The Ascent of Mount CarmelChapter IX. Faith is the proximate and proportionate means of the understanding by which the soul may attain to the divine union of love. Proofs from the Holy Scriptures

It appears then from what I have written that the under- | standing, if rightly disposed for the divine union, must be pure, and empty of all sensible objects, disengaged from all clear intellectual perceptions, inwardly tranquil and still, resting on faith; for faith is the sole proximate and proportionate means of the soul’s union with God, seeing that there is no other alternative, but that God is either seen, or believed in. For as God is infinite, so faith proposes Him as infinite; and as He is Three and One, so faith proposes Him to us as Three and One. And thus by this means alone, that is faith, God manifests Himself to the soul in the divine light, which surpasses all understanding, and therefore the greater the faith of the soul the more is that soul united to God. This is the meaning of St. Paul when he said, ‘He that cometh to God must believe that He is."* Such an one must walk by faith, with his understanding in darkness, and in the obscurity of faith only; for in this darkness God unites Himself to the understanding, being Himself hidden in it, as it is written: ‘Darkness was under His feet, and He ascended upon the cherubim, and He flew upon the wings of the winds. And He made darkness His covert, His pavilion round about Him, dark waters in the clouds of the air.¹ The darkness ‘under His feet,’ serving for ‘His covert’ and ‘His pavilion,’ and ‘the dark waters,’ signify the obscurity of faith, which conceals Him. His ‘ascending on the cherubim, and His flying ‘on the wings of the winds,’ signify that He transcends all understanding. The ‘cherubim’ mean those who understand or contemplate; the ‘wings of the winds’ are the sublime and lofty notions or conceptions of the mind, above which His divine being is, which no man can ever comprehend.

2. This truth is shadowed forth in the Holy Scriptures, where we read that, when Solomon had finished the temple, God came down in a cloud, which filled it, so that the people could not see. ‘Then Solomon said: The Lord said that He would dwell in a cloud.’³ Moses also, on the mount, saw a cloud wherein God was hidden. And at all times, when God communicated with men, He appeared through a cloud. We read in the book of Job, that God spoke out of the darkened air: ‘The Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind.’⁴ These clouds signify the obscurity of faith, in which God is hidden when He communicates Himself to the soul. This will be removed at that time to which St. Paul referred when he said, “When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away ;’⁵ when ‘that which is in part,’ the obscurity of faith, shall be done away, and when ‘that which is perfect,’ the divine light, shall come.

3. This is prefigured in the army of Gedeon: the soldiers had lamps in their hands, which they saw not, because they were ‘within the pitchers.’ But when they had broken the pitchers the lamps gave light. Gedeon ‘gave them trumpets in their hands, and empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers.’⁶ So faith, of which these pitchers were a figure, contains the divine light, that is the truth which God is; and at the end of this mortal life, when the work of faith is done, and the pitchers broken, the light and glory of God will then shine forth.

4. It is therefore plain that the soul, which would in this life be united with God and commune immediately with Him, must unite itself to Him in the cloud where, according to Solomon, He has promised to dwell; and in the obscure air, wherein He was pleased to reveal His secrets to Job; and take up the pitchers of Gedeon, that it may hold in its hands, in the acts of the will, that light which is the union of love—though in the obscurity of faith—so that, as soon as the pitcher of life be broken, it may see God face to face in glory.

5. It remains for me now to describe particularly those notions and apprehensions which the understanding can admit; the hindrance and the injury they can do in the way of faith; and how the soul must be disposed with respect to them, so that they may be profitable rather than hurtful, both those which proceed from the senses as well as those which proceed from the spirit