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

ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL
INTRODUCTION
AS will be seen from the biographical outline which we have given of the life of St. John
of the Cross, this was the first of the Saint's treatises to be written; it was begun at El
Calvario, and, after various intervals, due to the author's preoccupation with the
business of government and the direction and care of souls, was completed at Granada.
The treatise presents a remarkable outline of Christian perfection from the point
at which the soul first seeks to rise from the earth and soar upward towards union with
God. It is a work which shows every sign of careful planning and great attention to
detail, as an ascetic treatise it is noteworthy for its detailed psychological analysis; as a
contribution to mystical theology, for the skill with which it treats the most complicated
and delicate questions concerning the Mystic Way.
Both the great Carmelite reformers pay close attention to the early stages of the
mystical life, beyond which many never pass, and both give the primacy to prayer as a
means of attaining perfection. To St. Teresa prayer is the greatest of all blessings of this
life, the channel through which all the favours of God pass to the soul, the beginning of
every virtue and the plainly marked highroad which leads to the summit of Mount
Carmel. She can hardly conceive of a person in full spiritual health whose life is not one
of prayer. Her coadjutor in the Carmelite Reform writes in the same spirit. Prayer, for St.
John of the Cross as for St. Teresa, is no mere exercise made up of petition and
meditation, but a complete spiritual life which brings in its train all the virtues, increases
all the soul's potentialities and may ultimately lead to 'deification' or transformation in
God through love. It may be said that the exposition of the life of prayer, from its lowest
stages to its highest, is the common aim of these two Saints, which each pursues and
accomplishes in a peculiarly individual manner.
St. John of the Cross assumes his reader to be familiar with the rudiments of the
spiritual life and therefore omits detailed description of the most elementary of the
exercises incumbent upon all Christians. The plan of the Ascent of Mount Carmel
(which, properly speaking, embraces its sequel, the Dark Night) follows the lines of the
poem with the latter title (p. 10). Into two stanzas of five lines each, St. John of the
Cross has condensed all the instruction which he develops in this treatise. In order to
reach the Union of Light, the soul must pass through the Dark Night -- that is to say,
through a series of purifications, during which it is walking, as it were, through a tunnel
of impenetrable obscurity and from which it emerges to bask in the sunshine of grace
and to enjoy the Divine intimacy.
Through this obscurity the thread which guides the soul is that of 'emptiness' or
'negation.' Only by voiding ourselves of all that is not God can we attain to the
possession of God, for two contraries cannot co-exist in one individual, and creaturelove
is darkness, while God is light, so that from any human heart one of the two cannot
fail to drive out the other. 59
Now the soul, according to the Saint's psychology, is made up of interior and
exterior senses and of the faculties. All these must be free from creature impurities in
59 Ascent, Bk. III, Chap. ii.
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