The Ascent to Truth by Thomas Merton

Author:Thomas Merton
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is significant that some of the strongest language used by Saint John of the Cross is poured out on the heads of men who defied reason with an inordinate love of bodily penance. But the most important thing about this paragraph of The Dark Night is that it lays down the fundamental principle to which we have already alluded, and which is the test of true discretion.

The success or failure of a man’s spiritual life depends on the clarity with which he is able to see and judge the motives of his moral acts. To use a term canonized by ascetic tradition, the first step to sanctity is self-knowledge. It is the function of reason to judge these motives, to try the purity of our intentions, and to evaluate the objects of our desire and all the circumstances that surround our moral activity. But this work of reason is obstructed and fouled by a habit of acting on impulse every time we are prompted by the instinctive motions of passion and desire.

Now, the impulsions of desire which present the greatest problem in the ascetic life are not those which reach out for an object that is manifestly evil. On the contrary, the biggest task of reason, in the spiritual life, is to unmask disordered impulsions that seem at first to be spiritual and aimed at the highest good. The reason why so many pious men fail to become saints is that they do evil for the glory of God.

The apparent ruthlessness of Saint John of the Cross consists in the fact that he turns the merciless light of an intellect purified by the fire of God upon scores of objects and desires which seem, to the misguided, to belong to the very essence of sanctity and Christian perfection: and he condemns them all. Not that they are all evil: but the mere fact that they are not good enough means that they are not worthy of our desire. We must turn aside from them and look elsewhere. Not only the good things of the world are to be renounced by the ascetic but even some of the highest gifts and favors of God. Not that we should formally refuse a gift of God: but we must always be careful to receive His extraordinary favors in such a way that our desire is centered on the Giver, not on the gift itself.

But the pleasures of the interior life are so great and so pure; they so far transcend the crude joys of sense and of this world, that they exercise a terrible attraction upon the soul that meets them along its road to God. The thought of these pleasures, the memory of them and the hope of their recapture move a man to the very depths of his spirit and almost turn him inside out with the vehemence of great desire. He will do the wildest things if he believes that it will bring back two minutes of the joy he has once tasted in what seemed to be a vision of God.

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