The Perfect, the Extraordinary, and the Excellent

Perfectionism is trying to be extraordinary. The extraordinary here is beyond the ordinary and beyond the capacity of what is normal. Not everyone can be extraordinary; otherwise there would be no such thing as extraordinary.

Perfectionism is a rejection of limit, the limits imposed by our finitude. Every perfectionism pretends to overcome those limits but can do so only by imposing new limits. The person neurotically committed to perfectionism is not free from limits but enslaved to the demands of that "perfection."

We cannot aspire to the extraordinary because the extraordinary is a combination of chance talent, circumstances, and effort.

We can aspire only to what is within our capacity and potential, which when I begin, I do not know. All I do know is that my potential has a limit. Perhaps my potential is the extraordinary, but I cannot expect that.

The excellent is within the capacity of the ordinary and is the true perfection of the ordinary. Whatever is done, is done well, and this is excellent. If when achieving excellence, I attain to the extraordinary, that can be recognized only in hindsight. The extraordinary, for those with the potential for it, is the fruit of pursuing excellence, which all may and should pursue.

St. John of the Cross on Perfect Transformation in God

Since every living being lives by its operations, as the philosophers say, and the soul's operations are in God though its union with him, it lives the life of God. Thus it changed its death to life, its animal life to spiritual life.

The intellect, which before this union understood naturally by the vigor of its natural light by means of the natural senses, is now moved and informed by another higher principle of supernatural divine light, and the senses are bypassed. Accordingly, the intellect becomes divine, because through its union with God's intellect both become one.

And the will, which previously loved in a base and deadly way with only its natural affection, is now changed into the life of divine love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit in which it now lives the life of love. By means of this union God's will and the soul's will are now one. 

And the memory, which by itself perceived only the figures and phantasms of creatures, is changed through this union so as to have in its mind the eternal years mentioned by David [Ps. 77:5].

And the natural appetite that only had the ability and strength to relish creatures (which causes death), is changed now so that its taste and savor are divine, and it is moved and satisfied by another principle: the delight of God, in which it is more alive. And because it is united with him, it is no longer anything else than the appetite of God.

Finally all the movements, operations, and inclinations the soul had previously from the principle and strength of its natural life are now in this union dead to what they formerly were, changed into divine movements, and alive to God. For the soul, like a true daughter of God, is moved in all by the Spirit of God, as St. Paul teaches in saying that those who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God himself [Rom. 8:14].

Accordingly, the intellect of this soul is God's intellect; its will is God's will; its memory is the memory of God; and its delight is God's delight; and although the substance of this soul is not the substance of God, since it cannot undergo a substantial conversion into him, it has become God through participation in God, being united to and absorbed in him, as it is in this state. Such a union is wrought in this perfect state of the spiritual life, yet not as perfectly as in the next life. Consequently the soul is dead to all it was in itself, which was death to it, and alive to what God is in himself. Speaking of itself, the soul declares in this verse: "In killing you changed death to life." 

The soul can well repeat the words of St. Paul: I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me [Gal. 2:20]. The death of this soul is changed to the life of God. 

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Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.34.

Pressure vs. Cooperation

In common experience, we feel "under pressure" when the results of some effort depend upon us combined with the expectation of success in achieving the goal of that undertaking, whether these expectations are internal to us or external/social.

Feeling under pressure in the spiritual life is a sign of pride, a sign that the results of our progress depend principally upon our efforts. In contrast, cooperation with God removes pressure because we know that God provides a superabundance of means for our sanctification; hence any failure to achieve sanctity is not because God places an expectation without providing the means to achieve the goal, but because we failed to cooperate with those graces offered at every moment by our free resistance.

Hence as cooperation increases, pressure decreases. The Blessed Virgin was under no pressure when Gabriel extended the invitation to become the Mother of God; all the just souls of the past, the present, and the future waited on her response, united mystically to this moment every time they pray the Angelic Salutation. If the Blessed Virgin could, by means of an infused understanding from God, see this reality at the moment that Gabriel waited, the reality of all souls to be redeemed watching and waiting on the Blessed Virgin to give her fiat, she nevertheless would have felt absolutely no pressure to "make the right choice." Her only concern was to cooperate as perfectly as possible with God's will with the full humble knowledge that any positive acceptance of God's will would be provided totally by God's power, His grace not only allowing the cooperation but providing the condition by which her free will could even exercise itself without doing harm to its integrity.

Insofar as we believe that our salvation depends upon ourselves, we shall feel the pressure of perfectionism. Insofar as we believe that our salvation depends upon God and our simple cooperation, there is no pressure, no fear, only perfect love.

Mastery Requires Awareness

It seems that higher levels of mastery require deeper levels of awareness, fine tuned to details that are otherwise completely unnoticed by lay folk. What is simply a wood chair to one is a Nakashima masterpiece by another who has the eyes to see. What is simply the same wall of choral sound to one is a vastly different sound "palette" to an experienced choir director. What is simply a nice book to one is a sign of profound dedication to the craft of typesetting to another. It could be said, then, that the refinement and growth of awareness forms one of the most necessary foundations for mastery.

Appreciation is a form of awareness—awareness of goodness in another or in a deed done. Gratitude is awareness. Joy is awareness of the presence of goodness and its possession. Humility is awareness of truth.

George Nakashima Interview from George Nakashima Woodworker on Vimeo.

St. Thomas Aquinas on the Purpose of Work for Man and God

"Man works in order to supply his wants: not so God, Who works in order to communicate to others the abundance of His perfection."

- St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ 3.23.1 ad 2

St. Alphonsus Liguori on Signs of a Vocation to Priesthood

Let us now see what are the marks of a divine vocation to the sacerdotal state.

Nobility is not a mark of a divine vocation. [...] We must consider not nobility of blood, but sanctity of life (St. Jerome, In Tit., i). St. Gregory says the same: "By one's conduct, not by one's high birth, is one's vocation proved."

Nor is the will of the parents a mark of a divine vocation. [...] "How many mothers," says St. John Chrysostom, [...] "have eyes only for the bodies of their children and disdain their souls! To see them happy here below is all that they desire; as for the punishments that perhaps their children are to endure in the next life, they do not even think of them" (Hom. 35). [...] We have no enemies more dangerous than our own relatives. [...]

St. Thomas expressly teaches that in the choice of a state of life children are not obliged to obey their parents. And the saint says that when there is a question of a vocation to religion, a person is not bound even to consult his relatives. [cf. Contra retr. a rel., ch. 9]. [...]

Nor is talent or fitness for the offices of a priest a sign of vocation, for along with talent a holy life and a divine call are necessary. What, then, are the marks of a divine vocation to the ecclesiastical state? There are three principal marks:

I. PURITY OF INTENTION.

The first is a good intention. It is necessary to enter the sanctuary by the door, but there is no other door than Jesus Christ: I am the door of the sheep.... If any man enter in, he shall be saved (Jn. 10:7). To enter, then, by the door is to become a priest not to please relatives, nor to advance the family, nor for the sake of self-interest or self-esteem, but to serve God, to propagate his glory, and to save souls. "If any one," says a wise theologian, the learned continuator of Tournely, "presents himself for holy Orders without any vicious affection, and with the sole desire to be employed in the service of God and in the salvation of his neighbor, he, we may believe, is called by God" (De Ord., q. 4, a. 4). Another author asserts that he who is impelled by ambition, interest, or a motive of his own glory, is called not by God, but by the devil. "But," adds St. Anselm, "he who enters the priesthood through so unworthy motives shall receive not a blessing but a malediction from God" (In Heb. 5).

2. SCIENCE AND TALENTS.

The second mark is the talent and learning necessary for the fulfillment of the duties of a priest. Priests must be masters to teach the people the law of God. For the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth (Mal. 2:7). Sidonius Apollinarius used to say: "Ignorant physicians are the cause of many deaths" (Lib. 2, ep. 12). An ignorant priest, particularly a confessor, who teaches false doctrines and gives bad counsels will be the ruin of many souls; because, in consequence of being a priest, his errors are easily believed. Hence Ivone Carnotensis has written: "No one should be admitted to holy Orders unless he has given sufficient proofs of good conduct and learning."

3. POSITIVE GOODNESS OF CHARACTER.

The third mark of an ecclesiastical vocation is positive virtue. Hence, in the first place, the person who is to be ordained should be a man of innocent life, and should not be contaminated by sins. The Apostle requires that they who are to be ordained priests should be free from every crime. In ancient times a person who had committed a single mortal sin could never be ordained, as we learn from the First Council of Nice (Canon 9: "Qui confessi sunt peccata, canon (ecclesiasticus ordo) non admittit). And St. Jerome says that it was not enough for a person to be free from sin at the time of his ordination, but that it was, moreover, necessary that he should not have fallen into mortal sin since the time of his baptism (In Tit. 1). It is true that this rigorous discipline has ceased in the Church, but it has always been at least required that he who had fallen into grievous sins should purify his conscience for a considerable time before his ordination. This we may infer from a letter to the Archbishop of Rheims, in which Alexander III commanded that a deacon who had wounded another deacon, if he sincerely repented of his sin, might, after being absolved, and after performing the penance enjoined, be permitted again to exercise his Order; and that if he afterwards led a perfect life, he might be promoted to priesthood (De diacono. Qui cler., ch. 1). He, then, who finds himself bound by a habit of any vice cannot take any holy Order without incurring the guilt of mortal sin. "I am horrified," says St. Bernard (Epist. 8), "when I think whence thou comest, whither thou goest, and what a short penance thou hast put between thy sins and thy ordination. However, it is indispensable that thou do not undertake to purify the conscience of others before thou purifiest thy own."

Of those daring sinners who, though full of bad habits, take priesthood, an ancient author, Gildas, says, "It is not to the priesthood that they should be admitted, but they should be dragged to the pillory." They, then, says St. Isidore, who are still subject to the habit of any sin should not be promoted to holy Orders (Sent. 1.3, ch. 34).

But he who intends to ascend the altar must not only be free from sin, but must have also begun to walk in the path of perfection, and have acquired a habit of virtue. In our Moral Theology (1.6, n. 63, etc.) we have shown in a distinct dissertation (and this is the common opinion) that if a person in the habit of any vice wish to be ordained, it is not enough for him to have the dispositions necessary for the sacrament of penance, but that he must also have the dispositions required for receiving the sacrament of order; otherwise he is unfit for both; and should he receive absolution with the intention of taking Orders without the necessary dispositions, he and the confessor who absolves him shall be guilty of a grievous sin. For it is not enough for those who wish to take holy Orders to have left the state of sin, they must also, according to the words of Alexander III, cited in the preceding paragraph, have the positive virtue necessary for the ecclesiastical state. From the words of the Pontiff we learn that a person who has done penance may exercise an order already received, but he who has only done penance cannot take a higher order.

The angelic Doctor teaches the same doctrine: "Sanctity is required for the reception of holy Orders, and we must place the sublime burden on the priesthood only upon walls already dried by sanctity; that is freed from the malignant humor of sin" (S.Th., 2.2.189.1). This is conformable to what St. Denis wrote long before: "Let no one be so bold as to propose himself to others as their guide in the things of God, if he has not first, with all his power, transformed himself into God to the point of perfect resemblance to him" (De Eccl. Hier., ch. 3). For this St. Thomas adduces two reasons: the first is, that as he who takes orders is raised above seculars in dignity, so he should be superior to them in sanctity (Suppl., 35.1). The second reason is, that by his ordination a priest is appointed to exercise the most sublime ministry on the altar, for which greater sanctity is required than for the religious state (S.Th., 2.2.184.8).

Hence the Apostle forbade Timothy to ordain neophytes; that is, according to St. Thomas, neophytes in perfection as well as neophytes in age.

Hence the Council of Trent, in reference to the words of Scripture, And a spotless life in old age (Wis. 4:9), prescribes to the bishops to admit to ordination only those who show themselves worthy by a conduct full of wise maturity (Sess. 23, ch. 12). And of this positive virtue it is necessary, according to St. Thomas, to have not a doubtful but a certain knowledge (Suppl., 36.4). This, according to St. Gregory, is particularly necessary with regard to the virtue of chastity: "No one should be admitted to the ministry of the altar unless an assurance has been given of his perfect chastity" (Lib. 1, ep. 42). With regard to chastity, the holy Pontiff required a proof of many years (Lib. 3, ep. 26).

From this we may infer that God will demand a terrible account of the parish priest who gives to persons aspiring to the priesthood a testimony of their having frequented the sacraments and led exemplary lives, though they had neglected the frequentation of the sacraments, and had given scandal rather than good example. Such parish priests by the false attestations, given not through charity, as they pretend, but against the charity due to God and the Church, render themselves guilty of all the sins that shall afterwards be committed by the bad priests who were ordained in consequence of these testimonials. For in this matter bishops trust to the testimony of parish priests, and are deceived. Nor should a parish priest in giving such attestations trust the testimony of others; he cannot give them unless he is certain that what he attests is true, namely, that the ecclesiastic has really led an exemplary life, and has frequented the sacraments.

And as a bishop cannot ordain any person unless he be a man of approved chastity, so a confessor cannot permit an incontinent penitent to receive ordination without having a moral certainty that he is free from the bad habit which he had contracted, and that he had acquired a habit of the virtue of chastity.

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Source: St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Dignity and Duties of the Priest, ed. by Eugene Grimm (New York, NY), http://wallmell.webs.com/LiguoriDignityDutiesPriest.pdf, chapter 10.

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis on Love of Enemies and Spiritual Perfection

"You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven [....] Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:43-45, 48).

[236] [Our Lord's] commands are couched in the future indicative: "You will love your neighbor...", "You will be perfect...." These wills are stronger than a more straightforward command in the usual imperative because they not only communicate the speaker's wish that something be done, they also prophesy that something in the future will in fact be the case. Hence, not only the desirability that something be so is expressed by Christ but also the possibility that it become a reality.

Now in the first instance, when the Lord is loosely quoting Leviticus (19:18), all seems to make sense. It is not difficult to prophesy that natural man will love his neighbor (that is, those who are like himself and with whom he must get along if he is to exist at all) and hate his enemy. This is the logic of the flesh, of survival, of the precarious community establishing its unique identity over against all other groups, which simply by being other are potential threats. Much of the force of the passage resides in the fact that the Lord goes on [237] to subvert this natural logic by continuing to use its own forms, as if the unheard-of things he is proposing, so naturally repulsive to man, came as naturally to himself as Word of God as loving one's neighbor and hating one's enemy come to natural man.

"You will be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect": the expediency and real possibility of man putting on the mind and habits of God are presented by the Son as if nothing else in the world were more natural, desirable, possible, or necessary. His use of the future indicative as an imperative command manifests not only his wish and his teaching that his followers ought to move in this direction; it contains the promise that, by the power of his word here and now spoken to them, this will in fact become a reality. 'You must be perfect like God, because such is the nature of the human vocation in God's mind, and therefore you will be perfect. The One manifesting your deepest identity to you at this moment is, by doing so, communicating to you the power to undergo such a transformation.'

The image of man in the mind of the Word imposes itself as more real than the condition in which natural man happens to find himself. The very revelation of this image is already a promise of its realization.

"Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you [...] for if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?" (Mt. 5:44, 46-47).

Whereas human activity had previously been neatly and satisfyingly divided into loving and hating others, the Lord here keeps the first verb but adds another to that, instead of being its opposite, is rather an extension of the first. The Christian cannot allow himself the too easy satisfaction of loving and hating [238] according to personal whims or the superficial identity of his community or race. All the Christian is allowed to do is love, unconditionally. It is crucial, however, that the categorical imperative to love everyone at all times does not come from a blindness that refuses to see the existence of evil in the world. We are not to love others without exception on the grounds that everyone is so good and love-worthy, or especially because we are so good and loving in any spontaneous, natural sense. No: this would be illusory daydreaming of the first order! We are to love without qualification because the Son of the Father has, through the power of his word, made us children of this same Father [....] It is by the power of God in Christ that we are enabled to love without exception, because this is what the Father does, who is incapable of hatred.

Furthermore, the Lord here recognizes the existence of real enemies and persecutors. He passes no judgment, either, as to whether there is any justice in their animosity toward us and their persecution of us. We are hardly to assume automatically that anyone who is our enemy is a personification of evil! But the Christian's business is to love and to perform the work of love without having previously qualified or disqualified others according to criteria foreign to the mind of the Word. [...]

[239] The universal generosity of love to which Jesus is calling his disciples is like the unrestrained brilliance of the sun as it sheds its rays over all of creation. When we love someone, we are like a sun bestowing the benefit of life, or like rain drenching the parched land that it may give fruit. Behind both the Christian's deeds of goodness and the outpouring of light and water there is the same agent at work: God, the Creator and Bestower of life. Our love is the light and the rain of God upon the world, especially on those who need it the most—the bad and the unjust, who are the truly benighted and parched. [...]

The Lord is establishing a continuity and a harmony between the moral attitude in the heart of man and the objective laws that govern the laws of the cosmos. When we choose to love universally without private prejudice, we leave that illusory inner chamber where we create a puny world in keeping with our own mean ideas and begin discovering the real world created by God in his magnanimous wisdom. Learning how to love as God loves not only makes us his children in a purely interior sense; it is the gateway itself to our perception of the cosmos in all its glory and a participation in its mysterious life. Through universal love, we allow the full benefit of the sun and the rain to fall upon ourselves for the first time. [...]

"If you love [only] those who love you...." Can my attitude of soul be worhty of the name "love" if it is nothing more than a response in kind to someone else's [240] attitude of goodwill toward me? At a purely human level, yes: What sense does it make to pour affection into a dark hole? Is not a clinging to unreciprocated love—or, even worse, to the love of what hurts us—the privilege of the mad? Human love encloses itself in a neat system of "energy conservation", where nothing is ever lost because nothing is ever gained. To love in this way is to take a prudent, speculator's view of human relationships, in which success depends on the greatest possible avoidance of risks. [...] The alleged child of God belies his Origin if he loves only those who love him, out of self-interest, instead of acting like his Father, whose goodness falls upon all without expecting a return in kind. [...]

To love only those who love us is its own reward. The account is neatly balanced. We are established in self-satisfaction. We inhabit a purely horizontal realm with a ceiling so low that our existence smothers for lack of oxygen. Our vision, too, is projected only unidimensionally down the tunnel of our immediate concerns. Man is unlike the other primates in that his posture is upright: he can, if he so chooses, gaze upward continually. His field of vision, if free of artificial clutter, enables him to take in both the ground under his feet and the sky above his head. This is why "our Father" is said here to be "in the heavens": by nature he is the one above the choking [241] horizontality of hermetic systems; he is the one whose very nature makes him condescend, makes him bestow life and love where none yet exists. To be "in heaven", to have one's dwelling in the heavens, far from connoting a spiritualistic fleeing from the earth, means rather to reside in the fullness of love and to be always engaged in bestowing the benefits of love on others—to pour out one's being into the void in others as if one were sunlight and rain. [...]

"You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." How can a human being be perfect in the same manner that God in heaven is perfect? There is an insurmountable problem in our Lord's solemn injunction, which concludes this whole section as its summary, as long as we insist on an abstract, essentialist definition of the term "perfect". The being of man, in this sense, can never be perfect in the same way God's is, and the Lord seems to be enjoining the impossible. Persons have been known to wreck their psychic, physical, and spiritual lives trying to apply this command in an erroneous way. If we apply the literal Greek meaning of the word for "perfect" as noted ("goal" or "end"), we will see that what the command intends is, rather, 'Guide your actions and attitudes by the same intention, the same finality, as your heavenly Father's.' Far from implying a head-breaking striving for the unattainable, we should rise from our immersion in the business of self-survival and focus our outlook from the divine point of view.

From this vantage point in heaven, the Father has as the "goal" of his love the totality of the human family, not just individuals within it.

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Source: Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, vol. 1 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1996), 237–241.

Fr. Antonio Royo Marin on Uprooting Voluntary Imperfections

It is therefore absolutely necessary to wage an unceasing battle against our voluntary imperfections if we wish to arrive at perfect union with God. The soul must use all its efforts and all its energies to make them disappear. It must tend always toward the more perfect and try to do all things with the greatest possible intensity. Naturally, this greater intensity should not be considered as a physical or organic intensity, as if it were necessary to keep one's nervous system in a state of constant tension or to make an act of love of God accompanied by organic or psychic intensity. We are referring here simply to the perfection of one's motives which lead one to act: doing all things with the greatest possible purity of intention, with the greatest possible desire of glorifying God, with the ardent desire that God's action invade or dominate us completely, that the Holy Spirit take complete control of our soul and do with us as he wishes in time and in eternity, without taking any account of our own tastes or desires. It consists simply in an ever more perfect and docile abandonment to the will of God until we are led by him without the least resistance. And this will not occur before the total death of our human egoism and our full transformation in Christ, which will enable us to say with St. Paul: "It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

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Source: Fr. Antonio Royo Marin, The Theology of Christian Perfection, trans. by Jordan Aumann (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 237.

Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J., on the Degrees of Surrender to Providence

For in this virtue [of patient resignation to God's providence] as well as in others, there are several degrees, which may all be reduced to three; according to the distinction of degrees the saints note in the virtue of patience.

The first degree is, when we are far from desiring or taking a pleasure in misfortunes that befall us, but on the contrary we avoid and shun them, as far as we are able: yet we would rather suffer and undergo them, than incur any sin in avoiding them. And this is the lowest degree, and what precisely is of indispensable obligation. So that supposing we are sensibly touched with any mischances or accidents; that we groan and sigh in our sickness, that we cry out in the violence of our pain; that we mourn and lament at the death of our parents or friends, we may notwithstanding all this have conformity to the divine will. 

The second degree is, when although of ourselves we have no inclinations to desire pains and afflictions, nevertheless when they happen, we receive and bear them most willingly; because we know the will of God is thereby executed. And in what this degree surpasses the former, is, that it makes us in some manner love afflictions for God's sake, and that we are willing to suffer them not only with patience, in as much as we are obliged thereto under sin, but also with a sort of joy, in as much as we are convinced it is a thing very pleasing to God. The first degree makes us suffer things with patience. The second, makes us suffer them with a prompt and cheerful disposition of mind, towards what God ordains. 

But the third, and most perfect degree of all, is, when out of an excess of love towards God, we do not, only suffer and accept willingly all the afflictions and pains he sends; but we even prevent him by our desires, and rejoice; because we know they happen not but by the adorable decree of his holy will. 

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Source: Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian Perfection, tract 8, chap. 12.

St. John of the Cross on Why So Few Attain Perfection

And here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It should be known that the reason is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work. Since he tries them in little things and finds them so weak that they immediately flee from work, unwilling to be subject to the least discomfort and mortification, it follows that not finding them strong and faithful in that little [Mt. 25:21, 23], in which he favored them by beginning to hew and polish them, he realizes that they will be much less strong in these greater trials. As a result he proceeds no further in purifying them and raising them from the dust of the earth through the toil of mortification. They are in need of greater constancy and fortitude than they showed.

There are many who desire to advance and persistently beseech God to bring them to this state of perfection. Yet when God wills to conduct them through the initial trials and mortifications, as is necessary, they are unwilling to suffer them and they shun them, flee from the narrow road of life [Mt. 7:14] and seek the broad road of their own consolation, which is that of their own perdition [Mt. 7:13]; thus they do not allow God to begin to grant their petition. They are like useless containers, for although they desire to reach the state of the perfect they do not want to be guided by the path of trials that leads to it. They hardly even begin to walk along this road by submitting to what is least, that is, to ordinary sufferings.

We can answer them with Jeremiah's words: If you have grown weary running with footmen, how will you contend with horses? And if you have had quiet in the land of peace, what will you do in the swelling of the Jordan? [Jer. 12:5]. This is like saying: If by the common trials (on foot) that form part of human life, it seemed to you that you were running because there were so many, and you took such short steps, how will you keep up with the horse's stride, which signifies more than ordinary trials for which human strength and speed is not enough? And if you have not wanted to forego the peace and pleasure of your earth, which is your sensuality, or contradict it in anything or stir up a war, I do not know how you will desire to enter the impetuous waters of spiritual tribulations and trials that are deeper.

O souls who in spiritual matters desire to walk in security and consolation! If you but knew how much it behooves you to suffer in order to reach this security and consolation, and how without suffering you cannot attain to your desire but rather turn back, in no way would you look for comfort either from God or from creatures. You would instead carry the cross and, placed on it, desire to drink the pure gall and vinegar. You would consider it good fortune that, dying to this world and to yourselves, you would live to God in the delights of the spirit, and patiently and faithfully suffering exterior trials, which are small, you would merit that God fix his eyes on you and purge you more profoundly through deeper spiritual trials in order to give you more interior blessings. [...]

For he tries them in this way so as to make them advance in gifts and merits, as he did with holy Tobit to whom St. Raphael said: Since you were acceptable to God, he favored you by sending you temptation that he might try you more in order to exalt you more [Tb. 12:13]. After that temptation, all the rest of his life was in joy, as Sacred Scripture says [Tb. 14:4]. We also see in the life of holy Job that once God accepted his works in the sight of the good and evil spirits, he immediately favored him by sending those great trials so that subsequently he could extol him much more. And this he did, multiplying his goods, both spiritual and temporal [Jb. 1-2; 42:10, 12]. [...]

People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God's hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health. [...] People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.

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Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.27-30, 667-669.