The Ascent of Mount Carmel

I have begun reading “The Ascent of Mount Carmel” by St. John of the Cross, and so far, I am appalled.

... every pleasure that presents itself to the senses, if it be not purely for the honor and glory of God, must be renounced and completely rejected... [If one cannot avoid encountering something pleasant,] it suffices that, although these things may be present to his senses, he desires not to have this pleasure. And in this wise he will be able to mortify and void his senses of such pleasure, as though they were in darkness.

This is so wrong! It is ungrateful to thus despise the gifts of God.
Better advice comes from Moses:

And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house; thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you. (Deuteronomy 26:11)

And from the Preacher:

There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

And St. Paul:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (I Timothy 4:1-5)

I am not prepared to call the writings of St. John of the Cross “doctrines of devils,” for he does have an important point. If any desires, any possessions, any persons, any things whatsoever come between us and God, they “weary the soul and torment and darken it, and defile it and weaken it.”

But the path he describes can easily end in a narrow, bitter, solitary death of the spirit, destroying one's self and everything that one touches. One sees this, I think, in the Spanish Catholicism of his day, which bore its most characteristic fruit in the work of the Inquisition, and the enslavement of the native peoples of Latin America. But then one must consider Tomás Luis de Victoria. And El Greco. They are the other side of that dark and oppressive age.

Perhaps what St. John is after, or at least what I would say of such things, is that desire takes us out of the present moment, the Now which is the only opportunity we have to walk with God. We hunger, we lust, we covet, and we are immediately out of the Now, longing for some imagined future when our desires are sated. Or an equally imaginary past when we had that which is no longer with us (e.g., “the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick” of Egypt [Numbers 11:8]).

But I would submit that the Now should be a joyful thanksgiving, not a dreary blinding of the senses and spirit to what surrounds us. "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." (Philippians 4:11-12). One might say: "Desire nothing; enjoy everything."

I will continue with St. John of the Cross, for he is one of the great spiritual masters. Perhaps he will make more sense as I proceed, or (as he suggests early on in the book) upon a second reading.

We are not off to a good start.