THE LOVE OF GOD and the CROSS OF JESUS By _ ‘Tue Rev. REGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, O.P. Translated By SISTER JEANNE MARIE, O.P. E Tospital St Mar Sisters. VOLUME TWO CAM RS I B. HERDER BOOK CO. 35 & 17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS 2, MO. AND 33 QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W. G r95tALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in US.A. ‘NIHIL OBSTAT William M. Drumm Censor Libroruam IMPRIMATUR E Jouph B. Ritter Arcbiepiscopes si die 6 Dec. 1950 Copyright 1951 B, HERDER BOOK CO. Vai Ballow Press, Ine Binghamton and New York CONTENTS PART I CROSSES OF THE SENSES I. Tam Passive Purrescarion of THE SENSES. 5. . 3 Art, I, The Necessity for Purification Pen Be ul pal aaaceaihr caer Purification of the Senses 10 ‘An. TIL, A Causal Explanation of the State of Purif Cate thee ass Daas II. Wrar Is 10 Be Dowe Duaine THe Nicur oF rie Senses eg ENG Nay II. Eveeers or tux Passive Portwication of rue Senses 40 IV, Triats Orpinariy Accompanyine THe Nicur or Beeoincen 0 Nn ne Mees rai V. Tue Union wert Gop Onoivanmy Fottowne 1 Nicut of tHe Senses... . . s 76 PART IL CROSSES OF THE SOUL PURIFYING GRACES OF THE NIGHT OF THE SOUL VI. Tur Passive Puriricarion or tHe Sour as De- scrimeD ny St. JOHN oF THE Cross... . . 97 VIL. Tie Passive Purrrication or Fara. 2... 123 VIIL. Tie Passive Purtrication or Hors... 144iv CONTENTS IX. Tue Passive Purtrication or Cuanmry . 5. . 161 XX. Crtaracrentstic Stens of THE Passive Purirication Ge ram eouLs ee ean (Maia eee PART Ul i THE LIFE OF UNION THROUGH JESUS AND MARY XL Tue Anme or THe Bresson Trovity iw Purtriep Souts ax Transrornixs UNION. 2199 XIL. Tie Prace or tae Unimive Lire ano Tae Mysricat Onn 228 Arw’ 1. "The Spiimnality “of St. “Aiphona: “Its General Characteristics 29 ‘Art, Il A Comparison of the Spiciialiny f Se Alphonsus with the Principles of St. ‘Thomas and the Doctrine of St. John of the Cross p 234 XIN. Tae Urry ano Suatincry or rime Arosroxic Lire: ‘4 Sunmiusis oF CONTEMPLATION AND Action. . 268 Are I. The Apostolic Life: Ite Dificulty and ‘Superiority : 2 Ar. Il The Special End of he: Apseuoslntn hay Ar IIL, The Elements of Religious Life in Apos tolic Orders. 282 XIV. Tue Priesrtioon or Carist anv tire Lire or Union 291 ‘Art, I. Christ’s Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews + 293 ‘Art. Tl The Perfection of Christs Priesthood . . 297 Art. ILL. The Formal Cause of Christ's Priesthood 308 XV. Tue Kivesine or Cumsr. . . 34 Art. I. Christ’s Universal eae in a Hal Sctip- ture i 35 CONTENTS v ‘Art. Il. The Nature, Basis, and Excellence of Christ’s Kingship Mi ea ae Art, II]. The Exercise of Ch: XVI Exemprar ror Our Free Wu. 's Royal Power... 327 Cumust’s areca ee Liperry ie ao eeae Art. I. The World's Notion. of tees vo 8 388 Art. IL Christ’s Liberty on Earth. . . . . . 336 Art. IIL The Liberty of the Sains. . . ! . . 34 XVII. Many, Mover or raz Lire or Reraration, . .. 347 Art. I. Mary Mediatrix and the Grace of Final Perseverance . . is as Art. IL. The Mystery of aie bene Nets XVIIL Sr. Josepu: Move: or tHe Hwven Lire anp First AMONG THE SAINTS yk a XIX. Tue Sour or rue Sacuirice or THe Mass... . 384 Emocue. The Narrow Path of Perfection and the Full De- velopment of the Illuminative and Unitive Ways 411 Constcearion 10 rue Hoy Gust... 1 1... 420 ‘Tue Way oF rie Cxoss Acconpine ro Sr. Tomas Aquinas 421 ‘Tue Mysrunms op raz Rosary. 2 2 ss es. 35 PPB LOC a Ra eau GagePART I Crosszs OF THE SENSESCHAPTER I ‘Tue Passtve PuriricaTion of THE SENSES When speaking of mortification or active purification we have already said that we must impose it upon ourselves chiefly for the following reasons: (x) to correct whatever inordinate tendencies resulting from original sin remain after baptism; (2) to destroy the results of our personal sins and to make reparation for offending God; (3) to prevent an over- development of our natural activity and consequent injury to the life of grace, together with an increasing blindness to the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end; (4) to imitate Christ crucified and to work with Him for the salvation of souls. Our Lord Himself pointed out this fourth reason to us when He said: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” In quoting these words, St. Luke remarks that Christ said them “to all.” To mortify ourselves still falls short, in fact, of what is necessary; we must bear patiently as well the crosses God sends us to purify us, to make us like to our Savior, and, in a sense, to so continue the mystery of redemption with Him, by Him, and in Him until the end of time. What Christian terminology calls “the Cross” by analogy with the sufferings and death of our Lord, is made up of the 1 Lake 9¢235 Matt. 16: 245 Mask 8: 34 3‘ ‘THE LOVE OF GOD daily physical and moral trials arising from our relations with the world of things and of men but especially of those sufferings sent more directly by God to make us more like Christ Jesus, who became “obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” ? for the ransom of mankind. “As the Father hath given Me commandment, so do 1.”* All Chris- tians, each in the measure of his capacity, must go even to these lengths to follow our divine Master. "The necessity of the cross is laid on us principally for two reasons. The first is that the roots of evil we bear within us go much deeper than we may think, and we hardly know \ where these germs of death are to be found. Even when we have mortified ourselves and tried hard to be regular and fervent, we still have many unconscious faults: egoism in various forms, even in our prayers and devotions, in study and the apostolate. Natural eagerness, spiritual sensuality, intellectual pride, self judgment and self-will, all these pre- vent God's kingdom from becoming deeply established in us and keep us from closer union with Him, A vast difference exists between regularity, even when accompanied with a certain fervor, and true sanctity. The cross patiently borne for love bridges the distance between these two. Our Lord knows better than we do where the evil in us lies; He sends messengers to tell us, not always too charitably, the truth about ourselves and to put a finger on our touchiest points. He comes Himself, when necessary, with metal and fire to cut and cauterize our wounds, the principles of corruption ‘which prevent us from becoming the living image of Hlis Son. ‘The second reason why the cross is imposed on us has to do 2 phil. 2:8, John 14:30 PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 5 with our two great models, Jesus and Mary. They had no need for purification; they suffered for our redemption. We must imitate them in this. Our association with our Lord in His redemptive work keeps pace with the growth of our union with Him, and He Himself used the cross as the prin- cipal means for redeeming the world, the supreme manifes- tation of His love for the Father and for us. Consequently, as the lives of all the saints prove, the neces- sity of the cross is proportionate to the purification souls need and to the degree of their union with Christ, as well as of the apostolic and reparative life God efficaciously wills for them. Some souls, still in their baptismal innocence, have less need for purifications others, though already quite pure, live in almost continual suffering because our Lord calls them to an incomparably higher perféction than that which contents so many easily satisfied Christians. The more God loves us, the heavier crosses He sends us, and the more they resemble the cross carried by Christ and shared by His Blessed Mother. To bear the cross patiently, we must understand it, see where it leads, and carry it in the light of love. It is therefore good for us to know the different ways in which God usually ties souls. Some crosses are intended to purify the senses and subject them to the spirit; these occur frequently and are common to many persons, especially to beginners. Other crosses are of the spirit. These have for their purpose the progressive supernaturalization of the soul and its growing subjection to God. Trials of this kind are the lot of a small number of advanced souls. Spiritual writers properly speak, then, of two kinds of trials, calling one passive purification of the senses and the other passive purification of the soul, designations that help6 THE LOVE OF GOD tus to determine what is essential to each and what trials commonly accompany them. And thus we can come to understand why souls must undergo a twofold passive puri- fication to arrive at the full perfection of Christian life. For the sake of order, the following questions will be taken up in this chapter in regard to the passive purification of the senses: first, the necessity for purification; secondly, its psychological description; and thirdly, its theological and causal explanation. In subsequent chapters the rules for di- rection appropriate for this state, together with its purifying effects and accompanying trials, will be discussed. Lastly we shall see just when the passive purification of the senses normally takes place, whether at the beginning of the il- _Juminative way or considerably later. ARTICLE I ‘THE NECESSITY FOR PURIFICATION ‘The spiritual imperfections of beginners (possible paths to pride, sensuality, and sloth of a spiritual kind) make purifica- tion necessary, as St. John of the Cross shows.* These imper- fections are, as it were, so many modulations of the seven capital sins appearing as different deviations in the spiritual life but all leading back to the principal ones just spoken of above. St. John of the Cross confines himself exclusively to the consideration of the trouble these cause in our relations with God, but they work no less harm to our relations with our neighbor and to the apostolate entrusted to us. ‘A man may become immoderately attached to sensible con- solations and scek them for themselves, forgetting that they “he Dark Night, chaps 3-9 PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 7 are not an end but a means; thus he may come to prefer the favor of spiritual things to their essence. Spiritual greediness of this kind, when unsatisfied, begets impatience and, as soon as “the narrow path” has to be taken, spiritual sloth and a distaste for the work of sanctification so frequently re- ferred to by early writers under the name of acedia.* If, instead, everything goes as we would have it, we take pride in our perfection and judge others severely, posing as masters when we are nothing but poor disciples. Spiritual pride, St. John of the Cross says,’ leads beginners to avoid masters who disapprove of their spirit and even sometimes to harbor ill will toward them. ‘They look for guides to suit their tastes, desire to be intimate with them, and confess their sins to them in such a way as “to excuse themselves rather than to accuse themselves... . And sometimes they seck another confessor to tell the wrongs they have done, so that their own confessor shall think they have done nothing wrong at all.”* ‘This hypocrisy pointed out by St. John of the Cross in beginners, who need to undergo the passive purification of the senses, shows clearly that, for him, they are beginners in the sense in which that term is generally understood and that we should take literally and in the ordinary sense of the words what is said in The Dark Night: “the night of sense is common and comes to many; these are the beginners.” * Tecannot, therefore, be admitted, as some hold, that the begin- ners referred to here are already living in the unitive way after passing through active purification and that they merit the * sunt, Ma las, 9.35. The Dork Nigh, Bi. 1, chap. Ibi. 8 Op. eit, Ble. T, chap. 8.8 ‘THE LOVE OF GOD. name of beginners only from a very special point of view, so far as they are making a beginning, not in the interior life, but in the passive ways, considered as more or less ex- traordinary and beyond the normal way.? "The faults St. John of the Cross speaks of certainly show that he is talking about real beginners, not in a special sense, but in the traditional sense of the word, taken in its full and ‘unwatered meaning with particular reference to those having cither a contemplative vocation or a call to the apostolate, the overflowing of contemplation. Many other faults companion those remarked by St. John of the Gross, but he scarcely comments on them since he con- cerns himself, as has been said, only with our relations with God and not, as it were, with the repercussions these faults have on study and the apostolate. However, to round out his, thought on this point presents little difficulty. Beginners—and the retarded, too, of whom there are but too many—devote themselves to study more out of curiosity than from love of truth and, as they fail to appreciate the value of truth, they take insufficient precautions against error. ‘They are likely to overevaluate themselves, to become ir- ritated when others seem not to recognize their worth. Jeal- ousy and envy lead them to disparage fellow workers more talented and more disinterested than themselves and so to block the good influence these might have exerted on others, who may fail, therefore, to advance or even to persevere be- cause of this lack, People who do things like this may work isto be segreted that Tanquerey in his mentze on The Spirinat Life Branderis and ed. (Tournai: Desclée, 1930), pp. 60 ff. favors this point of views Facing the ight of the senses in BK. ll where he considers the unitive way. In Qcing s0 he departs not only from the terminology of St.John of the Cross but both from his teaching and from traditional doctrine as well. PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 9 great harm to the general good without being conscious of it. Even in scholarly religious circles a thousand petty pas- sions and intrigues may influence minds and result in books and reviews becoming tainted with untruth, even when, and perhaps especially when, all concerned profess to be quite objective, Irritating controversies arise only too often because those concerned have but relative good faith. ‘Those who give themselves to the apostolate bring much natural eagerness and self-sccking to it and they unconsciously make themselves the center of their activity and attract souls cither to themselves or to the groups to which they belong in- stead of to our Lord Jesus Christ. And when trials come they complain and allow themselves to sink into discouragement. ‘Anyone who sets out to indicate all the nuances of the seven capital sins on this level of human activity, either in begin- ners or in the great number of retarded souls, would never be done. ‘All this shows us the necessity for profound purification. Exterior, and especially interior, mortification can doubtless correct many of these faults, but what we impose on ourselves cannot suffice to tear up the roots that reach down into the depths of our faculties. The remains of sin impregnate, as it were, our temperament and character. We are unconscious of this, but our neighbor is not and sometimes, without say- ing anything, suffers much because of it. St. John of the Cross says: But neither from these imperfections nor from those others can the soul be perfectly purified until God brings it into the passive purgation of that dark night whereof we shall speak presently. It befits the soul, however, in so far as it can, to contrive to labour, on its own account, to purge and perfect itself, so that it may merit10 THE LOVE OF GOD being taken by God into that Divine care wherein it becomes healed of all things that it was unable of itself to cure. Because, however greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify it- self so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire, in the way and manner that we have to describe? Further, to remedy the faults of the proficient, there must Jater be another much more grievous and proportionately more fruitful purification of the spirit.!* ARTICLE II PSYCHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF ‘THE PASSIVE PURIFICATON OF THE SENSES In describing this state, many authors place particular em- phasis on its negative aspect: the loss of all sensible devotion and the great difficulty experienced in discursive meditation. "They give us the impression that itis a time of relapse rather than of progress, not bringing out what is positive and prin- cipal in the night of the senses: a strong desire for God, a sign of the beginning of infused contemplation, the entrance into a new way. It is commonly and truly said that, in the passive purifica- tion of the senses, the soul experiences complere sensible aridity in prayer and pious exercises; nothing offered to it in meditation or in the books it used to love attracts it any more; it no longer has any taste for these things and everywhere finds dryness and sterility. It has the impression of being left in darkness and penetrating cold, as though the sun which 30 The Dark Night, Bk. I, chap. 3. 31. Ybid., Bk. U, chaps. 2, 2. PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES 1 gave light and warmth to the spirit had ceased. Sometimes this painful aridity engenders a disgust for spiritual things and even a sort of desolation, especially in souls tempera- mentally inclined to sadness, souls that formerly received sensible consolations. In the words of the Book of Job, they become a burden to themselves, “factus sum mihimetips: “gravis.” ? They have no spirit for prayer of for work, and yet they realize how necessary prayer is. They ask themselves whether their aridity is lukewarmness, whether it comes from some partly unconscious fault of their own, for example, from presumption which they have taken for zeal. If they consult others, many wish to persuade them that their trouble is due to melancholy and that they ought to take the ap- propriate remedies for it: exercise, diversion, and exterior works, ‘Authors usually add that sensible aridity is a privation of merely accidental, but not of substantial, devotion. The will to give oneself generously to the service of God is not lost,** bur the senses and imagination are left in a kind of emptiness and the sensuous appetency finds no savor in anything. The disgust experienced with everything is really involuntary and fails to affect the will, which is as far above the sensuous appetency as the intellect is above the senses and imagination. ‘All this is true; but we must consider aridity or dryness of the sensuous appetency more closely so as to distinguish it from spiritual sloth or acedia, the privation of substantial devotion itself, a disgust for spiritual things both culpable and voluntary, if not in itself at least in the negligence which gives it birth. To confuse the night of the senses with #2 Job 733 81a The 83) act H Ibid 0.35.2 ‘THE LOVE OF GOD. spiritual sloth would be a grave speculative and practical error leading straight to quietism. ‘To draw a clear distinction between them, we shall have to return to the description of the passive night of the senses left us by St. John of the Cross, who plumbed the depths of St. Gregory the Great's doctrine on this point.** In the Mid- dle Ages Hugh of St. Victor ** and later Tauler ” developed this teaching. Together with these masters, we must insist on stressing the positive aspect of the state of purification, that is, a strong desire for God and for perfection, rather than the negative characteristics of aridity and difficulty in medi- tating. Indeed the soul makes great progress during this period because of the profound working of God within it, and this divine activity and the passive state resulting from it are plainly the chief clements of the state, although the negative notes of dryness and quasi-impossibility to meditate serve as the chief means of evidencing it, especially at first. The description given by St. John of the Cross * brings out what is most fundamental, positive, and divine in this state and will serve to help us get beyond its negative aspects to the supernatural reality produced by God. According to St. John of the Cross three principal signs, already noted by ‘Tauler, manifest this state. He expresses it thus in The Dark Night: * 4 Moral, XXIV, chap. 6, no. 11} % chap. x0, no. x7. Im Beech Bk Hy bore ahs ie 387m Bel, hm, 1. Here Hugh of St. Vicor compres the pasive puifsion af the vil by dvinc sce wo the tandormaton of geen woo! in re 1 Tetons, chap, From their ater crons Taul's dcp gathered together the esenval of ti ding io the Patton see Derk Nghe, Bk, chap. 9 1 Ud PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES RB "The first (sign) is whether, when a soul finds no pleasure or con- solation in the things of God,?? it also fails to find it in anything created; for, as God sets the soul in this dark night to the end that He may quench and purge its sensual desire, He allows it not to find attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever.** Hence it may be laid down as very probable that this aridity and insipidity proceed not from recently committed sins or imperfections. For, if this were so, the soul would feel in its nature some inclination or desire to taste other things than those of God. . . . Since, how- ever, this lack of enjoyment in things above or below might pro- ceed from some indisposition or melancholy humour, which often- times makes it impossible for the soul to take pleasure in anything, it becomes necessary to apply the second sign and condition. ‘The second sign whereby a man may believe himself to be ex- periencing the said purgation is that ordinarily the memory is centred upon God, with painful care and solicitude, thinking that it is not serving God, but is backsliding, because it finds itself with- out sweetness in the things of God. And in such a case it is evident that this lack of sweetness and this aridity come not from weak- ness and lukewarmness; for it is the nature of lukewarmiess not to care greatly or to have any inward solicitude for the things of God . . . for lukewarmness consists in great weakness and re- missness in the will and in the spirit, without solicitude as to serv- ing God; whereas purgative aridity is ordinarily accompanied by solicitude, with care and grief, as I say, because the soul is not serving God. And although this may sometimes be increased by melancholy or some other humour (as it frequently is) it fails not for this reason to produce a purgative effect upon the desire, since 140 What is meant is that the soul no longer finds consolation in things divine proposed to it in a sensible way, for example, by way of the imagination in discursive meditation. ‘1 Later it will be made evident that this is an effect of the gift of knowledge, which shows us the vanity of all created things and their inability to reveal to us God's intimate life,4 ‘THE LOVE OF GOD the desire is deprived of all pleasure, and has its care centred upon Godalone. . . . When the cause is aridity, itis true that the sensual part of the soul has fallen low, and is weak and feeble in its actions, by reason of the little pleasure which it finds in them; but the spirit, on the other hand, is ready and strong.?* St, John of the Cross insists on the positive character of the second sign: For the cause of this aridity is that God transfers to the spirit the good things and the strength of the senses, which, since the soul's hatural strength and senses are incapable of using them, remain barren, dry and empty. For the sensual part of a man has no ca- pacity for that which is pure spirit, and thus, when it is the spirit that receives the pleasure, the flesh is left without savour and is too weak to perform any action. But the spirit, which all the time is being fed, goes forward in strength, and with more alertness and solicitude than before, in its anxiety not to fail God; and if it is not immediately conscious of spiritual sweetness and delight, but only of aridity and lack of sweetness, the reason for this is the strangeness of the exchange; for its palate has become accustomed to those other sensual pleasures upon which its eyes are still fixed, and, since the spiritual palate is not made ready or purged for such subtle pleasure, until it finds itself becoming prepared for it by means of this arid and dark night, it cannot experience spiritual pleasure and good. . « « “These souls whom God is beginning to lead through these soli- tary places of the wilderness are like to the children of Israel; to whom in the wilderness God began to give food from Heaven, containing within itself all sweetness, and, as is there said, it turned 22 Just as in the first sign we see the effects of the sift of knowledge, im the second we find manifest the gifts of fortitude and fear of the Lord. These, too, will be given further consideration later. PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES . 15 to the savour which each one of them desired, But withal the children of Israel felt the lack of the pleasures and delights of the flesh and the onions which they had eaten aforetime in Egypt. This state has also been compared to the teething period of infants; when they begin to cut their teeth, they have con- tinual pain, but after their teeth have come through they are ready for stronger food and will reccive it. At first it has no appeal for them, but soon they grow to need and desire it. Because the same is true of the spiritual life, St. John of the Cross add ‘The which food is the beginning of contemplation that is dark and arid to the senscs; which contemplation is secret and hidden from the very person that experiences it; and ordinarily, together with the aridity and emptiness which it causes in the senses, it gives the soul an inclination and desire to be alone and in quietness, wi out being able to think of any particular thing or having the de- sire to do so. If those souls to whom this comes to pass knew how tobe quiet at this time . . . then they would delicately experience this inward refreshment in that ease and freedom from care. So delicate is this refreshment that ordinarily, if a man have desire or care to experience it, he experiences it not; for, as I say, it does its work when the soul is most at ease and fireest from care; it is like the air which, if one would close one’s hand upon it, es capes. «+ For in such a way does God bring the soul into this state, and by so different a path docs He lead it that, if it desires to work with its faculties, it hinders the work which God is doing in it rather than aids it... . For anything that the soul can do of its own accord at this time serves only, as we have said, to hinder inward peace and the work which God is accomplishing in the spirit by ‘means of that aridity of sense... .16 ‘THE LOVE OF GOD ‘The third sign whereby this purgation of the senses may be recognized is that the soul can no longer meditate or reflect in its sense of the imagination, as it was wont, however much it may ‘endeavor to do so. For God now begins to communicate Himself to it, no longer through sense, as He did aforetime, by means of re- flections which joined and sundered its knowledge but by pure spirit, into which consecutive reflections enter not; for He come smunicates Himself to it by an act of simple contemplation.# ‘On the subject of this third sign, St. John of the Cross se- marks that “the embarrassment and dissatisfaction of the faculties proceed not from indisposition, for, when this is the case, and the indisposition, which is never permanent, comes to an end, then the soul is able once more, by taking some care about the matter, to do what it did before, and the faculties find their needed support. But in the purgation of the desire this is not so: when once the soul begins to enter therein, its inability to reflect with the faculties grows ever greater . .. although, at first, and with some persons, itis ‘not as continuous.” In the Ascent of Mount Carmel;* too, St. John of the Cross, while not following absolutely the same order, men- tions these three signs when indicating at what time it is well to pass from discursive meditation, to contemplation. “This passage refers to infused contemplation. St. John of the Cross ** says that contemplation works not actively but pas- sively, being received from God operating in us and having ‘22 When the gift of understanding is united to the gift of piety they. make themerlver evident by ther effects the gift of understanding serving asthe principle cre howlaige of divine things that is not discursive but superior to reasoning, Zivple, and leading the soul to experience as it were, things divine, Cl. Na Har qeBy 8625 3) 4s 7 54 Bk. TH, chaps. 11) 126 238 [bid chaps. 12, 13- PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES a such subtlety and delicacy that the soul may hardly notice its presence. In this state “God communicates Himself to it passively, even as to one who has his eyes open, so that light is communicated to him passively without his doing more than keep them open. And this reception of light which is infused supernaturally is passive understanding.” ** ‘The state here referred to is the same as that described in The Dark Night Therefore, although this state is made manifest by two negative characteristics—aridity or the deprivation of all sensible consolation and difficulty or quasi-powerlessness to smeditate—it has another more important and positive ele- ment: the beginning of infused contemplation and the ardent desire for God which is born of it. Further, aridity of the sensuous appetency and difficulty in meditating spring pre- cisely from this, that grace is starting to take on a new and purely spiritual form, superior to the senses and to discursive reasoning. At first sight we might be led to believe that God purifies us chiefly by depriving us of something, sensible grace; in reality He gives us much more than we had before because, far from taking grace away from us, He gives it to ‘us more abundantly but in a higher form, far above the reach of any sense enjoyment. The state into which God thus leads the soul will be better understood when we have tried to dis- cover its causes. 38 Ibid, chap. 15. 21 The quotations just given, as well Th » as well as many other texts, show that these chaps othe divent of Mons Carmel al The Dark Nigh (Bk chap. 9) lesribe not two different states; one preceding the other in time, but the same a te Aint of Me Coral Selig wh aioe eer, The Dak Nin ee pedal oss); and more and more are coming to recognize it at