PASSIVE PURIFICATIONS. - To remove from the soul the obstacles that stand in the way of full perfection (sins, vices, inordinate passions, purely natural tendencies), one must first eliminate them through mortification (v.): and this is active p.
No one, however, can discern in the most hidden recesses of his interior the countless imperfections and vicious tendencies that infect even his practice of virtue (cf. the list that St. John of the Cross draws up, Dark Night, bk. I, chs. 2-7), nor much less purify himself of them thoroughly; for this purpose a special intervention of God is required, of a mystical order: the grace of infused contemplation, which enlightens the soul, revealing to it the whole complex of its impurities, and strips it radically through a long and most painful purgation: and this is passive p., called by St. John of the Cross the "dark night," which "is understood as the purgative contemplation, which passively causes in the soul the renunciation of itself and of all things" (ibid., prologue to the 1st stanza).
Passive p. is twofold, as the Mystical Doctor explains: "The first night or p. is the sensory one, with which the soul is purified according to the senses, accommodating them to the spirit; and the other is the spiritual night or p., with which the soul is purified and stripped according to the spirit, accommodating it and disposing it for union with God" (ibid., bk. I, ch. 8).
I. PASSIVE PURIFICATIONS OF THE SENSES
This is proper to beginners, leading them to pass to the state of the proficient. A double element must be distinguished in it, one negative and the other positive: a) the negative element of the passive purification of the senses is a prolonged spiritual aridity, which makes discursive meditation impossible: "They no longer know where to turn the sense of the imagination and reasoning, because they can no longer take a step to meditate as they formerly used to do" (ibid., l. I, ch. 8). b) The positive element of this passive purification is a beginning of dark mystical contemplation, which reveals itself through a vivid desire for God (by which the aforementioned aridity is distinguished from a natural disposition to melancholy); however, "this contemplation is hidden and secret even to the one who possesses it" (loc. cit.). At that point of the interior life the work of the spiritual director is most important, to reassure the soul, preventing it from turning back to restore discursive meditation, by then useless and harmful (St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, stanza 3, v. 3, §§ 4-13).
II. PASSIVE PURIFICATIONS OF THE SPIRIT
Proper to the "soul that God destines for a higher perfection" (Dark Night, bk. II, ch. 1), the purification of the spirit is separated from the preceding one by a more or less long period, during which the soul enjoys the fruits of the now habitual contemplation (ibid.), but in which notable imperfections are still found: a presumptuous display of one's gifts, vanity and arrogance, loss of the respect due to God (ibid., bk. II, ch. 2). Then there supervenes, terrible for the torments it brings with it, the passive purification of the spirit: "God strips their powers, affections and senses, both spiritual and sensory, both exterior and interior, leaving the intellect in darkness, the will arid, the memory empty, and the affections of the soul in a supreme affliction, bitterness and anguish, depriving it of the feeling and taste it formerly had for spiritual goods" (ibid., ch. 3). The operative principle of this purification is a more penetrating contemplation, which, by manifesting to the soul the most vivid contrast that exists between the divine light and perfection and its own impurity, causes it an indescribable sorrow: "As this pure light invades the soul to expel its impurity, the soul feels itself so impure and wretched that it seems to it that God has become its adversary and it an enemy of God" (ibid., ch. 3). A true purgatory, whose pain not even the spiritual father can alleviate (ibid., ch. 7), which often drags on for years.
Trials connected with that fundamental purification are often horrible temptations, a spirit of blasphemy, scruples, perplexities, sometimes, in stronger and more favored souls, even visible assaults, with blows and suggestions of every kind, by the devil. Everything tends to make the soul better feel its own nothingness, so that it may hope from God alone for liberating Grace. Overcoming every obstacle, finally "the soul reaches the spiritual union of the perfect love of God" (ibid., ch. 14). Then, says the Ven. Mary of the Incarnation, "the soul in its unity and in its center remains, in an actual love, in the embraces of the Spouse, the supersubstantial Incarnate Word" (Ecrits Spir., II, Relation de 1654, § LXXVI, V [13th state of prayer, part 1]). V. MYSTICISM.
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Ernesto Mura