Ascent of Mt. Carmel - St. Patrick's Basilica

necessary to answer our question, which was as follows: Since in these supernatural
visions there is so much hindrance and peril to progress, as we have said, why does
God, Who is most wise and desires to remove stumbling-blocks and snares from the
soul, offer and communicate them to it?
2. In order to answer this, it is well first of all to set down three fundamental
points. The first is from Saint Paul ad Romanos, where he says: Quae autem sunt, a
Deo ordinatoe sunt. 333 Which signifies: The works that are done are ordained of God.
The second is from the Holy Spirit in the Book of Wisdom, where He says: Disponit
omnia suaviter. 334 And this is as though He had said: The wisdom of God, although it
extends from one end to another -- that is to say, from one extreme to another -- orders
all things with sweetness. The third is from the theologians, who say that Omnia movet
secundum modum eorum. That is, God moves all things according to their nature.
3. It is clear, then, from these fundamental points, that if God is to move the soul
and to raise it up from the extreme depth of its lowliness to the extreme height of His
loftiness, in Divine union with Him, He must do it with order and sweetness and
according to the nature of the soul itself. Then, since the order whereby the soul
acquires knowledge is through forms and images of created things, and the natural way
wherein it acquires this knowledge and wisdom is through the senses, it follows that, if
God is to raise up the soul to supreme knowledge, and to do so with sweetness, He
must begin to work from the lowest and extreme end of the senses of the soul, in order
that He may gradually lead it, according to its own nature, to the other extreme of His
spiritual wisdom, which belongs not to sense. Wherefore He first leads it onward by
instructing it through forms, images and ways of sense, according to its own method of
understanding, now naturally, now supernaturally, and by means of reasoning, to this
supreme Spirit of God.
4. It is for this reason that God gives the soul visions and forms, images and
other kinds of sensible and intelligible knowledge of a spiritual nature; not that God
would not give it spiritual wisdom immediately, and all at once, if the two extremes --
which are human and Divine, sense and spirit -- could in the ordinary way concur and
unite in one single act, without the previous intervention of many other preparatory acts
which concur among themselves in order and sweetness, and are a basis and a
preparation one for another, like natural agents; so that the first acts serve the second,
the second the third, and so onward, in exactly the same way. And thus God brings man
to perfection according to the way of man's own nature, working from what is lowest and
most exterior up to what is most interior and highest. First, then, He perfects his bodily
senses, impelling him to make use of good things which are natural, perfect and
exterior, such as hearing sermons and masses, looking on holy things, mortifying the
palate at meals and chastening the sense of touch by penance and holy rigour. And,
when these senses are in some degree prepared, He is wont to perfect them still
further, by bestowing on them certain supernatural favours and gifts, in order to confirm
them the more completely in that which is good, offering them certain supernatural
communications, such as visions of saints or holy things, in corporeal shape, the
sweetest perfumes, locutions, and exceeding great delights of touch, wherewith sense
is greatly continued in virtue and is withdrawn from a desire for evil things. And besides
this He continues at the same time to perfect the interior bodily senses, whereof we are
333 Romans xiii, 1.
334 Wisdom viii, 1.
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