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Having now to endeavour to show how[236] the three
faculties of the soul -- understanding, memory and
will -- are brought into this spiritual night, which
is the means to Divine union, it is necessary first
of all to explain in this chapter how the three
theological virtues -- faith, hope and charity --
which have respect to the three faculties aforesaid
as their proper supernatural objects, and by means
whereof the soul is united with God according to its
faculties, produce the same emptiness and darkness,
each one in its own faculty. Faith, in the
understanding; hope, in the memory; and charity, in
the will.
And afterwards we shall go on to describe how the
understanding is perfected in the darkness of faith;
and the memory in the emptiness of hope; and likewise
how the will must be buried by withdrawing and
detaching every affection so that the soul may
journey to God. This done, it will be clearly seen
how necessary it is for the soul, if it is to walk
securely on this spiritual road, to travel through
this dark night, leaning upon these three virtues,
which empty it of all things and make it dark with
respect to them.
For, as we have said, the soul is not united with
God in this life through understanding, nor through
enjoyment, nor through the imagination, nor through
any sense whatsoever; but only through faith,
according to the understanding; and through hope,
according to the memory; and through love, according
to the will.
2. These three virtues, as we have said, all cause
emptiness in the faculties: faith, in the
understanding, causes an emptiness and darkness with
respect to understanding; hope, in the memory, causes
emptiness of all possessions; and charity causes
emptiness in the will and detachment from all
affection and from rejoicing in all that is not God.
For, as we see, faith tells us what cannot be
understood with the understanding. Wherefore Saint
Paul spoke of it ad Hebraeos after this manner: Fides
est sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non
apparentium.[237] This we interpret as meaning that
faith is the substance of things hoped for; and,
although the understanding may be firmly and
certainly consenting to them, they are not things
that are revealed to the understanding, since, if
they were revealed to it, there would be no faith. So
faith, although it brings certainty to the
understanding, brings it not clearness, but
obscurity.
3. Then, as to hope, there is no doubt but that it
renders the memory empty and dark with respect both
to things below and to things above. For hope always
relates to that which is not possessed; for, if it
were possessed, there would be no more hope.
Wherefore Saint Paul says ad Romanos: Spes, quae
videtur, non est spes: nam quod videt quis, quid
sperat?[238] That is to say: Hope that is seen is not
hope; for what a man seeth -- that is, what a man
possesseth -- how doth he hope for it? This virtue,
then, also produces emptiness, for it has to do with
that which is not possessed and not with that which
is possessed.
4. Similarity, charity causes emptiness in the
will with respect to all things, since it obliges us
to love God above them all; which cannot be unless we
withdraw our affection from them in order to set it
wholly upon God. Wherefore Christ says, through Saint
Luke: Qui non renuntiat omnibus quae possidet, non
potest meus esse discipulus.[239] Which signifies: He
that renounces not all that he possesses with the
will cannot be My disciple. And thus all these three
virtues set the soul in obscurity and emptiness with
respect to all things.
5. And here we must consider that parable which
our Redeemer related in the eleventh chapter of Saint
Luke, wherein He said that a friend had to go out at
midnight in order to ask his friend for three
loaves;[240] the which loaves signify these three
virtues. And he said that he asked for them at
midnight in order to signify that the soul that is in
darkness as to all things must acquire these three
virtues according to its faculties and must perfect
itself in them in this night.
In the sixth chapter of Isaias we read that the
two seraphim whom this Prophet saw on either side of
God had each six wings; with two they covered their
feet, which signified the blinding and quenching of
the affections of the will with respect to all things
for the sake of God; and with two they covered their
face, which signified the darkness of the
understanding in the presence of God; and with the
other two they flew.[241] This is to signify the
flight of hope to the things that are not possessed,
when it is raised above all that it can possess,
whether below or above, apart from God.
6. To these three virtues, then, we have to lead
the three faculties of the soul, informing each
faculty by each one of them, and stripping it and
setting it in darkness concerning all things save
only these three virtues. And this is the spiritual
night which just now we called active; for the soul
does that which in it lies in order to enter therein.
And even as, in the night of sense, we described a
method of voiding the faculties of sense of their
sensible objects, with regard to the desire, so that
the soul might go forth from the beginning of its
course to the mean,[242] which is faith; even so, in
this spiritual night, with the favour of God, we
shall describe a method whereby the spiritual
faculties are voided and purified of all that is not
God, and are set in darkness concerning these three
virtues, which, as we have said, are the means and
preparation for the union of the soul with God.
7. In this method is found all security against
the crafts of the devil and against the efficacy of
self-love and its ramifications, which is wont most
subtly to deceive and hinder spiritual persons on
their road, when they know not how to become detached
and to govern themselves according to these three
virtues; and thus they are never able to reach the
substance and purity of spiritual good, nor do they
journey by so straight and short a road as they
might.
8. And it must be noted that I am now speaking
particularly to those who have begun to enter the
state of contemplation, because as far as this
concerns beginners it must be described somewhat more
amply, as we shall note in the second book, God
willing, when we treat of the properties of these
beginners. |