Susan's Musings: The Sum of Perfection

How is it possible to summarize what it means to be perfected in Christ? Providing us with the classical answer to this question is the mystical theologian and doctor of the Church, St

John of the Cross (1542-1591). He reveals in a four-line quatrain the way to be perfected in God and to unite our hearts to the Trinitarian mystery:

Forgetfulness of created things,

remembrance of the Creator,

attention turned toward inward things,

and loving the Beloved.

(The Collected Works, 14:73)

For St. John forgetfulness does not mean indifference to or lack of appreciation for; it

means letting go of inordinate attachments that may lead to our becoming possessed by our

possessions.

He loved creating things, not for their own sake, but as manifestations of their Creator.

He caught a trace of the mystery in leaping stags, sheepfolds, mountains, watersides, flowers,

wild beasts, frontiers, woods, thickets, green meadows, and groves—all of which God clothed in

beauty.

In The Spiritual Canticle, he depicts the union of the lover and the Beloved in the

splendor of cool breezes; in the solitude of lonely wooded valleys; on strange islands; by the side

of resounding rivers; in the tranquil night and at the time of the rising dawn.

As would every good steward of God’s gifts, St John made no claim whatsoever to

ownership. He taught that the way of perfection begins when we forget ourselves and focus our

attention on remembrance of our Creator.

God is the one who refreshes and deepens the bond of love that makes us be. It is God

who invites us into the wine cellar of charity. The moment we give ourselves wholly to God,

God gives us the grace of living knowledge of the Trinity; it fills our interiority to overflowing;

energizes us for service; and makes our every act an epiphany of love.

We continue to be perfected in the Lord when we turn our attention in two directions at

the same time: toward inward virtues like charity, humility and detachment and toward outward

manifestations of our love for the Lord in service, compassion, and other-centered care.

Before we can become instruments used by God to love and serve others, we have to

reorder our inner life. We need to face any facet of our interiority that is not in tune with God’s

will.

Unless we pay attention to what it is that separates us from God, there is no chance for us

to grow toward Christian perfection. Vanity of this sort is a serious obstacle to purity of heart and

poverty of spirit. Other imperfections that make it impossible to love God with our whole being

and our neighbors as ourselves include:

Spiritual avarice or the collector mentality that compels us to hear counsels or

assemble spiritual maxims or read countless spiritual books while not putting

what we have learned into practice. Avaricious souls love to amass sacred

symbols and holy décor, taking more pleasure in them than in the God to whom

they point.

Spiritual lust that breeds more love for the sensory consolations of God than for

humble gratitude to the God who consoles. Escalated may be impure thoughts and

feelings that attract demonic seduction and wage war in our soul by stirring up

waves of rebellion and agitation that crush the disposition of chaste, respectful

love.

St John goes on to identify with the precision of a true physician of the soul other

imperfections like indiscreet zeal breeding anger over others’ sins and setting ourselves up as

lords of virtue. Spiritual gluttony makes us so inordinately attached to “more” that we forget the

“more than.”

If a spiritual experience is not delightful and sweet, we discard it and go on to seek

exercises that satisfy our own desires, however contrary they might be to obedience. Unless God

purges us of this childishness, spiritual gluttony only grows to greater proportions, making us

feel further aversion toward the need for self-denial.

The final two imperfections St John identifies are spiritual envy and spiritual sloth. We

look with an envious eye on anyone who seems to be making more progress on the road of

Christ-formed perfection than we are. We may specialize in finding fault with others who arouse

in us not a desire to emulate their charity but subtle ploys to deface it.

Slothful souls flee from spiritual exercises that do not give them instant gratification. The

minute they become bored with a spiritual practice, they choose to skip it rather than to examine

their own lazy interiority.

As a result, we strive to satisfy our own will rather than God’s—a self-preoccupation that

must be uprooted from our interior life before we can turn from self-love to love of the Beloved.

St John summarizes this entire roadmap for transformation in Christ in the final stanza of his poem on the dark night. It would do us well in every season of our life to take these words of his to heart:

I abandoned and forgot myself,

Laying my face on my Beloved;

all things ceased; I went out from myself,

leaving my cares

forgotten among the lilies.