CANTICLE: 25-32 (CONTINUED)

PRELIMINARY: We continue our cruciform commentary on our Carmelite Holy Father’s mystagogical writing, The Spiritual Canticle. In this preliminary outline we will contrast the vertical order of knowing with the horizontal order of knowing. Again, knowing and knowledge are equivocal when employed separately in each of these two orders. In the vertical order, knowing is always a cognitive assmilative activity whereas in the horizontal order it is a conative non-cognitive productive enterprise. This is the case whether in the vertical order one is considering sentient knowledge or intellectual knowledge. And, again, this is the case whether in the horizontal order one is considering somatic sensuous sensitive bodily knowing (i.e., feeling) or psychic non-sensuous intimate mental knowing (i.e., bearing).

All knowledge is that of the human person. It is the human person that sees sentiently with the body’s organic eyesight and ponders intelligently with the soul’s inorganic intellectual insight. Certainly, the human person could not visibly see without the medium of light nor see without the healthy organs of sight. Nonetheless, it is neither the optical organs themselves that “see” what is sensible nor the intellect itself that fundamentally “sees” what is intelligible; it is the human person that sees through these faculties. Hence, all the many differentiated acts of sensing and understanding in the vertical order are undertaken by one and the same person. Furthermore, the human person not only knows sentiently and intelligently but is also aware and conscious of such knowledge. Such awareness is not egocentric nor self-serving. It is simply an awareness of the reality that is sensed and understood.

Now, such knowing and knowledge in the vertical order is always transsubjectively objective. The human person does not “see” the eye’s act of “seeing;” it sees the seeable reality independent of the eye’s eyesight. In visibly seeing the green grass the human person is consciously aware of knowing and seeing the reality itself, green grass, and not merely some image or mirage. Similarly in intelligibly pondering the grass’ green-as-such color, the human person is not intellectually consciously aware of knowing an idea or concept of green-as-such but the actual entitative reality (i.e., essential nature) of the grass’ color existing independently and transcendently to the intellect itself.

While the body’s eyesight cannot visibly see the color, green-as-such, apart from the grass that is green, the soul’s intellectual insight can intelligibly “see” the color, green-as-such, apart from the grass itself. Nonetheless, while such intellectual knowledge and knowing is immaterially metaphysical (i.e., beyond the grass’ physical and material existence), it is still a knowledge of the reality, green, existing independent and transcendent to the intellect itself. The color, green-as-such, is not green simply because the human person through the intellect knows it to be green. Rather, the intellect knows this color, green-as-such, to be actually green because it is ontologically green independent of the intellect’s knowledge of it. When the human person states that “the grass is green,” he is acknowledging intelligently that he knows the truth of the grass’ real color, green-as-such.

The situation is completely reversed in the horizontal order of knowing and knowledge. Here, again, it is the same human person that engages such knowledge and knowing. Yet, it is not the same person who engages his personal public and objective dynamic and energetic intelligent and sentient nature. Rather, it is the same person who engages his own personalized private and subjective self-serving, self-conscious, ego-centric impotent and synergetic self-cultivated selfhood. In the vertical order the object of knowing and knowledge is not productively created by the human person but merely assimilated by his senses and the intellect. In the horizontal order, it is simply the reverse. The human person himself self-consciously cannot know the “green grass” without productively fashioning some imaginary figment or some mental notion of it. In such cases, such knowing is not being knowledgeable concerning the “green grass” but, rather, having knowledge about it. Further, the human person subjectively within his own self-conscious self-centered awareness of the “green grass” is not in touch with the reality itself but merely with its sensational image or inspirational notion which he has imaginatively and/or mindfully fabricated for himself and his own usage.

This occurs, for example, when one has taken a photograph of the “green grass” and is able even when the reality itself ceases to exist to continue to gaze at this green turf by examining the photo. The photo is more an imaginary factual epistemological visualization of the “green grass” than it is an actual “seeing” of the ontological reality itself. Indeed, the photo reveals more about a human person’s epistemic self-conscious attentiveness and appreciation of the “green grass” than it is does about the reality itself of the “green grass.” Another example of this self-conscious awareness is the same human person’s memory of his mental notion of such “green grass” which he cherishes from his encounter with it in a long ago past moment of historical time.

In this horizontal order of the human person’s having knowledge, such knowledge is not principally informative of reality transcendent to and independent of the human person. Rather, it is mis-informative inasmuch as it is not the reality itself which is directly known or cognized. Rather, it is the human person’s transformative fabrication of the original reality that is self-consciously fashioned and attended to. Indeed, it is precisely this self-serving and ego-centric attentiveness which is most distinctive of such subjective knowledge and knowing. For, such knowledge is most assuredly not informatively cognitive regarding the objective reality itself. On the other hand, it is unquestionably transformatively revealing regarding the human person’s personalized bodily feeling for and/or mental regard for the object which it has taken such pains to fabricate as a memento for itself and its own safe-keeping.

Consider a photograph that one keeps of his parents who are deceased. The photo informatively misrepresents them inasmuch as they objectively no longer actually exist as seen in the photo. Yet, the photo does subjectively and transformatively reveal the bodily sensitive feeling and mental intimate caring that the person who preserves this photo has toward the persons pictured. It is in this sense that such consciously self-serving and self-centered knowing on the part of the human person’s selfhood and subjectivity is more properly transformatively conative than it is informatively cognitive. The photo reveals the transformative subjective temperamental and sentimental conative selfhood of the person who cherishes and treasures the photo moreso than it does the informative objective reality of the parents in the photo.

When it comes to trust, one can trust one’s objective cognitive knowledge in the vertical order but one cannot trust one’s subjective conative knowledge in the horizontal order. In the objective order it is the reality itself which is known in its actual existence while in the subjective order it is a fabrication substituting for reality itself which is known. In the objective order, the reality known exists independent of a human person’s conative sensitive feelings and intimate caring for it (viz., liking or not liking it; caring or not caring for it). On the other hand, this conative infusion is precisely the hallmark of the subjective order of knowing. Objectively, knowing and knowledge is orthodox; that is, it is knowledge of what informatively exists. Subjectively, knowing and knowledge is paradoxical; that is, it is more an issue of ignorance than cognizance. That is, the photo of one’s parents on one’s dresser reveals not the truth about one’s parents but reveals the proof of one’s subjective personalized regard and interest in these persons. On the one hand, objective knowledge is truthful concerning which one would be lying if one deliberately misrepresented it. On the other hand, subjective knowledge is only (ap)provable regarding one’s self-serving bodly temperamental feelings or mental sentimental interests. Here there is not truth but merely proof. The photo of a person’s parents in the house proves the person’s affection and care for, interest in, and importance of his parents in his own subjectivity and personalized affectionate selfhood.

Objective knowledge is personally more valuable and worthwhile for the human person’s immortal community well-being while subjective knowledge is more personalistically valued and esteemed for the human person’s own historical social security and welfare. Objective knowledge is inherently conscionable in that the truth of such knowledge binds and obligates the human person to willingly exercise his soulful freedom of choice in deference to such truth. Subjective knowledge is, in turn, conscientious in that the proof of such knowledge demands that the same human person solicitously exercise his selfhood’s willful self-centered self-controlled self-interest in view of fulfilling himself beyond the subjectivity of his own selfish self-centeredness and in view sacrificially serving a cause transcending his own subjectivity.

Note well the radical difference between these two orders of knowing as they impact on the mystical life of the Catholic Christian. In the objective vertical order the mystic by supernatural faith knows intellectually the very reality of God’s own Triune Godhead. That is, he is in the very sacramental and supernatural presence of this divine and sublime reality as gratuitously Self-revealed by God. On the other hand, this public presence is not personalized nor internalized. It remains distinct and transcendent to the human person’s own personalized possession. This is the case even when by supernatural grace this divine Trinitarian Personhood abides sacramentally in the person’s human soul. On the other hand, in the subjective horizontal order the mystic by supernatural hope knows his own personalized superhumanistic and self-cultivated experience of God which is also gratuitously granted on the part of God. This experience is felt outwardly in the somatic body’s sensitivity and/or entertained inwardly in the psychic mind’s intimacy. But, paradoxically enough, this personalized experience is not of God’s actual presence; it is an experience of God’s absence.

When these two non-educible and irreducible orders of knowledge and knowing are cruciformally integrated and reconciled with each other there ensues a heterodox knowing in which the same person acts both conscionably and conscientiously; that is, he acts truthfully and approvingly. In this manner the informative and transformative orders become integrally the cruciform performative order. In such an integral integration the human person acts on a plane that is supernatural buttressed by sacramental grace and the sacramental Church’s ministry. Such performative activity engages simultaneously a tripartite cruciform order proper to the Blessed Trinity. Vertically, by the sacrament of baptism, the human person is informed with grace as a child of God-the-Father who initiates the human person’s redemption from all eternity. Horizontally, it is God-the-Son who consummately transforms this same human person to sacrificially facilitate his historical redemption in view of the sacrament of the Eucharist. And, cruciformly, it is God-the-Holy-Spirit that joins into one indissoluble integrity both the eternal and historical orders of the human person’s redemption, sanctification, and ultimate glorification by integrating the same human person into the sublime amicability of the Blessed Trinity.

In sum, there are three different compatible and complementary dimensions to the human person. In the vertical order the human person is a homo sapiens who in virtue of knowing the Truth is able to conscionably and personally govern his own conduct accordingly. In the horizontal order the same human person is a homo faber who in virtue of his own personalized industry can conscientiously and interpersonally cultivate his own personality and social autonomy. In the cruciformity of the first two orders the same human person is a homo oecumenicus who in virtue of his supernatural assimilation into Christ’s Eucharistic Sacramental Church is able to reconcile his objective conscionable conduct with his subjective conscientious enterprises.

The Catholic Christian mystic and, notably the Carmelite, is simultaneously prayerfully engaged in all three of these cruciform orders. Objectively, he prays publicly through the Catholic Church’s orthodox sacramental rites in the light of faith. Subjectively, he prays privately through the Catholic Church’s paraliturgical practices and saintly sanctioned pieties and traditional devotions in the conviction of hope. Cruciformatively, he integrates within his same personhood his public and private prayer such that he engages in one fundamentally and the other supplementally to bring to perfection in himself the very sacramental supernatural charitable mercy of Christ, God/Superman, reigning overall from within the bosom of the Blessed Trinity.

The mystic accomplishes this more perfectly by freely surrendering himself to Christ’s Blessed Mother, Mary, in the same Holy Spirit of self-surrender that Christ Himself undertook when He as God-the-Son became her first begotten Son-of-Man. By freely entering into Mary’s spiritual motherhood as mother of both the Head of the Sacramental Church, Jesus Christ, and the Church’s bodily members, the mystic enters completely into the Blessed Trinity’s very bosom. Mary’s Immaculate Heart is the maternal womb of the Church’s sacramental life alive in all her members.

Verse 25: We must not overlook that at this point in the Spiritual Canticle the mystic has reached the pinnacle of his spiritual pilgrimage up the Mount of Carmel to become espoused to God in the very same espousal that God has personally in the Personhood of the Blessed Trinity espoused himself to the human person. In the OT God-the-Father espouses Himself personally to His chosen family, the Israelites. In the NT God-the-Son espouses Himself incarnationally to his renewed family assembly, the Sacramental Church. And, in this Church, God-the-Holy-Spirit espouses Himself to the Mother of this Church, the Blessed Virgin, Mary and to her children.

In the vertical order of this espousal there is a clear-cut stature and status. Either one is in the state of grace or not; either baptized or not; either morally virtuous, honest and upright, or not. There is no middle ground nor process of becoming espoused to God. In the horizontal order of this espousal, on the other hand, there is a process and no status. Either the prayerful mystic is progressively advancing or regressively retreating from Christ. And, this advance and/or retreat are each respectively processively progressing or regressing. Hence, even when the mystic reaches the stage of sublime union with the Blessed Trinity, there continues to be a process of sanctification. This espousal, of course, is a covenant in which the contractual partners surrender to each other without reservation the totality of each’s own existence. Only the sacramentally immersed human person who with the grace of the Holy Spirit has made such a total self-commitment to Christ can progressively enter into Christ’s own total Self-commitment and espousal to Him as a member of His own Mystical Body, the Sacramental Church.

What our Carmelite mystagogue is expounding here in this verse and the subsequent ones is a progressive refinement of this espousal to the Blessed Trinity. St. John repeatedly ascribes this refinement to the human person’s soul. The soul is fundamentally the root source of all mystical experiences which are anchored in the objective supernatural gift of faith illuminating the soul’s intellectual intelligence with the graciousness of God’s own Trinitarian presence. Yet, the mystical experiences themselves occur within the human person’s subjective egocentric selfhood which is dichotomously a somatic willful bodily sensationally sensitized sensuous self or a psychic mindful inspirationally intimate non-sensuous cerebral self. In other words, the mystic either experientially encounters God through his body’s subjective bodily sensitivity or mental intimacy under the influence of the Holy Spirit abiding within the innermost inner recesses of the human person’s willful selfhood. The Holy Spirit is the very breath and breathing of this mystical experience.

In breathing there is an expiration and an inspiration; that is, a breathing out and a breathing in. Breathing in expands the lungs while breathing out contracts and constricts them. Breathing in God’s Godliness expands and dilates the body with a somatic pious sensitivity experienced as exultation and jubilation. This prompts the human person to sing and dance and to become bodily active with gestures resonating and manifesting this sublime excitation. Indeed, the very vitality and resonance of this sublime mystical experience is not confined to some special erotic physiological part of the human body’s sensitivity such as is the case with the pleasure of eating or taking some drug. It is ethereally diffused throughout the entire body’s sensitivity. Such a somatic mystical experience motivates the mystic to zealous action which, most likely, will take the form of the corporeal works of mercy such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, etc..

It is absolutely important, at this point of the mystic’s union with God, to emphasize that the mystic himself is not in charge nor in control of these sublime mystical bodily sensitized experiences of prayerful exuberance and exultation. It is not the case that he recollects himself in prayer to experientially feel more enthusiastically and sensationally God’s sublimity coursing through his body as one climbs aboard a roller-coaster to feel the thrill of being bodily suspended in air at one moment and plunging to earth at another. These bodily exquisite and delicate sensuous exultations are not under the mystic’s willful self-control and manipulation. They occur and dissipate at God’s good pleasure and not the mystic’s bidding. This lack of willful self-control is precisely one of the indications of the truly divine and sublime origins of these experiences. At this stage of the mystic’s progressive prayerful union with the Blessed Trinity, it is God’s glory which the mystic faithfully seeks and not his own self-secure bodily gratification, contentment, and satisfaction. He has already become completely detached from his own religious self-gratification in the preliminary purgative stage.

The stage of breathing which is opposite to breathing in is that of breathing out in which the lungs contract. Breathing out does not engage the human person’s willful bodily sensitive sensuous self but his willful mental intimate non-sensuous sedate self. In this breathing out the mystic expels completely from his willful selfhood all outward exciting bodily superficial, sensational, sensuous, sensitive experiences of God leaving his egocentric attention to be willfully concentrated exclusively inwardly on his mind’s calm, profound, inspirational, non-sensuous, intimate innermost experience of God. Understandably, this inner mental intimate experience of God does not engage the body’s sensational, sensuous, sensitivity; it is not exciting. Rather, it is a calming and quiescent sublime experience of God that is intimately cerebral and non-sensuous and beyond the body’s reach. Indeed, such non-mystical and non-pious experiences occur in a familiar way when a person is completely absorbed in some day-dreaming reverie and becomes oblivious to everything engaging his senses and bodily sensitivity.

The mystic’s subjective experiential espousal and union with the Blessed Trinity becomes progressively more prayerfully fused and bonded with God when his religious experience becomes concentrated on his inner intimate willful mental emotionless awareness of God’s eternal immobility and immutability which excludes all pious bodily feelings and excitement. Contemplative prayer is more perfectly contemplative the more the mystic is absorbed in the mind’s serene devout soothing inspirations and willful inner self-contained reverent bearing rather than focused on the body’s exciting expansive feelings of divine exhilaration.

Verse 26: St. John continues in this verse to describe the mystic’s ongoing progressive refined prayerful experience of the Blessed Trinity’s infinite Godliness. He speaks of the mystic’s experience of being immersed and saturated with God to the point of becoming inebriated with the Holy Spirit and oblivious to everything happening around him which is of such notable importance to worldly-minded persons. So completely immersed in God is this refined mystical experience that the mystic himself becomes impervious to his bodily needs and sensitivities. Indeed, the mystic finds himself in the very wine cellar itself of God’s divine distillation. In other words, he has at his disposal the choicest divine wines with which to regale himself.

What St. John is emphasizing here is that the mystic is no longer advancing progressively in an increasingly more refined experiential union with God through the medium of his selfhood’s bodily superficial outer sensuous sensitivity but, now, exclusively through the medium of his selfhood’s noumenal inner mental non-sensuous intimacy. This remarkable differentiation between the human person’s subjective inner mental and outer bodily willful selfhood may be better appreciated if we differentiate between the mental notion of a triangle and its corresponding bodily image. One and the same notion of a triangle is intensively, inclusively, and comprehensively the paragon for any and every triangle that could be imaginatively and sensationally imaged by the body’s imagination. The notion of a triangle as a “three-sided figure” includes simultaneously, occultly, and intimately the isosceles, equilateral, and right-angle triangles. On the other hand, a special image of one of these three triangles in the body’s imagination excludes the other three. In other words, a mental notion is more intensively and intimately a fusion of what is conceived than is any bodily imaginary image of the same notion.

This differentiation between the mystic’s reverent superficial prayerful outer bodily experience of God and his inner mental more profound experience underscores the progress the mystic undergoes in arriving at a more perfectly refined union with God. St. John proceeds to indicate that this refinement and ever-increasing intensive union with God involves all 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit which are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and awe of God. Further, these 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit engage the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity supernaturally enlivening the three pivotal points of intelligence, memory, and will involved in the mystic’s encounter with God. He gives an instance of this refinement when he singles out the mystic’s willful love of God-the-Father’s awesome majesty and splendor. The mystic’s mystical love of the Father’s august awesomeness becomes more perfectly refined when it progresses from being outwardly manifest in the mystic’s bodily exalted and expansive reverent feelings for the Father’s infinite grandeur to being more quietly manifest in the mystic’s inward mentally concentrated appreciation of the Father’s inexhaustible merciful providential paternal care and tenderness.

Our Carmelite doctor offers another telling point in differentiating between an objective theological knowledge of God which is lacking in devotion and piety, on the one hand, and a theological piety and devout love of God which, in turn, is lacking in understanding and intelligibility. This differentiation marks out, again, the radical difference between the horizontal and vertical orders of the cross’ cruciformity. In the vertical order, knowledge precedes the will’s dutiful volitions. Knowledge is informative. One cannot love well what one does not antecedently truthfully know. In the horizontal order, it is entirely the reverse which is the case. Love is transformative. Love takes precedence over the mind’s mindful awareness. Unless a human person sacrificially takes a greater willful self-interest in one thing rather than in another or, again, in one person rather than another, this same person will not be mindfully prompted to become more familiar with and more attentive to one thing or person to the exclusion of other things and persons.

Given this subtle distinction St. John notes, a person with a firm faith but little understanding may be endowed with a more intensive pious and devout love of God than one who is very learned in the discipline of theology. Similarly, one who is well informed in dogmatic theology may be exceedingly more learned than he is devout in his love for God. Of course, the optimum is to have one who is both learned in dogmatic theology and one who is also steeped in a mystical love of God. For, such a one would be more spurred on to explore more probatively and cogently the infinite depths of God’s divine intelligibility. Finally, it is important for every beginning mystic to appreciate that advancing in love of God does not demand that one first become proficiently learned in mystical theology. The important point to emphasize is that becoming madly in love with God is the only way to come to grips with God’s miraculous merciful love for mankind.

Verse 27: Such is the seeming madness of God’s love for mankind that God-the-Father through His gift of His only Son to mankind has made Himself a prisoner of the human person’s own willfulness. God-the-Father in His august majesty cannot cease to be infinitely removed from His creature, the human person. Yet, He providentially sends His only Son, Jesus Christ, God/Superman, to become infinitely below the human person through His filial humility to His Father’s Holy Will. The Father allows His only Son to become a sacrificially immolated volunteer victim of the Father’s love for the human person to restore the human person to the Father’s paternal divine embrace. The only return that the mystic can make for such divine folly is to return to God the very favor with which he has been favored. The only response that is commensurate with such reckless sublime love is a kindred love.

Verse 28: The only activity that remains for the mystic is that of a sacrificial love in which the mystic willfully prefers to selflessly serve God’s glory and merciful love rather than his own self-centered and self-serving worldly selfishness. This, of course, is only possible because the mystic is now living in virtue of the Father’s providential and paternal care, the Son’s Selfless victimhood, and the Holy Spirit’s unctuous influence. What is vitally important to appreciate here is that this elevated and advanced stage of spousal union with Christ and through, with, and in Christ with the Father’s Holy Will in the power of their Holy Spirit…this advanced union does not attract the attention of those with whom the mystic daily lives and has commerce.

The mystic’s total absorption in God does not demand that he cease visiting the store to purchase whatever commodities and food he needs for his daily fare. It does not demand that he abandon his given state in life be it lay, religious, or clerical. The tremendous change which has been effectuated in the mystic’s life is more within the inner occult recesses of his innermost inner intimate willful selfhood than in his outer bodily physiology and conduct. He will be walking the same way he has always walked and speaking the same vernacular language as previously. The mystical life is a hidden life precisely because the mystic’s psychic inner willful self is not directly available to empirical inspection and observation.

Verse 29: At the same time, the mystic who has advanced to this most intimate union with the Blessed Trinity is less and less disposed to be engaged with others whose cares and concerns are focused on their worldly enterprises and adventures. Such a mystic is not apt to be interested in the stock market’s daily fluctuations or the prospect of one political party being voted in and another being voted out. This does not mean that such a mystic must be physically removed from the world’s commerce and worldly enterprises. Oh no! What it means is that the mystic’s own cares and concerns are not a prisoner to such worldly affairs. Hence, the mystic may be fully engaged in having stock and attending to political matters without becoming so attached to these affairs as to be in the least anxious about them. But, what is more probably the course of conduct followed by the mystic is to entrust these affairs to someone else while he busies himself more with conducting himself as living a Gospel prayerful lifestyle of Mary rather than one typical of Martha.

Verse 30: What is proper to the vertical objective order is the unit-entity identity and identification of all that exists in the universe of reality. God-as-God in God’s own independent divinity cannot be metaphysically identified with any creature’s own dependent creaturelyness. Similarly, no individual existing creature can be metaphysically identified with any other regarding its individual existence. Each individual is unique and not repeatable. By contrast, what is proper to the horizontal order is the enterprising exchange and exchangeability between opposites. All such enterprising exchanges are rooted in the proportionality peculiar to mathematical notation. Thus ½ is similar and equivalent to 2/4 but not identical with it. The human person’s mindful self can intuitively discern the similarity between these opposite fractions. Similarly, the Ark of the Covenant in the OT is intuitively comparable to the Blessed Virgin, Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ in the NT carrying God in her sacramental womb. Of course, some exchanges are commutative and some are not.

In this specific verse St. John is marveling at the exchangeability of Christ’s Divine/superhuman incarnate divinized Personality with all of His magnificent superhumanized Selflessly Self-giving gratuitous gifts and talents abounding in the Holy Spirit’s own Gifted Selflessness being exchanged for the mystic’s own self-humanized personality. This exchange, of course, is not commutative (i.e., reversible) and takes place within the mystic’s deepest innermost intimate serene inspirational psychic willful selfhood beyond his body’s superficial excitable sensuous sensational sensitivity. What the mystic experiences is virtually Christ’s very own Selfhood as his own because Christ in His Paschal Mystery has already as a volunteer scapegoat sacrificially substituted Himself for every human person in His crucified act of oblation to God-the-Father’s Holy Will. Just as the priest in the Mass offering up the bread and wine makes possible by the Holy Spirit’s intercession the actual miraculous transformation of these creaturely species into the Uncreated glorified reality of Christ’s Body & Blood, so also there is exchanged in this mystical espousal the mystic’s own subjective personality and selfhood for that of Christ’s own subjective Personality (i.e., Persona not to be confused with His divine Personhood). St. Paul describes this when he exclaims that he no longer experiences his own self but the very Selfhood of Christ alive in himself.

The mystic totally obediently and sacrificially surrenders himself and all that he is and has to Christ’s own total obedient and sacrificial Self-surrender. In this mutual self-surrender all the mystic’s moral virtues and charismatic gifts are transposed into supernatural moral virtues and superhumanistic charisms commensurate with Christ’s superlative divinized objective human nature and Self-cultivated subjective glorified Personality. This exchange is effectuated by the Holy Spirit’s intercession. It is a miraculous mystical exchange precisely because it simultaneously involves both God’s miraculous efficacy in conjunction and in communion with the mystic’s full-fledged willful cooperation. So unctuously delicate and appropriate is this communion of the human and divine wills that it seems to the mystic that his own subjective willful will is that of the Holy Spirit while it, indeed, remains his own personalized willfulness. This mutual intimacy between the mystic and the Blessed Trinity is spoken poetically (i.e., intuitively) as a garland.

Here St. John differentiates three different types of garlands. It is notable that these three types, those of virgins, doctors, and martyrs, encapsulate again the cross’ cruciformity. What is singularly characteristic of these ringlets of flowers is that they all three together form a larger ringlet and crown adorning the Sacramental Church’s saints who are members of Christ’s Bride. Recall that the vertical order is fundamentally that of the hierarchical Church; the horizontal is that of the charismatic Church; and, their cruciform intersection is that of the domestic Church. Doctors notably uphold and advance the Church’s teaching in matters of faith and morals. Virgins witness to the Church’s charismatic selflessness and giftedness most frequently made manifest in the manifold religious communities committed to living to the full the Gospel councils of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And martyrs witness to the Church’s cruciform divine hierarchical authority integrated as one with her volunteer giftedness frequently repeated throughout her redemptive history. Of course, again, the bond that binds together all these garlands is the bond of Christ’s very own superhumane amiable merciful love (viz., charity) of friendship.

Verse 31: This verse continues the same theme as the previous one. The bond that weaves together all of these garlands and flowering ringlets is the bond of charity. What is so marvelously amazing here in this mystical love is that Christ’s infinite merciful immeasurable love for the mystic seems to be the very same love with which the mystic, in turn, selflessly and gratuitously loves Christ as his own Beloved treasure. Of course, we know from Christ’s passion and crucifixion that this Selfless love which He bestows on the mystic is won only through excruciating suffering. The mystic experiences this very same totally Self-giving Love as his very own only in conjunction with considerable excruciating sacrificial suffering entailing the loss of his own self-centered personality attachments for Christ’s Selfless Personality and universal unbounded Giftedness.

This charitable friendly amiable love and loveliness is characterized by three traits. It is a strong superhuman heroic enduring tenacious love. It is a singular love that is completely divine and by reason of its divinity completely selflessly self-giving. For this reason it is a love which both captivates God and makes God its prisoner. Thirdly, it is a love which is totally anchored and grounded in an unshakable faith. In brief, it is a charitable friendship love which is the coalescence of the supernatural gifts of faith and hope. Again, the cross’ cruciformity is highlighted here. It is objectively faithfully grounded inerrantly in its vertical unbounded everlasting trust of God and subjectively trust-bound unflinchingly in the hopeful conviction that historically and horizontally this hope is not in vain and will be fulfilled in Christ’s transhistorical resurrection and ascension.

Again, St. John is striving to emphasize and highlight God’s own simplicity that the mystic experiences in the very intimate pith of this divine merciful amicable amorosity. It is clear that the cross’ cruciformity is not entirely simple since it encloses three different dimensions. Yet, in the crucible of Christ’s divine and sublime charitable merciful Love and Loveliness the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross (viz., faith and hope) achieve an integrity and integrality in which each is perfectly reconciled and intertwined with the other to dissolve in a divine superlative amiable divine Love that embraces both in a friendship that is both trusting, trustful, confident and convincing.

Verse 32: Mystical love is captivating; it is gripping and riveting. The mystic’s love for God as his own Beloved is divinely captivating. This love is threefold in keeping with the cross’s cruciformity. It is vertically, virtuously, and objectively spontaneously dutifully obedient; it is horizontally, attitudinally, subjectively, and affectionately sacrificially that of a devoted servant; it is integrally, cruciformly, and unitively, a totally amicable self-giving reciprocal divine friendship. This agape love is the mystic’s amorous abandonment to and basking in Christ’s unfathomable gratuitous mercifulness. It is captivating in the sense that Christ Himself has volunteered to become graciously captive to the mystic’s own amorous embrace. The very presence of Christ in the Eucharist is evidence of this divine captivity.

Christ’s merciful love for mankind prompts Him to remain as a prisoner in the tabernacle at the beck and call of the mystic who chooses to visit Him there. St. John notes that God does not love the mystic because the mystic himself is lovable; the mystic becomes lovable and loving with an agape love because He is loved by Christ in virtue of the Father’s infinite merciful Goodness. This very agape divine love & loveliness abides in the innermost inner intimate recesses of the mystic’s heartfelt and mindful selfhood in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

PRAISED BE JESUS CHRIST! NOW & FOREVER! BLESSED BE MARY! NOW & FOREVER! HONORED BE ST. JOSEPH! NOW & FOREVER!