Ascent of Mount Carmel/Book 3/Chapter XLV

by John of the Cross

CHAPTER XLV

Which treats of the second kind of distinct good, wherein the will may rejoice vainly.

The second kind of distinct and delectable good wherein the will may rejoice vainly is that which provokes or persuades us to serve God and which we have called provocative. This class comprises preachers, and we might speak of it in two ways, namely, as affecting the preachers themselves and as affecting their hearers. For, as regards both, we must not fail to observe that both must direct the rejoicing of their will to God, with respect to this exercise.

2. In the first place, it must be pointed out to the preacher, if he is to cause his people profit and not to embarrass himself with vain joy and presumption, that preaching is a spiritual exercise rather than a vocal one. For, although it is practised by means of outward words, its power and efficacy reside not in these but in the inward spirit. Wherefore, however lofty be the doctrine that is preached, and however choice the rhetoric and sublime the style wherein it is clothed, it brings as a rule no more benefit than is present in the spirit of the preacher. For, although it is true that the word of God is of itself efficacious, according to those words of David, ‘He will give to His voice a voice of virtue,’^[1] yet fire, which has also a virtue — that of burning — will not burn when the material is not prepared.

3. To the end that the preacher’s instruction may exercise its full force, there must be two kinds of preparation: that of the preacher and that of the hearer; for as a rule the benefit derived from a sermon depends upon the preparation of the teacher. For this reason it is said that, as is the master, so is wont to be the disciple. For, when in the Acts of the Apostles those seven sons of that chief priest of the Jews were wont to cast out devils in the same form as Saint Paul, the devil rose up against them, saying: ‘Jesus I confess and Paul I know, but you, who are ye?’^[2] And then, attacking them, he stripped and wounded them. This was only because they had not the fitting preparation, and not because Christ willed not that they should do this in His name. For the Apostles once found a man, who was not a disciple, casting out a devil in the name of Christ, and they forbade him, and the Lord reproved them for it, saying: ‘Forbid him not, for no man that has done any mighty works in My name shall be able to speak evil of Me after a brief space of time.’^[3] But He is angry with those who, though teaching the law of God, keep it not, and, which preaching spirituality, possess it not. For this reason God says, through Saint Paul: ‘Thou teachest others and teachest not thyself. Thou who preachest that men should not steal, stealest.’^[4] And through David the Holy Spirit says: ‘To the sinner, God said: “Why dost thou declare My justice and take My law in thy mouth, when thou hast hated discipline and cast My words behind thee?”’^[5] Here it is made plain that He will give them no spirituality whereby they may bear fruit.

4. It is a common matter of observation that, so far as we can judge here below, the better is the life of the preacher, the greater is the fruit that he bears, however undistinguished his style may be, however small his rhetoric and however ordinary his instruction. For it is the warmth that comes from the living spirit that clings; whereas the other kind of preacher will produce very little profit, however sublime be his style and his instruction. For, although it is true that a good style and gestures and sublime instruction and well-chosen language influence men and produce much effect when accompanied by true spirituality, yet without this, although a sermon gives pleasure and delight to the sense and the understanding, very little or nothing of its sweetness remains in the will. As a rule, in this case, the will remains as weak and remiss with regard to good works as it was before. Although marvelous things may have been marvellously said by the preacher, they serve only to delight the ear, like a concert of music or a peal of bells; the spirit, as I say, goes no farther from its habits than before, since the voice has no virtue to raise one that is dead from his grave.

5. Little does it matter that one kind of music should sound better than another if the better kind move me not more than the other to do good works. For, although marvellous things may have been said, they are at once forgotten if they have not fired the will. For, not only do they of themselves bear little fruit, but the fastening of the sense upon the pleasure that it finds in that sort of instruction hinders the instruction from passing to the spirit, so that only the method and the accidents of what has been said are appreciated, and the preacher is praised for this characteristic or for that, and followed from such motives as these rather than because of the purpose of amendment of life which he has inspired. This doctrine is well explained to the Corinthians by Saint Paul, where he says: ‘I, brethren, when I came to you, came not preaching Christ with loftiness of instruction and of wisdom, and my words and my preaching consisted not in the rhetoric of human wisdom, but in the showing forth of the spirit and of the truth.’^[6]

6. Although the intention of the Apostle here, like my own intention, is not to condemn good style and rhetoric and phraseology, for, on the contrary, these are of great importance to the preacher, as in everything else, since good phraseology and style raise up and restore things that are fallen and ruined, even as bad phraseology ruins and destroys good things . . .^[7]

Footnotes

1. Psalm lxvii, 34 [A.V., lxviii, 33].
2. Acts xix, 15.
3. St. Mark ix, 38-9.
4. Romans ii, 21.
5. Psalm xlix, 16-17 [A.V., l, 16-17].
6. 1 Corinthians ii, 1-4.
7. E.p. adds: ‘End of the Ascent of Mount Carmel.’ The treatise thus remains incomplete, the chapter on the preacher being unfinished and no part of any chapter upon the hearer having come down to us. Further, the last two divisions of the four mentioned in Chap. xxxv, 1 are not treated in any of the MSS. or early editions. The fragments which P. Gerardo [Obras, etc., I, 402–10] added to the Ascent, forming two chapters, cannot be considered as a continuation of this book. They are in reality a long and admirable letter [Letter XI in The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross: Vol. III, p. 255], written to a religious, who was one of the Saint’s spiritual sons, and copied by P. Jerónimo de San José in his History of St. John of the Cross (Bk. VI, Chap. vii). There is not the slightest doubt that the letter which was written at Segovia, and is fully dated, is a genuine letter, and not an editor’s maltreatment of part of a treatise. Only the similarity of its subject with that of these last chapters is responsible for its having been added to the Ascent. It is hard to see how P. Gerardo could have been misled about a matter which is so clear. [This question was re-opened, in 1950, by P. Sobrino (see Vol. III, p. 240), who adds TG and a codex belonging to the Discalced Carmelite Fathers of Madrid to the list of the MSS. which give the fragments as part of the Ascent, making six authorities in all, against which can be set only the proved and admitted reliability of P. Jerónimo de San José. P. Sobrino, who discusses the matter (Estudios, etc., pp. 166–93) in great detail, hazards a plausible and attractive solution, which he reinforces with substantial evidence — that of a ‘double redaction.’ According to this theory, the Saint, in writing to the religious of Letter XI, made use, for the substance of his instruction, of two fragments which were to have gone into the Ascent. Considering how often in his writings he doubled passages, to say nothing of whole works, it is quite understandable that he should have utilized two unincorporated, and indeed unfinished, passages for a private letter.]