THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE: VERSES
17-24 (continued)
PRELIMINARY: Prior to commenting on the verses, 17-24, we
will again reiterate that this commentary is based on the cruciformity of the
cross of Jesus Christ which encompasses a Triune Trinitarian threefold order.
This order itself is a transcendental order which is the disjunctive property
of being-as-such; the metaphysical touchstone for the human soulful intellect’s
intelligibility for all that exists within the domain of created and uncreated
reality.
For, whatever
exists in reality, God included, is a being-as-such. But transcendental
being-as-such (i.e. the formative object of the human person’s intelligence) is
itself neither prior nor posterior. And, because it is neither it may be either
disjunctively. Hence, every exiting reality within the universe of existence is
itself either a prior or posterior being-as-such. God, for instance, is a
prior-being-as-such in reference to every reality that is not itself God (i.e.,
all of creation). And every creature in existence is a posterior-being-as-such
in reference to the reality of God who is paramount within the universe of
reality.
This
transcendental order and ordering is itself threefold: initial, additional, and
complementary. Another way of stating this is that there is a threefold order
within the universe of reality among all the various beings that exist, God
included. There is the order of the originator and the originated; the culminater and the culminated; the integrator and the
integrated. This is not an issue of causation per se but simply of a
prior-posterior referral of one reality to another reality. God-the-Father
precedes God-the-Son originatively while the latter
precedes the former consummately. God-the-Holy-Spirit precedes both integrally
as their integral integration.
Cruciformly
the cross of Jesus Christ embraces these three orders. Vertically it is the
hierarchical order of initiation which originates with the Father’s Holy Will.
Horizontally, it is the historical order of culmination and consummation which culminates
with the Son’s crucifixion and death on the cross as the historical climax of
the Old Testament and the historical onset of the New Testament (i.e., the BC
and AD). And, cruciformly, it is the integral order of integration that
eschatologically integrates the historical and eternal orders together under
the influence of the Holy Spirit who is the integral integration of the Father
and Son’s separate wills incarnated and triunely
integrated into humanity’s redeemed, sanctified, and glorified human will
through Christ’s own humanity and Paschal Mystery.
Congruent
with this there is a triune cruciform liberating, redeeming, and sanctifying freedom
which mankind inherits from, through, and with Christ as a baptized adopted
child of the Father in the power of their Holy Spirit.
Faith
is fundamental to hope and charity. The mystical life is rooted and anchored in
faith and the soul’s intellect through which the human person can reasonably
and vertically reach even to the gate of heaven and God’s domain of eternal
existence. The mystical life also embraces in the same human person’s hopeful
historical experiences of his own dreams, expectations, and self-fulfillment
which is centered in a hope that is supplemental to
faith. The mystical life of faith is principally a dutiful and voluntary obedient
willing intellectual embrace of that authority (viz., God) which is truthfully
objectively inherently trustworthy and honorably (i.e., conscionably) deserving
of trust and the will’s respectful obedience. A person of faith is obediently
and voluntarily trusting.
The mystical
life of hope is the confident and even convinced sacrificial willful self-surrender
of the human person to what he trustingly believes. The person of hope becomes
a trust-bound confidant of his own trusting belief and is self-convinced of the
need to tenaciously serve and cling to this belief. The mystical life of charity
is the person’s sacrificial volunteer self-determination to conscientiously and
faithfully be a steadfast trustee and witness to the moral authority (God) in whom
he places his confident expectation.
A person of charity
is integrally intellectually rooted in faith and sacrificially surrendered to
serving this faith in hope. That is, he is simultaneously willingly obediently
conscionably trusting in what is obviously truthful (i.e., worthy of
such trust) and willfully conscientiously trust-bound in sacrificing
himself to serve the Author of this objective conscionable truth. Finally, in
the integral integration of his conscionable obedient will and his conscientious
self-sacrificial will he becomes a sacrificial and faithful volunteer trustee
that lives and bears witness and testimony to both what he believes in and
hopes for. That is, he objectively willingly honors what is worthy of all honor
above and beyond everything else (viz., God). Subjectively, he willfully
sacrifices his own selfish self-interest to hopefully find his fulsome
self-fulfillment in serving what he believes is supremely honorable above every
other worthwhile value.
In
view of this, there are two separate will’s in the human person’s
anthropological make-up: the objective soul’s intellectual goal-directed will
and the subjective self’s self-serving mindful and heartfelt dichotomous will.
The objective will is the human person’s intellect’s own appetitive drive to appropriately
love and to respectfully honor whatever the intellect grasps as truly good. The
subjective will is the same human person’s self-centered and self-serving
mindful and heartfelt dichotomous will. The objective will is liberated through
supernatural faith which enables the will to willingly love and obey the truth
of God’s Self-Revelation. The subjective will is liberated through supernatural
hope which enables the will to willfully sacrificially serve the Truth of
Revelation by memorially forgetting and foregoing its own hopeless historical
self-attachment and incompetent self-control by confidently surrendering itself
to the hope of Christ’s Mastery of life made manifest in His resurrection to
eternal life. When these two wills complement each other they charitably,
superhumanly, superhumanistically, and superhumanely (i.e., cruciformly)
witness and testify to the very masterful supernatural Life of Christ’s
Selfless service both to His Heavenly Father and to mankind’s liberation,
sanctification, and glorification.
Commensurate
with this cruciformity there are three separate Christian emancipations and
freedoms inherent in the human person’s anthropological make-up. There is
objectively and vertically the inalienable freedom of choice in which the human
person exercises his own sovereign moral authority and responsibility. There is
subjectively and horizontally the alienable freedom of self-control in which
the human person personalizes and takes charge and is accountable to himself
and others for his own social functions, motivations, and social autonomy
(i.e., social self-reliance). And, congruently, there is the reconciliation of
these two freedoms when the same human person both personally and
personalistically, conscionably and conscientiously is steadfastly
self-determined to live a lifestyle which integrates and reconciles these two
freedoms with each other.
The
Christian Catholic mystic’s “dark night” of purgative and ascetic suffering is,
in keeping with this cruciformity’s threefold orders.
It involves these three different cruciform freedoms. The freedom of obediential trust is won when the mystic in faith chooses
to obey not his own sovereign authority but a higher moral authority (viz.,
God) whom he cannot fully understand. The freedom of
sacrificial self-control is won when the mystic in hope decides to sacrificially
forego his own personalized social autonomy and security (i.e., his social self-reliance)
and submit his life’s service to Christ’s own messianic mission of liberating
all of mankind from the prison of mankind’s enslavement to its own selfishness.
The freedom of self-determination is won when the mystic volunteers to both obedientially and sacrificially together become a volunteer
selfless servant and disciple of Christ’s Gospel of love. Why is this “dark
night” of purgative suffering threefold? Because the mystic must walk by a
trusting faith in God’s moral authority and not his own; by hoping in God’s
indefectible security and not his own defectible
social security; and by God’s merciful forgiving love and not by his own sense
of justice and self-righteousness.
When
the mystic endures this excruciatingly arduous and long-lasting painful
purification in which he becomes simultaneously super-humanly personally informed
by faith, superhumanistically personalistically transformed by hope, and
super-humanely able to performatively behave charitably as a disciple of
Jesus Christ, he advances to the subsequent mystical illuminative stage in
which he becomes increasingly aware of being completely engaged to Jesus Christ in a mutual act of
self-giving which anticipates the total self-giving proper to spiritual marriage
itself. In this illuminative stage and increasingly in the subsequent stage of
espousal, the mystic recognizes and experiences his own threefold liberation
through the auspices of the Blessed Trinity mediated by Jesus Christ,
God/Superman.
The
mystic becomes superhumanly not merely obediently subordinated to
God-the-Father’s moral authority but the Father’s very royal son and daughter.
In addition, the mystic becomes superhumanistically not merely a
spectator in the drama of Christ liberating mankind from its own self-centered
selfishness but a sacrificial companion cooperatively conjoined with Christ’s
own crucified oblation. And, cruciformly, the mystic becomes superhumanely
through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit simultaneously alive with the very benevolent
love and loveliness that bonds the Father and the Son together for all
eternity.
The
Spiritual Canticle records the mystic’s subjective experience of his
historical transition from his initial very painful stage of experiencing and
suffering through the loss and the disappearance of God intellectually,
self-consciously, and as the most important treasure in his life.
Intellectually the mystic loses personal sight of God when God becomes
personally less important than merely adhering to doctrinal and moral tenets of
faith. Self-consciously the mystic loses a personalized interest in God because
he becomes deprived of the religious bodily feelings and mental bearing
pertaining to his own social security and peace of mind. With the loss of this
personalized self-assurance of God’s guaranteed protection, he seems to have
also loss any and every personalized enjoyment and commitment to God. Finally,
and most importantly, the mystic seems to have lost God altogether as the most
important reality in his life with the integral disappearance of God combined
in the two previous losses.
The
mystic subsequently and much later discovers providing he perseveres in prayer
and in trust, hope, and love of God in spite of God’s apparent triple
disappearance from his own pious and reverent prayerful experiences and
prolonged wretchedness and forlornness in being abandoned by God…he discovers
that he has through his own tenacity and through God’s own graciousness
advanced and prospered in his own sacrificial willful attachment to and love of
God. So much so that he no longer finds faith to be a wall separating himself
from God but a translucent
“face-to-face” encounter with the Blessed Trinity. He further finds that there
is no lingering selfish sensuous or hyped-up self-centered concern within his
own transformed selfhood and personality to detract from his total sacrificial
self-surrender to Christ and through Christ to the Father’s Holy Will. He
further finds that he is able superhumanely able to respond and to requite
Christ’s infinitely merciful love and loveliness with a selfless charitable
love (viz., the Holy Spirit’s love and loveliness) of his own commensurate with
the Father and Son’s own mutual love and benevolent graciousness.
In
sum there are three divine loves. Vertically there is a dutiful meritorious sacramental
love of God beyond all other loves because God is supremely worthy of such
love. This is the foundation for the vertical transcendent immortal dignity of
the human person’s inalienable moral right to life, liberty, and respect from
others for the sacredness of his life. This is the foundation for religious
love which horizontally is a fervent and devoted love that treasures and
sacrificially cherishes God above and beyond any and every selfish
self-centered interest and security. Thirdly and cruciformly there is a
selfless volunteer heroic love that conscientiously and most generously
amicably treasures God’s merciful loveliness and friendship in conjunction with
a dutiful obedient love that conscionably honors and worships God’s majestic
Benevolent Goodness and Bounty.
Initially as a
novice the mystic loves God but imperfectly with a self-centered interest which
gradually becomes purged of its own selfishness. Additionally, the experienced
mystic has learned through his long-suffering purgation to love God unselfishly
and through this unselfish love to affectionately regard all other selves with
the very same forgiving merciful love which is lavished on him by God. Finally
and conclusively the expert mystic has learned through God’s merciful
graciousness and benignity to love God with God’s own unstinted generosity that
requites God’s infinite Love with a love that is itself divinized by God’s own
gracious Loveliness.
In sum, there
are two separate distinct wills in the human person’s anthropological
constitution: the vertical antecedent and the horizontal consequential will.
The former is the person’s objective soulful conscionable freedom to choose to
do or not do what the person conscionably ought or ought not do
commensurate with the human person’s ultimate immortal transcendent well-being.
The latter is the person’s subjective self-centered conscientious freedom of
self-control to make or not make what it may or may not
conscientiously functionally make to advance the person’s own personality’s
authentic self-fulfillment.
Verse 17: In this stage of
being formally engaged to Christ as a couple is engaged in a promissory way
prior to actual marriage, the mystic experiences a sensuous reverent sensitized
delicate bodily elation toward Christ together with an intimate exquisite mental
serenity. The mystic is no longer in the seemingly never-ending barren desert
of experiencing bodily God’s absence and mentally God’s remoteness including a
complete absence of religious feelings accompanied by mental religious
disquietude and anxiousness.
Now
the mystic yearns and hungers for a greater personalized mental intimacy with
Christ, an intimacy within the very pith and innermost intimacy of his own
self-centered psychic willfulness. Having become purified of his intimate
willful selfish self-interest in Christ, and now experiencing something of a
calm and serene intimate selfless self-interested willful concern and
solicitude for Christ, he seeks to further deepen and to refine this selfless
intimacy by wishing to have all bodily sensitive reverent feelings to cease
altogether and to cease detracting from his complete preoccupation and
attention to his innermost intimate willful psychic cerebral self rather than
to his sensitive somatic visceral self.
Of
course, it should be understood that this increased intensified yearning on the
part of the mystic for a more intensive intimacy with Christ is subtly and
delicately influenced by Christ and His Heavenly Father’s Holy Spirit
abiding superhumanistically within the abysmal depths of the mystic’s willful
selfhood. The “breathing out” of the Holy Spirit serves as an expiration to
expel and quell the mystic’s willful self-contented bodily emotionally stirring
pious sensitivity and “breathing in” as an inspiration to deepen and dilate the
mystic’s willful self-contained mental innermost calm emotionless pious
intimacy.
Now, it is easy
to fathom that a ship on the ocean is much more desirous of calm rather than
turbulent waters. It is very much the same with the mystic’s subjective
experiential reverent endearing experience of Christ in this stage of his
spiritual journey to the summit of
Verse 18: This is a
continuation of verse 17. It is a plea on the part of the mystic to be removed
from the body’s religious stimulations. It is notable that young couples who
fall in love usually seek to flee from others who may become spectators to
their personalized intimacy. Further, they seek to become familiar with each
other’s most intimate secret thoughts, wishes, and willful ambitions over and
above each other’s sensitive feelings and temperamental moods. The very same is
the case with the mystic as a bride encountering Christ, the Bridegroom.
Verse 19: This overriding
thirst for a more intensive spiritual and willful reverent psychic intimacy on
the part of the mystic continues to increase ever more solicitously.
And,
again, the mystic’s self-centered willfulness is itself dichotomous in that it
is either/or both focused centrifugally on the body’s outer
visceral sensitivity and sensuous emotional self-contentment as well as
centered centripetally on the mind’s inner cerebral intimacy and
non-sensuous emotionless self-containment. The mystic-bride seeks to retreat
with Christ the Groom within the innermost calm and serene utterly hidden
introspective intimacy of the will’s psychic selfhood. Here the mystic will be
fortified with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit and will communicate
with Christ beyond feelings and beyond imagery and beyond spoken words and
bodily gestures. The mystic will be hidden occultly from the gaze and curiosity
of all idle spectators and all who are alien to this utmost intimate prayerful
communications of the mystic’s humanity with Christ’s divinity.
Verses 20-21: In these two verses
Further,
the mystic’s intimate prayerful communication with Christ is further
strengthened by the supernatural gifts of faith, hope, and charity which
cleanse the mystic’s soulful intellect, memorial egocentric selfhood, and
self-centered willfulness from their weakness inherited from the original sin
of Adam & Eve. Additionally, the mystic’s sensitized sensational emotional
bodily feelings which grip the mystic and make him an addictive prisoner of
their seductive sensuality; these sensualities are completely subjugated to the
mystic’s magnetic love and passionate overriding affection for Christ.
Through
faith the mystic’s soulful intellectual will is enlightened to be
supernaturally enabled to obediently adore and worship God-the-Father’s Holy
Will. Through hope the mystic’s own egocentric selfhood’s memory of its own
historical vulnerability and inevitable death is super-humanly fortified with a
confidence in its own life-long immortal resurrection through Christ’s own
bodily resurrection. Through charity the mystic’s selfish self-centered
willfulness is transformed into Christ’s very own merciful generous self-giving
and self-surrendering super-humane and heroic Selfless Selfhood.
The
crux of this advanced stage of prayerful religious devout communication between
the mystic as-bride and Christ as-Bridegroom is that the mystic now experiences
Christ’s merciful infinite divine magnanimity within the very nuclear core,
pith, and marrow of his own innermost intimate willful psychic prayerful
stilled selfhood as a calm and stilled ocean’s fathomless depth. All reverent
and reverential awesome sensitive feelings and/or intimate carings
and solicitous concerns for Christ are no more than ripples on the surface of
this profound and peaceful immersion in God’s immutable eternal serenity.
Verse 22: All that is
transformatively accomplished in the mystic’s own objective soulful personhood
and subjective self-centered personality is accomplished through
Christ-the-Bridegroom’s agency under the subtle undetectable influence of the Holy
Spirit who is more delicately intimate to the mystic’s willful innermost
intimacy than the mystic is intimate to his own selfhood. This transformation
is further brought to perfection by the merciful graciousness of Christ’s
magnanimity.
In
other words, this transformation culminates in the mystic’s reverential awesome
experience of Christ’s very own Selfless amorosity serenely and profoundly
flooding the mystic’s own innermost intimacy. The mystic becomes aware of
reaching the very bridal chamber of Christ’s Sacred Heart and Messianic
Mindset. The mystic is experientially aware that his own ecstatic experience of
Christ is commensurate with Christ’s very own divine merciful magnanimity. The
mystic experiences Christ’s divine infinite justice not as a punitive presence
but as the very unction of the Father’s infinitely immeasurable and
inexhaustible mercy. Like an ocean-liner that has come into port, the mystic
rests delightfully within the bosom of Christ’s own divinity and loving
embrace.
Verse 23: Here the mystic
becomes more intimately conversant with Christ’s Incarnation and Paschal
Mystery. Not catechetically but experientially as
though the mystic were personalistically experiencing in persona Christi his
own personal salvation history including the incalculable price that Christ
paid to ransom His bride of predilection from the prison of the seven capital
sins and the devil’s tentacles.
Verse 24: The bride-mystic
becomes reflectively and prayerfully in contemplative prayer more fully
ensconced in the spiritual marriage that Christ has prepared from all eternity
for His own bride of predilection. Furthermore, the bride-mystic becomes
reflectively and prayerfully able to reverently revel in the awesome mantle of
her very own bridal divine bounty adorned with superlative gems and precious
gifts and fruits of God’s unbounded generosity.
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST! NOW & FOREVER!
BLESSED BE MARY! NOW
& FOREVER!
HONORED BE ST.
JOSEPH! NOW & FOREVER!