The first time I was tottering on the edge of just letting God have his way with me and making me (letting me) suffer things that are too far beyond me to always be comfortable, my overly analytical brain started into overly analytical overdrive.

The trouble was, I had some faint idea what was happening. And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing if you have any tendency to dominate your experiences with your ideas.

I had come a long way with Saint Thomas Aquinas, and I knew that he considered infused contemplation to be a very active thing. Meanwhile, every page of Saint John of the Cross is a testimony to his central theme: in both the later purifications and in contemplation itself, we are passive to God’s work in us (he is the potter and we are the clay).

In a conflict of words, I wanted to know whether it was to be active or passive? After all, was I to be active or passive? If, in part, what we do follows on what we know, and if I couldn’t ignore what I’d learned from these two Doctors of the Church, what was I to be thinking?

I wasted too much blood on this. They are both right.

In the realm of values and purportedly objective descriptions (vera speculativa), Thomas is right. This infused contemplation is a suffering of the deep things of God – something far beyond our human nature; if it in any way affects a human being, then her activity far outstrips her natural state. That means it’s a very active thing.

But in the realm of subjective descriptions or practical experiences (vera practica), John is right. This infused contemplation requires, for the contemplative in the cloister, cessation of all conscious activity on the part of the recipient, and for the contemplative on the roads, the acceptance to be led by the hand and to see things that, with her own efforts, she could never attain to. Infused contemplation cannot be done by us. It can only be done to us and we, poor little creatures that we are, assent.

So ended a quarrel of words with two Doctors of the Church. As may be expected, they both came out winning, and I ended up the loser until I ate humble pie.