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Brookline Carmel Bulletin
November 6, 1960
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
(The
Natural Point of View)
Man
may be rightly styled a miniature cosmos; he shares in every level of
existence. He is ‘at home’ in the worlds
of matter, of living things, and of ideas.
Vegetative,
animal and intellectual life with their respective principles of operation are
to be found in Man. On the vegetative
level he grows, nourishes himself, reproduces.
On the level of animal life he possesses the faculties of sense
perception, of sense memory and of locomotion.
On the highest, the intellectual, level he enjoys the faculties of
intellect – with its power to reason and understand – and will – with its power
to choose and love.
In virtue
of his intellect and will Man has something in common with both the Angels and
God. His resemblance to them, however,
is one of analogy only. Human
intellectual and volitional operations are not the same as those of the Angels;
nor again, are angelic operations the same as those of God. Nevertheless, individual men and Angels,
like God, are persons: A ‘person’ is
defined as a being subsisting in a rational nature. Which means, of course, that only those beings capable of knowing
and of loving – free beings – may be called persons. The transcendence of human life over lower forms of life stems
directly from a man’s dignity as a person, a being capable of determining
himself. Man is master of his fate.
The
Spiritual Theologian is certainly interested in the fixed, abstract view of Man
as just stated, since everything in human nature has some bearing upon his life
as an ‘adopted’ son of God. But he –
the Spiritual Theologian – is even more interested in the concrete, dynamic
view of Man as he exists in his particular environment here and now.
A
human being comes into the world in a highly imperfect state (more so than any
of the forms of life beneath him). He
has to undergo a long, slow, involved process of development to a state of
perfection. When mature, he will have
realized, to a great extent, his innate potential. To insure that development there exists in his various tendencies
(issuing in needs, desires, drives), which incline him toward some particular
kind of ‘fulfillment’. The present
state of these tendencies – i.e., their actuation or inhibition, their
modifications due to heredity, to environment, to their ‘channelization’ to
specific ends by intellectual, moral and cultural education, to our cognitive
and volitive response to them in the give and take of daily life: this entire vital, changing complex –
determines the present state of a man’s soul.
They constitute his spiritual orientation. Obviously, the man striving for Sanctity never stops trying to
effect in his soul an orientation that accords perfectly with the exigencies of
his dignity as an adopted child of God.
Speaking more popularly, he tries to reproduce in his own soul an
orientation that is essentially the same as that which existed in Jesus Christ,
the ‘natural’ Son of God. Thus, if we
want to be Saints, we have to be cognizant of all the tendencies of our nature,
their scope, their present state of development, of which are to be cultivated,
of which denied, of which moderated (and to what extent). Only then can we expect to work effectively
and travel swiftly toward Holiness.
To
give a thorough explanation of the various tendencies, innate and acquired,
actual and habitual, would require a trained psychologist. But we can at least point out the profound
(innate) tendencies. Psychologists
recognize three spheres of development of human life: the biological, the psychosocial and the spiritual. Though logically distinct, they cannot in
practice be completely isolated from one another. In each of them can be seen two well defined tendencies: the tendency to self-preservation (includes
consolidation) and the tendency to communication. In the biological sphere there exists the tendency to nourish
oneself (self-preservation) and to reproduce oneself (communication). In the psychosocial sphere there is the
tendency to maintain oneself among other beings – i.e., discourage aggression
and the infringement of rights – (self-preservation) and the tendency to band
together with others into social units (communication). In the spiritual sphere (as distinct from
supernatural) there is found the tendency to take up a respectable and
defensible position in the world of ideas (self-preservation) and the tendency
to inculcate one’s values, one’s philosophy of life in others
(communication).
This
gives us a picture of what man is both in the abstract and in the concrete.
This is the creature that must be divinized.
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