After exposing these principles of asceticism, we turn to the purification of the will by the theological virtue of charity. Saint John of the Cross treats this subject in the last section of book 3 of The Ascent of Mount Carmel. The teaching is not a matter simply of self-denial leading to an emptying of the will for God. While the ascetical task is important and required, what is indispensable for the grace of contemplation is a developed capacity for deeper self-emptying. No grace of contemplation can be expected as long as we indulge coveting tendencies in our lives. A release from immoderate, self-oriented desires that turn us inwardly upon ourselves is therefore a necessary preparation for any deeper life of prayer. Seeking to please ourselves as a motive for choices is always some variation of this damaging inward turn. In the view of Saint John of the Cross, this tendency demands serious efforts of reversal. If we aspire to the grace of contemplation, our will has to give itself with vigor to the will of God. We have to strive to give delight to God by our choices and by our renunciations, not seeking to find pleasure and delight simply for ourselves. As we turn away from pleasing ourselves, we become more empty and receptive inwardly to God’s promptings. The grace of contemplation in prayer then has an open window, if God chooses to bestow it. Otherwise, that window is sealed tight. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the deeper challenges in this purification of the will for the sake of contemplative graces. As the will exercises itself in interior self-renunciation, it opens itself to a loving union with the will of God. This increasing bond with the will of God is a necessary prerequisite for the prayer of contemplation.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 120-121). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

For Saint John of the Cross, it is not simply the pleasures and enjoyments of the senses in themselves that are the crux of the problem. The human experience of sense satisfaction is unavoidable. Even the desert monks of the early Christian centuries, who took on extreme physical hardships, no doubt preferred the taste of one cooked leaf to another or found one cool spring of water a better choice over another. The Gospel recounts that Saint John the Baptist, in his desert, along with his consumption of the unpalatable locusts, survived also on honey. The Christian perspective in this matter, when it is healthy, advocates a balanced approach. It does not propose a denigration of bodily life to the point of destroying or damaging it. We are an inseparable unity of body and soul as human persons, and bodily life has a sacred dimension, a truth that has far-reaching consequences in morality. But that unity of body and soul is precisely the point and the issue of importance in asceticism. Nothing of bodily life can be lived as though detached from the soul’s existence.

Even more to the point, bodily pursuits inevitably engage the will. The will and its desires remain always in a kind of dynamic consort with bodily, emotional, and intellectual activity. At the same time, the will is a primary reality in our lives by the manner in which it cooperates with or rebels against the graced invitations of God. Seeking union with God demands a deeply rooted determination of our soul to give our will fully in love to God. This cannot be accomplished without the desires of the will aligning themselves with the goal of a union with God’s will in all facets of bodily, emotional, and intellectual life. Most importantly, the will is the faculty of love in the soul. The will must be empty of desires for gratification if by a great love it is to seek for God as a primary desire. All that touches and enters into the desires of the will is crucial for the possibility of a union with God by means of love. It remains now to explain how the will in its capacity for love is affected by the principles of self-denial and asceticism. These two statements from book 2 of The Ascent to Mount Carmel in effect define the nature of sanctity and at the same time express the essential importance of the will’s purification in sanctity.

Haggerty, Donald. Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (pp. 107-108). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.