by Gerald May

Counsels for Spiritual Directors from John of the Cross

Four hundred years ago, St. John of the Cross offered passionate advice to spiritual directors for companioning people whom God was leading into deeper contemplative awareness. People going through such transitions usually feel confused and distressed and are concerned that they are doing something wrong. All too often, their directors agree. John says such "blind guides" fail to realize that God is secretly preparing the soul for greater realized union and freedom in love. Knowing only how to "hammer and pound" with practices and concepts that "they themselves have used or read of somewhere," these "pestiferous" directors work against the exquisite gift God is giving.

John's advice remains especially relevant today. With all the spiritual practices and psychological knowledge available to modern spiritual directors, we have even more material with which to make pests of ourselves. Below are ten counsels that I believe John of the Cross offers. Remember that they apply specifically to transitions into deepening contemplative awareness and that they are my own interpretations.* Where I have distorted John's original intent, I ask forgiveness.

1) A person moving into deeper contemplation might feel stagnated, as if nothing were happening for a very long time. It is easy for directors to become frustrated: "He's making no progress. I wonder why he keeps coming when he's not doing anything!" To this John says, "I will prove to you that [the soul] is accomplishing a great deal by doing nothing." In becoming inactive, the person is unknowingly welcoming and cooperating with God's secret interior movement towards greater realization.

2) It may even seem like regression. A director might think, "This person was beginning to claim her self-worth and take charge of her life, but now she's assuming no responsibility or initiative anywhere in her life." John's counsel here again is not to meddle, for "it is God who in this state is the agent; the soul is the receiver...pure contemplation lies in receiving."

3) What was once a rich and disciplined prayer life now seems a shambles. The person feels it's his fault, that he doesn't have the willpower to pray. Rather than encouraging the person's practice, John suggests helping him explore his real desire. If the desire is to just be with God in "simple, loving attention" without active prayer or meditation, this should be affirmed.

4) Sometimes even simple, loving attention is lost. John counsels no worry here either. He says that in the depths of inner solitude and receptiveness, people "should even forget the practice of loving attentiveness."

5) People in this transition lose touch with their habitual images of themselves, their sense of direction, and their usual belief systems. Directors often try to help with psychological insights or theological explanations, but John maintains that these losses are necessary for freedom. Because "God transcends the intellect," the mind needs to be emptied "of everything comprehensible to it."

6) Images and perceptions of God disappear. A person might say, "God used to be very real for me as a loving Presence, but now all I find is emptiness and void." Directors may desperately want to help fill this void, but John says it would be a mistake to try to do so. He explains that the person "walks safely when empty of form and figure..." because God "cannot be grasped by the imagination." A person is much more available when "the senses find nothing to be attached to, take pleasure in, or do." Putting it succinctly, he says, "God does not fit in an occupied heart."

7) In this transition, people often feel they are becoming more withdrawn and less loving. The director may agree that this is evidence of having gone astray. John, however, maintains that God, not the person's will, is now doing the loving. Neither director nor directee may understand it, but "if the will stops making acts of love on its own...God makes them in it...secretly, with infused love."

8) Or a person may confess, "I feel completely lazy. I don't care about my responsibilities anymore. I'd really like to just go be a hermit." John says these feelings need to be respected, for they constitute "holy idleness...an inclination toward solitude and a weariness with...the world, in the gentle breathing of love and life in the spirit." He says that far from being a disorder, this is an "inestimable good... much greater at times than a soul or its director can imagine."

9) It is not unusual at these times for a person to want to find another spiritual director, or to discontinue direction for a while. Directors often feel this is unwise, but John affirms that people may well need such a change. He says, "you should not assume that in turning from you this person turned from God."

10) The last counsel embraces all the others and, I believe, applies to all spiritual companionship: never forget that God is the True Director. God is now guiding the soul in secret, "leading it by the hand to the place it knows not how to reach." The director cannot "know the means by which God may wish to benefit" the soul, and the person therefore needs "another doctrine more sublime than yours, and another spirituality."

Even if directors mean well, John says they have no excuse for "rudely meddling in something they do not understand." In other words, don't be a pest. In all spiritual companionship, and especially during these transitions to deeper contemplation, the spiritual director needs to be exquisitely prayerful, completely humble, and full of faith in God's goodness and mercy. Of the latter, John has no doubt: "It should be known," he says, "that if a person is seeking God, God is seeking that person much more." And he goes on: "when the soul desires God fully, it then possesses God."