How
many times do we struggle to know God's will for our lives. As St. John notes: There are many roads
to holiness - - and to Hell. A
path wrong for one will suit another, yet what each is doing is pleasing to
God." How are we to live our
lives? What are we to do? In a moment of crisis, when a decision
has to be made and to made quickly, what does God want us to do? What will please Him? What will bring us heavenly rewards? Am I hearing the voice of God or the
voice of self or worse still, the voice of Satan? How do I know?
Anyone who is traveling the spiritual road knows in the depths of his
being how agonizing these questions truly are. In response to this feeling, St. John offers some practical
advice from his own experience.
First,
he insists that "those who wish to discover the will of God must begin by
mortifying their own will."
St. John recognizes that it is easy for us to say that we want to know
God's will when, in fact, we really only want our will. It is also easy for us to convince
ourselves that what God wants is what we want, and then to imagine that our
voice is the voice of God. This
deception (known as "prelest" in the spiritual tradition) leads us to
hell. Once we have confused our
voice for God's, we are easy prey for the Devil. Humility, the recognition that our will is confused and
confusing, is the necessary prelude to knowing the will of God. To keep us from playing games with
ourselves and to insure that we are totally humble before God so that we can be
guided by Him, St. John suggest that we make no decisions without the input and
agreement of others. Do nothing
without a blessing! This blessing
may be obtained from one's confessor, superior, spiritual guide, the writings
and examples of the saints and from our brothers and sisters in Christ.
St.
John also suggest that we discover the will of God through abandoning every
attachment. We human beings are
impulsive; our desires are awakened and immediately we want to fulfill
them. Usually, if we say
"No" to our immediate desires to do something, they fade away and are
replaced by desire for other things.
If we detach ourselves from that which awakened our desires, they tend
to go away. This is especially
true if we submit ourselves during this time to a strict regiment of prayer and
fasting. Human desires (even those
Satanically inspired) cannot sustain themselves if they are detached from the
object of their desire and if they are not fed by constant thought and
imagination. However, a call from
God will grow stronger during a time of prayer and fasting. The will of God is not dependent upon
human impulses. The more it is
nurtured and fed with prayer and fasting the stronger it grows. The more detached we are from those
things which feed the flesh and its desires and the more attached we are to
those things which feed our soul the more we are able to discern the will of
God for our lives.
Furthermore,
St. John teaches that trials and difficulties are often reliable signposts in
discerning the will of God. We
often start something which we think is of God and as soon as it gets difficult
we grow discouraged and think that maybe we made a mistake and that maybe it
really wasn't of God. How different
is the reasoning of St. John. If
we start something and experience tremendous troubles in the doing of it, then
we probably are on the right track.
Satan will only oppose something that is good; the better and purer it
is, the more Satan will try to stop us at every turn.
Yet
to know God's will is not easy; we often make mistakes. This should keep us humble but it
should not depress us. For our
encouragement, St. John writes: "God is not unjust. He will not slam the door against the
man who humbly knocks. . . .And
every act that is not the product of personal inclination or of impurity will
be imputed to us for good, especially if it is done for the sake of God. . . .
God judges us by our intentions, but because of His love for us He only demands
from us such actions as lie within our power."
1-6 Discernment
defined.
Among
beginners, discernment is real self-knowledge; among those midway along the
road to perfection, it is a spiritual capacity to distinguish unfailingly
between what is truly good and what in nature is opposed to the good; among the
perfect, it is a knowledge resulting from divine illumination, which with its
lamp can light up what is dark in others.
To put the matter generally, discernment is - - and is recognized to be
- - a solid understanding of the will of God in all times, in all places, in
all things; and its found only among those who are pure in heart, in body and
in speech.
Discernment
is an uncorrupted conscience. It
is pure perception.
Let
our God-directed conscience be our aim and rule in everything so that, knowing
how the wind is blowing, we may set our sails accordingly.
7-35 In
these paragraphs St. John teaches us about various impediments to discerning
the will of God - from the pitfalls that demons place in the way of our
spiritual progress to the trials and distractions of physical illness. He also speaks in particular of the
need for discernment in those who are spiritual guides.
Amid
all our efforts to please God, three pitfalls lie, prepared for us by
demons. First is their attempt to
impede any sort of worthwhile achievement; and if this fails, they strive
secondly to ensure that what we do should not be in accordance with the will of
God. And if the scoundrels fail in
this too, then they stand quietly before our soul and praise us for the fact
that in every respect we are living as God would wish. We should fight these risks, the first
by zeal and fear of death, the second by obedience and self-abasement, the
third by unceasing self-condemnation.
"This work is ahead of us until the fire of God shall enter our
sanctuary" (Ps 72: 16-17), and then indeed the power of our
predispositions will no longer constrain us. For our God is a fire consuming all lusts, all stirrings of
passion, all predispositions, and all hardness of heart, both within and
without, both visible and spiritual.
Demons,
on the other hand, bring about the very opposite to all this. Grabbing a soul, they put out the light
of the mind until in our wretchedness we find ourselves lacking sobriety or
discernment, self-knowledge or shame; and we are burdened instead with
indifference, insensitivity, want of discernment, and blindness.
We
have to be particularly vigilant whenever the body is sick, for at such a time
the demons, observing our weakness and our inability to fight against them as
usual, rush in to attack us. In
times of illness the demon of anger and even of blasphemy may be discovered
around those who live in the world.
And
I have noticed how the wolf of fornication increased the sufferings of the sick
and, while they were laid low, cause stirring of the flesh . . . . It was amazing to see how the body,
for all its agonies, could still rage and lust.
One
man's medicine can be another man's poison, and something can be a medicine to
the same man at one time and a poison at another. So I have seen an incompetent physician who by inflicting
dishonor on a sick but contrite man produced despair in him, and I have seen a
skillful physician who cut through an arrogant heart with the knife of dishonor
and thereby drained it of all its foul-smelling pus. I have seen a sick man striving to cleanse his impurity by
drinking the medicine of obedience, by moving, walking, and staying awake. That same man when the eye of his soul
was sick did not move, made no noise, and was silent. Therefore, "he who has ears to hear, let him hear"
(Luke 14:35).
36-106 St.
John then begins to discuss what discernment allows us to see and how it must
be used. (a) Discernment, he
states, helps us to understand the capital vices and their offspring. It is the ability to see how certain
actions and thoughts give rise to sin and teaches us how to avoid them. (b) Discernment helps us to examine our
motives honestly and allows us to see that virtues and vices are sometimes
intermingled. It even helps us to
understand why certain prayers go unanswered by God. (c) Furthermore, such a gift helps us to know and anticipate
the ways of demons and teaches us how to respond to situations involving multiple
evils. (d) It leads us to
scrutinize ourselves as a matter of course - thoroughly examining every virtue
and vice.
(e) He who has
received this gift can detect hidden vices in others as well as in
himself. He knows the seasons of
the spiritual life, when the fruits of spiritual labors come, the movements of
one's spirit and the different levels of sorrow and despair. (f) He makes the will of God his rule
of life. (g) He knows which of the
spiritual gifts are the most important and valuable. (h) He neglects no fault, no matter
how small, seeing that it may bring his downfall. (i) A discerning man understands that sometimes we are
vulnerable to certain sins simply because of body weaknesses. (j) He understands that relationships
must be properly understood if they are to remain undefiled and holy. (k) He knows and desires to give what
is best to God - the first fruits of his labors and his day. (l) He chooses the path in life which
best suits him - the path that leads to sanctity. (m) Discernment helps him to see all things in their proper
light.
(a) .
. . jokes at the wrong time can be the product of lust, or of vainglory when a
man impiously pretends to be pious, or high living. Excessive sleep can arise from luxury, from fasting when those
who fast become proud of it, from despondency, or sometimes from nature. Garrulity sometimes comes from
gluttony, and sometimes from vainglory.
Despondency can derive now from high living, now from lack of fear of
God. Blasphemy is properly the
child of pride but can often arise out of the readiness to condemn one's
neighbor for the same offense, or it can be due to the untimely envy of
demons. Hardheartedness is
sometimes the consequence of gluttony, frequently of insensitivity, and also of
being grasping. And to be grasping
can be due to lust, avarice, gluttony, vainglory, and indeed to many other
causes. Malice comes from conceit
and from anger, while hypocrisy comes from independence and self-direction.
(b) I
have watched farmers sowing the same type of seed, and yet each one had
different ideas of what he was doing.
One was planning to pay off his debts. Another was hoping to get rich. Another wanted to be able to bring gifts to honor the
Lord. Another was hoping to earn
praise for his work from the passers-by in life. Someone else wanted to irritate a jealous neighbor, while
there was yet another who did not want to be reproached by men for
laziness. And as for the seeds
thrown into the earth, their names are fasting, keeping vigil, almsgiving,
service, and suchlike. So let our
brethren in the Lord keep a careful eye on their motives.
When
we draw water from a well, it can happen that we inadvertently also bring up a
frog. When we acquire virtues we
can sometimes find ourselves involved with the vices which are imperceptibly
interwoven with them. What I mean
is this. Gluttony can be caught up
with hospitality; lust with love; cunning with discernment; malice with
prudence; duplicity, procrastination, slovenliness, stubbornness, wilfulness,
and disobedience with meekness; refusal to learn with silence; conceit with
joy; laziness with hope; nasty condemnation with love again; despondency and
indolence with tranquillity; sarcasm with chastity; familiarity with lowliness. And behind all the virtues follows
vainglory as a salve, or rather a poison, for everything.
We
must not become upset if for a while the Lord seems to allow our requests to go
unheard. Naturally the Lord would
be delighted if in one moment all men became dispassionate. But He knows, in His providence, that
this would not be to their advantage.
When
requests are made to God and are not immediately answered, the reason may be
one of the following; either that the petition is premature, or because it has
been made unworthily or vaingloriously, or because, if granted, it would lead
to conceit, or because negligence and carelessness would result.
(c) Demons
and passions quit the soul entirely or for some length of time. No one can deny that. However, the reasons for such a departure
are known to very few.
Demons
leave us alone so as to make us careless, then pounce on our miserable
souls. And those beasts have
another trick, of which I am aware; namely, to depart when the soul has become
thoroughly imbued with the habits of evil, when it has turned into its own
betrayer and enemy. It is rather
like what happens to infants weaned from the mother's breast, who suck their
fingers because the habit has taken hold of them.
When
confronted by evils, we should choose the least. For instance, we are standing at prayer and some brothers
approach us. We have to do one of
two things, either to cease praying or to upset a brother by ignoring him. Now love is greater than prayer, since
the latter is a particular virtue while the former embraces all virtues.
Long
ago, in my young days, I came to a city or to a village, and while sitting at
table I was afflicted at the same time by thoughts of gluttony and
vainglory. Knowing and fearing the
outcome of gluttony, I decided to give into vainglory. I also knew that in the young, the
demon of gluttony often overcomes the demon of vainglory. This is not to be wondered at, for
among people of the world love of money is the root of all evil, whereas in
monks it is gluttony.
God
in His providence often leaves some vestiges of passion in people of a very
spiritual disposition. He does so
in order that, by their endless condemnation of what are very minor defects,
they may obtain a wealth of humility that no one can plunder.
(d) Regarding
every vice and every virtue, we must unceasingly scrutinize ourselves to see
what point we have reached, a beginning, a middle, or the end.
Attacks
by demons afflict us for three reasons: because we are sensual, because we are
proud, or because the demons envy us.
The last is a ground for rejoicing, the middle for pity, and where the
first is concerned, the prospect is lifelong failure.
(e) Everyone
with a healthy sense of smell can detect hidden perfumes, and a pure soul can
quickly recognize in others the sheer fragrance of goodness that he himself has
received from God. And indeed he can also recognize - as others cannot - the
foul odor from which he himself has been liberated.
Ecclesiastes
declares that there is a time for everything under heave, and
"everything" may be taken to refer to our spiritual life. If this is so, then we ought to examine
the matter; and we should do everything in proper season. . . There is a time
for the sowing of labors and a time to reap the astounding fruits of grace; and
if it were otherwise we would not receive in due time whatever was proper to
the season.
God
in his unspeakable providence has arranged that some received the holy reward
of their toils even before they set to work, others while actually working,
others again when the work was done, and still others at the time of their
death. Let the reader ask himself
which one of them was made more humble.
There
is a despair that results from the great number of one's sins. It comes from a burdened conscience and
intolerable grief, when the soul, engulfed by the mass and the burden of its
wounds, slips into the deep waters of hopelessness. But there is also another kind of sorrow. It comes from pride and conceit and
arises when a man thinks it unfair that he lapsed in some way. Now there is a distinctive aspect to
each of these conditions which the observant will discover. The one man gives himself over to
indifference, the other continues to practice his ascetic disciplines even
though his despair persists in him, which is a contradiction. Temperance and good hope can heal the
first man; the other will be cured by humility and by the practice of judging
no one.
(f) Whatever
you do, however you live, whether you live under obedience or whether you are
independent, in which you do openly or in your spiritual life, let it be your
rule and practice to ask if what you do is in accordance with the will of
God. When we novices, for
instance, do something and the humility deriving from that action is not added
to the possessions of our souls, then the action, great or small, has not been
undertaken in deference to the divine will. For those of us who are untried recruits in the life of the
spirit, growth in humility comes out of doing what the Lord wants; for those who
have reached midway along that route, the test is an end to inner conflict; and
for the perfect there is increase and, indeed, a wealth of divine light.
(g) Some
people are full of praise for the gift of miracle working and for those other
spiritual gifts that can be seen.
What they do not know is that there are many more important gifts and
that these are hidden and are therefore secure.
(h) A
small fire can wipe out an entire forest and a small fault can ruin all our
work.
(i) There
is . . . an exhaustion of the body that can actually evoke the flesh's
lust. So "we shall put no
trust in ourselves" (2 Cor. 1:9).
We ought, rather, to depend on God, Who in His own secret way can
mortify our living lusts.
(j) If
it comes to our attention that there are some who love us in the Lord, we must
be very careful to keep our distance from them, since nothing can so damage
love and produce hatred as familiarity.
(k) Give
the first fruits of your day to the Lord, for it will determine the rest of the
day. An excellent servant of the
Lord once said to me something well worth hearing. "I can tell from my morning how the rest of the day
will go."
(l) There
are many roads to holiness - and to hell.
A path wrong for one will suit another, yet what each is doing is
pleasing to God.
(m) Our
eyes are a light to all the body.
Discernment of the virtues is a light to all the mind.
107-181 St.
John then discusses more advanced forms of discernment and how such a gift may
be fostered in a persons' soul.
(a) He speaks of the necessity of mortifying one's will, seeking the
counsel of others with humility, and abandoning attachment to everything. (b) A person must learn how to judge
failures and successes in his spiritual pursuits and interpret their
meaning. (c) He must also learn
not to follow certain inclinations that would lead him to take upon himself
tasks beyond his capabilities. (d)
Such a virtue will help him to understand the meaning of the moral lapses in
those who seem to be holy and blessed with many spiritual gifts. (e) Gradually he will learn not to be
surprised at the unexpected actions of others, but will remain a peace even
when afflicted and rebuked. (f) He
will understand the need to strike down demons before giving them an
opportunity to wound him. (g) His
eyes will be open to how demons seek to teach us how to interpret scripture in
a distorted fashion and how they seek to confuse our thoughts. (h) He will see how and in what manner
he must enter into the struggle and who his enemies are.
(a) Those
who wish to discover the will of God must begin by mortifying their own
will. Then having prayed in faith
and simplicity, all malice spent, they should turn humbly and in confidence to
the fathers or even the brothers and they should accept their counsel, as
though from God Himself, even when that counsel goes against the grain, even
when the advice comes from those who do not seem very spiritual. God, after all, is not unjust. He will not lead astray the souls who,
trusting and guileless, yield in lowliness to the advice and decision of their
neighbor. Even if those consulted
are stupid, God immaterially and invisibly speaks through them and anyone who
faithfully submits to this norm will be filled with humility.
Yet
this perfect and easy rule is rejected by many for reasons of pride. Instead they have sought to discover
the will of God by their own resources and within themselves and have then
proceeded to offer us numerous and different opinions on this whole issue.
(b) Some
of those trying to discover the will of God abandoned every attachment. They asked God to be the arbiter of any
thoughts they might have concerning the stirrings of their souls, whether to do
something or to resist it. They
prayed hard for a fixed number of days and they laid aside any inclination of
their own. In this way they found
out what God willed, either through some direct manner of intelligible
communication from Him or by the complete evaporation from their souls of
whatever it was they had proposed to do.
Others
found so much trouble and distraction in whatever they were doing that they
were led to think that bother of this sort could only have come from God, in
accordance with the saying, "We wanted to come to you once and once again,
but Satan prevented us" (1 Thes. 2:18).
But
there were others who found that a venture of theirs had proved unexpectedly
successful, and so they inferred that it had pleased God, and they went on to
declare that God helps everyone who chooses to do the right thing (Rom 8:28).
Wavering
judgment and lingering doubt are the signs of an unenlightened and vainglorious
soul.
God
is not unjust. He will not slam
the door against the man who humbly knocks.
In
everything we do, in what has to be done now or later, the objective must be
sought from God Himself; and every act that is not the product of personal
inclination or of impurity will be imputed to us for good, especially if done
for the sake of God and not for someone else. This is so, even if the actions themselves are not completely
good.
There
is always a danger in seeking for what is beyond our immediate reach, and what
God has decided for us is hard to penetrate. In His providence, He often conceals His will from us, for
He knows that even if we knew about it, we would disobey it, thereby rendering
ourselves liable to greater punishment.
(c) There
are brave souls who lovingly and humbly undertake tasks that are well beyond
them. There are proud hearts that
do the same. Now it often happens
that our enemies deliberately inspire us to do things beyond our capacities,
and their objective is to make us falter so that we abandon even what lies
within our power, and make ourselves ridiculous to our enemies.
I
have observed men who were sick in soul and body and who, out of a sense of the
great number of their sins, tried to do what was beyond their power, and
therefore failed. To these I say
that God judges our repentance not by our exertions but by our humility.
(d) Someone
asked this question of a discerning man: "Why is it that God confers gifts
and wonder-working powers on some, even though He knows in advance that they
will lapse?" His answer was
that God does this so that other spiritual men may grow cautious, and to show
that the human will is free, and to demonstrate that on the day of judgment
there will be no excuse for those who lapsed.
(e) You
should not be surprise if those you love turn against you after you have
rebuked them. The frivolous are
instruments of the demons, and are used, especially against the demon's
enemies.
(f) We
should not spar with demons. We
should make outright war on them.
In the first case a fall is sometimes given or taken, but in the latter
case the enemy is always under fierce attack.
(g) When
we begin religious life, some unclean demons give us lessons in the
interpretation of scripture. This
happens particularly in the case of people who are either vainglorious or who
have had a secular education, and these are gradually led into heresy and
blasphemy. One may detect this diabolical
teaching about God, or rather war against God, by the upheaval, confusion, and
unholy joy in the soul during lessons.
Do
not be surprised if demons often inspire good thoughts in us, together with the
reasoned arguments against them.
What these enemies of ours are trying to do is to get us to believe that
they know even our innermost thoughts.
(h) Christ,
although all-powerful, fled bodily from Herod. So let the foolish learn not to fling themselves into
temptation. It is said: "Let
not your foot be moved and let not your guardian angel slumber" (cf. Ps.
120:3).
Like
bindweed round a cypress, vanity twines itself around courage. And we must be ever on guard against
yielding to the mere thought that we have achieved any sort of good. We have to be really careful about
this, in case it should be a trait within us, for if it is, then we have
certainly failed.
If
we watch out continually for signs of the passions, we will discover that there
are many within us which, in our sickness, we never noticed. We were too weak, or they were too
deeply rooted.
God
judges us by our intentions, but because of His love for us He only demands
from us such actions as lie within our power. Great is the man who does all that lies within his power,
but greater still is the man who, in all humility, tries to do more.
Demons
often prevent us from doing what would be easy and valuable for us. Instead they like to push us into
trying what is harder.
Some
who claim that our repeated lapses in some matter are caused by our failure to
do adequate penance for earlier falls.
But the problem then arises as to whether those who have not fallen into
the same type of sin over and over again have actually repented as they should. People commit the same sin again and
again either because they have thoroughly forgotten their previous sins, or
because in their own pleasure-loving way they keep thinking that God is
merciful, or because they have give up all hope of salvation. Now - and I may be severely criticized
for this - it seems to me that their real difficulty is that they have not had
the strength to grip firmly what in fact is a dominating habit.
At
the start of religious life, the young and those of advanced years are not
troubled by the same passions, since very often they have quite opposite
failings. Hence the fact that
humility is so truly blessed, for it makes repentance safe and effective for
both young and old.
We
must be very shrewd in the matter of knowing when to stand up against sin, when
and to what extent to fight against whatever nourishes the passions, and when
to withdraw from the struggle.
Because of our weakness there are times when we must choose flight if we
are to avoid death. We must watch
and see which of the demons uplift us, which depress us, which make us hard,
which bring us consolation, which darken us, which pretend to enlighten us,
which make us lazy, which shifty, which make us sad and which cheerful.
At
the start of our religious lives, we may find that our passions are stronger
than they were when we were in the world.
This should not upset us, and if we remove the causes of our sickness,
then health will come to us. Those
beasts were formerly concealed in us, but they did not reveal themselves.
It
is characteristic of the perfect that they always know whether a thought comes
from within themselves, or from God, or from the demons. Remember that demons do not
automatically propose evil at the outset.
Here we have a problem truly hard to penetrate.
Two
corporeal eyes give light to the body, and the eyes of the heart are
enlightened by discernment in things seen and unseen.
