THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE: VERSES 33-40

PRELIMINARY: In these final verses we reach the pinnacle and culmination of the mystic’s union with the Blessed Trinity’s own divine simplicity which is so simple that God’s divine Godhead is totally identical with the Father, the Son, and their Holy Spirit. So sacramentally, interiorly, and intimately is the Catholic Christian mystic wed through Christ’s mediation to the Trinity that the mystic’s very own divinized personality transformed into the Persona of Christ’s own superhumanized heroic Selfless Personality experiences within itself something of the total simplicity proper to God’s own Triune Godhead.

The very core and crux of this wedding between God and the mystic is the cruciformity of love. The love that comes alive in the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s culminating act of divine and sublime Self-donation is a cruciform love; it is threefold encompassing the threefold theological gifts of faith, hope, and charity. And, as previously emphasized these threefold gifts themselves are centered in the person’s soulful intellect, his mindful memory, and his self-centered will. The human person by reason of his intellect has objectively a natural access to the heavenly realm of eternity and a supernatural access by grace to voluntarily respond to God’s Self-manifestation of His infinite Paternal Goodness revealed in the Old and New Testaments and the Church’s sacramentality.

In this voluntary response the Catholic Christian mystic is enabled through the gift of faith in the sacrament of Baptism to address God as his own Father and as a member of God’s Triune family. This is the vertical order of the cross in which the mystic voluntarily (i.e., freely) worships, adores, thanks, and beseeches His own Father with a dutiful love which he rightfully owes to the Father. This “divine right” is the root of the mystic’s very own inalienable dignity and inalienable right to be himself universally respected albeit his own shortcomings and failings in life. In this dutiful faith-anchored love the mystic, like Christ Himself, is totally obedient to the Father’s Holy Will and is loved by the Father with a divine love that is the same love reserved for His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

The same human person by reason of his mindful memory is subjectively afforded as a member of the Church’s Mystical Body a self-cultivated access to the very historical Self-manifestation of God-the-Son especially in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Further, he comes to be subjectively conscious of Jesus Christ within the consciousness of his own historical existence in the measure that he himself becomes willfully super-culturally and super-civilly self-humanized by advancing little-by-little from his infancy to his adulthood through an ascetic life of self-denial more and more Christ-like both in his attitudinal mindset and in the very heart of his deepest aspirations. Within the innermost sanctuary of this very personalized mindful (i.e., willful) memory the mystic becomes transformed in his own personality by willfully (i.e., forcibly) converting his own mental attitude and heartfelt feelings to those of Christ’s own be-attitudinal redemptive mindset and heartfelt empathy toward his neighbors.

Indeed, by a heroic mindful self-purification of his very memory---his past eventuation and future aspirations---he has superhumanistically through Christ’s very own sacrificial heroism little-by-little willfully divested himself of his own selfish-self-centered mindset and become more masterfully confirmed in Christ’s very own masterful Selfless service both to the Father, Holy Mother, the Sacramental Church, and to his neighbor. In this spiritual maturation, the mystic has become increasingly masterful with the mastery of Christ’s very own heroic Self-denial and Self-control of His own motivations, emotional impulses, and serene inspirations. Here the mystic is not excelling in an eminently dutifully virtuous love but in a serviceable selfless sacrificial love. This sacrificial love is in the horizontal order and progresses through successive stages of purification in which the mystic becomes increasingly less selfishly self-centered and more selflessly self-centered. Unlike the dutiful virtuous love---proper to the vertical order---in which the mystic ought to love God because God is infinitely loveable and worthy of such love, this sacrificial love is such that the mystic needs to and must willfully love God (i.e., cherish God) to enable his own mindful self to become lovely with a loveliness that is Christ’s very own superheroic superhumanistic SELFLESS LOVELINESS.

In the matter of God-the-Father’s love for the mystic, the mystic himself is loved with an infinite divine love. For God-the-Father does not love the mystic because the mystic himself is loveable; rather, He loves the mystic because He (i.e., the Father) Himself is eminently LOVING. Hence, He loves the mystic paternally with a divine benevolence that wills the mystic to be infinitely benevolent as He Himself is such in His very existence and divine nature. In the matter of God-the-Son become incarnate in the very flesh of everyman including the mystic, He makes possible in His Paschal Mystery for every human person to be willfully and sacrificially transformed within the historical subjectivity of the mystic’s own personalized self-cultivated willfully self-centered personhood into the SELFLESS LOVELINESS of His (i.e., Christ’s) own superhumanized and superdivinized Self-cultivated sacrificial servant Persona (i.e., Personality).

These two irreducible and non-educible orders of the cross, the vertical and horizontal---i.e., the communal in which the human person is ontologically “at one” with every other human person in the family of humanity and the social in which the human person finds that he is phenomenologically an intrapersonal and interpersonal associate with other persons in society---engaging the mystic’s natural objective inalienable soulful freedom of choice and conscionable responsibility, on the one hand, and his self-cultivated subjective self-centered alienable freedom of conscientious mindful and heartfelt self-control and social accountability, on the other, …these two orders become reconciled cruciformly by the God-the-Holy-Spirit abiding superhumanely within Christ’s own subjective Persona enabling His superhumanized Selfless Personality to become as submissively lovingly wed to God-the-Father as was His own divinized objective human nature and soulful will dutifully lovingly obedient. In bestowing His very own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth on the Apostles and the Sacramental Church’s Mystical Body, each member of this Church, including the Catholic Christian mystic is supernaturally and superhumanistically and superhumanely gifted with the Holy Spirit’s Giftedness.

By reason of God-the-Holy Spirit’s divine Giftedness the mystic is able to reconcile his objective willing dutiful love for the Father with his subjective sacrificial willful love for the Son. That is, the mystic as a superhuman sacramentally graced person is able to reconcile within his own personhood his conscionable soulful dutiful love for the Father’s infinite lovability with his conscientious self-centered sacrificial love for the Son’s superhuman heroic loveliness. In this regard the mystic himself becomes infinitely loveable by reason of the Father’s infinite paternal love for him and superhumanistically (i.e., selflessly) lovely by reason of the Son’s Selfless brotherly love for him. In this reconciliation the mystic’s love for God becomes integrally a sacrificially virtuous love together with a duty-bound sacrificial love. That is, this love is not merely faith-based fundamentally, objectively, and trustingly; it is faith-bound supplementally, confidently, subjectively, and hopefully; furthermore, it is faithfully subjectively objective and objectively subjective in its integrality. That is, it is conscionably conscientious and conscientiously conscionable.

What this brings about in the mystic is a consummate wedding with the Blessed Trinity in which his very own personhood’s objective soulful nature and subjective self-cultivated selfhood become integrally reconciled with each other. The mystic experiences the peace of Christ which the world cannot give. At the same time, he experiences even on this side of heaven something of the beatitude of the beatific vision reserved for the saint in the heaven of the Church’s New Jerusalem. Objectively by reason of his intellectual intelligibility he fully recognizes God’s existential eminence as God and his own creaturely existence which is infinitely inferior to God’s divine existence. Subjectively by reason of his mindful historical memory eschatologically subsumed into the very eternity of the Blessed Trinity’s immutable Godhead by Christ’s redemptive Paschal Mystery, he experiences himself transported into the very bosom of this Triune family Godhead. While he remains fully cognizant of the disparity between God’s divine immortal infinity and his own historical mortal finitude, he experiences by reason of the Holy Spirit’s Giftedness a volunteer gift of himself to the Triune Supreme love that is both not possessively his own and yet enjoyed and religiously experienced as his very own.

This is the divine love which St. John of the Cross is describing in these final verses of the Spiritual Canticle. The mystic who plumbs this love and deciphers for himself the depth of these verses will most assuredly be plumbing the depths of our Blessed Mother’s own sublime Trinitarian love and lovable loveliness. Such consummate mystical love is peculiar to all Christian espousal love. It is a love which is reserved for the spouses themselves. Those who would intrude on it venture into a sanctuary which is reserved for the spouses alone. Yet, such is this divine espousal love that it is simultaneously communal and sociable. It integrates and reconciles a person’s objective personal voluntary dutiful obligations to God with his subjective personalized affections and self-detached voluntaristic attachments to God. In doing so it enables the human person to become a personage in the company of the saints who themselves have become the integral integrated Personal, Personalized Personage that is Jesus Christ, God/Superman.

This integral cruciformly integrated love is freely mediated by Jesus Christ, God/Superman. At the same time, it is freely embraced by the Catholic Christian mystic himself. In this embrace the mystic freely (i.e., voluntarily) dutifully obeys his divine Father’s Holy Will providentially made objectively manifest in the moral obligations of the 10 commandments. He, additionally, freely (i.e., voluntaristically & forcibly) sacrificially becomes be-attitudinally self-detached from the subjective prison of his own selfish servile selfhood liberated by Christ’s Gospel life-style and very own Self-oblation on the cross of His crucifixion. The mystic is liberated from the prison of his own self-centered selfishness and from the guilt of his own disobedience to God made supernaturally possible by Christ’s precious Blood, the sacramental currency of the Church’s redemptive economy. In this twofold vertical and horizontal liberation, the Catholic Christian mystic is enabled to enter into a volunteer self-giving freedom of the Holy Spirit’s own Giftedness. This is the freedom of self-determination. This freedom is the integral freedom of both being virtuously (i.e., vigorously voluntarily) noble in choosing God above and beyond all other choices together with having Christ’s very own sacrificial sufficient masterful forcible self-control over his own bodily feelings and mental bearings to transcend his own self-centered selfishness.

This integral cruciform freedom of self-determination is such that the Catholic Christian mystic is simultaneously (vertically) objectively fully trusting in the Father’s providential Holy Will, and (horizontally) subjectively hopefully convinced and confidently trust-bound to being resurrected to immortal life with Christ following the oblation of his own selfhood in union with Christ’s oblation. This integral (cruciform) freedom of self-determination integrates his objective dutiful love with his subjective sacrificial love into a superhumane agape love of friendship allowing and enabling the mystic to be a fellow companion with Christ and freely (i.e., as a volunteer offering) joining Christ’s mission of redeeming, sanctifying, and glorifying mankind. Here the Catholic Christian mystic under the unctuous influence of the Holy Spirit becomes a faithful unwavering indomitable trustee (i.e., witness & prophet) of God’s very own freedom and gracious loving loveliness. Here the mystic without ceasing to be a creature of God, his Creator, experiences religiously through God’s magnificent and gracious benevolent largesse, his own ability to requite the Father’s infinite providential and paternal benevolence with the Son’s own filial exuberant volunteer love under the auspices of the Holy Spirit’s influential benediction abiding within the innermost intimacy of his own selfhood.

Verse 33: Here the mystic recognizes that through the grace of Christ’s own redemptive Paschal Mystery including the gift of the Holy Spirit’s own Giftedness, he now is endowed with a divine graciousness and beauty of his own commensurate with God’s own loveliness and goodness. In view of this, he not only merits being loved by God not merely condescendingly but even as a full-fledged member of the family of the Blessed Trinity.

Verse 34: Here the mystic recognizes that his peaceful accord between his objective conscionable nature and his subjective conscientious self-cultivated self enables him to find his restful abode in God’s Triune bosom above and beyond all of the vicissitudes of his own inner and outer conflicts.

Verse 35: Here the mystic recognizes that the epitome of his religious communion with God’s Trinitarian Godhead is nothing less than the awesome and stupendous immutable and eternal solitude of God’s own solitary Godhead. The more perfectly the mystic communes with God the more patently he becomes aware that the only one with whom he can fully personally share this communion is God alone. This is typical of all spousal love that it is the mutual espousal love of the spouses alone. Anyone who attempts to insert himself in this love seems to be an intruder unless it is one actually born of this love such as is the case with children born of wedded love.

Verse 36: Here the mystic is so inebriated with the very divine love that is proper to God’s own divinity that he is emboldened to revel joyfully in a joy that is beatitudinal precisely because it is redolent of the Trinitarian family Love which is crystallized in the Person of the Holy Spirit. In this crystallization it is impossible to differentiate between the lover and the Beloved.

Verse 37: Here the mystic recognizes along with St. Paul that “he himself no longer lives; it is Christ that is his very own life.” Here, then, the mystic becomes aware that in himself he is experiencing something of the very mystery of Christ’s incarnation as the God/Superman, Christ’s Self-oblation on the cross, Christ’s indwelling in the Sacred Eucharist, as well as Christ’s bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven. In other words, the mystic recognizes that it is only in, through, and with Christ that he has reached his own fulsome authentic identity and self-fulfillment.

Verse 38: Here the mystic recognizes that his own life will reach its total consummation when he becomes divinely enabled by reason of God’s infinite benevolence and benediction to return God’s love measure-for-measure.

Verse 39: Here the mystic anticipates becoming so perfectly transformed into Christ as to become indistinguishable from the very divine beloved vitality which is characteristic of the Holy Spirit personifying the munificent love that enfolds the Father and Son’s mutual divine embrace.

Verse 40: Here the mystic reflects on himself and recognizes that by reason of God’s Trinitarian grace and loving graciousness he himself in his natural faculties and self-cultivated self-centered propensities is completely at peace with himself, an indomitable peace that only Christ, God/Superman can grant to his own disciple in bestowing on him the gift of His own Holy Spirit.

It seems to me only fitting to point out that this consummated communion between the mystic and the Blessed Trinity mediated through Christ reaches its apex and summit (of Mount Carmel) only in the measure that it approaches somewhat the august mystical communion that exists between our Blessed Mother, Mary, and her first begotten Son, Jesus Christ. She as Mother of the Sacramental Church is also Mother of the Church’s Mystical Body which is constituted of all the bodily members of that same Church. Having recourse to our Blessed Mother is tantamount to becoming the child of the same mother who has herself given birth, nursed, and nurtured and become herself the most eminent mystical disciple of the very one, Jesus Christ, who is the very summit of Mount Carmel. We can pray to Mary accordingly: “Mary, Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, Mother in me the life which you mothered in your Son, Jesus Christ, God/Superman.”

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