A Bit on The Illuminative and Unitive States....more to come

Kieran Kavanaugh, whose translation and notes I have been using in the past few weeks, clarifies St. John of the Cross’ poetry by clearly translating the commentaries.

St. John’s commentaries are what I have been mostly using in the past few weeks, as those who have been following the series noticed that I switched from one translation to Kavanaugh’s

Two points stand out on the characteristics of the Illuminative and Unitive Stages, to which I have been referring during the perfection and Dark Night series in the past two years.

Those people who enter into the Illuminative, and finally, the Unitive States, work totally out of love for God and not out of their egos.

Here is one of the key stanzas from The Spiritual Canticle concerning this stress on love.

If, then, I am no longer

Seen or found on the common,

You will say that I am lost,

That sticken by love,

I lost myself, and was found.

The soul lost is love becomes one, as it were, contra mundi.  The world rejects the beloved, “and think(s) these person excessive in their conduct, estrangement, and withdrawal, and asset that they are useless in important matters and lost to what the world esteems”.

Too often, those of us who seek the love of God and find Him, are misunderstood, and, indeed, judged by the world, which wants all people to not only conform to the flesh and the world, but applaud the pursuits of wealth and status as well.

Here is a longer comment by St. John on this point. This comment is damning and reveals, again, the lack of generosity of most who want to follow Christ and serve His Church but pull back.

“Few spiritual persons reach such daring and determination in their works. Though some do act this way, and are considered far advanced, they never lose themselves entirely in some matters, whether worldly or natural, and never execute works fr Christ with perfection and nakedness of spirit and without thought of what others will say or how their work will appear. Since these persons are not lost to themselves in their work, they cannot declare, ‘You will say that I am lost.’ They are still ashamed to confess Christ before others by their works. Because of their human respect they do not live entirely in Christ.”

One cannot lose one’s self in Christ, in love, until after the purging of the ego. How many good works in the Church have been ruined by those who think they are doing God’s work, but are merely stroking their own egos?  The lack of love is key. If one truly has found the Bridegroom, nothing else matters but Christ and His Church-nothing.

Again, a generosity of spirit is not only necessary, but vital, giving life to the hard walk to perfection. And, the goal is Christ Himself.

Those who are canonized by the Church have reached this level of forgetfulness of self while on earth.

Those who have been canonized show us the way not only of perfection, but of love for God, in God, and with God-the one thing necessary.

So, an easily seen sign of the Illuminative and Unitive States is this love of God, which spurns all cares of the world and places the person in Christ.

To be continued….