From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part II, Chapter 4. Inner Growth Books, 1986.

Three Difficult Texts

The second difficult passage is to be found in the Ascent of Mount Carmel where St. John is discussing the fittingness of leaving meditation for contemplation:

"For it must be known that the end of reasoning and meditation on the things of God is the gaining of some knowledge and love of God, and each time that the soul gains this through meditation, it is an act; and just as many acts, of whatever kind, end by forming a habit in the soul, just so, many of these acts of loving knowledge which the soul has been making one after another from time to time come through repetition to be so continuous in it that they become habitual."(48)

At first glance this text seems like it can be construed in the sense that the acts of loving knowledge appropriate to meditation form a habit of loving knowledge, which the soul exercises without the previous discursive acts as a kind of active contemplation. This interpretation is unfounded. The passage from acts of loving knowledge to the habit is not continuous in an ontological sense, but only in a chronological sense inasmuch as meditation provides the remote preparation for contemplation, not an intrinsic and essential one. St. John immediately points up this discontinuity by adding to the passage: "This end God is wont also to effect in many souls without the intervention of these acts (or at least without many such acts having preceded it), by setting them at once in contemplation." And he goes on to say that what was gained by meditation becomes "converted and changed into habit and substance of loving knowledge, of a general kind, and not distinct or particular as before", making it clear that the continuity between meditation and contemplation is not of an essential kind. The contemplation is infused contemplation and not an active kind that has grown out of the working of the faculties. This becomes abundantly clear when St. John continues this same passage:

"Wherefore, when it gives itself to prayer, the soul is now like one to whom water has been brought, so that he drinks peacefully, without labour, and is no longer forced to draw water through the aqueducts of past meditations and forms and figures. So that, as soon as the soul comes before God, it makes an act of knowledge, confused, loving, passive and tranquil, wherein it drinks of wisdom and love and delight."(49)

The reference here to St. Teresa is unmistakable and refers to what she called the prayer of quiet, and clearly indicates the infused nature of the contemplation.

The sense of this passage is further clarified when a few numbers further on St. John emphatically states, "when the contemplative has to turn aside from the way of meditation and reasoning, he needs this general and loving attentiveness or knowledge of God. The reason is that if the soul at this time had not this knowledge of God or this realization of His presence, the result would be that it would do nothing and have nothing."(50)