ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE: VERSES 1-8 INCLUSIVE 

 

THE CROSS’ CRUCIFORMITY

 

            The paradigmatic and programmatic outline of this commentary is the configuration of Christ’s cross of crucifixion. This cross contains three different, disparate beams. The upright and vertical beam points to heaven’s immutable eternity beyond earth’s time and temporality; the horizontal cross beam spans the entire history of mankind living on earth in its pilgrimage to heaven; the intersection of the two beams forms the cross’ cruciformity. In this cruciformity there is the march of a Christian’s eschatological salvation history toward heaven alongside the march of secular history toward its doomsday. These three beams with each’s special orientation engage three separate and disparate orders inherent in the Christian’s life. The vertical order is ontological-metaphysical; the horizontal order is phenomenological-paraphysical; the cruciform intersection of these two orders integrates and reconciles together the two previous orders. The vertical order entails a logic that is orthodox; the horizontal entails an order that is one of paradox; and the cruciform order entails a logic that is heterodox engaging both previous orders simultaneously. The logic proper to the vertical order is the logic of analogy; that of the horizontal involves the logic of typology and catalogy; the cruciform order inculcates both of the two previous logical formats by way of dialogue.

 

            Thus, the vertical order has a terminology peculiar to its own logic. It employs such general metaphysical terms as intellectual, intelligibility, orthodox, fundamental, truth, obvious, transcendent, existing and existence, literal, categorical, objectivity, essence and essential, etc.. The horizontal order has a disparate paraphysical more specialized terminology such as experiential, unintelligible, paradox, prototypical, supplemental, provable, devious, immanent, resisting, metaphorical, story-telling, subjectivity. The knowledge peculiar to the vertical order is that of insightful knowing by essence, intelligence, presence such that when a person bites into an apple and tastes its sweetness, the intellect discerns and discriminates that sweetness is an incidental quality of the apple but not the apple in its very essence. The knowledge peculiar to the horizontal order is that of knowing by appearance not essence; by intuiting, congruent, compatible and incongruent, incompatible associations while remaining ignorant of their nature; by absence rather than by presence when one observes the TV screen’s electronic depiction of an apple rather than the apple itself.

 

            When these two disparate orders of knowing are dialogically reconciled there results a knowledge which engages both disparate orders heterodoxically. In this case, the same human person is privy to both the apple’s essence objectively and to its mere appearance subjectively. The very same person simultaneously objectively understands this essence and remains subjectively ignorant of it; he fundamentally knows the apple in its essence and supplementally remains ignorant of this essence and is conversant merely with its appearance. In the one case, it is the real apple that is really present to the knower and in the other case, this real apple is absent and only its appearance is known. When the apple in its physical substance is knowingly present, it is obviously present; when the apple’s non-substantive corpuscular characteristics are the object of knowledge, it is deviously present. The orthodox knowledge transcends the knower and attains to the reality itself of the apple while the paradoxical knowledge remains immanent within the knower and fails to attain to the reality itself of the apple. The orthodox knowledge attains to the very existence of the apple where the paradoxical subjective knowledge resists such an attainment. The terminology of the orthodox is to be taken literally (as is) while that of the paradoxical knowing is to be taken metaphorically (as if). Finally, the orthodox knowing is dogmatically immutable and definitive whereas the paradoxical knowing is mutably (viz., historically) transient, transitional, and only captured descriptively; not definitively.

 

            There is a remarkable difference between the mystic’s objective and his subjective encounters with God. Objectively, it is the very reality of God that is personally encountered. In this encounter God remains unambiguously distinct from the mystic himself in God’s majestic and eternal grandeur. This God remains objectively the very same reality that others personally encounter and speak of. Subjectively, it is the mystic’s own divine transformation that is personably experienced. In this superhumanizing and superhumane transformation, the mystic experiences himself infused and transfused with God’s very own divinity.  This experience of God differs remarkably from one stage of experience to another and from one person to the other.

 

            There is in this threefold cruciform dialogical engagement a Trinitarian anthropology. The vertical order is directed toward God-the-Father. The horizontal order is orientated toward God-the-Son. The cruciform order itself is enveloped with the Father and Son’s Holy Spirit. That is, the Father initiates, the Son consummates, and the Holy Spirit integrates. That is, the vertical order is that of the Father’s creative initiation and paternal providence over the human person. The horizontal order is that of the Son’s sacrificial re-creation and redemption of the human person’s fall from the Father’s graciousness. The cruciform order itself is that of the Holy Spirit’s integrity and integration reconciling the vertical and horizontal orders with each other. Objectively to the mystic God is always present while subjectively God is always absent.

 

Vertically and hierarchically this order is based on the underlying holistic metaphysical principle that the holistic whole exceeds its constitutive parts. Thus, the human person, as an existing entity within the universe of reality, is naturally constituted of the substantive principles of matter (viz., body) and spirit (viz., the soul).  This is enunciated by stating that “man is a body; man is a soul.” In this statement, man is holistically both a body and soul; but not reducibly so. That is, the human person as a man is not partially a body and partially a soul. The whole of man-as-such is body and the whole of man-as-such is soul. Considered holistically, the constitutive principles constitute one and the same integral whole. Considered constitutively, they remain distinct within the same integral holistic whole.

 

            Within this hierarchical order of the cross’s vertical beam, the human person is a homo sapiens that is a creature of God and is ordered to God as causally issuing from God and predestined in his finality to be directed toward God. In this order, the human person is fundamentally a unique, intelligent, free, sovereign unsubstitutable responsible being whose destiny is immortal and whose intelligible horizon and freedom penetrates into the realm of eternity, the realm of the immutable and the ideal; the realm of God’s divine existence.

 

            Within the historical order of the cross’s horizontal beam, this order is based on the underlying epistemological and phenomenological principle that the piecemeal whole is reducible to its component parts. This quasi whole is perforce always a mathematical whole. Thus, if we again consider the reality, the human person, as constituted microscopically, his bio-chemical constitution comes to the forefront. In this dimensional framework, his biological make-up consists of his major physiological systemic organisms (viz., heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines, brain, etc.) These organisms themselves are each, in turn, reducible to their sub component parts.

 

Thus, there is no more to the heart’s organism than its physiological organic parts and to its blood’s make-up its reductive chemical components which, in turn, may be further reduced to molecular particles and, still further, to atomic and sub-atomic components. Briefly, there is no enduring holistic heart-as-such entity as there is an ontological enduring entity, man-as-such. Rather, there is only a functional heart enterprise facilitating the blood’s circulation. There is no heart-as-such remaining identically one and the same organism throughout its lifetime. It continues to processively undergo its own re or degeneration through its lifetime. One cannot declare that every physiological part of the heart organism is the heart itself as can be stated that every substantive component of man-as-such is holistically man itself. Every part of the heart organism is only a segmented part of the heart. The human person’s organic heart may technically be replaced with an alternative heart. But, man-as-such, constituting the very objective nature of each human person cannot be in any way substituted; it is essential to the human person’s constitution.

 

Here in the horizontal order we deal with mathematical paraphysical piecemeal enterprising functional wholes and not any metaphysical entitative holistic wholes. It is the same entity man-as-such that constitutes the human person ontologically throughout a person’s entire existence. The same human person phenomenologically considered is an enterprise which continues to processively mutate throughout a person’s historical life-time on earth. Similarly, with the human person’s every other bio-chemical and socio-political organistic make-up in the subjective order of the human person’s epistemological and phenomenological constitution.

 

Within this historical order of the cross’s horizontal beam, the human person is a homo laborens. In this respect, the human person takes the initiative in advancing his own self-humanization and self-cultivation. Here the human person is not objectively theocentrically ordered but subjectively anthropocentrically self-orientated. There is no causality in this order; there is only a push-pull influence of the human person’s self-humanizing willful self-control that is devoid of purpose and finality. In this self-orientation the human person is entirely self-serving in pursuit of his own overriding self-centered self-interest. In this order the human person is supplementally an anonymous, autonomous (viz., self-sufficient), mindful substitutable self-controllable self-centered dichotomous social personality processively evolving through a temporary mutating span of space-time that is doomed to extinction.

 

            The cross’s cruciformity includes the joining of the vertical and horizontal beams together to form a cross. Within this juncture of the cross’s cruciformity, the two separate and disparate hierarchical and horizontal orders are integrated and reconciled with each other within the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s crucifixion. Within this cruciform order itself, the human person through Christ’s mediation as God/Superman becomes an integral and integrated homo sapiens and a homo laborens. On the one hand the human person can ponder wisely, unerringly, and effortlessly the fundamental truths of all reality without toil and labor. On the other hand, he must toil laboriously and productively with much effort to civilize his sociability with selves other than his own self and to safeguard himself by cultivating his environment to serve his basic needs. Paradoxically, he is unable here to ponder wisely on the ultimate purpose and meaning of the product of his effort and toil. In this cruciform order integrating and reconciling the former two orders (viz., heaven’s immutable eternity with earth’s historical transitoriness, the human person becomes homo oecumenicus, the ecumenical human person.

 

            The human person’s task here is to engage both beams simultaneously without confusing the two together nor forfeiting what is peculiar and proper to each while integrating each with the other in a complementary fashion. This integration and reconciliation demands that the human person, on the one hand, recognize his own personhood in its essence as that of an immortal enduring unsubstitutable sovereign dynamic entity; this is an objective approach. On the other hand, the same human person must recognize his own personhood in its appearance as a mortal transitional substitutable enterprising synergetic dichotomous personality, subjectively speaking. In this same objective, subjective opposition, the human person understands intelligently and objectively the universe of God’s creation within which he is a creature while simultaneously remaining subjectively ignorant of the world of his own self-cultivation and self-humanization in which he resides within a provincial civilized culture. God’s creation is known as a stable and an enduring presence whereas the world of man’s own involvement lacks such stability and presence. It is the same tree that one might visit 50 years later but never the same city which one would visit within the same span of time. The original city is absent 50 years later. It is objectively the very same person that one visits 50 years later but subjectively a considerably different personality; the earlier personality is absent.

 

            The fundamental hierarchical order is orthodox; the same person remains identical within his own personhood. The supplemental historical order is one of paradox; the personality continues to evolve within the same personhood. The personhood’s natural perduring identity is intelligibly recognizable, objectively speaking; whereas the same personhood’s subjective evolving sociable personality is not recognizable, subjectively speaking. How can one recognize in a person’s mature personality his earlier youthful personality? This objective-subjective differentiation cannot be said of the tree or the brute animal which have no subjective self-conscious awareness. This can only be said of the human person. Thus, the very same person in his very personhood is both objectively present and subjectively absent to himself. Objectively, I am always the same person throughout all of my historical development but subjectively I am never quite the same personality. Objectively, I enjoy an ontological immortal status while subjectively I am always phenomenologically in process. Fundamentally I remain identical with my own being whereas supplementally I continue to evolve re/de/generatively from one processive stage to another.

           

            Objectively speaking, the truth of the human person considered as a man-as-such is invariable. No human person throughout all of creation is other by nature than a man-as-such constituted of body/soul substantive principles. Subjectively speaking, there is no such invariable truth regarding the human person’s self-cultivated personality. There is only a theoretical mental conjecture and corresponding empirical proof regarding the human person’s self-cultivated enterprising personality and make-up. The make-up of the human person considered objectively is obvious inasmuch as he is what he is naturally and cannot be otherwise according to the principle of identity. The same human person’s make-up considered subjectively is devious inasmuch as culturally and processively he is not what he purports to be and purports what he is not. For example, within his subjective personality the human person considered in terms of the mind’s intimacy he is psychic but not somatic; conversely, considered in terms of the body’s sensitivity he is somatic but not psychic.

 

            Further, considered objectively, the human person is continuous with the universe of creation as an entity within it. In this manner the human person is known transcendentally as a reality among realities. Considered subjectively, the human person is self-enclosed within the immanence of his own selfhood. Situated within this immanence he learns of everything from the perspective of his own dichotomous ego as that which radiates from and remains immanent within this egological hub.

 

The objective order is one of existence in which the human person’s very existence depends on a universal reality, God, transcendent to him. The subjective horizontal order is one of resistance in which the human person’s self-serving will is the nuclear core and bastion of all resistance in the world of man’s own self-humanization and self-cultivation. There is no cultivation and civilization without forceful and self-centered willful intervention. Where existence is the hallmark of the vertical order, resistance is the horizontal order’s hallmark. A tree resists being reduced to lumber; it must be forcibly and willfully cut down, hewn, and fashioned into lumber. In the final analysis, the human person’s self-centered will must paradoxically be forcibly overcome regarding its own selfish resistance to becoming civilized and artfully cultivated to become productively proficient in conjunction with selves other than its own self.

 

The cruciform integral order is one of consistency. Within this order the human person is engaged in reconciling his objective moral responsible personhood with his subjective amoral (i.e., technical) accountable personality. Objectively, the human person operates intentionally (i.e., purposefully), energetically and spontaneously through the sentient and soulful faculties with which he is naturally endowed. These operations are directed toward an immortal transhistorical communal destiny which is identical for every individual human person. Subjectively, the same human person in virtue of his transcendent personhood functions synergetically, autonomously (i.e., self-servingly and socially), and motivationally through psychosomatic facilities which are productively and socially self-cultivated. These functions are orientated toward the human person’s temporary social welfare and safeguard throughout his mortal duration.

 

            This integral cruciform order of reconciliation must both uphold the fundamental order of existence fundamentally and the supplemental order of resistance supplementally. When this fundamental/supplemental ordering is sustained, the two disparate orders complement each other. That is, the vertical communal immortal moral order of family existence that transcends transhistorically all phases, stages, and spans of the human person’s historical resistance holds a fundamental primary priority. On the other hand, the horizontal social transitional and mortal technical order of resistant sociability historically unfolding and evolving periodically and chronologically holds its own supplemental subsidiary priority. When these two orders remain thus mutually and reciprocally ordered they complement each other and become consistent with each other.

 

            It is of utmost importance to recognize that these two disparate orders cannot be completely reconciled with each other simply naturally and humanistically. This can only be brought about supernaturally in the objective order and superhumanistically in the subjective order. Without the order of grace, the human person cannot attain to his universal destiny: union with the Trinitarian family and Godhead. Further, without Christ’s cross of crucifixion, the human person cannot attain to his authentic eschatological (i.e., transhistorical) self-fulfillment. This self-fulfillment entails a violent sacrificial submission of the person’s willful resistant selfhood converted to a willful self-donation and surrender to Christ’s very own volunteer Self-surrender of His own crucified Selfless Selfhood graciously and benevolently offered to substitute for the human person’s reluctant self.

 

           

 

           

 

 

 

           

           

 

Vertical: intellectual-intelligible-orthodox-fundamental-truthful-obvious-transcendent-existing-literal-categorical-objective

Horizontal: experiential-unintelligible-paradox-supplemental-provable-devious-immanent-resisting-metaphorical-story--subjectivity

 

Vertical: knowing by essence…intelligence…presence….biting into the apple…tasting its very essence…it is sweet

Horizontal: knowing only by appearance…ignorance…absence…watching the TV apple…only its appearance…it is not an apple

 

Cruciform intersection of the two: essence & appearance---intelligence & ignorance---heterodox---fundamental & supplemental---presence & absence---truthful & provable---obvious & devious---transcendent & immanent---existence & resistance---literal & metaphorical---dogmatic & historical

 

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

 

            Here we will conduct a dialogue engaging the vertical with the horizontal order of the cross’ cruciformity. This dialogue will recognize that the analogical logic inherent in the ontological order is to be retained ontologically whereas the typological logic pertinent to the phenomenological order will remain phenomenologically.  This is the most vital part of this dialogue. The logic inherent in each order must be respected and not diminished in finding a dialogical reconciliation between the two. The same terminology at times may be deployed in both orders. The meanings of these terms so employed are not univocal; they become equivocal. The equivocal terms are not reducible to each other nor educible from each other; they remain equivocal. The meaning of these terms is to be ascertained within the logic of the order within which they are deployed.

 

            The vertical cross beam is fundamental, natural, and theocentric in the universal order of creation issuing from God. The horizontal cross beam is supplemental, cultural, and anthropocentric in the order of the human person’s worldly self-cultivation and self-humanization. The disparity between these two orders will be indicated throughout this dialogue. In the personalism advocated and propounded by Pope John Paul II, the human person is the key to understanding the reconciliation between these two orders. It is the same human person as an incommunicable (i.e., inalienable), induplicable, subsistent    sovereign free and intelligent substrate that is by nature objectively, dynamically, and spontaneously cognizant and free. At the same time, this very same person subjectively within the subjectivity of this same personhood cultivates and develops a self-serving autonomous (i.e., social) alienable selfhood with its own distinctive self-motivated knowing and freedom. By nature the human person is one in the immortal transhistorical community of individual human persons. By culture the human person is interpersonally an associate with other selves within the subjectivity of his selfhood in dys/functional worlds subject to historical transition.

 

            One can only love what one first knows. This is fundamental. The intellect’s knowledge of the Truth fundamentally precedes the Will’s freedom to love. However, the intellect cannot fully know the Truth if the will does not love and treasure it beyond every other love. The will’s Freedom supplementally precedes Truth supplementally. The Truth of the intellect precedes the will’s Freedom fundamentally while the will’s Freedom to love freely precedes supplementally the intellect’s knowledge of the Truth. The intellect’s Truth is intelligible but not experiential while the will’s Freedom is experiential but unintelligible.

It is reasonable for the intellect to truthfully govern the will’s freedom to choose what truthfully exists and is worthy of the will’s love.

It is unreasonable for the will to necessarily love the Truth lovingly, honorably, and preciously since the will is willfully free to love whatever it wills to love and to treasure.

When the fundamental Truth precedes the will’s Freedom fundamentally and directs and governs it conscionably…

When the supplemental Freedom of the will precedes the Truth supplementally and freely embraces it whole-heartedly…

The two complement each other integrally; each in solidarity and accord with each other.

The intellect’s reasonable Truthfulness regarding what really exists honorably prevails while the will’s unreasonable Freedom regarding its willful freedom to resist what actually exists also freely prevails.

St. Augustine in his typical masterful style sums this up as follows: Love the Truth and do whatever you will. The implication is that the will who freely treasures the Truth above every other choice honors both the Truth itself (viz. God) as well as its own Freedom.

 

 

Verse 1:

Objectively: God in His very divine essence is present (by grace) but hidden by transcendence. Intellectual faith

Subjectively: God is felt experientially as absent. Memorial hope.

Objectively: God is not reducible to one’s subjective experience of Him,

Subjectively: A devotional experience of God is not an intellectual beatifying vision of Him as He really exists.

Objectively: God in His Trinitarian Godhead abides in the soul through sanctifying and actual GRACE

Subjectively: One’s experience must also be hidden in God and not manifest within one’s feelings & musings

Objectively: God will be known perfectly only in the next life

Subjectively: One cannot in this life experience God perfectly present but only in the next life.

Objectively: God is to be sought through faith which transcends human understanding

Subjectively: God is to sought prayerfully in a sacrificial love that sacrifices one’s pious sensitive feelings and one’s pious intimate musings of Him (i.e., religious consolations, exultations, and delights of Him.

Objectively: God is ineffable and beyond the reach of one’s natural intelligence; faith is darkness.

Subjectively: One must live in hope humbly suffering the lack of any experiential enjoyable feeling or inspirational musing of God and from God.

Objectively: God cannot be totally possessed as is the case with an apple that can be totally consumed.

Subjectively: God can only be possessed by a love that sacrifices self-love for God is more precious than one’s self

Objectively: God is truly sacramentally present in the soul…the body is the Holy Spirit’s tabernacle.

Subjectively: The mystic remains restless and moans in his awareness that he aches for God who continues to remain absent and beyond his grasp. God is the most precious object of the mystic’s reverent attention; his Beloved.

Objectively: The mystic believes through faith God’s divine personal sacramental presence.

Subjectively: by self-mortification and self-denial the mystic is attached to God alone in poverty of spirit. So intensive is this divine attachment that the mystic moans and groans in feeling and gauging his own bleak emptiness. At the same time this prayerful sighing, moaning, and groaning occurs because he continues to hope to enjoy God blissfully.

Objectively: God is like a deer who lives alone apart from and beyond the universe of creation.

Subjectively: God touches the mystic’s pious feelings an arouses his affection only to depart and vanish and leave the mystic smitten with his love but completely unable to find the God of his pious and reverent affection.

Objectively: God seems to be like the fleet and graceful deer that refuses to be captured

Subjectively: the mystic is severely wounded by the intense sensitized glorious feeling of God’s splendor and the profound intimate serenity of God’s eternal immutability. But, these wonderful experiences of God leave the mystic’s heart teasingly inflamed and the mystic’s mind helplessly inspired with God’s grandeur. This love is a gaping and incurable wound whose cure is God alone who seemingly refuses to cure this wound He has inflicted on the mystic.

Objectively: God is like the fleeting deer that refuses to be captured.

Subjectively: the mystic is so helplessly wounded by the exalted experience of God’s divine loveliness that he is severely and intensively tortured by this love itself which leaves him helplessly pining and aching for his Beloved whom he is completely unable to reach out and embrace.

Objectively: God is ineffably transcendent to all of creation.

Subjectively: the exquisite religious pious divine and sublime touches (i.e., sensitized emotional feelings and intimate serene devotional musings) which the mystic experiences of God’s sublimity and loveliness only serve to painfully awaken the mystic to his own abject misery in failing to perfectly embrace God without any further delay.

            The upshot of this is the mystic’s realization that he has through this experience of divine love detached himself completely from the secular world’s securities and friendships as well as from his own self-centered satisfactions and justifications only to be denied the very Beloved to whom he has become completely attached. He now recognizes himself to be in a “no man’s land;” he is neither in heaven’s divine delights nor on earth with its secular diversions.

            The mystic endures excruciating suffering in his helplessness to fully embrace his Beloved to whom he is so vehemently attached that he has become completely self-detached from everything that is not God, including detached from his own selfhood. The Dark Night of the Soul.

 

Verse 2:     The bride is sick, suffers, and dies in the intellect, memory, and will.  

The intellect: because lacking in the beatific vision

The memory: because of the prospect of not merely living but also dying without God

The will: because she does not possess God

 

Verse 3: seek God through her own efforts of moral discipline and ascetic self-denial and penance

Strive to contend vigorously against the world’s lures & mockery; the flesh’s weakness , and the devil by prayer & mortification

 

Verse 4: The bride seeks God in His creation of the heavens and of earth. They cannot substitute for God Himself.

 

Verse 5: The many natural beautiful wonders of creation are merely traces of His greatness and beauty. God is more directly discovered in the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation and Paschal Mystery.

 

Verse 6: All these marvelous and wonderful traces of God’s Beauty only increase the bride’s love for God and her restlessness and sorrow in not fully possessing God above and beyond His creation.

 

Verse 7: The bride is dying of love and languishing because this love remains unfulfilled and cannot be satisfied with mere messengers of God. These messengers only intensify this love and increase the bride’s longing and aching.

 

Verse 8: While the mystic remains alive in the body, he is dead in his spirit since the most precious object in his life, his love for God, remains beyond his possession. Where your treasure is, there also is your heart.

 

 

THE CROSS’ CRUCIFORMITY

 

Vertical: intellectual-intelligible-orthodox-fundamental-truthful-obvious-transcendent-existing-literal-categorical

Horizontal: experiential-unintelligible-paradox-supplemental-provable-devious-immanent-resisting-metaphorical-story

 

Vertical: knowing by essence…intelligence…presence….biting into the apple…tasting its very essence…it is sweet

Horizontal: knowing only by appearance…ignorance…absence…watching the TV apple…only its appearance…it is not an apple

 

Cruciform intersection of the two: essence & appearance---intelligence & ignorance---heterodox---fundamental & supplemental---presence & absence---truthful & provable---obvious & devious---transcendent & immanent---existence & resistance---literal & metaphorical---dogmatic & historical

 

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

 

One can only love what one first knows. This is fundamental. The intellect’s knowledge of the Truth fundamentally precedes the Will’s freedom to love.

However, the intellect cannot fully know the Truth if the will does not love and treasure it beyond every other love. The will’s Freedom supplementally precedes Truth supplementally.

The Truth of the intellect precedes the will’s Freedom fundamentally while the will’s Freedom to love freely precedes supplementally the intellect’s knowledge the Truth.

The intellect’s Truth is intelligible but not experiential while the will’s Freedom is experiential but unintelligible.

It is reasonable for the intellect to truthfully govern the will’s freedom to choose what truthfully exists and is worthy of the will’s love.

It is unreasonable for the will to necessarily love the Truth lovingly, honorably, and preciously since the will is willfully free to love whatever it wills to love and to treasure.

When the fundamental Truth precedes the will’s Freedom fundamentally and directs and governs it conscionably…

When the supplemental Freedom of the will precedes the Truth supplementally and freely embraces it whole-heartedly…

The two complement each other integrally; each in solidarity and accord with each other.

The intellect’s reasonable Truthfulness regarding what really exists honorably prevails while the will’s unreasonable Freedom regarding its willful freedom to resist to what actually exists also freely prevails.

St. Augustine in his typical masterful style sums this up as follows: Love the Truth and do whatever you will. The implication is that the will who freely treasures the Truth above every other choice honors both the Truth itself (viz. God) as well as its own volitional Freedom.

 

 

 

PRAISED BE JESUS CHRIST! NOW & FOREVER!

BLESSED BE MARY! NOW & FOREVER!

HONORED BE ST. JOSEPH! NOW & FOREVER!