On Union of the Soul with God

St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel Bk. 2 Ch. 5

Introduction

Nestled in the early chapters of book two of The Ascent of Mount Carmel lies one of the most important sections in all of St. John’s corpus. Chapter five details the nature of the soul’s union with God. This is immensely necessary to understand in light of St. John’s work, in particular, in reference to his writings on the purification that all souls must undergo on the way to this union. Essentially, St. John is detailing the nature of the union with God so that the devout soul may understand why the purifications of the senses and the soul are so necessary. This chapter is truly pivotal to the entire spiritual work to be explored in the rest of The Ascent and in the continuation of his work, The Dark Night of the Soul.

In this article, I want to visit this chapter and dive into what The Mystic writes to help readers understand the end to which our lives are ordered by God. The common mind of all of the mystics is that all of the just have at least a remote call to this union with God and the perfection of Charity. This is a call to ascend the mountain of the interior life through a perfecting of our soul, that is, a conforming of the soul to Christ through purification of even the slightest imperfection of the soul. Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange summarizes this in the introduction to The Three Ages of the Interior Life. He writes:

By sanctity we understand close union with God… To be more exact, we shall say that the sanctity in question here is the normal, immediate prelude of the life of heaven, a prelude which is realized, either on earth before death, or in purgatory, and which assumes that the soul is fully purified, is capable of receiving the beatific vision immediately.¹

I contend that Garrigou is simply summarizing chapter five of The Ascent. He is detailing, I think, what most people miss in our consideration of just how the soul is granted admittance to the beatific vision. It is not a simple case of a person dying, and they automatically arrive in heaven on account of God viewing them as justified. It is not God merely seeing us justified or even declaring us so. It is a transformation of the soul in God.²

Only the perfect soul is able to receive the beatific vision as “nothing unclean can enter it”³ and so the soul must be made able to receive that great outpouring of the essence of God. The Divine cannot and will not dwell within a soul that is stained by even the smallest imperfection, let alone sin. This purification is accomplished either in this life through the ascent of the mountain through the purifications of the senses and soul, or it happens through the purification of Purgatory.

The Immensity of God and Union with Him

To begin our consideration of the soul’s union with God, St. John begins with the distinction between the natural union with God that all creatures possess and the supernatural union that the souls of the just possess through sanctifying grace, charity, and the indwelling of the Trinity. Here, we can see the great influence of St. Thomas Aquinas on St. John. In considering the union of God with creatures, there are three distinct modes of union:⁴

1. The general presence of God in all things by His immensity.

2. The special presence of God in the souls of the just.

3. The unique presence of the Word in the humanity of the Savior, and the reflection of this presence in the Church and in the Vicar of Christ.

For the purposes of this work, we will consider only the first two. St. John writes:

God sustains every soul and dwells in it substantially, even though it may be that of the greatest sinner in the world. This union between God and creatures always exists. By it, He conserves their being so that if the union should end, they would immediately be annihilated and cease to exist.⁵

This is what we understand in Thomistic teaching as the immensity and ubiquity of God. This means that He is immeasurable and able to be in every place as well as actually present everywhere.⁶ Specifically for our consideration, as St. John teaches above, God is present in all things insofar as He sustains them in being and existence since He is Ipsum Esse Subsistens, Being Itself. All creatures participate in this being, and so they must be sustained by Him who IS Being Itself. This is how we understand God’s Omnipresence. It is not by virtue of space but by sustaining all things in being.

This is the union that all souls have with God by nature. Garrigou speaks to this:

And so God as pure spirit is in every being, in every soul, of which He is the transcendent center as the apex of the pyramid which contains in a transcendent manner all its sides.⁷

It is important to note this distinction between nature and supernature, or, more commonly, nature and grace, that is so prevalent in St. Thomas’ theology and which very much influenced St. John of the Cross. It is natural and common to all creatures to be sustained by God as First Cause. But this is not the union of which St. John is writing about in The Ascent. This union that we are being called to, this transforming union, is one of supernature; it is one of likeness of love or the union of likeness.

While the first union is one that always exists, no matter the state that a soul finds itself in, this second union only exists in a soul that begins in a state of grace and then is purified of all that is contrary to God. This dwelling of God in the soul of the just is not simply as a preserving cause but as a fountain of divine life in the devout soul. This is expressed in the words of Our Blessed Lord from the Gospel of John, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”⁸ The Blessed Trinity comes and makes their abode in the soul of the just in a unique and life-giving way. Not simply a natural life but one of divine life. This is why the just are called temples of the Holy Spirit.⁹

It is this union, affected through sanctifying grace and the infusion of the theological virtues, in particular, that of Charity, that disposes one to the union of the beatific vision that is to come. It is here that we find the perfection of charity to be particularly important, as it is through charity that we are conformed to God, since “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”¹⁰ This means that our wills must be in conformity with God since the virtue of Charity is found in the will.¹¹ St. John of the Cross draws upon this when he writes:

The supernatural union exists when God’s will and the soul’s are in conformity, so that nothing in the one is repugnant to the other. When the soul rids itself completely of what is repugnant and unconformed to the divine will, it rests transformed in God through love.¹²

Way of Union with God

It is here that St. John takes up the very nature of this union with God, that being the Way of Love, that is, the absolute conforming of one’s will to God’s will. While God is ever present to all souls by a natural dwelling by sustaining their being, God does not always communicate the divine life to individual souls. This is only done through love and grace.¹³ It is here that we find the union of wills necessary for the permanent union with God. St. John writes:

Consequently, a soul must strip itself of everything pertaining to creatures and of its actions and abilities, so that when everything unlike and unconformed to God is cast out, it may receive the likeness of God. And the soul will receive this likeness because nothing contrary to the will of God will be left in it. Thus it will be transformed in God.¹⁴

This is the key to union with God for St. John and the rest of the mystical tradition, truly it is an exposition on the passage from 1 John quoted above. For God to dwell in the soul of the just most perfectly, the soul must be conformed most perfectly to God as Love. This requires us to detach from the love of things of this world and love God with an ever-deepening fervency, that is, a love without limitations, as the first commandment bids us.¹⁵ This can only be done through a stripping of the will of all things that are not God. Again, the will takes precedence here since charity is found in the will as the culmination of the desire for (hope) and movement toward union with the object of that love, God.¹⁶

Further, the outpouring of God is given in proportion to the advancement in charity that a given soul has made: “To the soul that is more advanced in love, more conformed to the divine will, God communicates more of Himself.”¹⁷ But it is necessary to understand that this is only accomplished through eliminating in oneself what is contrary to God’s will, “not only of one’s acts but of one’s habits as well.”¹⁸ This means that both voluntary imperfections must cease as well as habitual imperfections. This is a much deeper-rooted imperfection. Both must be annihilated, as The Mystic says.

The imperfections of our will must be annihilated and replaced with the perfections of the will of God.

As a result, individuals have nothing more to do than to strip their souls of these natural contraries and dissimilarities so that God, who is naturally communicating Himself to them through nature, may do so supernaturally through grace.¹⁹

This is the very nature of union with God. Through this preparation in the devout soul, it is disposed to receive from God the purifications that come from Him in the Dark Nights. It is at this point that the devout soul begins to experience that union with God, called the Transforming Union, which is the prelude to eternal life, i.e., permanent union with God.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that even though St. John is speaking about what we must do in our journey toward union with God, it presupposes the understanding that all of these things are begun by God, cooperated with by us, and ultimately accomplished by God. He is both First Cause and Final Cause. But it is in that middle part that we find The Mystic exhorting us to conform our will to God’s so that we may be transformed in Him. This is done through love, “for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God.”²⁰ Notice, The Mystic is not at all defining love by a common worldly definition of acceptance and tolerance. It is very much the opposite, true love casts out all that is contrary to God, first in ourselves, and then, in truth and charity, in our neighbor. Thus, love of God and love of neighbor are unconditionally united to one another.²¹ We are to love our neighbor as ourselves for the sake of God. This is done with a love that is holy, righteous, and true, as St. Thomas teaches.²²

By conforming our wills to God’s, through the elimination of all that is even remotely contrary to God, we are disposed to God’s great work of grace in our souls, that of God communicating “His supernatural being to the soul that it will appear to be God Himself and will possess what God Himself possesses.”²³ This is the great mystery of Divine Participation, or Theosis.²⁴ St. John writes so beautifully:

When God grants this supernatural favor to the soul, so great a union is caused that all the things of both God and the soul become one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul. Indeed, it is God by participation. Yet, truly, its being (even though transformed) is naturally as distinct from God’s as it was before…²⁵

The devout soul receives a prelude of union with God in heaven while on earth in the Transforming Union when peace reigns in the soul, and the will is perfectly conformed to God, expelling from it sin and imperfection. This Transforming Union then gives way, as the devout soul crosses the threshold of death, to the beatific vision, permanent union with God.

For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.

1. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, 23.

2. St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 4.

3. Revelation 21:27.

4. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Providence, 101.

5. Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 3.

6. Cf. Providence, 100.

7. Providence, 102.

8. John 14:23.

9. Cf. 1 Corinthians 3:16.

10. 1 John 4:16.

11. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae q. 24, a. 1.

12. The Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 3.

13. Cf. Ibid., 4.

14. Ibid.

15. Cf. Matthew 22:37.

16. It is important to note here the way that the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity build upon one another and are ordered toward union with God. Faith, found in the intellect, apprehends God as first Truth and believes in the unseen. Faith then gives way to hope, which is the desire for union with that which is our greatest good. Hope necessitates something desired but not yet attained. This desire then gives way to union through Charity. God is Love. He is not faith nor hope, nor do the blessed in heaven possess faith or hope. Charity is the principle of unity with God. This is the fatal error of Martin Luther and Sola Fide. See St. Thomas’ discourse on the Theological Virtues in Summa Theologiae II-II qq. 1-46.

17. The Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 4.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 7.

21. Cf. Matthew 22:37-40.

22. Cf. ST IIa-IIae q. 44, a. 7.

23. The Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 7.

24. Cf. 1 Peter 1:4.

25. The Ascent, Bk. II, Ch. 5, 7.