The desire for the extirpation of personal flaws often masks a deeper corruption: spiritual pride. When the soul demands relief from its faults primarily to secure psychological tranquility, it misinterprets the teleology of purgation, substituting self-satisfaction for the absolute reality of God. St. John of the Cross demonstrates that the lower faculties crave an unblemished self-image, transforming an intrinsic spiritual good into a vehicle for selfishness. True transformation within the Dark Night requires the complete subordination of the ego, wherein even our persistent imperfections are recognized as providential instruments designed to shatter self-reliance and anchor the will in God alone.

  • The Teleology of Purgation: How a well-intentioned desire to eradicate faults becomes corrupted when the ultimate end is self-directed peace rather than the glory of God.
  • Motive as a Cause: An analysis of how an ordered object (virtue) is entirely ruined when married to selfishness.
  • Providential Faults: The metaphysical necessity of persistent imperfections as a tool utilized by God to cultivate true humility and break the reliance on human praise.
  • The Oil of the Wise Virgins: Interpreting Matthew 25 through a Carmelite lens, shifting the focus from external validation to an interior orientation directed solely toward the Divine.

You have the concepts, but you need the tool. When the audio ends and the silence returns, don't go back to "trying harder." Use the "5-Minute Prayer Reset" to stabilize your interior life and prepare for the Divine Physician.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. This week I want to talk about the imperfection of pride possessed by beginners in the spiritual life. John talks about this in the Dark Night, and what struck me when I revisited it was his comment that many people are anxious for God to remove their faults and imperfections, but their motive is personal peace rather than God. Consider a situation in a person's spiritual life where we want to remove our imperfections and faults, but we don't want it for God's sake—we want it for our own personal peace. That is selfishness. In other words, wanting these faults removed isn't for the sake of being close to God; it's because you don't want to deal with the outcome of the fault, meaning you are only thinking about yourself. In the abstract, getting rid of faults is a good thing, but if the reality is that you are doing it for your own personal peace and don't really care about God, then the means end up at a bad end, which I find very fascinating.

John continues by saying that these people fail to realize that were God to remove their faults, they might very well become more proud and presumptuous. Wanting to remove your faults for the sake of your personal peace instead of union with God is an act of spiritual pride. What's worse is if God actually removed the faults, you would become more prideful because you are only looking for your personal peace and for yourself. Sometimes God allows this—and this is what I love about the spiritual life, because you wouldn't think this—but St. John says that if God removed these faults, the person would become worse instead of better.

This is important because it means our motives—the source from which we decide to do something—order both the means and the end, and actually affect the end. If the end is having certain faults removed, but your motive is selfishness, that selfishness infects the whole process from the start. Even though removing faults is good in the abstract, because it is married to a selfish motive—and motive and object cannot be separated—it is ruined. Your own selfishness ruins something good, which is sin, and the reality of that is amazing.

John even says that these same people minimize their faults and at other times become discouraged by them because they think they are already past them. When the faults return, they fail to realize that maybe God is allowing the fault to remain for humility, so they can trust in God, get over themselves, and let God work through those faults to bring them closer to Him. This changes their motive from personal peace and selfishness to union with God, making it all about Him.

Finally, John says that people like this dislike praising anyone else, but they certainly love to receive praise and sometimes actively seek it. He compares them to the foolish virgins in Matthew 25 who looked for oil from the wise virgins. Seeking approval in the world rather than seeking it in God leads to that selfish motive. If you are seeking finite things in the world, like human fame or material things, you want to control them because your selfishness is driving it. John is saying that you need to prepare yourself by removing your selfishness and obtaining the oil, just as the wise virgins did—the oil of seeking God rather than seeking your own personal peace, pointing yourself entirely at God. Those were my thoughts on this one; I just wanted to share them, and I'll see you next time.