St John of the Cross is a really good writer, I truly felt that I was connecting with his writing. The purpose of St John's writing was to seek perfection for our souls. St John first names the steps beginning with the beginners. This book is mainly about spirituality and how to improve in it. The beginners begin to "meditate on the spiritual road."[1] Once they accomplish this then they begin to go to the state of progressive, which is when they have accomplished contemplation. Then they finally arrive at the state of perfection which is "the Divine union of the soul with God"[2] At first this sounded like it was going to be a very easy way of obtaining perfection. the more you read the more I realized I am still at the beginner's step. What helped me realize that is when he describes the 7 deadly sins and the imperfections that one has to deal with.
The first sin is pride or what St John calls it is "secret pride". This is when someone is satisfied with there prayer life and works and then begin to feel like they are holy enough to even speak about spiritual things in front of others. "They even condemn others in their heart because the person is not doing the same devotion that they themselves desire."[3] St John describes these people as Pharisees. This is just one example of how one can fall into pride, St Johns goes much more into depth and even gives you the solution on how to overcome this prideful way of thinking. This is why I highly recommend this book because it helps you realize all the wrongs you are doing in your spiritual life and how to improve it. The second capital sin is avarice, which is when one can't get enough of learning spiritual precepts, counsels, reading many books, and they spend so much time in these things that they should rather be working "on mortification and the perfecting of the inward poverty of spirit which should be theirs."[4] one thing that hit me about this is how even though the burdening ourselves with images and statues and what kind of crucifix we prefer this affects our interior spirituality. It affects us because "we forget to set our eyes upon the reality of interior perfection, which is to give pleasure to God and to not give pleasures to our selves."[5] in other words get rid of our human's desires such as wanting this and wanting that, we shouldn't even be sentimental about material things, we should only desire Godly things. This was the one that got me because I love statues and get attached things to them easily but I forget the true purpose of why I have those things. St John gives a very beautiful example of humble people making their own crosses out of a branch and they did not care about how ugly it was, according to St John these are the people whoa re making progress because they don't need a visible instrument or burden themselves with desires.[6] the third sin is luxury oe\r what St John calls it a spiritual luxury which is when someone gives up prayer because they feel attacked by the devil. St John does not deny that the devil does attack when one is praying but we should not let you remotions get in the way of you praying.the next sin is wrath and there are several ways you can sin with wrath. one wrath is when one gets mad at his brother and sister by the way they are sinning. They watch them very uneasy zeal, they even set themselves as masters of virtue.[7] the next sin is gluttony which is when you have committed a sin and to make yourself to feel better you go and take communion many times. They try to do many other things than to confess their sins nakedly.[8] The last two deadly sin is envy and sloth. the envy is caused when a person gets jealous if his brother is being praised for his goodness. St John says that this is all contrary to charity and even quote St Paul when he said: "rejoice in goodness".[9] Sloth comes when all you desire is sweetness and pleasure and are only accustomed to it. so when a prayer is not sweet or pleasurable for them, they then abandon the prayer.[10] With just reading about the 7 deadly sins I realized that I am still at the beginners level, because of my prayer life.
I would highly recommend this book to everyone because we are all here to grow in our interior life so that we with our souls can be unified with Christ. The Carmelites have many saints that have influenced the way we pray and they also have many great saints such as St Teresa of Lisieux, St Teresa of Avila and even St John of the Cross. This book has changed the way I look at things and the way I pray. This book showed with stuff that I need to work on and how to improve them. which is a good thing, and I hope this book will also help many others to improve in their spiritual life.
[1] Cross, Saint J. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. I C S Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979. 24
[2] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.24
[3] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.26
[4] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.31
[5]Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. 33
[6] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.32
[7] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.39
[8] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.43
[9] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.45
[10]Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.45
[11] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.138
[12] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.139
[13] Saint John. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.143
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