The Uncompromising Lover

Extract

The great, attraction exercised by the writings of the mystics on all who sincerely love God is a fact of everyday experience. Richard Rolle in our own country, Ruysbroeck in the Netherlands, Saint Catherine of Siena in Italy, Saint Teresa in Spain, these and a host of others have a numerous and sympathetic following. But there is one exception for which it is difficult to account : St. John of the Cross. Undoubtedly the greatest of them all, he is nevertheless generally regarded by average readers with something akin to fear and repulsion. When they pick up the Ascent of Mount Carmel for the first time and become aware of the sacrifices, the detachment and the denudation of spirit which he demands they are filled with consternation and dread. Such teaching seems to lead more to death than to life : and urged by the instinct of self preservation rather than by lack of generosity they recoil from putting it into practice.

This impression, derived solely from the Ascent, is, to a certain degree, comprehensible. The relentless logic with which St. John of the Cross drives his principles to their conclusions, the merciless insistence on the absolute validity of certain Gospel truths, the absence of all compromise and indulgence, these and other traits of a like nature strike a chill into the heart of uninitiated readers. They feel that the saint must have been devoid of all sensibility, out of touch with common humanity and limited in his outlook on the world. And they put down the book with the conviction that such counsel is not for them because it is utterly inhuman.