Unconditional Freedom With St. John Of The Cross
We know that our salvation requires us to turn away from serious sin. If we took a poll, even in these days of skewed and suspect polling, we could count on an overwhelming majority of committed Christians to agree with that statement. Consider the next proposition in our imaginary poll: Living a true Christian life is more than just avoiding sin. We’d probably still get a majority. Where the consensus would break down is with the follow-up question: If giving up sin is not enough, if something more is required, what exactly is it? What is required for a person to reach holiness in this life?
The problem is that–let’s face it–we aren’t really sure if we want holiness. Or like the young St. Augustine, we want it, but not yet.
What is the source of this hesitation? We probably aren’t holding out in the conscious hope of committing a few more horrible sins in the near future. If you are like me, then the desire for sanctity is tangled up in anxiety about losing my freedom. If I seek wholeheartedly to follow the will of God, then my own will suffers. And if I can’t do my own will in all things, then I am not free.
St. John of the Cross tells us otherwise. He tells us that the person who does his own will in all things inevitably becomes, not free, but the servant of his appetites.
St. John is not the first saint to teach that freedom does not consist in having an unrestrained will. “A good man, though a slave, is free,” St. Augustine wrote. “But a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but … as many masters as he has vices.” City of God, Bk IV.3. The idea of a truly Christian freedom has been with us since the beginning, since Christ Himself: “If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Jn 8:31-32 (Douay Rheims).
What St. John of the Cross adds to this patrimony is some of the Church’s most detailed teaching on true freedom, the kind that accompanies holiness.
We are familiar with the importance of unconditional love. What the saint teaches us, what is perhaps no less important for holiness, is unconditional freedom.
True freedom does not consist in doing whatever you want. The simple fact is that a person with an unrestrained will does not float serenely through life in perfect freedom. Think of the wealthy celebrities and powerful people who receive the attention of the public. Do they give the impression of a person at peace? Or do we not see far more frequently evidence of slavish desire, for more attention, more money, more honors? I might be tempted to think I would handle such abundance more calmly. But the practice of self-examination has taught me that, if my will is allowed to roam without governance, it inevitably fastens on some goal or object that feeds some appetite within me. And the less governance the will receives, the more it craves the fulfillment of that appetite. If I had unlimited money, and the admiration of all around me, and I set my will loose in that environment, it would become the slave of my appetites and make a speedy wreck of my soul.
That is the freedom the world offers. It is conditional, because it depends on money, power, honors, and pleasures. When any of those are denied or even curtailed, my feeling of freedom collapses. And when they are secured, I become more and more the slave of my appetites.
This is a key to understanding one of St. John of the Cross’s most quoted expressions: the night of the soul. Very basically, this is the process by which one restrains the will and surrenders the attachments that the will too easily forms. In the early stages of purification of the senses, we must strive to become, in a word, detached:
We call this detachment “night” to the soul, for we are not treating here of the lack of things[.] This implies no detachment on the part of the soul, if it has a desire for them; but we are treating of the detachment … of the … desire, for it is this that leaves the soul free. … It is not the things of this world that either occupy the soul or cause it harm, since they enter it not, but rather the will and desire for them, for it is these that dwell within it.
Ascent of Mount Carmel, I.3.4
I vividly recall the first time I read these words with real understanding. I immediately found myself thinking about dill pickles. I love dill pickles. It gives me such pleasure to bite into a well-nurtured dill. In my hometown, there is an old-fashioned deli restaurant, and on every table, there is a large glass jar filled with the dill pickles they make there. You can just help yourself. I love that restaurant.
The reader of St. John of the Cross might harbor the notion that detachment means doing without. In other words, I couldn’t be detached from my love of dill pickles unless I gave them up forever. In a few words, near the beginning of his great work on detachment, he blew this notion to pieces. And I saw at once that of course he was right. A poor person can be eaten up with desire for money. A solitary person can be mastered by lust for another. What matters is the disposition of the will. Enjoying the good things of this life is still permitted, even to the ascetic, if he does not grasp after them.
Late in his life, St. John of the Cross was compelled to undertake a journey from his monastery in Peñuela, Spain, to another Carmelite monastery where he expected to be treated with hostility (he was). He was gravely ill, and aged from a life of austerity and troubles. The lay brother who accompanied him on the trip suggested one day that he rest and take some nourishment.
“I should be very glad,” he replied, “of a little rest; but I can eat nothing.”
“Is there nothing your reverence could eat?” the brother asked.
The saint considered, and then answered, “Asparagus; but where to find that at this season?”
The 19th Century biographer David Lewis then relates that they approached a small brook and sat down to rest. As they took in the beauty and solitude of the spot, the lay brother glanced aside and saw, sitting on a nearby stone, a bundle of cut asparagus.
Wonder at the miracle aside, it is a comfort to us to think that St. John of the Cross had a special fondness for asparagus, and it didn’t keep him from being a most holy and detached monk.
The point is not to stop preferring this or that thing, but to carry all our preferences lightly. We are meant to be unconditionally free. That’s the freedom we are meant to have, the saint tells us: “Liberty cannot dwell in a heart that is subject to desires, for this is the heart of a slave; but it dwells in the free man, because he has the heart of a son.” Ascent of Mount Carmel, I.4.6.
This article originally appeared on www.spiritualdirection.com
