mode of being and acting", as Father Chrysogonus himself says very well. He quotes the principle admirably, but he interprets it precisely the other way around from what it means. For the very mode of being of sanctifying grace is in no way human, but divine, in the fullest sense of the word, as is expressly stated by the divine 35 3 Petr. 1,4.- St. Thomas repeats it many times in a very clear and unequivocal way - Here are some texts: "Gratia conferí animae perfectionem in quodam divino esse, et non solum respectu opens, seeundum quod quod quod quodammodo gratíam habentes deiformes constituuntur, propter quod sicut filii, Deo grati dicuntur* (II Sent. d.26 q.l a.4 ad 3). _ "Gratia habet in nobis diversos effectus ordinatos. Primum enim quod quod facit hoc quod dat esse quoddam divinum" ( lbid ., a. 5 sol.). "lile qui non est adeptus divinum esse per spiritualem regenerationem non potest participare divinas operationes. Oportet ergo quod primum donum quod gratis hommi ínfunditur, hunc habeat effectum ut ipsam essentiam animae in quoddam divinum esse elevet, ut idónea sit ad divinas operationes* ( lbid., a. 3 sol.}. 271 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES revelation. And since it is in itself a divine form, it demands and postulates for its perfect development not the human mode of the soul - which is simply the subject in which it resides - but the divine or superhuman mode, which corresponds to its proper way of being and acting, as the principle invoked by Father Chrysogonus says. And precisely because in the ascetic state grace is obliged to develop (by means of the infused virtues, which are its operative principles) in that atmosphere or human modality - proceeding from the rule of reason to which the infused virtues are subjected in that state - , that is why it grows so rickety and slowly, postulating and demanding the divine modality of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which will provide the infused virtues with the propitious atmosphere, perfectly adapted to the divine nature of grace and of the infused virtues themselves, and will make them grow rapidly until they reach their full perfection and development. As long as they remain in that human atmosphere, proper to the ascetic state, which suffocates and suffocates the divine being of grace, it is completely impossible for them to reach their perfect development and expansion. From where it can be seen that the mystical state, far from being an abnormal and extraordinary state, is precisely the normal and adequate environment that grace demands and demands by its own supernatural and divine nature. It is the ascetic state that is abnormal and strange to the nature of grace, and therefore asceticism is a provisional, imperfect stage, which grace has to traverse painfully at the beginning of its development, given the imperfect, earthly and human modality with which we participate in that divine form in the first steps of its development, based on the exercise of the infused virtues in the human way, under the rule and control of reason illuminated by faith; But it tends to, demands and demands the divine atmosphere of the gifts, only in which it will be able to develop all its intrinsic virtualities, giving us the experimental conscience that we are children of God when we are introduced by Him in the full mystical state: "qui Spiritu Dei aguntur, ii sunt filii Dei" 36. There is not the slightest doubt: mysticism is precisely the normal atmosphere which, called for and demanded by the very nature of grace, must be found in the soul in order to reach its full development and expansion. Outside of mysticism, Christian perfection is impossible, simply because the full development of grace is impossible. Thus the principle invoked by Father Chrysogonus, and which we fully admit, not only destroys by its basis his own thesis, but is precisely the unshakable principle on which the marvelous synthesis of St. Thomas rests and rests, which is what we have humbly tried to expound in the preceding pages. Objection 2 . a 150 . We all agree that mysticism consists in the action and predominance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the divine or superhuman way. But since the gifts, apart from acting in the divine way, can also act in the human way, a full development of grace - based on the progressive growth of the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit - is perfectly possible without leaving the human modality, proper and characteristic of asceticism. Therefore, mysticism is not absolutely indispensable for Christian perfection 37, 36 Rom. 8:14. . 37 Cf. P. Chrysogonus, La perfecthn et la mystique selon les principes de Saint Thotnas p.51. c. 5. relations between perfection and mysticism Solution. - The objection starts from the false assumption of the existence of a human mode in the gifts, which we have already seen is completely absurd and impossible (cf. n. 78 - 82 ). Objection 3. a 151 . The Council of Trent defined that the justified man can merit with true merit (that is, de condigno, as theologians explain) the increase of grace, eternal life, the attainment of eternal life (provided he dies in grace) and the increase of glory.38 From which it follows that if mysticism were to enter into the ordinary and normal development of sanctifying grace, one would immediately conclude that it could merit de condigno, because in this way one merits sanctifying grace. 38 From where it follows that, if mysticism were to enter into the ordinary and normal development of sanctifying grace, one would have to conclude immediately that it could be merited as condign, because in this way the increase and development of grace is merited, as St. Thomas 39 expressly teaches and later confirmed by the Council. Now, the majority of experimental mystics categorically affirm the gratuitous character of infused contemplation, which is one of the most typical and characteristic acts of mysticism 40 . Therefore, mysticism, or at least the act of infused contemplation, does not enter into the normal and ordinary development of sanctifying grace, unless we want to establish a true antinomy and contradiction between the data of theology and the experiences of the mystics. Solution. - It seems to us that it is very easy to resolve this apparent antinomy and contradiction between the data of the mystics and the speculations of the theologians. And we say apparent contradiction because it is unquestionable that there cannot be any in reality. The God of the mystics is also the God of the theologians; and if in our human limitation and poor way of speaking two truths can appear as opposed and contrary to each other, they must necessarily find their concord and harmony before the First Truth, of which all the others are but mere derivations and resonances. The key to solving the problem seems to us to lie in a simple distinction proposed by one of the greatest masters of spirituality that our times have known: the distinguished Fr. In an article of one of his best works, the Mystical Questions, he proposes to demonstrate "how the most precious gift of divine contemplation, according to St. Thomas, is a crown of justice, and thus can be rigorously merited with faithful, humble, loving and persevering correspondence to grace" 4 . In our opinion, this is the best elaborated article - from the theological point of view - of all those written by the great Dominican mystic. After explaining the terms of the problem and the meaning of the problem, 38 See the text defined by the council in n.103,6. 39 Here are the very words of St. Thomas translated literally: "Under the merit of condign falls everything to which the motion of grace extends. Now the motion of any motor does not extend only to the last term of the movement, but to the whole progress of that movement. The end of the movement of grace is eternal life: the progress of this movement is realized by the increase of charity or grace, according to that (Prov. 4:18): "The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, increasing until the full day. Thus, then, the increase of grace falls under the merit of condign * (I-II, 114,81. 40 Let us listen to St. Teresa: "I want to say that, even if we meditate more, and even if we wring ourselves and we have tears, this water does not come here. It is given only to those whom God wills and when the soul is often most neglected" (Moradas quartas 2,9). 41 Cuestiones místicas 2.* a. 6 (3.* ed.). It is necessary to keep to the last edition, since this is precisely one of the articles that has been expanded more than in the 1st edition, as Father Arintero himself points out in the prologue to the 3rd edition. 272 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 5. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 273 establishes a simple distinction between the question of ture and the question of fado. It will give us the key to explain satisfactorily the apparent antinomy and contradiction between mystics and theologians that we have just raised. In the first place, the question de iure. Arintero's argumentation to demonstrate the merit of Condigno in relation to the mystical life is of unshakable firmness and solidity. Following his overwhelming style of plaguing everything with quotations, he brings up an enormous quantity of testimonies of experimental mystics and above all of theologians, with St. Thomas at the head, from whom he quotes - it seems to us - all that the Saint wrote related to this matter 42. Arintero will come, we are quite sure, to the firm conviction that indeed, at least in the order of juridical requirements, contemplation is a "crown of justice", and can, therefore, be merited with strict merit or of condign 43 . It is quite another thing when from the question of de iure, or speculative requirements, one descends to the question of fado, or practical limitations. In this order of things it seems to Fr. Arintero - and we believe that his demonstration is as beautiful and profound as the previous one - that in practice, in fact, in the majority of cases, there will not really be given more than a merit of convenience, that is, a merit of congruity, as the theologians say. The fundamental reason is the following: merit - as St. Thomas teaches - is only the essential order of the prize, which will be attained in due time if there are no obstacles; but it does not always or necessarily mean the actual attainment of the prize, since by virtue of the obstacles that have been placed or will be placed before it is actually attained, it can be delayed for a long time and even prevented altogether. Here are the very words of the Angelic Doctor: "The impetration imports the attainment of that which is asked for; but the merit does not import the attainment, but only the order of justice to the attainment. Therefore, when an obstacle is interposed, the reason of impetration disappears, because it takes away the attainment; but the obstacle does not take away the order of attainment and, for the same reason, does not take away the merit. From which it must be concluded that even he who does not persevere deserves, but only he who perseveres impetrates" 44 . This magnificent principle of St. Thomas sheds great light in resolving this question. There is no inconvenience in our deserving de iure what we do not attain de fado because of the obstacles that our misery and inconstancy have placed between the merit itself and the attainment of the prize. 42 This theological orientation is precisely what gives so much solidity and value to Father Arintero's argumentation on this particular point. It seems to us that in this question and in all strictly theological questions it is the speculative theologians and not the experimental mystics who have to say the last word. Everything in its place and to each his own. Here, as in everything else, we must keep in mind that well-known and exact formula: "Let the prudent govern us; let the wise (here the theologian) teach us; and let the saint pray for us". 43 Father Santiago Ramirez reaches the same conclusion in two precious articles entitled Merit and The Mystical Life, which appeared in "The Supernatural Life" (August and October 1921). The thesis demonstrated by the eminent theologian sounds as follows: "From the theological principles of St. Thomas, it evidently follows that the gift of mystical contemplation falls under r . 'rite of condigno, or, what is the same thing, it is the object of that merit." 44 "Impetratio importat consecutionem eius quod petitur; sed meritum non importat consecutionem, sed ordinem iustitiae ad consecutionem; et ideo impedimentum interveniens per instabilitatem, tollit rationem impetradoras, quia tollit consecutionem: sed non tollit ordinem ad consecutionem, et ideo non tollit meritum: unde meretur etiam qui non persevera veril; sed non impstmt nisi perseveran# fin IV Sent. d.15 q.4 a. 7 sol. 3 ad 4). correspondingly. For just as sometimes a mercy is obtained from God without deserving it 45 , at other times it may very well be deserved and for one reason or another not attain it. In fact, the Christian who sins and condemns himself after having lived in grace certainly deserved eternal life with works done in grace 4r> ; and yet, in fact, he will never attain it because he has placed between that merit and the reward the insurmountable obstacle of final impenitence. It may very well happen, then, that he who has merited and obtained an increase of grace and, consequently, of the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit as habits, will not be sufficiently faithful and generous to dispose himself to receive from God the actual graces that would set those habits in motion, producing infused contemplation or any other mystical act. For we must not forget - we have already spoken of this in its proper place - that in order to obtain actual efficacious graces there is, according to the most common sentence among theologians, no true merit of merit, but only an improper merit, of congruity, of convenience, founded "in iure amicabili, secundum leges amicitiae". Man can and must dispose himself to receive these graces, not placing any obstacle to the divine action and requesting them with fervent, humble and persevering prayer. If he does so, he will in fact obtain them infallibly, not because all this amounts to a true merit of merit, but because of the divine promise, which has expressly promised to prayer clothed with the proper conditions everything that can be convenient for eternal salvation.41 The infused contemplation of God's graces is the only way to obtain them. 41 And that infused contemplation is most convenient for this, no one with sound judgment can doubt. On the other hand, the gifts of the Holy Spirit having reached a notable degree of development as habits - obtained by true merit of the worthy - they are as if they demand their own performance, if we do not want to admit that God is pleased to increase them in order to keep them idle. Therefore, in practice, in fact, if the soul is faithful to grace and humbly perseveres in prayer, God will unfailingly act upon these habits, thus producing mystical phenomena in a perfectly normal way within the ordinary development of sanctifying grace. God will unfailingly act upon these habits, thus producing the mystical phenomenon in a perfectly normal way within the ordinary development of sanctifying grace. In this way, the mystical life will be merited in one aspect (the development of the habit of the gifts) and will be obtained congruously, but infallibly, in another aspect (the very act of contemplation or the performance of a given gift produced by an actual grace). Of course, in practice, in the sad reality, our prayer will often lack the complement of conditions necessary for the infallible impetration of these actual graces, and God will have to make use, so to speak, of his pure mercy if he wants to grant us, in spite of our resistance and infidelity to grace, the ineffable gift of infused contemplation. He is not obliged to do so, and in fact he often omits it in punishment for our own faults; but at other times, moved in spite of everything by his ineffable mercy, he sends us an efficacious actual grace, which sets in motion the gifts of the Holy Spirit by giving us - if it is a question of the intellective gifts - the very act of infused contemplation, not only in a completely gratuitous manner, but even * 5 "Impetratio orationis innititur misericord iae : meritum autem condigni innititur iustitiae. Et ideo multa multa orando impetrat homo ex divina misericordia, quae tamen non meretur secundum iustitiam" (I-II, 114,6 ad 2). 46 Cf. Denz. 842. 47 Cf. Mt. 7:7; 21:22; Me. 11,24; Le- ii, 9 í lo. 14.13; 16,23; Iac. 1:6, etc. -Prümmer rightly says: "This proposition seems to be of Catholic faith, from the manifest testimonies of Sacred Scripture" (cf. KíanuaU Theolasiae Moralis t.a n.351). 274 P. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES C. 5. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 275 often "when the soul is most neglected," as the distinguished Reformer of Carmel beautifully tells us. Let us not forget that - as St. Thomas says - God always goes further in rewarding us than we do in deserving it 4S . This would explain the apparent antinomies and contradictions found not only between the language of the mystics and that of the theologians, but also between the language of the mystics and that of the theologians. and these are much more frequent - between two passages of a single experimental mysticism. It is well known that the Thomistic school has always cited against the Carmelite school passages of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross in which they invite everyone to the great heights of contemplation and mystical life; and, in turn, the Carmelite school opposes to the Thomistic school other texts of the same St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross in which they seem to say the opposite. Unless we incur the irreverence of knowingly attributing to them a true and real contradiction, there is no other possible explanation than to say that in some passages they affirm the question de iure - which should be so because of the proper and normal demands of grace - and in others they speak of the question de facto, which in fact occurs because of our misery and inconstancy. St. John of the Cross has distinguished these two orders very well in a beautiful passage that we have already quoted above: "And here we should note the reason why there are so few who reach such a high state of perfection of union with God. In which it is to be known that it is not because God wills that there should be few of these raised spirits, who would rather that all should be perfect, but that he finds few vessels that will undergo so high and lofty a work. The underlined words express the de iure question; and the following, the de facto question. Father Garrigou-Lagrange has explained all this very well in a page of his precious work Perfection chrétienne et contemplation, which we are going to transcribe in its entirety given the importance of the subject. This is what the famous professor of the Angelicum in Rome says: "Certainly we can merit from God the increase of charity, virtues and gifts, as habits, without any limit being assigned here on earth to this increase (11-11,24,7). And the Holy Spirit generally moves souls according to the degree of their infused habits, of their habitual docility (unless there is some obstacle, venial sin or imperfection; in the latter case, the meritorious act is weak, remiss, inferior to the degree of charity). In the same way, Thomists generally say that the just person who perseveres in fervor can merit saltem de congruo (at least in the broad sense of the word "merit") the grace of infused contemplation. Why do they say saltem, at least, de congruo? Because there is in the grace of infused contemplation something that is strictly merited or condign; it is a high degree of the gifts of understanding and wisdom considered as habits. But infused contemplation itself is not a habit, but an act, and the mystical state is this act which lasts for a certain time. But this act presupposes an actual efficacious grace, and, according to the Thomists, we cannot strictly merit or condignly deserve the 48 "Semper dona _ Dei _ excedunt merita nostra" (Mt. 5). - "Multa orando ¡mpetrat homo ex divina misericordia, quae tamen non meretur secundum iustitiam* (1-11,114,6 ad 2). 48 Flame of living love canc.2 n.37. effective help that preserves us in the state of grace. Why? Because the principle of merit does not fall under merit: and for this reason neither the first grace, nor the efficacious help that keeps us in the state of grace, nor the gift of final perseverance, though so necessary for salvation, cannot be merited by merit. If, on the other hand, the just person could strictly merit efficacious grace a, by it he would likewise merit efficacious grace b, and so on until the grace of final perseverance, which would thus be merited from condign. It follows that many of the graces necessary for salvation cannot be the object of strict merit; it is not surprising, therefore, that the actual efficacious grace of infused contemplation cannot be merited de condigno even if it is on the normal path to holiness. It can be merited more than the grace of final perseverance, because it would be an exaggeration to say that the latter can be merited saltem de congruo. But in a certain sense, the actual grace of infused contemplation is more gratuitous than that necessary for the obligatory exercise of the infused virtues, because we can use the infused virtues when we want to; which is not the case with the gifts, although we can dispose ourselves, by our fidelity, to receive the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, we must dispose ourselves, and if we do so generously, the day will come when the grace of contemplation will be frequently granted to us. God ordinarily gives it to the perfect, unless accidental obstacles prevent it; but he gives it either in aridity and night, or in light and consolation" 5 °. And elsewhere in the same work, Father Garrigou adds the following note, which completes his thought and rounds out his doctrine: "The grace of the good death or of final perseverance cannot be merited, in the proper sense of the word, condign or even strictly congruous; and yet it is necessary for salvation, and we must certainly desire it, dispose ourselves and ask for it unceasingly, and persevering prayer will obtain it for us. The same must be said for the sinner of the grace of conversion or justification: it cannot be merited, since it is the principle of merit, and yet everyone who is in mortal sin must, with the actual grace offered to him, desire it and ask for it. Here we touch on the profound mysteries of the efficacy of grace and predestination (cf. I-II, 114,5 et 9). The grace of justification and of final perseverance are necessary for salvation, and yet they cannot be merited from condignity. The same must be said of efficacious grace, which preserves us in the state of grace. The grace of infused contemplation is no more gratuitous, since a very high degree of the gift of wisdom, considered as a habit, can be merited progressively from condign, and since the Holy Spirit generally inspires souls according to the degree of their habitual docility. Moreover, to merit is added the impetratory power of prayer, and if we must ask for the grace of the good death that we will not know how to merit, a fervent soul can also ask very well, with as much 50 Perfection chrétienne et contemplation c.5 a. 4 (p.513-14 in the 7th French edition). 276 I>. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES trust as humility, the grace of contemplation to better live the mysteries of salvation, to better know one's misery, to humble oneself, to be less indifferent to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. This is basically what we ask for when we recite with all our heart the Vera Creator. For all these reasons, the grace of contemplation is less gratuitous than the so-called graces gratis datae, such as those of miracles or prophecy, which are in no way necessary for our personal sanctification. For the rest, the Holy Spirit blows where he wills and when he wills, since we cannot exercise at will the acts that proceed from the gifts of the Holy Spirit" 5 ! In summary, and gathering all these data from theologians and experimental mystics, it seems to us that the question of merit in relation to the mystical life can be summed up in the following conclusions: 1. ® The increase of grace can be deserved and in fact is deserved as worthy, and together with it the increase of the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit insofar as they are habits. 2. a With good works and fidelity to grace can be merited from congruity, and with humble and persevering prayer can be infallibly imputed (in virtue of the divine promise) the effective actual graces, which will set in motion the habit of the gifts, normally producing the mystical phenomenon. 3. a Given our fragility and misery, in practice it often happens that man does not do everything he should to merit these actual graces with congruent merit, nor is his prayer accompanied by the necessary conditions to infallibly impetrate them, remaining below them because of his negligence and lack of generosity. 4. a Man is thus deprived both of the merit of being worthy and of the merit of being congruous, and his prayer lacks the necessary conditions for infallibly impetrating them. In fact, God often makes up for the defect of his creature by granting him out of pure mercy, in spite of his lack of dispositions, those actual efficacious graces which produce the mystical phenomenon when the gifts of the Holy Spirit act; but he is not obliged to do so, and in fact he often denies them to voluntarily imperfect souls. This explains very well the at first sight disconcerting fact that de fado there are so few true contemplatives and mystics, in spite of the fact that de iure we are all called to be so, as St. John of the Cross says in the famous text of the Living Flame of Love (canc.2 n.27). And it is in this sense that we must interpret the texts of the experimental mystics when they say that God gives the grace of contemplation to whom he wills and when he wills and sometimes "when the soul is most neglected," as St. Teresa of Jesus says. 5. a Therefore, de iure, that is, in the order of the demands of grace, the mystical life is deserved de condigno in one aspect (the development of the gifts as habits), and can be deserved de congruo and obtained infallibly by prayer in another aspect (the action of the gifts producing the mystical phenomenon, under the motion of the Holy Spirit, corresponding to actual efficacious grace). In this sense it can and must be said that the mystical life is infallibly open to all generous souls who do not place obstacles to grace and who dispose themselves suitably 1 Perféction chrétienne et contemplaiiort c.s a. 2 p.440. C. 5 . RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 277 to it. The fact that there are so few mystics and contemplatives in fado in no way compromises the normal order of the juridical requirements of grace. We sincerely believe that these conclusions cannot be reasonably rejected by anyone. They could serve, it seems to us, as a point of contact and rapprochement between the two apparently antagonistic mystical schools: the Thomistic and the Carmelite. We believe that in practice the discrepancies and antagonisms are much more apparent than real. The Thomistic school, accustomed to high theological speculation, strongly affirms the demands of the juridical order and sees the mystical life as virtually contained in the very seed of grace. The Carmelite school, on the other hand, which usually draws its inspiration from the experimental mystics, focuses above all on the prodigious scarcity of the mystics and denies in the realm of facts what the Thomist school affirms in the realm of juridical requirements. With a little good will on the part of all, it seems to us that an agreement could easily be reached by simply stating with all accuracy and precision the true meaning of the question. Objection 4 . a 152. I-a formulated by Father Poulain in his work Des grdces d'oraison. We are going to collect it in its original French text so that the reader can appreciate all its nuances: "But if mystical contemplation is produced by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it is false that reciprocally every act produced by certain gifts is mystical. For this would be to say that these gifts are never exercised in ordinary prayer. Or such a theory has never been demonstrated 52 . It is not in conformity with the teaching of Saint Thomas, admitting that gifts are not reserved for difficult acts 53 . Moreover, if this proposition were true, the mystics would pull on our globe. Because at confirmation and even at baptism, every Christian rejoices in these gifts and we cannot admit that they remain in the state of pure habitudes, without any action "54 . This is the objection, exposed by the author himself. If what we have said above in affirming that every action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit produces a mystical act were true, we would have to conclude that "mystics swarm everywhere," since all Christians receive the gifts in baptism and confirmation, and it cannot be admitted that they remain idle in our souls without any action. Answer. - This objection, which is presented as such a showy one, is in reality quite harmless. For from the fact that all Christians begin to participate imperfectly in the mystical graces at the very dawn of the spiritual life, it by no means follows that mystics swarm everywhere. For just as it does not occur to anyone to call a pianist a pianist if he is learning to play the piano - even if he plays it imperfectly many times a day, tormenting the ears of those to whom he is 52 not, as it is false! We have already said that the gifts act more or less intensely throughout the whole of the spiritual life - therefore also of incipient prayer - producing imperfect mystical acts even in the full ascetic state. 53 Such is the truth. But absolutely nothing follows from this against our thesis, but rather a new confirmation of it. P. p oülain, Des grdces d'oraison c.6 n.ig bis. 278 r. II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Thus it is not licit to call an imperfect Christian a mystic, even if the Holy Spirit mercifully produces imperfect mystical acts in him from time to time, because the imperfect disposition of that soul suffers nothing else. The mystic - thus, without more, or in the full sense of the word - is not the one who performs from time to time some mystical act under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the one who allows himself to be handled docilely and habitually by the same Holy Spirit and has allowed himself to be introduced by Him in the full mystical state. So this objection is absolutely worthless, since it plays with a misunderstanding. It can be undone with a simple distinction: imperfect mystical acts swarm everywhere; I concede, there is no inconvenience in this being so; mystical souls swarm everywhere; I deny, it is a completely different thing. Unfortunately, mystical souls have been scarce and will always be scarce, because in order to be so, a heroic abnegation and a total and unreserved surrender to the action of the Holy Spirit are required, which only very few souls succeed in practicing. Let us not forget that mystical souls are the souls of heroic virtue; they are the souls of the saints. Objection 5. 153. In beatifying and canonizing the servants of God, the Church does not take into account at all whether or not they had infused contemplation and other mystical phenomena, but only whether they habitually practiced the infused, theological and moral virtues to a heroic degree. Benedict XIV says so in his work De Beatificatione servorum Dei et de Beatorum Canonizatione ss . Therefore, it is evident that mysticism is not necessary for Christian perfection, even in a canonizable degree. r--*f Solution. - The objection proves absolutely nothing. Moreover: h^ and in it sufficient elements to draw a new argument in favor of the Thomistic thesis, taking it precisely from that practice of the Church. For if the Church canonizes only those who have habitually practiced the infused virtues to a heroic degree, since we believe we have demonstrated that the virtues cannot reach their perfect development (and habitual heroism presupposes this, as is evident) except under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit acting in a divine or superhuman manner, it follows clearly that the Church canonizes only the mystics. That in the canonization process it is not usually examined whether or not they had infused contemplation? Of course not. But the reason is very clear and does not touch our conclusions at all. For since infused contemplation and the other mystical graces related to the normal development of sanctifying grace (not the graces freely given, which we all agree are not necessary for perfection) are intimate graces that provide the mystic with an ineffable experience of the divine, it follows that as such they are completely beyond the control and exa 5 5 Here are Benedict XIV's own words: "Cumplures perfectos experimur canonizan, licet in processibus pro eis factis de infusa contemplatione non fíat mentio, sed de aliis virtutibus in gradu heroico, et de miraculis fíat constans probatio" (De Beatificatione servorum Dei et de Beatorum Canonizatione I.3 c.26 n.8). It should be noted that this work was written by Prospero Lambertini before he ascended to the supreme pontificate. The first edition, in five volumes, appeared in Bologna between 1734 and 1738: and its author was elected pope in 1740. In it, therefore, Benedict XIV does not speak, but only Prospero Lambertini. In any case, what he says is true, and we have no inconvenience in admitting it, since nothing absolutely follows against our thesis. C. 5 . RELATIONS BETWEEN PERFECTION AND MYSTICISM 279 They can only be known indirectly, that is, through their marvelous effects. They can only be known indirectly, that is, through their marvelous effects, which are the virtues practiced to a heroic degree under the influence of the divine modality of the gifts, which fully provide them with that superhuman and heroic intensity. The producing cause of this phenomenon is purely internal (the superhuman action of the gifts) and the canonical principle that "de internis non iudicat Ecclesia" is elementary. The Church looks at the only thing that appears externally and is perfectly verifiable by the witnesses who witnessed it: the heroic practice of all the Christian virtues. Once this has been proven, it only awaits the manifestation of the divine will (miracles performed through the intercession of the servant of God) in order to proceed, without further ado, to his beatification or canonization. So the objection not only does not prove what it intends, but rather favors the thesis it is trying to combat. Since the Church canonizes only those who have practiced the virtues to a heroic or superhuman degree, and this superhuman heroism can only be achieved under the regime of the gifts, which is precisely the essential characteristic and intimate constituent of mysticism, it follows with all evidence that the Church canonizes only the mystics. * * * Having examined and resolved the main objections against the fundamental theses that we have been setting forth in this second part of our Theology of Perfection, dedicated to the great principles of the supernatural life, we will now move on to the third, more practically oriented part, in which we will see the development of the Christian life in its different stages and manifestations. INTRODUCTION 281 PART THREE The normal development of the Christian life I N T R O D U C T I O N 154. Having examined the end and the great principles of the Christian life, we must now consider the process of its development, that is, the practice of the Christian life. This is the object of this third part of our Theology of Christian Perfection. The approach to this part, of vast amplitude, is very varied among authors. Some divide the subject on the basis of the three traditional paths: purgative, illuminative and unitive, and around them they describe the state and main characteristics of the souls as they pass through them h Others consider these three periods first in asceticism and then in mysticism, making each of them a distinct path, which leads equally - they say - to the summit of perfection 1 2 3 . Others describe the whole process of the spiritual life around the life of prayer } . Still others, finally, dispense more or less with the chronological order in which the phenomena may occur, and group the principal means of sanctification into homogeneous sections 4 . All these procedures - if we dispense with the second, which seems to us to be totally inadmissible - have their advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of those who follow the process of the three traditional ways is that they are closer to the facts, as they usually occur in reality. But it has the serious disadvantage of isolating too much those three aspects of the spiritual life, which in practice never form watertight and irreducible departments, but interpenetrate and complement each other in such a way that at any moment or stage of the spiritual life there are aspects of purification, illumination and union. Hence the inevitable repetitions and continual touches of attention on points already treated that these authors are forced to make. 1 For example, Saudreau in The Degrees of the Spiritual Life and Tanquerey in his Ascetic and Mystical Theology. 2 Father Chrysogonus in his Compendium of Asceticism and Mysticism. Naval speaks of the three ways only in the ascetical part, and they no longer appear in the mystical part (cf. Curso de Ascética y Mística). 3 Thus Fr. Arintero in his Grades of Prayer. * Garri Gou-Lagrange in Perfection et Contemplation and in The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life; Fr. De Guibert in The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life; Fr. Theologia spiritualis ascetica et mystica, and Fr. Schrijvers in The Principles of the Spiritual Life. Those who make the whole process of the spiritual life revolve around the degrees of prayer rely on experience - which confirms it - and on a text of St. Pius X in which it is expressly stated that there is an intimate relationship between the progressive degrees of prayer pointed out by St. Teresa and the growth in the whole spiritual life.5 But it has the disadvantage of leaving unresolved many concomitant problems that arise on the right and on the left, or of losing sight of the degrees of prayer if one wants to fill in these gaps. But it has the disadvantage of leaving unresolved many concomitant problems that arise on the right and on the left, or of losing sight of the degrees of prayer if one wants to fill these gaps. Those who prefer to group matters by homogeneous sections proceed with great clarity and avoid annoying repetitions. But they are forced to study separately things that in real life are intimately united. In short: that there is not, nor does it seem to us that there can be, a method that brings together all the advantages and avoids all the disadvantages. The spiritual life is very mysterious and complex, and in its development it offers such a variety of nuances when divine action is combined with the special psychology of a particular soul, that it is almost impossible to try to reduce it to human schemes and categories. The Holy Spirit blows where he wills (lo. 3:8) and leads each soul along very different paths to the summit of perfection. In fact, it can be said that each soul has its own path, which is never completely repeated in any case. In any case, some method must be followed in order to proceed with a certain order and, above all, with the greatest possible clarity in these intricate matters. For this reason, while recognizing its disadvantages and regretting having to incur them because they are absolutely inevitable, we will follow the procedure of studying the issues by homogeneous sections. Taking into account the nature of our work and its pedagogical purpose, it seems to us that this procedure is the most appropriate to bring order and clarity to these difficult matters. Here is our plan: after giving a quick and schematic overview of the whole process of the spiritual life, we will divide this third part into two large books. In the first, we will deal with the negative aspect of the Christian life, and in the second with the positive. And in each of them we will examine the main problems of the spiritual life in its most related groups or sections. General idea of the development of the Christian life 155. Each soul, as we have just recalled, follows its own path to holiness under the guidance and supreme impulse of the Holy Spirit. No two physiognomies are entirely alike in the body or in the soul. Nevertheless, the masters of the spiritual life have attempted various classifications according to the predominant dispositions of souls, which are useful at least as a point of reference for determining the approximate degree of spiritual life in which a given soul finds itself. This 3 Here are the words of St. Pius X: "Docet enim (S.Theresia) : gradus rationis quot numerantur, veluti totidem superiors in christiana perfectione ascensus es.se" (in letter to the General of the Discalced Carmelites of March 7, 1914; see in De Guibert, Documenta EcdcAastica christianac perfectionis sludium spcctanft'a 11.636). 282 I>. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE INTRODUCTION 283 This knowledge is of great importance in practice, since the direction to be given to a soul walking through the first degrees of spiritual life is very different from that which is appropriate to more advanced and perfect souls. Three are, it seems to us, the main classifications that have been proposed throughout the history of Christian spirituality: the classic one of the three ways: purgative, illuminative and unitive; that of the Angelic Doctor, based on the three degrees of beginners, profited and perfect 6 , and that of St. Teresa of Jesus in her brilliant Interior Castle or book of the Moradas. By combining these three classifications into one, it seems to us that the following schematic picture of the entire Christian life can be proposed 7 : On the roundabout of the castle at a) Total absence of Christian life They are the souls of hardened sinners, who habitually live in sin, without worrying about getting out of it. Most of them sin out of ignorance or frailty, but there are also those who indulge in sin out of cold indifference and even obstinate and satanic malice. In some cases, total absence of remorse and voluntary suppression of all prayer or recourse to God. b) Christian varnish Deadly sin. - Considered as of little importance or easily forgiven, they recklessly put themselves in all kinds of dangerous occasions and succumb to any temptation with the greatest ease. Practices of piety. - Sunday Mass, often omitted under futile pretexts; annual confession - sometimes omitted - done routinely, without interior spirit, without the spirit of getting out of sin for good. Sometimes, some vocal prayers without attention, without true piety and always asking for temporal things: health, riches, welfare.... - Cf. 11-11,24.9 7 We draw our inspiration principally from St. Thomas here, from St. Teresa of Jesus, from the excellent work of Saudreau The Degrees of the Spiritual Life and from the outline of Dom Chautard in his famous little work The Soul of Every Apostolate p. 4 § f. 8 She alludes to a well-known text of St. Teresa in her Interior Castle: "There are many souls who are in the round of the castle..., who are not given anything to enter inside nor do they know what is in that so precious place..." (Moradas primeras 1,5). (Moradas primeras 1,5). Purgative route: incipient charity When the soul begins to desire with all sincerity to live in a Christian way, it enters the purgative way or first degree of charity. Its fundamental dispositions are described by St. Thomas in the following words: "In the first degree, man's fundamental concern is to turn away from sin and to resist his lusts, which move against charity. And this belongs to the incipient, in whom charity must be nourished and fostered so that it does not become corrupt." l) . Let us now see the degrees into which it can be subdivided. 1. Believing souls (first dwellings, by St. Teresa) Deadly sin . - Weakly fought, but sincere repentance and true confessions. Often dangerous occasions willfully sought. Venial sin . - No effort to avoid it. Very little importance is attached to it. Practices of piety. - Those precepted by the Church. Some omissions. Sometimes, some practices of supererogation. Prayer. - Purely vocal, rarely and with many distractions. Human petitions, of temporal interests, rarely of a spiritual nature. 2. Good souls (second homes) Deadly sin . - Sincerely fought. Sometimes, however, dangerous occasions, followed by some fall. Sincere repentance and prompt confession. Venial sin . - Sometimes fully deliberate. Weak struggle, superficial repentance, constant relapses into backbiting, etc. Practices of piety . - Frequency of sacraments (First Fridays, principal feasts, etc.). Sometimes daily Mass, but with little preparation. Family rosary, easily omitted. Sentence . - Usually vocal prayers. Sometimes, some time of meditation, but with little fidelity and many voluntary distractions. 3. Pious souls (third dwellings) Deadly sin . - Rarely. Lively repentance, immediate confession, precautions to avoid relapse. 9 Here is the Latin text: "Diversi gradus caritatis distinguuntur secundum diversa studia ad quae homo perducitur per caritatis augmentum. Nam primo quidem incumbit homini studium principale ad recedendum a peccato et resistendum concupiscentiis eius, quac in contrarium caritatis movent. Et hoc pertine t ad incipientes, in quibus caritas est nutrienda vel fovenda ne corrumpatur" (11-11,24,9). 284 1'. ni. DKSAKKOUO NoliMAi W l>, CHRISTIAN LIFE INTRODUCTION 285 Venial sin. - Sincerely fought. Particular examination, but with little constancy and little fruit. Practices of piety. - Daily Mass and communion, but with a certain spirit of routine. Weekly confession, with little amendment of defects. Family Rosary. Visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Weekly Way of the Cross, etc. Prayer. - Daily meditation, but no great effort to do it well. Many distractions. Easy omission, especially when dryness or occupations arise, which could have been avoided without failing in the duties of one's state. Often, affective prayer, which tends to become more and more simplified. The night of sense begins, as a transition to the illuminative path. Illuminative way: proficient charity When the soul has decided to undertake a solidly pious life and to advance in the way of virtue, it has entered the illuminative way. Its main concern, according to St. Thomas, is to grow and advance in the Christian life, increasing and corroborating charity Ul . Here are the degrees into which it is subdivided. 4. The fervent souls (fourth dwellings) Deadly sin. - Never. At most, some violent and unforeseen surprises. In these cases, doubtful mortal sin, followed by a very lively repentance, immediate confession and reparatory penances. Venial sin. - Serious vigilance to avoid it. Rarely deliberate. Particular examination seriously aimed at combating it. Imperfections. - The soul avoids examining itself too much about them so as not to be obliged to fight them. It loves self-denial and self-renunciation, but to a certain extent and without great effort. Practices of piety. - Daily Mass and communion with fervent preparation and thanksgiving. Diligently practiced weekly confession. Spiritual direction aimed at advancing in virtue. Tender devotion to Mary. Prayer. - Fidelity to it in spite of the dryness and dryness of the night of meaning. Prayer of simple gaze, as a transition to contemplative prayers. In moments of particular intensity, prayer of infused recollection and stillness. 5. Relatively perfect souls (fifth dwellings) Venial sin. - Deliberately, never. Sometime by surprise or with little warning. Vividly mourned and seriously repaired. 10 "Secundum autem studium succedit, ut homo principaliter intendat ad hoc quod in bono pr oficial. Et hoc studium pertinet ad proficientes , qui ad hoc principaliter intendunt ut in eis caritas per augmentum roboretur* (11-11,24, 9). Imperfections. - Seriously reproved, combated from the heart to please God. Sometimes deliberate, but quickly deplored. Frequent acts of abnegation and renunciation. Particular examination aimed at perfecting a given imperfection. virtue. Practices of piety. - More and more simple and less numerous, but practiced with ardent love. Charity is having a more and more intense and actual influence in everything he does. Love of solitude, spirit of detachment, longing for the love of God, desire for heaven, love of the cross, disinterested zeal, hunger and thirst for communion. Prayer. - Habitual life of prayer, which is like the breathing of the soul. Contemplative prayer of union. Often, passive purifications and mystical epiphenomena. Via unitiva: perfect charity When the life of prayer constitutes, as it were, the background and the habitual breathing of a soul, even in the midst of its occupations and duties of the proper state, which it fulfills most faithfully; when intimate union with God and reaching the summit of Christian perfection constitutes the supreme illusion of its life, it has entered the unitive way. His fundamental concern, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is to be united to God and to enjoy Him n . Here are the two main degrees that constitute it: 6 . Heroic souls (sixth dwellings) Imperfections. - Deliberate, never. Sometimes, semi-deliberate impulses poured out, but quickly rejected. Practices of piety. - They fulfill with exquisite fidelity all that their state and condition of life entails, but they are concerned only with uniting themselves more and more intimately with God. Self-contempt to the point of oblivion; thirst for suffering and tribulations ("to suffer or die"): very hard penances and the desire of total immolation for the conversion of sinners. Offering themselves as victims. Prayer. - Supernatural gifts of almost habitual contemplation. Prayer of very perfect union, often ecstatic. Passive purifications, night of the spirit. Spiritual espousal. Concomitant phenomena and free graces given. 7. The great saints (seventh dwellings) I mperfections. - Barely apparent . Practices of piety . - In reality, they are reduced to the exercise of love: "That in loving alone is my exercise" (St. John of the Cross). 11 "Tertium autem studium est ut homo ad hoc principaliter intendat ut De o inhaereat deo fruatur. Et hoc pertinet ad perfectos, qui cupiunt dissolvi et esse cura Ghristo" (11-11,24,9). 286 P. Ilt. ttF.SARKOI.tO NOKMAt t>R CHRISTIAN LIFE INTRODUCTION 287 His love is of an incredible intensity, but calm and tranquil; the flame no longer crackles, because it has become an ember. Unalterable peace and serenity, profound humility, unity of vision and simplicity of intention: "Only the honor and glory of God dwells on this mountain" (St. John of the Cross). Prayer. - Intellectual vision - "by a certain way of representing the truth" (St. Teresa) - of the Most Holy Trinity in the soul. Transforming union. Spiritual marriage. Sometimes, confirmation in grace. # * * Garrigou-Lagrange 12 proposes the following outline of the development of the spiritual life based on the three fundamental degrees of beginners, proficient and perfect: Beginners (Purgative life, ascetic life) Initial virtues. First degree of charity, temperance, chastity, patience; first degree of humility. Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Rather latent. Inspirations at rare intervals. Little attention even to take advantage of them, little docility. The soul is conscious, above all, of its own activity. Active purification of the sense and spirit, that is, external and internal mortifications. Acquired prayer: vocal prayer, discursive prayer, affective prayer, which is increasingly simplified, called acquired prayer of recollection. The Moradas of St. Teresa. First and second. Proficient (Illuminative life, threshold of the mystical life) Solid virtues. Second degree of charity, obedience, deepest humility; spirit of counsel. Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Above all, the three inferior gifts of fear, knowledge and piety begin to manifest themselves. The soul, more docile, takes more advantage of the inspirations and internal illuminations. Passive purification of the sense, especially under the influence of the gifts of fear and knowledge. Concomitant tests. Initial infused prayer. Isolated acts of infused contemplation in the course of the acquired prayer of recollection. Afterwards, prayer of supernatural recollection and quietude. Manifest influence of the gift of piety. Moradas de Santa Teresa. Third and fourth. Perfect (Unitive life, mystical life) Eminent and heroic virtues. Third degree of charity, perfect humility, great spirit of faith, abandonment, almost unalterable patience. Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The superior gifts manifest themselves more visibly and frequently. The soul is as if dominated by the Holy Spirit. Great passivity, which does not exclude the activity of virtue. Passive purification of the spirit, under the influence especially of the gift of understanding. Concomitant trials in which the gifts of fortitude and counsel are manifested. Infused prayer of simple union, of complete union (sometimes ecstatic) and of transforming union, under the increasingly intense influence of the gift of wisdom. Concomitant graces. Moradas de Santa Teresa. Fifth, sixth and seventh. * # * Such is, in its fundamental lines, the path that souls usually follow in their ascent to sanctity. Within it there is room for infinite nuances - no two souls are entirely alike - but the expert director who looks carefully at the general characteristics we have just described will be able to ascertain with great accuracy the degree of spiritual life attained by a given soul. We are now going to examine in detail the two fundamental aspects of the Christian life: the negative, that is, what is to be avoided or combated, and the positive, that is, what is to be practiced or fostered. We have already said that both aspects go together in practice and are in fact inseparable; but for pedagogical reasons and above all for the sake of clarity and precision, we are going to examine them separately in the two books that make up this third part of our Theology of Perfection. 12 Gf. Perfection eX contemplated p.VlII. BOOK ONE Negative aspect of Cristian's life. The negative aspect of the Christian life consists in fighting and getting rid of everything that could constitute a hindrance on the path of our sanctification. It is also necessary to include in it the trials of God or passive purifications (nights of the sense and of the spirit), which have the purpose of completing the purification of the soul that it alone could not achieve completely. With these principles in mind, we will divide this first book into six chapters, each subdivided into its corresponding articles. Here is an outline of the path we are going to follow: L. I. C. I. THE FIGHT AGAINST SIN 28 " CHAPTER I The fight against sin S.Th., 1-11,71-89; Vallgornera, Kíystica Theologia q.2 d.i a.3-4; Alvarez de Paz, De abiectione peccatorum; Antonio del Espíritu Santo, Directorium Kíysticum d.i sect.3 2 Monsignor D'Hulst, Caréme 1892; P. Janvier, Car eme 1907, i. a conf.; Caráme 1908, entire; Saudreau, The degrees of the spiritual life prel. c.i. 156. Sin is the "number one enemy" of our sanctification and in reality the only enemy, since all the others are so insofar as they come from sin or lead to it. Sin, as is well known, is "a voluntary transgression of the law of God". It always presupposes three essential elements: forbidden matter (or at least considered as such), warning on the part of the understanding, and consent or acceptance on the part of the will. If the matter is grave and the warning and consent are full, a mortal sin is committed; if the matter is light or the warning and consent have been imperfect, the sin is venial. Within each of these two categories there are infinite degrees. The detailed study of all this corresponds to moral theology. Here we will take up only what is more closely related to the enterprise of our own sanctification. We will examine principally the way to combat mortal sin, venial sin and voluntary imperfections. ARTICLE 1 Mortal sin 157. 1. Sinners. - Unfortunately, there are legions of men who habitually live in mortal sin. Absorbed almost entirely by the cares of life, involved in professional business, devoured by an insatiable thirst for pleasures and amusements, and plunged in a religious ignorance that often reaches incredible extremes, they do not even consider the problem of the hereafter. Some, especially if they have received in their childhood a certain Christian education and still retain some remnant of faith, usually react to the approaching death and receive with dubious dispositions the last sacraments before appearing before God; but many others go down to the grave quietly, without any other problem, without any other problem or pain than that of having to leave forever this world, in which their hearts are deeply rooted. These unfortunate people are "crippled souls - says St. Teresa - who, unless the Lord Himself comes to command them to get up, as He did to the one who Theol. of perf. L. I. C. I. l\ MICHA CONTRI El. SIN 291 P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE had been in the pool for thirty years, they have a lot of bad luck and great danger" *. They are in great danger - indeed - of eternal damnation. If death surprises them in this state, their fate will be dreadful for all eternity. Habitual mortal sin has blackened their souls in such a way that "there is no darkness so dark and black that it is not much darker "2 . St. Teresa affirms that, if sinners understood how a soul remains when it sins mortally, "it would not be possible for anyone to sin, even if he were to put himself to greater labors than can be thought of to flee from occasions" 3 . However, not all those who habitually live in sin have assumed the same responsibility before God. We can distinguish four classes of sin, which indicate as many categories of sinners, from the lowest to the highest: a) Sins of ignorance. - We are not referring to a total and invincible ignorance - which would entirely exempt from sin - but to the result of an anti-religious or totally indifferent education, together with an intelligence of very limited scope and an environment hostile to or far removed from any religious influence. Those who live in such situations usually have, nevertheless, some knowledge of the malice of sin. They are perfectly aware that certain actions which they commit with ease are not morally upright. Perhaps they feel, from time to time, the pangs of remorse. They have, by the same token, sufficient capacity to knowingly commit a real mortal sin that would turn them away from the path of their salvation. But in addition to all this, it is necessary to recognize that their responsibility before God is very attenuated. If they have retained their horror of what seemed to them most unjust or sinful; if the depths of their hearts, in spite of external weaknesses, have remained upright in the fundamentals; if they have practiced, even rudimentarily, some devotion to Our Lady learned in the days of their childhood; if they have refrained from attacking religion and its ministers, and above all, if at the hour of death they have succeeded in raising their hearts to God full of repentance and confidence in his mercy, there is no doubt that they will be judged with particular benignity at the divine tribunal. If Christ warned us that much will be asked of those who have been given much (Le. 12:48), it is fair to think that little will be asked of those who have received little. Such people tend to turn to God with relative ease if they are presented with an opportune occasion to do so. Since their careless life does not come from true wickedness, but from a very deep ignorance, any situation that strongly impresses their soul and makes them enter into themselves can be enough to turn them back to God. The death of a relative, a few missionary sermons, entry into a religious environment, etc., are usually enough to bring them back to the right path. In any case, they usually continue their whole life lukewarm and ignorant, and the priest in charge of watching over them will have to return again and again to the burden to complete their formation and to avoid at least that they return to their primitive state. b) The sins of fragility. - There are legions of people sufficiently educated in religion so that their disorders cannot be attributed to 1 Moradas primeras i,8. 2 Ibid., II, 1. 3 Ibid., II, a. to simple ignorance or ignorance of their duties. However, they do not sin by cold and calculated wickedness either. They are weak, of very little energy and willpower, strongly inclined to sensual pleasures, thoughtless and reckless, full of laziness and cowardice. They regret their downfalls, admire the good ones, "would like" to be one of them, but lack the courage and energy to actually be one. These dispositions do not excuse them from sin; on the contrary, they are more guilty than those of the previous chapter, since they sin with greater knowledge of the cause. But at bottom they are weaker than bad. The one in charge of watching over them must be concerned, above all, to strengthen them in their good intentions, leading them to frequent the sacraments, to reflection, to flee from occasions, etc., in order to bring them definitively out of their sad situation and to guide them along the paths of goodness. c) The sins of coldness and indifference. - There is another third category of habitual sinners who do not sin out of ignorance, like those in the first group, nor are they hurt or grieved by their conduct, like those in the second group. They sin knowing that they sin, not precisely because they want evil for evil's sake - that is, as an offense against God - but because they do not want to renounce their pleasures and are not concerned either a little or a lot that their conduct may be sinful before God. They sin with coldness, with indifference, without remorse of conscience or silencing the weak remnants of it in order to continue their life of sin without discomfort. The conversion of these people is very difficult. The continuous infidelity to the inspirations of grace, the cold indifference with which they shrug their shoulders before the postulates of reason and of the most elementary morality, the systematic disregard of the good advice they may receive from those who love them well, etc., etc., harden their hearts and callous their souls, and a true miracle of grace would be necessary to bring them back to the right path. If death surprises them in this state, their eternal fate will be deplorable. Perhaps the most effective means to return them to God would be to get them to practice a series of internal spiritual exercises with a group of like-minded people (of the same profession, social situation, etc.). Although it may seem strange, it is not uncommon among this kind of men to accept "to see what it is like" one of these batches of exercises, especially if it is proposed with skill and affection by a close friend. There awaits them - often - the tomb-like grace of God. Sometimes there are noisy conversions, radical changes of conduct, the beginning of a life of piety and fervor in those who had previously lived completely forgetful of God. The priest who has had the joy of being the instrument of divine mercy must watch over his convert and ensure, through wise and timely spiritual direction, the definitive and permanent fruit of that marvelous return to God. Something similar to this usually happens in the admirable "cursillos de cristiandad". d) Sins of obstinacy and malice. - There is, finally, another fourth category of sinners, the most guilty and horrible of all. They no longer sin through ignorance, weakness or indifference, but through refined malice and satanic obstinacy. Their most common sin is blasphemy, uttered precisely out of hatred against God. Perhaps they began as good Christians, but they gradually slipped; their evil passions, more and more satisfied, acquired gigantic proportions, and a moment came when they considered themselves definitive failures. Already in the arms of despair came soon after, as an inevitable consequence, defection and apostasy. The last barriers that held them back from the edge of the precipice having been broken, they threw themselves, in a kind of revenge against God and their own conscience, into the abyss. 292 I*. III. THE RULE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE L. I. C. I. I. I, A toen A AGAINST KI. 1'IH'ADO 293 They fiercely attack religion - of which they may have been its ministers - , fight the Church, hate the good, join anti-Catholic sects, spreading their evil doctrines. They fiercely attack religion - of which perhaps they had been its ministers -, they fight against the Church, they hate the good, they join anti-Catholic sects, propagating their unhealthy doctrines with unquenchable zeal and ardor, and, driven desperate by the cries of their conscience - which shrieks in spite of everything -, they sink deeper and deeper into sin. This is the case of Julian the Apostate, Luther, Calvin, Voltaire and so many others less known, but no less guilty, who have spent their lives sinning against the light with satanic obstinacy, with refined hatred of God and all that is holy. It might be said that they are like an incarnation of Satan himself. One of these wretches went so far as to say on a certain occasion: "I do not believe in the existence of hell; but if there is one and I go to it, at least I will have the pleasure of never bowing down before God. And another, foreseeing that perhaps at the hour of death the grace of repentance would come to him from heaven, voluntarily closed himself to the possibility of returning to God, saying to his friends and relatives: "If at the hour of death I ask for a priest to confess me, do not bring him to me; I will be delirious". The conversion of one of these satanic men would require a miracle of grace greater than the resurrection of a dead man in the natural order. It is useless to attempt it by way of persuasion or advice; everything will slip like water on marble or will produce totally counterproductive effects. There is no other way than the strictly supernatural: prayer, fasting, tears, unceasing recourse to the Virgin Mary, advocate and refuge of sinners. A true miracle is needed, and only God can do it. He will not always do it in spite of so many pleas and supplications. It could be said that these unfortunates have already exceeded the measure of God's patience and are destined to be, for all eternity, living testimonies of how inflexible and rigorous divine justice is when it is fully unloaded on those who have definitely abused his infinite mercy. Let us dispense with these unfortunates, whose conversion would require a true miracle of grace, and let us turn our eyes once again to that immense multitude of those who sin through frailty or ignorance; to that great mass of people who deep down have faith, practice some superficial devotions and think at times about the things of their soul and of eternity, but absorbed by business and worldly concerns, lead an almost purely natural life, rising and falling continually and sometimes remaining for long periods of time in a state of mortal sin. Such are the vast majority of Christians of the "minimum program" (Sunday Mass, annual confession, etc.), in whom the Christian sense is very little developed, and they give themselves up to a life without supernatural horizons, in which the senses predominate over reason and faith and in which they are very exposed to getting lost. What can be done to bring these poor souls to a more Christian life, more in harmony with the demands of baptism and their eternal interests? First of all, we must inspire in them a great horror of mortal sin. 158. 2. Horror of mortal sin. - To achieve this, nothing better, after prayer, than the consideration of its gravity and its terrible consequences. Let us first listen to St. Teresa of Jesus: "There is no darkness so dark, no thing so dark and black that it is not much darker (speaking of the soul in mortal sin).... Nothing profits him, and hence it follows that all the good works that he does, being thus in mortal sin, are of no profit for glory.... I know of a person (speaking of himself) to whom Our Lord wanted to show how a soul remained when it sinned mortally. That person says that it seems to him that, if they understood it, it would not be possible for anyone to sin, even if they put themselves to greater labors than can be imagined to escape from occasions.... O souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, understand and pity yourselves! How is it possible that, understanding this, you do not try to remove this fish from this crystal? Behold, if your life is ended, you will never again enjoy this light. O Jesus, what it is to see a soul separated from it! What are the poor chambers of the castle! How troubled are the senses, which are the people who live in them! And the powers, who are the governors and the stewards and the maîtresalas, with what blindness, with what misrule! Finally, as where the tree is planted, which is the devil, what fruit can it bear? I once heard a spiritual man say that he was not frightened by what one who is in mortal sin does, but by what he does not do. God in his mercy deliver us from so great an evil, for there is no thing while we live that deserves this name of evil, but this, for it brings eternal evils without end" 4 . Warnings to the spiritual director Here is a brief outline of the ideas to be inculcated in a soul by the priest in charge of removing it from habitual mortal sin: 1. a Mortal sin must be a most grievous evil when God punishes it so terribly. For, considering that he is infinitely just, and because he is so he cannot punish anyone more than he deserves, and that he is infinitely merciful, and because he is so he always punishes the guilty less than they deserve,5 we certainly know that for a single mortal sin: a) The rebellious angels became horrible demons for all eternity. b) He threw our first parents out of paradise and submerged mankind in a sea of tears, diseases, desolations and deaths. c) It will maintain for all eternity the fire of hell in punishment of the guilty whom death surprised in mortal sin. It is of faith. d) Jesus Christ, the beloved Son, in whom the Father was well pleased (Mt. 17:5), when he wanted to stand surety for the guilty man, had to suffer the terrible torments of his passion and, above all, to experience upon himself - as the representative of sinful humanity - the indignation of divine justice, to the point of making him exclaim in incomprehensible pain: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt. 27:46). 2. a The reason for all this is that sin, by reason of the injury against the God of infinite majesty and the infinite distance that separates us from Him, contains a malice in a certain infinite way. 6. 4 First dwellings 11,1.2.4 and 5 5 Citra condignum , says St. Thomas speaking even of the demons and damned of hell (cf. SuppL 99,2 ad 1). 6 "Peccatum contra Deum commisum quandam infinitatem habet ex infinítate divinae maiestatis," expressly says St. Thomas (III, 1,2 ad 2). '¿'34: P. III. NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 3. a Mortal sin instantly produces these disastrous effects in the soul that commits it: a) Loss of sanctifying grace, of the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Suppression of the vital influence of Christ, like the branch separated from the vine. b) Loss of the loving presence of the Holy Trinity in the soul. c) Loss of all merits acquired in the entire past life. d ) Very ugly stain on the soul (macula animaej, which leaves it dark and horrible. e J Slavery to Satan, increase of evil inclinations, remorse of conscience. f) Reato of eternal punishment. Mortal sin is potential hell. It is, then, like an instantaneous collapse of our supernatural life, a true suicide of the soul to the life of grace. With these ideas well thought out and assimilated, and, above all, with God's help, which he must humbly implore in prayer, the soul will acquire an ever greater horror of mortal sin, until it decides to break with it definitively and become ready to die rather than commit it again. # # # But this simple decision of the will is not enough. The soul is still very weak, and it must be strengthened by the use of negative and positive means in order to acquire the strength and energy it lacks. It must be advised to flee with great care from all kinds of dangerous occasions, to frequent the sacraments, to make a daily examination of conscience to prevent surprises and avoid falls, to have a tender devotion to Mary, to try to be always profitably occupied (to combat idleness, the mother of all vices) and to ask God daily for effective grace so as not to offend Him. Of all these things we treat at length in other places, and to them we refer the reader who wants more abundant information7 . ARTICLE 2 Venial sin After mortal sin, there is nothing that we must avoid more carefully than venial sin. Although it is much less horrible than mortal sin, it is still situated on the line of moral evil, which is the greatest of all evils. Before it pale and are as if they were not all the evils and misfortunes of the physical order that can fall upon us and even on the whole universe. Neither sickness nor death itself can compare with it. And the gain of all the riches of the world and the natural dominion of the whole creation could not compensate for the supernatural loss that a single venial sin causes in the soul. It is necessary, therefore, to have clear ideas about its nature, kinds, malice and regrettable consequences, in order to conceive a great horror towards it and to put into practice all the means to avoid it. 7 Cf. our alphabetical index of subjects. L. I. C. I. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SIN 295 159. 1. Nature of venial sin. - This is one of the most difficult questions that can be posed in theology. For our purpose it is enough to know that, unlike mortal sin, it is a simple deviation, not a total aversion of the last end; it is a sickness, not the death of the soul.8 The sinner who commits a mortal sin is like the traveler who, intending to reach a certain point, suddenly turns his back completely to it and begins to walk in the opposite direction. He who commits a venial sin, on the other hand, limits himself to making a detour or deviation from the right path, but without losing the fundamental orientation towards the point to which he is heading. 160. 2. Division. - Three classes of venial sins are distinguished: a) By their own kind, i.e., those that by their very nature involve only a slight disorder or deviation (e.g., a small lie without harm to anyone). b) By parvity of matter, that is, those sins which are gravely forbidden in themselves, but which, because of the smallness of the matter, involve only a slight disorder (e.g., the theft of a small coin). c) For the imperfection of the act, i.e. when full warning or full consent is lacking in matters that would be serious in themselves (e.g., obscene thoughts scmiadverted or scmideliberate). The simple multiplication of venial sins does not by itself make them change species. A thousand venial sins would never be equivalent to a single mortal sin. However, a venial sin could become mortal for several chapters: a) Due to erroneous or seriously doubtful awareness of the serious malice of an action that is executed recklessly 9 . b) For its gravely evil purpose (such as one who slightly insults his neighbor in order to make him utter a blasphemy). c) Because of the near danger of falling into mortal sin if he commits venial sin (as the one who lets himself be carried away a little by anger knowing that he usually ends up seriously insulting his neighbor). d ) For a serious scandal that he will credibly cause (such as a priest who, out of simple curiosity, enters a dance hall of ill fame in the middle of a party). e) For formal disregard of a law that slightly binds I0 . f) By accumulation of matter that can become serious; e.g., the one who commits several petty thefts until reaching serious matter: in the last one he commits mortal sin (and already in the first one if he had the intention of reaching little by little the serious amount). f I-II,72,s. 9 Thus, e.g., he who erroneously believes that an action that is in itself licit is a mortal sin, sins mortally if he commits it. And likewise he who seriously doubts whether it will be or not: he must get out of his doubt (e.g., by studying, asking a priest, etc.) before he recklessly embarks on the action. 10 The contempt is called formal if it falls on the authority itself, material if on another different aspect, e.g., on the thing commanded, which seems of little importance, etc. In the first case there is always a serious disorder if it is done with all warning and deliberation coaita the authority itself as such. P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE L. 1 . C. I. L' FIGHT AGAINST SIN 297 i6i. Malice of venial sin. - It is true that there is a gulf between mortal sin and venial sin. The Church has condemned the following proposition of Bayo: "There is no sin by its very nature venial, but every sin deserves eternal punishment. "11 Venial sin, however, constitutes in itself a real offense against God, a willful disobedience to his most holy laws and a very great ingratitude to his immense benefits. The will of God and his glory are placed before us on the one hand, and our own tastes and whims on the other, and we willingly prefer the latter! It is true that we would not prefer them if we knew that they would radically separate us from God (and in this venial sin is distinguished from mortal sin, which jumps over everything and turns its back on God); but there is no doubt that the lack of respect and delicacy towards God is of itself very great, even in venial sin. St. Teresa rightly writes: "The sin of warning, however small it may be, God save us from it, how much more so when it is against so great a Majesty and when we see that he is watching us! It seems to me that this is a sin overthought and as one who says: Lord, even though it weighs on you, I will do this; I see that you see it and I know that you do not want it and I understand it; but I want to follow my whim and appetite more than your will. And that in a thing of this sort there is little, it does not seem to me, however slight the fault may be, but much and very much" l2 . So grave, indeed, is the malice of a venial sin as an offense against God, that it should not be committed even if by it we could remove all souls from purgatory and even extinguish forever the flames of hell. However, we must distinguish between venial sins of pure fragility, committed by surprise or with little warning and deliberation, and those that are committed coldly, in full awareness of the fact that they displease God. The former we can never completely avoid,13 and God, who knows very well the clay of which we are made, easily takes pity on us. The only thing to do with regard to these faults of pure fragility and weakness is to try to diminish their number as far as possible and to avoid discouragement, which would be fatal to progress in perfection and which always presupposes a more or less concealed base of self-love. Let us listen to St. Francis de Sales on this point: "Although it is right to feel displeasure and regret for having committed some faults, this displeasure should not be bitter, angry, biting and angry; and thus it is a great defect of those who, seeing themselves angered, become impatient of their own impatience and angry of their own anger.... Believe me, Filotea, that just as a son is more strengthened by his father's sweet and cordial reproofs than by his anger and wrath, so too, if we reprove our heart when it commits some 1 1 Cf. Denz, 1020. D-Cnmíno 41.3. 1 3 This would require a special privilege from God, such as the Blessed Virgin Mary received. It is defined by the Council of Trent (cf. Denz. 833). it is lacking with soft and peaceful reconventions, using more compassion than anger and encouraging him to amendment, we will get him to conceive a repentance much deeper and more penetrating than the one he could conceive among resentment, anger and confusion.... When, therefore, your heart shall fall, lift it up gently, humbling yourself much in the presence of God with the knowledge of your misery, not wondering at your fall; for how strange it is that sickness is infirm, and weakness weak, and misery wretched? But nevertheless, detest with all your heart the offense you have done to God, and, full of courage and confidence in his mercy, take up again the exercise of that virtue which you have abandoned" 1 4 . Doing so, reacting promptly against those faults of frailty with a deep repentance, but full of meekness, humility and trust in the Lord's mercy, they hardly leave a trace in the soul and do not represent a serious obstacle on the path of our sanctification. But when venial sins are committed coldly, with perfect awareness, with full warning and deliberation, they represent an insurmountable obstacle to the perfection of the soul. It is impossible to take a firm step on the road to holiness. Those sins committed with such indelicacy and carelessness grieve the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says (Eph. 4:30), and completely paralyze his sanctifying action in the soul. Let us listen to Father Lallemant: "One is astonished to see so many religious who, after having lived forty and fifty years in grace, saying Mass every day and practicing all the holy exercises of the religious life and, consequently, possessing all the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a very high physical degree and corresponding to that sort of perfection of grace which theologians call gradual, or of physical increase; one is astonished, I say, to see that these religious make nothing of the gifts of the.Holy Spirit make known in their acts and in their conduct; to see that their life is completely natural; that, when they are reproved or displeased, they show their resentment; that they manifest so much solicitude for praise, for the esteem and applause of the world, they delight in it, they love and seek its comforts and everything that flatters self-love. There is no reason to be astonished; the venial sins that they commit continually have the gifts of the Holy Spirit as if they were tied to them; it is no wonder that the effects are not seen in them. It is true that these gifts grow together with charity habitually and in their physical being, but not presently and in the perfection that responds to the fervor of charity and that increases in us merit, because venial sins, opposing the fervor of charity, impede the operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If these religious would strive for purity of heart, the fervor of charity would grow in them more and more and the gifts of the Holy Spirit would shine forth in all their conduct; but they will never be seen to appear much, living as they do without recollection, without attention to their interior, allowing themselves to be carried away and carried away by their inclinations, avoiding only the gravest sins and neglecting little things" I 5 . 14 Devout Life p.3.* c.9 "Of gentleness with ourselves", íJ P. Lallemant, La doctrine ¿spirituelle princip.4 c.3 a.3. 298 p. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE It will still help us to understand the malice of deliberate venial sin to consider the lamentable effects it brings with it in this life and in the next. 162. 4. Effects of deliberate venial sin 16 . - In this life. - Four are - in this life - the main consequences of venial sin committed frequently and deliberately: 1. "It deprives us of many present graces which the Holy Spirit had attached to our exactness and fidelity, destroyed by voluntary venial sin. This deprivation will determine sometimes the fall into a temptation that we would have avoided with that present grace of which we have been deprived; at other times, the denial of a new advance in the spiritual life; always, a diminution of the degree of eternal glory that we could have reached by resisting that temptation or by that spiritual growth. Only in the light of eternity - when there is no longer any remedy - will we realize that it was a treasure infinitely superior to the whole world. And we happily lost it for the whim and caprice of committing a venial sin! 2. a It diminishes the fervor of charity and generosity in the service of God. This fervor and generosity presuppose a sincere desire for perfection and a constant effort towards it, things that are totally incompatible with voluntary venial sin, which means a renunciation of the ideal of self-improvement and a voluntary halt in the struggle undertaken for it. 3. a It increases the difficulties for the exercise of virtue. - This is a result of the two previous consequences. Deprived of many actual graces that we would need to keep us on the path of good, and our fervor and generosity in the service of God diminished, the soul weakens little by little and loses more and more of its energy. Virtue appears more difficult, the slope leading to the summit becomes steeper and steeper, the experience of past failures - for which it alone is to blame - disheartens the soul and, as soon as the world entices with its seductions and the devil intensifies his assaults, it throws everything into a tailspin and abandons the path of perfection and perhaps surrenders without resistance to sin. From where: 4. a It predisposes to mortal sin. - It is a clear affirmation of the Holy Spirit that "he who despises the little things will gradually fall down" (Eccl. 19:1), Experience fully confirms the divine oracle. Rarely does the vertical fall of a soul full of supernatural life and power take place, no matter how violent the attack of its enemies may be. Almost always, the falls that leave the soul battered by the dust of the road have been prepared little by little. The soul has been yielding ground to the enemy, it has been losing strength through its voluntary imprudence in things that it considered of little importance, the divine lights and inspirations have been diminishing, the defenses that guarded the fortress of our soul have been crumbling little by little, and a moment comes when the enemy, with a furious assault, seizes the square. Cf. Tanquerey, Theologia ascetica n. 729-35. L. I. C. I. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SIN 299 In the afterlife. - Venial sin also has a regrettable repercussion in purgatory and in heaven. 1 .° In purgatory. - The only raison d'être of the pains of purgatory is the punishment and purification of the soul. Every sin, in addition to the guilt, carries with it a reato of punishment, which must be satisfied in this life or in the next. The burden of punishment coming from mortal sins already forgiven in terms of guilt and that of venial sins forgiven or not in this life: this is the fuel that feeds the fire of purgatory. "Everything is paid for," said Napoleon at St. Helena; and in nothing is this sentence better fulfilled than with regard to sin. God cannot renounce His justice, and the soul will have to pay the last penny before being admitted to beatific enjoyment. And the penalties that in purgatory it will have to suffer for those faults that it now so lightly commits, qualifying them as "trifles," "scruples," and peccata minuta, exceed the greatest that can be suffered in this world. St. Thomas I7 expressly says so, and his reasons are fully confirmed if we bear in mind that the punishments of this life, however terrible they may be, are of a purely natural kind, while those of purgatory belong to the supernatural order of grace and glory; there is a gulf between the two orders, and there must be, consequently, between the corresponding punishments. 2. 0 In heaven. - The increases of sanctifying grace of which the soul was deprived in this life by the subtraction of so many present graces in punishment for its venial sins, will have an eternal repercussion. The soul will have in heaven a lesser glory than it could have attained with a little more care and fidelity to grace and, what is infinitely more regrettable still, it will glorify God less for all eternity. The degree of one's own glory and divine glorification is in direct relation to the degree of grace attained in this life. Irreparable loss, which would constitute a real torment for the blessed if they were capable of suffering it. 163. 5. Means of combating venial sin. - First of all it is necessary to conceive a great horror of it. We will not take a single firm and serious step on the road to our sanctification until we have fully attained it. For this purpose it will help us very much to consider slowly the reasons we have just given for its malice and fatal consequences. We must return again and again to the struggle against venial sin, without abandoning it for a moment under the pretext of "catching our breath. In reality, with these little stops and vacations in the life of fervor and continuous vigilance, it is sin that "catches its breath", spurred on by our indolence and cowardice. We must be very faithful to the examination of conscience, general and particular; we must increase our spirit of sacrifice and prayer; we must keep the exterior and interior recollection to the maximum extent that the obligations of our state allow us; we must remember, finally, the example of the saints, who would have let themselves be killed rather than commit a single deliberate venial sin. When we succeed in rooting in our souls this disposition in a way that is per * In purgatory there are two kinds of penalties: one of harm, which consists in delaying them the hour of the divine vision; and the other of sense, which consists in the torment of bodily fire. And one and the other are so great, that the smallest punishment in purgatory exceeds the greatest in this world * ( Suppl . to the Summa, question of purgatory a.3). P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE L. I. C. I. THE FIGHT AGAINST SIN 301 When we are ready, readily and easily, to practice whatever sacrifice is necessary to avoid a deliberate venial sin, no matter how small it may seem, we will have reached the second negative degree of piety, which consists in the escape from venial sin. This is not an easy undertaking. If the first degree - absolute flight from mortal sin - already costs so many struggles, what can we say about the absolute flight from venial sin? But however difficult it may be, it is perfectly possible to approach this ideal by constant struggle and humble prayer until it is achieved to the same extent that the saints achieved it. ARTICLE 3 Imperfection t 6 4 . The third degree of perfection, in the negative aspect of the word, is the absence of voluntary imperfections. Although it is a matter of lively debate among theologians, we believe that imperfection, even voluntary, is distinct from venial sin.19 An act that is good in itself is still in the line of good, even if it could have been better. Venial sin, on the other hand, is in the line of evil, however slight it may be. There is a real gulf between the two lines. In theory, then, the distinction between venial sin and imperfection seems very clear to us. However, in practice, fully voluntary imperfection has very disastrous consequences in the spiritual life and is in itself sufficient to impede the flight of a soul towards sanctity. Let us listen to St. John of the Cross, who is perhaps the one who has spoken most clearly and precisely about imperfections. For one thing, the Saint distinguishes very well between venial sin and imperfection; for him they are two perfectly distinct things. Here are his words in their full context: "But all the other voluntary appetites, whether of mortal sin, which are the most serious, or of venial sin, which are less serious, or of imperfections, which are the least, must all be emptied, and the soul must be deprived of them all in order to come to this total union, however minimal they may be. And the reason is because the state of this divine union consists in having the soul, according to the will, with total transformation in the will of God, so that there is nothing in it contrary to the will of God, but that in everything and for all its movement it is the will of God alone" 20 . The Saint has just pointed out the fundamental reason why it is necessary to renounce voluntary imperfections at all. He then goes on to expound his thought at greater length in the following way: 18 Cf. Tissot, The Interior Life Simplified p.iA I.3 c.i. 19 Gf. n.ial, where we explain the reasons we have for thinking so. í 20 Ascent I,n,3. "For if this soul wanted some imperfection that God does not want, it would not be made a will of God, for the soul had a will that God did not have. Therefore, it is clear that in order for the soul to be perfectly united with God by love and will, it must first be devoid of any appetite for will, no matter how slight it may be. That is, it must not knowingly and knowingly consent with the will in imperfection and come to have power and freedom to be able to do so in warning" (Ibid., n. 3). As can be seen, the Saint strongly emphasizes the voluntariness of these imperfections in order to distinguish them from those of pure fragility and inadvertence, which it is impossible to avoid altogether. Let us continue to listen to him: "And I say knowingly because without warning and knowledge, or without being in his hand, he will well fall into imperfections and venial sins and into the natural appetites that we have been told; for of these such not so voluntary and surreptitious sins it is written that the just shall fall seven times in a day and rise again (Prov. 24:16). But the voluntary appetites, which are venial sins of warning, even if they are of little things, as I have said, it is enough for one that is not overcome to impede" (Ibid., n. 3). Of course, it is necessary to distinguish between some isolated act, even if it is voluntary, and the ingrained habit of voluntary imperfection. It is the latter that impedes perfect union with God. The Saint expressly says so: "I say not mortifying such a habit, because some acts, sometimes, of different appetites do not even do so much when the habits are mortified. Although these too must come to be absent, because they also proceed from the habit of imperfection. But some habits of willful imperfections in which they never quite overcome, these not only hinder divine union, but the going forward in perfection" (Ibid., n. 3). And then, by way of example, he points out some of these voluntary imperfections: "These habitual imperfections are: such as a common habit of talking a lot, an assimilation to something that never ends up wanting to overcome, such as a person, a dress, a book, a cell, such a way of eating and other little conversations and tastes in wanting to like things, to know and to hear and other similar ones" (Ibid., n.4). And he returns again to ponder the damage that these habits of voluntary imperfections cause to the soul, using the beautiful simile of the bird tied to a thread that prevents it from taking flight: "Any of these imperfections in which the soul has a hold and habit is so harmful to its ability to grow and advance in virtue that, if it should fall into many other imperfections and venial sins that do not proceed from ordinary habit, from some ordinary bad property, they will not hinder it so much as the soul's having a hold on something. For as long as the soul has this hold, it is excusable that it can go forward in perfection, even if the imperfection is very slight. For it makes no more difference to me whether a bird is attached to a thin thread than to a thick one; for, even if it is L. I. C. I. THE FIGHT AGAINST SIN P, III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE / The thin one will be as attached to it as to the thick one as long as it does not break it to fly. It is true that the thin one is easier to break; but as easy as it is, if it does not break it, it will not fly. And so is the soul that has a hold on something, that, even if it has more virtue, it will not reach the freedom of the divine union" (Ibid., n.4). This magnificent doctrine of the sublime Fontivereño mystic finds its best confirmation in the Thomistic doctrine of the growth of habits. According to St. Thomas 21 , charity and all other infused habits grow only by an act more intense than the habit presently possessed 22 . Now then: imperfection is, by its very nature, a remiss act, that is, the voluntary negation of the more intense act. It is therefore impossible to take a step towards perfection without renouncing voluntary imperfections. And this is the reason why in practice so many potential saints are frustrated and true saints are so scarce. There are legions of souls who habitually live in the grace of God, who never fall into mortal sins and who even strive to avoid venial sins. And yet, they are seen paralyzed in the spiritual life; years go by and they continue in the same way or perhaps with greater imperfections each time. What is it that happens to explain this phenomenon? Simply that they have not tried to uproot their voluntary imperfections; they have not tried to break "the thin thread" that holds them to the earth, and for this reason they cannot take flight towards the heights. With what an accent of compassion and sadness St. John of the Cross laments it! "And so, it is a pity to see some souls, like rich ships loaded with riches, and works, and spiritual exercises, and virtues, and mercies that God gives them, and because they do not have the courage to finish with some taste, or hold, or fondness - which is all one -, they never go forward nor reach the port of perfection, which was nothing more than to take a good flight and finish breaking that thread of hold or remove that glued remora of appetite. It is very painful that God has caused them to break other thicker cords of affections of sins and vanities, and for not getting rid of a childishness that God told them to overcome for the love of Him, which is nothing more than a thread and a hair, they stop going to so much good. And what is worse is that they not only do not go forward, but by that hold they go backward, losing what they have walked and gained with so much work for so long a time 23; because 21 Cf. n. 101,10. a; and n. 260-61. where we explain this doctrine at length. 22 This greater intensity is due to the impetus of an actual grace that is also more intense than the habit; otherwise, it would be impossible (no one gives what he does not have). From this we deduce the decisive importance of prayer, the only procedure we have at our disposal to impetrate those actual graces, which, as we have already explained in its place, escape merit properly speaking (cf. n. 103, 12. R ). 23 These words of the holy Doctor need explanation. As is well known, the merits acquired before God never diminish no matter how many venial sins are committed. As long as mortal sin does not come to totally destroy the life of grace, the merits acquired remain intact before God, as does the habitual degree of infused habits. St. Thomas says this expressly with regard to charity (cf. 11-11:24, r o: "Utrum caritas possit diminuí"). The reason is because, as the Angelic Doctor explains, "the conservation of any thing depends on its cause. Now then: the cause of acquired virtues is human acts; hence, if those human acts cease, the acquired virtues diminish and may, finally, disappear altogether. But this does not take place with regard to charity, because charity, as an infused virtue, is not caused by human acts, but only by God. Hence it follows that, even if human acts cease, charity, as an infused virtue, is not caused by human acts, but only by God. We already know that on this path, not to go forward is to go backward and not to go forward is to lose. This is what Our Lord wanted us to understand when he said: "He who is not with me is against me, and he who is not with me pours out" (Mt. 12:30). He who does not take care to remedy the vessel, even if it has a small crack, it is enough to spill all the liquor that is inside. For Ecclesiasticus taught us well saying: "He who despises little things will gradually fall". For, as he also says (11:34), "from a single spark the fire increases". And so, one imperfection is enough to bring another, and those, others; and thus, one will almost never see a soul that is negligent in overcoming one appetite that does not have many others, which come out of the same weakness and imperfection that it has in that one. And so, they are always falling, and we have already seen many persons whom God had the mercy of leading very far ahead in great detachment and freedom, and for only beginning to take a little taste and color of good, of conversation and friendship, their spirit and taste for God and holy solitude, fall from joy and integrity in the spiritual exercises and do not stop until they lose everything; and this because they did not stop that principle of taste and sensitive appetite by keeping themselves in solitude for God" (Ibid....), n.4 and 5). It is therefore absolutely necessary, if we wish to attain perfect union with God, to fight resolutely and untiringly against voluntary imperfections. The soul must put all its efforts and deploy all its energies to diminish them by all the means at its disposal. It must always tend towards the most perfect, trying to do all things with the greatest possible intensity. Naturally, this greater intensity should not be imagined as something of a physical or organic type, as if it were necessary to put the nervous system under tension and clench the fists tightly when performing an act of love of God. It is not that. It is only a matter of perfecting the motives that impel us to act, doing all things with ever greater purity of intention, with greater eagerness to glorify God, with an ardent desire that his action may invade and dominate us completely, that the Holy Spirit may take full possession of our soul and do what he wills with us in time and eternity without taking our tastes or whims into account at all. It simply consists in an ever more perfect and docile adaptation to the will of God over us, until we allow ourselves to be led by Him, without the least resistance, to wherever He wills; which will only be until the total death of our human egoisms and the is neither diminished nor corrupted, as long as there is no sin in the cessation itself". And then St. Thomas explains how venial sin does not diminish the habit of charity - nor, consequently, that of the other infused virtues - either effectively or meritoriously. Therefore, it is all the more reason to say that simple imperfections do not diminish them. Nevertheless, rightly understood, what St. John of the Cross says is true. For, as he himself explains in the same text we are quoting, an imperfection committed voluntarily almost never goes alone; it drags along with it many others, which weaken and weaken the soul's strength (even if the infused habits and merits contracted before God remain intact) and predispose it more and more to fall into venial sins and, finally, into mortal sin, which would bring down its entire supernatural life. In this sense, St. Thomas also concedes - at the end of the article cited above - that venial sin - and there is no objection in saying that voluntary imperfections also, although more remotely - indirectly diminish charity, inasmuch as they predispose it to its corruption or disappearance by mortal sin. p. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE full transformation in Christ, allowing us to say with St. Paul: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:2o). Of course, this profound transformation of our being and total death to our egotistical self is an undertaking beyond human strength, even with the help of simple ordinary grace. As long as man has the initiative of his own Christian life through the simple ascetic exercise of the virtues in the human way, it is impossible to achieve this profound purification of the innermost part of our being. It is necessary that the Holy Spirit himself take charge of this profound transformation in its double negative and positive aspect. St. John of the Cross 24 says it expressly, and anyone who realizes the magnitude of this undertaking, which surpasses and transcends completely the strength of the poor soul, even with the help of simple ordinary grace, which leaves in its inexperienced hands the helm and government of itself, must say it. Holiness is impossible outside the mystical life. CHAPTER II The fight against the world Diego de Estella, Treatise on the Vanity of the World; Ribet, L'ascetique c. 1 5 ; TanQt.TRFY, Ascetic Theology n.210-18; Hello, Man 1 , 13 ; Marmion, Jesus Christ, ideal of the monk c.5. After having described the fundamental lines of the struggle against mortal and venial sin - the principal enemies of our soul - and the need to combat voluntary imperfections, which are like their antechamber and preparation, it is now necessary to determine the characteristics of the secondary enemies of our sanctification: the world, the devil and the flesh, and the most effective means to counteract and overcome their unhealthy influences. 165. 1. What is the world. - It is difficult to define it by its very complexity. It is, in the final analysis, the anti-Christian atmosphere that is breathed among people who live completely forgetful of God and completely given over to the things of the earth. This unhealthy environment is constituted and manifested in four main ways. a) False maxims, in direct opposition to those of the Gospel. The world exalts riches, pleasures, violence, fraud and deceit placed at the service of its own selfishness, the omnipresent liberty of the individual, the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the world, the freedom of the individual: "These imperfections suffice it here to have referred of the many in which those of this first state of beginners live so that it may be seen how great is the need they have that God Ies put them in a state of profited; which is done by entering them in the dark night that we now say, where, God weaning them from the breasts of these tastes and flavors in pure dryness and interior darkness, Jes removes all these impertinences and childishness and makes them gain the virtues by very different means. For no matter how much the beginner exercises himself to mortify in himself all these actions and passions, he can never completely, nor by far, until God does it in him passively through the purgation of the said night" (Night 1, 7, 5). t. I. C. 2. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WORLD 305 fashion to indulge in all kinds of excesses and sins. "We are young, we must enjoy life", "God is very good and understanding; we will not be condemned for having a little fun", "We must earn money, no matter what", "The main thing is health and a long life", "Eat well, dress well, have a lot of fun; that is what we must strive for", etc., etc., etc. These are the maxims consecrated by the world and to which it worships and vassals. It conceives of nothing nobler and loftier, and is tired and bored by the contrary maxims, which are entirely those of the Gospel. And so far does the world go in subverting the reality of things, that a vulgar thief is "a man skilled in his business"; a seducer, a "merry man"; an impious freethinker, a "man of independent judgment"; a woman in indecent and provocative dress, one who "dresses to the day"; and so on. h) Mockery and persecutions against the life of piety, against decent and honest clothing; against moral spectacles, which he describes as ridiculous and boring; against delicacy of conscience in business; against the holy laws of marriage, which he judges antiquated and impossible to practice; against Christian home life; against the submission and obedience of youth, whom he proclaims to be all-powerfully free to jump over all brakes and barriers, etc., etc., etc. c) Pleasures and amusements more and more abundant, refined and immoral; theaters, cinemas, dances, centers of perversion, beaches and swimming pools with immoral promiscuity of sexes; magazines, newspapers, novels, shop windows, indecent fashions, clumsy conversations, dirty jokes, phrases of double sense, etc., etc., etc. One thinks and lives only for pleasure and amusement, to which one often sacrifices rest and the very daily wage indispensable for the most pressing necessities of life. d) Scandals and bad examples are almost continuous, to the point of hardly being able to go out on the street, open a newspaper, look in a shop window, listen to a conversation without seeing in all its crudeness an incitement to sin in one of its forms. St. John rightly said that the world is as it were immersed in evil and under the power of Satan: "the whole world is under the power of the evil one" (1 Lk. 5:19), and the Divine Master warned us against the seductions of the world: "Woe to the world because of its scandals" (Mt. 18:7). (Mt. 18:7), announcing to us the dreadful fate that awaits the scandalous (Mt. 18:6-9). 166. 2. Mode of combating it. - The most effective remedy against the world would be to flee from it materially. But since not all Christians have the vocation of Carthusians or hermits, and the vast majority have to live in the midst of the world without renouncing Christian perfection, it is necessary for them to acquire the true spirituality of the world. 306 P. Til. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE The spirit of Jesus Christ, which is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the world, is the spirit of Jesus Christ, which is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the world. To this end, they will make every effort and commitment: a) The flight from dangerous occasions. - In the world there are plenty of them. Above all, the soul that aspires to sanctification must willingly renounce spectacles, in most of which the world inoculates its poison, sows its errors and excites the lower passions. Nowhere else does the oracle of the Holy Spirit apply as it does here: "He who loves danger will perish in it" (Eccl. 3:27). It is instructive, among a thousand others, the case of Alypius - the saintly and dear friend of St. Augustine - who, dragged by his friends, attended a dangerous spectacle with the intention of showing them that he had enough willpower to remain all the time with his eyes closed so as not to contemplate the shameful tournament, and ended up opening them more than anyone else and applauding and shouting like no one else! Apart from this reason, there is still the need to mortify oneself completely in order to attain perfect union with God. Let it not seem to anyone too much of a renunciation to deprive oneself forever of the greater part of the spectacles and amusements. In reality, he who forsakes all things for the sake of God renounces nothing, since all creatures are as if they were not before Him. It is only to our blindness and obstinacy that we must attribute the fact that it seems too expensive to us to buy holiness - which will translate into eternal happiness of immeasurable magnitude - in exchange for a few centimes; that that, and less than that, are all creatures together, as St. John of the Cross says 2 . b) To revive faith, which gives us the victory over the world: "This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith" (1Lo. 5:4). Guided by it, we must oppose to the false appearances of the world the firm adherence of the spirit to the invisible divine things; to its perverse maxims, the words of Jesus Christ; to its flatteries and seductions, the eternal promises; to its pleasures and amusements, the peace of our soul and the serenity of a good conscience; to its mockeries and scorns, the integrity of the children of God; to its scandals and bad examples, the conduct of the saints and the constant affirmation of a life blameless before God and man. c) Consider the vanity of the world. - The world passes quickly: "for the form of this world passes away" (1 Cor. 7:31), and with it pass away its pleasures and lusts: "the world passes away and so do its lusts" (1Lo. 2:17). Nothing is stable under heaven, everything moves and shakes like the storm-tossed sea. The world - moreover - continually changes its judgments, its affirmations, its tastes and its whims; it sometimes denies what it had before. 1 Cf. St. Augustine, Confessions 6:8. 2 Cf. Ascent 1 , 4 . L. I. C. 2. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WORLD 307 \ applauded with frenzy, going from one extreme to another without the least scruple or modesty, remaining constant only in the ease of lying and in obstinacy in evil. Everything passes away and 'vanishes like smoke. Only "God does not change", as Saint Teresa used to say. And together with him remain forever his truth: "et veritas Domini manet in aeternum" (Ps. 116,2); his word: "verbum autem Domini manet in aeternum" (1 Pet. 1,25); his justice: "iustitia eius manet in saeculum saeculi" (Ps. 110,3), and he who fulfills his divine will: "qui autem facit voluntatem Dei manet in aeternum" (1 lo. 2,17). d) To trample on human respect. - The attention to what people will say is one of the most vile and unworthy attitudes of a Christian and one of the most injurious against God 3 . In order not to "displease" four indecent little worms who live in mortal sin, one violates the law of God and feels ashamed to show oneself a disciple of Jesus Christ. The divine Master clearly warns us in the Gospel that he will deny before his heavenly Father anyone who has denied him before men (Mt. 10:33). It is necessary to take a frank and decisive attitude before him: "he who is not with me is against me" (Mt. 12:30). And St. Paul affirms of himself that he would not be a disciple of Jesus Christ if he sought to please men (Gal. 1:10). The Christian who wants to sanctify himself must absolutely disregard what the world may say or think. Even if the whole world shrieks at him and fills him with mockery and scorn, he must press on with unwavering energy and determination. It is better to adopt from the first moment an attitude that is absolutely clear and unequivocal so that no one will have the slightest doubt about our true purposes and intentions. The world will hate us and persecute us - as the Divine Master warned us (Lk. 15:18-20) - but, if it finds in us a resolute and unwavering attitude, it will end up leaving us in peace, considering the game lost. It is only against the cowards who hesitate that he returns again and again to drag them back into his ranks. The best way to defeat the world is not to yield a single step, asserting with force our personality in a determined, clear and unwavering attitude of renouncing forever to its maxims and vanities 4 . 3 Cf. the precious chapter dedicated to human respect by Ernesto Hello in his work Man 1 , 3 . 4 Cf. St. Francis de Sales: "That we should not listen to the sayings of the children of the world* (Devotional Life p-4. ft c.i). 308 P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE L. I. C. 3 . THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL 309 CHAPTER III The fight against the devil Ribet, L'ascetique c.16; La mystique divine t.3; Tanquerey, Ascetic Theology n.219-25; 1531 - 49 ; Desiderius Costa, The Devil ; Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages 5,6; Saudreau, L'état mystique c.22-23; Schram, Théologie mystique 1 p.i. a § 174-204; Joseph de Tonquedec, Diabolic Action or Illness?; Etudes Carmélitaines, Satin. The second external enemy with which we must fight tooth and nail is the devil. Because of its great importance in practice, we are going to study this matter with the maximum extension that the Indole of this work allows us. We take for granted here all that dogmatic theology teaches about the existence of demons, their nature and the reasons for their enmity towards us,1 and we will focus only on the diabolical action on souls, which takes three main forms: temptation, obsession and possession. ARTICLE 1 Temptation 2 167. According to the Angelic Doctor, the proper office of the devil is to tempt 3 . However, he then adds 4 that not all the temptations that man suffers come from the devil; there are those that have their origin in his own concupiscence, as the Apostle James says: "Each one is tempted by his own lusts, which entice and seduce him" (Iac. 1:14). It is true, however, that many temptations come from the devil, driven by his envy against man and his pride against God5 . It is expressly stated in divine revelation: "Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist the wiles of the devil; for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this dark world, against the evil spirits of the air" (Eph. 6:11-12). And St. Peter compares the devil to an enraged lion that circles around us, desiring to devour us (1 Pet. 5:8). 1 Cf. 1:63-64; 109; 114. 2 We know nothing better about temptation in all its forms than the articles of P. Masson, O.P., in "La vie spirituelle" (from November 1923 to April 1926). Here is the index of these articles: I. Temptation in general (nature, universality) ; II. Its sources. The flesh (nature of concupiscence) ; The world and its weapons (violence, seduction) ; The devil (the character and his history, the work of the tempter, his action on the intelligence, the sensitive appetite and the material body) ; III. The process of temptation; IV. Its purpose (on the part of the devil, on the part of God). God's plan: work of justice and mercy. 3 T,H4,2. 4 !hyd. 3. 5 Ibid., 1. There is no fixed rule or clear sign to distinguish when temptation proceeds from the devil or from other causes. However, when the temptation is sudden, violent and tenacious; when there is no proximate or remote cause that could produce it; when it causes deep disturbance in the soul or suggests the desire for marvelous or spectacular things, or incites one to distrust superiors or to communicate nothing of what is happening to the spiritual director, one can well see in all this a more or less direct intervention of the devil. God never tempts anyone by inciting him to evil (Iac. 1:13). When Sacred Scripture speaks of the temptations of God, it uses the word "temptation" in its broad sense, as a simple experiment of a thing - tentare, id est, experimentum sumere de aliquo 6 - and not in relation to divine knowledge (which knows nothing), but in relation to the knowledge and profit of man himself. But God permits us to be incited to evil by our spiritual enemies in order to give us occasion for greater merit. He will never allow us to be tempted beyond our strength: "God is faithful, and will not allow you to be tempted above your strength, but with the temptation he will arrange success so that you may be able to resist it" (1 Cor. 10:13). The advantages of temptation overcome with God's grace and help are innumerable. For it humbles Satan, makes the glory of God shine forth, purifies our soul, filling us with humility, repentance and trust in divine help; it obliges us to be ever vigilant and alert, to distrust ourselves, expecting everything from God; to mortify our tastes and whims; it excites us to prayer; it increases our experience, and makes us more circumspect and cautious in the fight against our enemies. James rightly affirms that "blessed is the man who endures temptation, for he who has been tested will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him" (Iac. 1:12). But to obtain all these advantages it is necessary to train ourselves in the fight in order to obtain victory through the help of God. In order to do this, it will help us a lot to know the devil's strategy and how to react against it. 168. 1. Psychology of temptation - Perhaps nowhere else The underhanded strategy of the devil in his work of temptation appears with as much transparency and clarity in the inspired page as in the impressive account of the temptation of the first woman, which brought about the ruin of all mankind. Let us examine the biblical story, deducing its most important teachings 7 . a) The tempter approaches. - We do not always have him at our side. Some Holy Fathers and theologians believe that next to the guardian angel, deputed by God for our good, we all have a devil, appointed by Satan to tempt us and push us to evil 8 ; but this is not always the case. 8 1,114,2; II-II,97,i. 7 Cf. Gen. 3. 1 Cf. Petau, De Angel. 1.4 c.27" 310 1 \ ni. DEVELOPMENT STANDARD I, BE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE L. I. C. 3. THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL 311 This supposition cannot be supported by any absolutely clear and indisputable text of Sacred Scripture. It seems more probable that the presence of the devil with us is not permanent and continuous, but circumscribed to the moments of temptation. This seems to emerge from certain biblical accounts, especially from the temptations of the Lord in the desert, at the end of which the sacred text expressly says that the devil withdrew from Him for a certain time: "diabolus recessit ab illo usque ad tempus" (devil recessesit ab illo usque ad tempus). (Lc> 4,I3) ' , . , But, even if sometimes he keeps away from us, it is certain that many other times the devil tempts us. And although on certain occasions he suddenly launches himself into an attack without prior preparation - in order to surprise the soul - on many other occasions, however, he insinuates himself cautiously, not immediately proposing the object of the temptation, but entering into dialogue with the soul. b ) First insinuation: "Has God commanded you not to eat of all the trees of Paradise? The devil is not yet tempting, but he is already taking the conversation to the terrain that suits him. His tactics remain the same today as ever. To persons particularly inclined to sensuality or to doubts against faith he will raise in general terms, and without yet inciting them to evil, the problem of religion or purity. "Does God really demand the blind assent of your intelligence or the all-embracing immolation of your natural appetites?" c) The response of the soul. - If the soul, realizing that the mere posing of the problem represents a danger for it, refuses to dialogue with the tempter - for example, by turning its thoughts and imagination to other, completely unrelated matters - the temptation is strangled in its very preparation, and the victory is as easy as it is resounding: the tempter withdraws in shame before the Olympian contempt. But if the soul, imprudently, accepts the dialogue with the tempter, it exposes itself to great danger of succumbing: "And the woman answered the serpent: Of the fruit of the trees of paradise we eat, but of the fruit of him that is in the midst of paradise God hath said unto us, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." The soul realizes that God strictly forbids it to perform that action, to dwell on that doubt, to foster that thought or to nourish that desire. It does not want to disobey God, but it is wasting its time remembering that it should not do so. How much simpler it would be not to have even had to remember its moral duties, strangling the temptation at its inception and not even bothering to ponder the reasons why it should do so! d) Direct proposal of sin. - The soul has yielded ground to the enemy, and the latter gains strength and audacity to directly attempt the assault: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Nay, ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." The devil presents a dazzling panorama. Behind sin an ineffable happiness is hidden. He no longer suggests to the soul the thought that "it will be like God"-that utopia he could only once present it-but tells him that he will be happy if he indulges once more in sin. "In any case," he adds, "God is infinitely merciful and will easily forgive you. Enjoy once more the forbidden fruit. Nothing bad will happen to you. Have you no experience of other times? How much you enjoy and what an easy thing it is for you to come out of sin by immediate repentance!" If the soul opens its ears to these diabolical insinuations, it is lost. It is not yet in time to turn back - the will has not yet given its consent - but, if it does not immediately and energetically cut off, it is in grave danger of succumbing. Her strength is weakening, the graces of God are less intense and sin appears to her more and more suggestive and fascinating. e) Hesitation. - Let us listen to the biblical account: "So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, beautiful to look at, and desirable to gain wisdom by it..." The soul begins to waver and to be deeply troubled. The heart beats violently in the chest. A strange nervousness takes possession of his whole being. He would not want to offend God. But, on the other hand, the panorama before him is so seductive! A struggle too violent to be prolonged for long is engaged. If the soul, in a supreme effort and under the influence of an efficacious grace, of which it has made itself unworthy by its imprudence, decides to remain faithful to its duty, it will remain fundamentally victorious, but with its forces battered and with a venial sin on its conscience (negligence, semi-consent, hesitation in the face of evil). But more often than not, she will take the fatal step into the abyss. f ) Voluntary consent. "And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave of it also to her husband, who also ate with her." The soul has fully succumbed to temptation. It has committed the sin, and often - through scandal and complicity - makes others commit it as well. g) Disillusionment. - How different the poor soul finds the sin from what the diabolical suggestion had painted it! Immediately after having consummated it, it experiences a great disappointment, which plunges it into the greatest misfortune and the blackest emptiness: "The eyes of both of them were opened, and seeing that they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves belts." ■ The poor soul realizes that it has lost everything. It has been left completely naked before God: without sanctifying grace, without the infused virtues, without the gifts of the Holy Spirit, without the loving indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity, with absolute loss of all the merits acquired at the cost of strenuous efforts throughout its life. There has been an instantaneous collapse of his whole supernatural life, and there only remains, in the midst of that heap of ruins, *his bitter disappointment and the sarcastic laughter of the tempter. P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 313 h) Shame and remorse. - Immediately the voice of conscience is heard, inflexible and terrible, reproaching the crime committed: "And they heard the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God in the midst of the grove of the garden. But the LORD God called unto Adam, saying, Adam, where art thou?" This same question, posed to the sinner by his own conscience, has no possible answer. One can only fall on one's knees before it and ask God's forgiveness for the infidelity committed and learn from the painful experience to resist the tempter from the very first moment, that is, from the very beginning, when the victory is easy and the triumph certain under the loving gaze of God. 169. 2. Practical conduct in the face of temptation. - But let us specify a little more what the soul must do before, during and after temptation. This will complete the theoretical doctrine and the practical training of the soul in its struggle against the infernal enemy. 1) Before temptation. - The fundamental strategy to prevent temptation was suggested by Our Lord Jesus Christ to the disciples in Gethsemane on the night of the supper: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation" (Mt. 26:41). Vigilance and prayer are necessary. a) Vigilance. - The devil does not give up possession of our soul. If at times he seems to leave us in peace and does not tempt us, it is only to return to the assault at the least expected moment. In times of calm and tranquility, we must be convinced that the war will return, perhaps with greater intensity than before. It is necessary to be alert so as not to let ourselves be surprised. This vigilance must manifest itself in the flight from all more or less dangerous occasions, in the foresight of unexpected assaults, in the mastery of ourselves, particularly of the sense of sight and imagination, in preventive examination, in the frequent renewal of the firm resolution never to sin again, in combating idleness, the mother of all vices, and in other similar things. We are in a state of war with the devil, and we cannot abandon our post of guard and sentinel, if we do not want him to seize by surprise, at the least expected moment, the fortress of our soul. b) Prayer: But our vigilance and our efforts are not enough. To remain in the state of grace, and consequently to triumph over temptation, requires an efficacious grace from God, which can only be obtained through prayer. The most exquisite vigilance and the most tenacious effort would be totally ineffective without the help of God's grace. With it, on the other hand, the triumph is infallible. This efficacious grace - as we have already said - escapes the merit of justice and is strictly due to no one, not even to the greatest saints. But God has pledged his word, and he will infallibly grant it to us if we ask him for it through prayer with the proper conditions. This highlights the exceptional importance of the prayer of L. I. C. 3. THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL supplication. St. Alphonsus Liguori was right to say, referring to the absolute necessity of efficacious grace, which can only be obtained through prayer: "He who prays is saved, and he who does not pray is condemned". And to decide in the face of a soul's doubt whether or not he had succumbed to temptation he used to ask him simply: " Did you pray asking God for the grace not to fall ?" This is profoundly theological. This is why Christ taught us in the Lord's Prayer to ask God "not to let us fall into temptation". And it is very good and reasonable that in this preventive prayer we also invoke Mary, our good Mother, who crushed with her virginal soles the head of the infernal serpent, and our guardian angel, one of whose principal offices is precisely that of defending us against the assaults of the infernal enemy. 2) During temptation. - Practical conduct during temptation can be summed up in one word: resist. It is not enough to maintain a merely passive attitude (neither consenting nor not consenting), but positive resistance is necessary. But this positive resistance can be direct or indirect. a) Direct resistance is that which confronts the temptation itself and overcomes it by doing precisely the opposite of what it suggests. For example: to begin to speak well of a person when we were tempted to criticize him, to give a splendid alms when stinginess tried to close our hand to an ordinary alms, to prolong prayer when the enemy suggested that we shorten or suppress it, to make an act of public manifestation of faith when human respect tried to frighten us, etc. This direct resistance should be used in all kinds of temptations, with the exception of those that refer to faith or purity, as we are going to say next. b) Indirect resistance is that which does not confront the temptation, but turns away from it, distracting the mind to another completely different object. It is particularly indicated in temptations against faith or chastity, where it is not convenient to fight directly, which would perhaps increase the temptation because of the dangerous and slippery nature of the matter. The best thing in these cases is to practice quickly and energetically, but also with great serenity and calm, a mental exercise that absorbs our internal faculties, especially the memory and the imagination, and indirectly, gently and effortlessly, separates them from the object of temptation. For example: mentally going through the list of our friends in such and such a town, the names of the provinces of Spain, the titles of the books we have read on such and such a subject, the fifteen best monuments we know, etc., etc., etc. The procedures we can use for this kind of indirect resistance are very varied, and in practice it gives positive and excellent results, especially if it is practiced at the very moment of the beginning of the temptation and before allowing it to take root in the soul. Sometimes the temptation does not go away as soon as we have rejected it, and the devil returns again and again with untiring tenacity and stubbornness. We should not be discouraged by this. This diabolical insistence is the best proof that the soul has not succumbed to temptation. Repeat your repudiation once and a thousand times if necessary with great serenity and peace, carefully avoiding nervousness and 314 P. III- NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE disturbance. Each new assault rejected is a new merit contracted before God and a new strengthening of the soul. Far from being weakened by these continually rejected assaults, the soul acquires new strength and energy. The devil, seeing his loss, will eventually leave us in peace, especially if he notices that he does not even succeed in disturbing the peace of our spirit, which was perhaps the only purpose he had in mind with these repeated assaults. It is always good, especially in the case of very tenacious and repeated temptations, to manifest what is happening to us to our spiritual director. The Lord usually rewards this act of humility and simplicity, from which the devil tries to keep us away, with new and powerful help. That is why we must have the courage and the courage to manifest it bluntly, especially when we feel strongly inclined to keep silent about it. Let us not forget that, as the masters of the spiritual life teach, temptation declared, is already half vanquished. 3) After the temptation. - Only one of these three things could have happened: that we have overcome, or succumbed, or that we have doubts and uncertainty about it. a) If we have won and we are sure of it, it was only because of the efficacious help of God's grace. It is therefore necessary to make a simple and brief act of thanksgiving, accompanied by a new petition for divine help for other occasions. Everything can be reduced to this or a similar invocation: "Thank you, Lord; I owe everything to you; continue to help me on all dangerous occasions and have mercy on me. b) If we have fallen and there is not the slightest doubt about it, let us never lose heart. Let us remember the infinite mercy of God and the welcome he gave to the prodigal son, and let us throw ourselves full of humility and repentance into his arms of the Father, asking his tender forgiveness and promising with his help never to sin again. If the fall was serious, let us not be content with a simple act of contrition; let us go as soon as possible to the tribunal of penance and take the opportunity of our sad experience to redouble our vigilance and intensify our fervor so that it will never happen again. c) If we remain in doubt as to whether or not we have consented, let us not examine ourselves thoroughly and with anguish, because such imprudence would again provoke temptation and increase the danger. Let us allow some time to pass, and when we are completely calm, the testimony of our own conscience will tell us with sufficient clarity whether we have fallen or not. In any case, it is good to make an act of perfect contrition and to manifest to the confessor, when the time comes, what has happened in the form that is in our conscience or, better still, in the very presence of God. Scholium. - Assuming that we are dealing with a soul of daily communion, could he continue to receive communion until the usual day of confession with doubt as to whether or not he consented to a particular temptation? It is not possible to give a categorical and universal answer applicable to all souls and to all possible cases. The confessor will judge taking into account 9 Gf. on this subject in Tissot's precious booklet The Art of Using our Faults, . in which the doctrine of St. Francis de Sales is collected at length. I L. I. C. 3 . THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEMON! taking into account the penitent's temperament and habitual dispositions and applying the moral principle of presumption. If it is a soul habitually determined to die rather than sin and, on the other hand, is prone to scruples, he should command him to receive communion, disregarding these doubts and limiting himself to making a previous act of contrition for what might be. If, on the other hand, it is a matter of a soul who is prone to fall easily into mortal sin, with a broad conscience and without scruples, the presumption is against her; it is probable that she consented to the temptation, and he should not allow her to receive communion without first receiving sacramental absolution. The penitent in either case should humbly abide by what his confessor or spiritual director manifests to him and obey simply, without contradicting or arguing with him. ARTICLE 2 The diabolical obsession Simple temptation is the most common and universal way in which Satan exercises his diabolical action in the world. No one is exempt from it, not even the greatest saints. At every stage of the Christian life the soul experiences its assaults. The forms vary, the procedures change, its intensity increases or decreases, but the very fact of temptation remains constant throughout the spiritual life. Our Lord Jesus Christ also wanted to be tempted in order to teach us how to overcome the enemy of our souls. But sometimes the devil is not content with simple temptation. It is especially in the case of very elevated souls, who are hardly impressed by ordinary temptations, that he deploys all his infernal power, going as far, with God's permission, as obsession and sometimes even bodily possession of his victim. The fundamental difference between the two forms consists in the fact that in obsession the diabolical action is extrinsic to the person who suffers it, while in possession the demon actually enters the body of his victim and controls him from within as a chauffeur controls the steering wheel of a car as he pleases. Let us first study obsession, leaving the analysis of possession for the following article. 170. 1. Nature of obsession. - There is obsession always that the devil torments man from the outside in such a strong, sensitive and unequivocal way that there is no doubt about his presence and action. In simple temptation, the diabolical action is not so clear; it could be due to other causes. But in true and authentic obsession, the presence and action of Satan is so clear and unequivocal that neither the soul nor its director harbors the least doubt about it. The soul retains the consciousness of its vital and motive action on its bodily organs - something which disappears in possession -, but 316 P. III. NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE She clearly notices at the same time the external action of Satan, who tries to violate her with unheard-of force. "The obsession - Ribet 10 warns very well - is the attack of the enemy, who strives to enter a square of which he is not yet master; and this square to be conquered is the soul. Possession - on the other hand - is the enemy in the very heart of the square and ruling it despotically; and this invaded and enslaved square is the body. There is, then, as can be seen, a notable difference between these two diabolical irruptions. One is exterior, the other interior; the latter is directed by itself to the body, which it moves and agitates; the former is directed to the soul, and has for its immediate purpose to solicit it to evil. For this reason, obsession is more to be feared than possession itself: the enslavement of the body is infinitely less to be feared than that of the soul". 171. 2. Types. - Obsession may be internal or external. The first affects the interior powers, principally the imagination, provoking intimate impressions. The second affects the external senses in the most varied forms and degrees. Rarely does only the external one occur, since what the tempter tries to do is to disturb the peace of the soul through the senses; but there are cases in the lives of the saints in which the most furious external obsessions (apparitions, blows, etc.) did not succeed in altering in any way the imperturbable peace of their souls. 1) Internal obsession is distinguished from ordinary temptations only by its violence and duration. And although it is very difficult to determine exactly how far the simple temptation goes and where the real obsession begins, nevertheless, when the disturbance of the soul is so deep and the current that drags it towards evil so violent that to explain it it is necessary to suppose an extrinsic excitation - although nothing, on the other hand, appears externally -, it is possible to think of a diabolical intimate obsession. This intimate obsession can take the most varied forms. Sometimes it will manifest itself in the form of a fixed and absorbing idea on which all intellectual energies seem to concentrate; sometimes by images and representations so vivid that they impose themselves as if they were the most expressive and overwhelming realities; sometimes it will refer to our duties and obligations, producing towards them an almost insurmountable repugnance, sometimes it will manifest itself by the inclination and vehement desire for what is to be avoided, and so forth. The shaking of the spirit almost always has repercussions on the life of passion by virtue of the intimate relations that exist between the two aspects of our one self. The soul, in spite of itself, feels full of importunate, obsessive images, which push it to doubt, resentment, anger, antipathy, hatred and despair, when not to dangerous tenderness and the fascinating charm of voluptuousness. The best remedy against such assaults is prayer, together with true humility of heart, self-contempt, trust in God and in Mary's protection, the use of the sacramentals and blind obedience to the spiritual director, from whom nothing should be hidden of all that happens. t. I. C. 3 . THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL 317 2) The external and sensitive obsession is usually more spectacular and impressive, but it is actually less dangerous than the inner one, unless it is coupled with it, as is almost always the case. It can affect all the external senses. There are numerous examples in the lives of the saints. a) Sight is affected by the most varied diabolical apparitions. Sometimes they are dazzling, pleasant, Satan transforming himself into an angel of light in order to deceive the soul and inspire in it feelings of vanity, self-satisfaction, etc., etc. By these and similar effects the soul will recognize the presence of the enemy, apart from other norms that we will examine when we speak of the discernment of spirits n . At other times Satan appears in horrible and threatening forms to frighten the servants of God and to turn them away from the exercise of the virtues, as we read in the life of the holy Curé of Ars, of St. Gemma Galgani and many others. Others, finally, present themselves in a seductive and voluptuous way to drag them to evil, as happened with St. Hilarion, St. Anthony Abbot, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Alphonsus Rodriguez. b) The ear is tormented with shocks and frightful noises (Cure of Ars), with obscenities and blasphemies (St. Margaret of Cortona) or recreated with songs and voluptuous music to excite sensuality. c) The sense of smell perceives sometimes the softest odors (sensuality) or the most intolerable stench. There are numerous examples in the lives of the saints. d) Taste is affected in many different ways. Sometimes, the demon tries to excite feelings of gluttony by producing the sensation of succulent delicacies or delicious liquors that the subject who experiences it had never tasted. But the most frequent is to excite the sensation of a very bitter gall in the food he eats (to exhaust his strength by separating him from the necessary sustenance), or by mixing with the food disgusting things (worms, filth of all kinds), or dangerous to swallow and impossible to digest (thorns, needles, stones, fragments of glass, etc.). e) The touch, diffused throughout the body, suffers in a thousand ways the harmful influence of the devil. Sometimes they are terrible blows, as historically recorded by St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa, St. Francis Xavier and St. Gemma Galgani. Others, embraces and voluptuous caresses, as St. Alphonsus Rodriguez tells of himself; others, finally, God permitting it for the trial and benefit of his servants, the diabolical action reaches incredible extremes and clumsiness, without any fault on the part of the one who suffers it 12 . 172. 3. Causes of diabolic obsession. - Obsession can be due to multiple causes. a) To the permission of God, who wants with it to purify the virtue of a soul and increase its merits. In this sense it is equivalent to a passive trial or mystical night of the soul. From Job to the Curé of Ars, it can be said that there has been no saint who has not experienced it at some time with greater or lesser intensity. bj To the envy and pride of the devil, who cannot bear the sight of a soul that tries to sanctify itself truly and to glorify God with all its might, dragging a great number of souls after it towards perfection or salvation. 10 La mystique divine III, Q n 3. 1 1 Cf. n.536-41. 12 Gf. Ribet, La mystique divine III, 9 n.6. 318 P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE c) The imprudence of the obsessed person, who had the audacity to provoke or challenge Satan as if it were a small matter to defeat and defeat him. There are several examples of this kind of imprudence, which truly humble souls will never allow themselves. d) Although more remotely, it may also be due to the natural propensity of the obsessed person, which gives Satan the opportunity to attack him at his weakest point. This reason does not apply to external obsessions, which have nothing to do with the temperament or natural complexion of the sufferer; but it is valid for internal obsessions, which find fertile ground in a melancholic temperament prone to scruples, worries and sadness. In any case, obsession, however violent it may be, never deprives the subject of his freedom, and with the grace of God he can always overcome it and draw from it greater good. This is the only reason why God permits them. It is true, however, that, although the obsessed subject does not lose his interior freedom, he often loses control of his powers and lower senses, being forced by almost uncontainable impulses to say or do what he does not want to do. It is possible, sometimes, that the obsession goes together with a certain partial diabolic possession. 173. 4. Practical conduct of the director with souls obsessed. - Above all, a great deal of discretion and perspicacity is needed to distinguish true obsession from a host of nervous diseases and mental imbalances that are very similar to it. It would be foolish - as well as heretical and impious - to deny outright the reality of diabolical action in the world, since it is expressly stated in the very sources of revelation and has been proven a thousand times over with unequivocal and irrefutable proofs in the lives of the saints.13 But there is no doubt that countless apparently diabolical phenomena recognize in practice much less sensational causes. It is a rule of elementary prudence - always encouraged by the Church - not to attribute to the supernatural or preternatural order what can be explained, with greater or lesser probability, by purely natural causes. The director shall act prudently if he/she takes into account the following rules: 1. a Obsession does not ordinarily occur except in souls very advanced in virtue. Ordinary and mediocre souls, which are the vast majority of pious Christians, the devil is content to persecute them by means of simple temptation. Let the director, then, examine the kind of soul he has before him, and from there he will be able to draw a first guess as to the diabolical or purely natural origin of his presumed obsessions. 2. to See also with all diligence and care whether he is a normal soul, perfectly balanced, of sound judgment, an enemy of exaggerations and exaggerations; or whether, on the contrary, he is a restless, unbalanced, sickly spirit, of hysterical antecedents, tormented by scruples, or morally depressed by some inferiority complex. 13 The tendency to explain everything by purely natural causes is greatly exaggerated in modern times. A great contemporary theologian rightly laments that "perhaps the most alarming and dangerous victory of the devil is that he has succeeded in shaking from us faith in his frightful power" (cf. Dom Stolz. Theology of Mysticism, at the end of the chapter "The Empire of Satan"). L. 1. C. 3 . THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL 319 This second piece of information is of exceptional and often decisive importance. However, one should not make too hasty an opinion. A hysterical and unbalanced subject is perfectly capable of diabolic obsession. The differential diagnosis of what corresponds to the action of the devil and what is due to his nervous imbalance will be very difficult in practice, but the case is perfectly possible, and the director should not solve it with the simplistic solution of blaming everything on one or the other cause. Give him on his own the moral norms that correspond to his office of director of souls and refer him to a psychiatrist or Catholic doctor who will take care of alleviating his torments from the field of medicine and therapeutics. 3. a The authentic characters of the true diabolic obsession appear with sufficient clarity when it is revealed by signs visible to all (e.g., the displacement of an object by an invisible hand), when ostensible marks appear on the patient (traces of blows, wounds, etc.) of the cruelty of the demon that cannot be attributed to any purely natural cause and when the person who suffers from it offers all the guarantees of equanimity, self-possession, sincerity and, above all, virtue. We have already said that the devil does not usually obsess vulgar and mediocre souls. Sometimes, however, the Lord permits diabolical obsession in vulgar souls and even in hardened sinners as a salutary expiation of their sins and in order to give them an impressive idea of the dreadfulness of hell and of the necessity of coming out of sin in order to free themselves from the slavery of Satan. But the ordinary and common thing is that the obsessive assaults of the devil are suffered only by souls of very high virtue or who walk very seriously towards sanctity. 4. a Once the reality of the diabolical obsession has been proven - at least with discreet and prudent probability - the director will proceed with the utmost patience and gentleness of manner. These tormented souls need the help and consolation of someone who is entirely trustworthy and speaks to them in the name of God. His main concern will be to revive the soul and lift its dejected spirits. He will make her see how all the assaults of hell will be useless if she puts all her trust in God and does not lose her serenity. Speak to her of the foolishness and imprudence of the devil, who will only increase the merits and beauty of her soul by his assaults. Remind her that God is with her helping her to overcome - "If God is for us, who is against us?" (Rom. 8:31) - , and at her side is also Mary, her sweet Mother, and the guardian angel, whose power is far superior to that of Satan. Recommend to him never to lose his serenity, to despise the devil, to spit in his face if he presents himself to him in a visible form, to arm himself with the sign of the cross and the use of sacramentals - especially holy water, of recognized efficacy against the wiles of the devil - and never to stop doing what the enemy tries to prevent him from doing, nor ever to do what he suggests to him, even if it seems good and reasonable. Insist that he give him a detailed account of everything that happens, without ever hiding anything from him, no matter how hard and painful it may be. Let him see, finally, that God often makes use of the devil himself to purify and purify the soul, and the best way to support the divine plans is to abandon oneself entirely to his most holy will, remaining in humble acceptance of all that he disposes and for as long as he wills, asking him only for the grace not to succumb to the violence of temptations and remain faithful to him until death. 5. a In the most serious and persistent cases, the director may make use of the exorcisms prescribed by the Roman Ritual or other appropriate formulas. 320 P. III. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE by the Church. But always in private and without informing the patient that he is going to be exorcised (especially if it is feared that the news will cause him great impression (or disturbance of spirit); it is enough to tell him that a prayer approved by the Church will be said for him. ARTICLE 3 Devil possession Much more impressive than obsession, but also less dangerous and much rarer than it, is diabolic possession. The fundamental difference between the two, as we have already said, is that the former is constituted by a series of external assaults by the devil, while in the latter there is a real takeover of the victim's body by Satan, 174. 1. Existence-The existence of diabolical possession. is an absolutely indisputable fact that seems to belong to the deposit of faith ls . In the Gospel there are several cases of true and authentic diabolical possession, and it is precisely one of the impressive characteristics of the divine mission of Jesus Christ the sovereign empire that he exercised over the demons. Christ questioned him with dominion: "What is your name? He said: "Legion is my name, for we are many" (Me. 5:9); he forced them to abandon their victim: "Jesus commanded him: Be quiet and come out of him" (Me. 1:25); he forbade them to proclaim his messianism: "He commanded them with dominion not to make him known" (Me. 3:12); he freed a great number of demoniacs: "They brought him... and the demoniacs... and he he cured them" (Mt. 4:24); he conferred on them the power of the demons: "They brought him... and the demoniacs... and he cured them" (Mt. 4:24); he conferred on them the power of the demons: "They brought him... and he cured them" (Mt. 4:24). 4:24); he conferred on his disciples the power to cast out demons: "Heal the sick..., cast out the demons" (Mt. 10:8); they exercised it many times: "Lord, even the demons were subject to us in your name" (Le. 10:17); 1 ° same as St. Paul: "When Paul was troubled, he turned and said to the spirit: In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of this place. And immediately he went out" (Acts 16:18). Throughout the history of the Church, numerous cases of diabolical possession have been recorded, and many saints have intervened to free the unfortunate victims. Finally, the Church has instituted official exorcisms against Satan, which appear in the Pontifical and Roman Ritual. One cannot, therefore, without manifest temerity and probably without true heresy, deny the real fact of diabolical possession. Of course, there is no inconvenience for it from the metaphysical point of view (it does not involve contradiction), nor physical (it does not overcome the forces of the devil), nor moral (God allows it in punishment of sin or to obtain greater good). 14 It is well known that solemn exorcisms require the express permission of the ordinary and the use of due precautions (cf. CIC cn. 1151-2). 15 Thus Sciiram states: "II est de foi que le démon peut posséder et obséder le corps des hommes" (Théologie Mystique t.i c.3 § 184 p.435, Paris 1874). I. I. C. 3. THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEVIL 321 175. 2. Nature. - Diabolic possession is a phenomenon The demon invades the body of a living man and moves his organs on his behalf and at his pleasure as if it were his own body. The demon actually enters and resides inside the body of his unfortunate victim and works in it, speaks and treats it as his own property. Those who suffer from this despotic invasion are called possessed, possessed persons, demoniacs, or energumens. Possession supposes and carries with it two essential elements: a) the presence of the demon in the victim's body, and bj his despotic empire over it. Of course, there is no intrinsic information (in the way that the soul is a substantial form of the body), but only an entry or taking possession of the victim's body by the demon. The empire over him is despotic, but not as an intrinsic principle of his acts or movements, but only by a violent dominion external to the substance of the act. It could be compared to the function of the chauffeur driving the steering wheel of the car and directing the energy of its engine to where he pleases 16 . In whatever form it manifests itself, the intimate presence of the devil is confined exclusively to the body. The soul remains free, or at least, if by a consequence of the invasion of the bodily organs the exercise of its conscious life is suspended, it is never itself invaded. God alone has the privilege of penetrating into its very essence by his creative virtue and establishing his dwelling there by the special union of grace 17 . Nevertheless, the primary purpose of the devil's violence is to disturb the soul and drag it into sin. But the soul always remains master of itself, and, if it is faithful to the grace of God, it finds in its free will an inviolable asylum 18 . In possession, two very distinct periods can be distinguished: the state of crisis and that of calm. The periods of crisis are manifested by the violent access of evil, and their very violence does not allow them to be continuous, not even very prolonged. It is the moment when the devil declares himself openly by acts, words, convulsions, outbursts of rage and impiety, truly satanic obscenities and blasphemies, etc. In most of the cases, the patients lose the notion of what happens in them during this state, as it happens in the great crises of certain diseases. 1