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Three years ago, during my annual spiritual exercises, I was in the presence of the Blessed
Sacrament and the passage of the storm at sea came to mind. I was alone in a boat and the storm raged
around me. My boat had several leaks and much of my attention and energy was focused on trying to
repair it. Jesus approached me, walking on the water, bathed in light, and said, “Glory, step out on the
water. Come to me and abandon your boat.” I replied, “But Jesus, if I leave my boat it will sink.” He
responded, “Let it sink.” Jesus’ response took me by surprise since I expected him to come into my boat
and repair it for me. I protested, “Jesus, it’s not fair. Everyone else has a boat!” And he just smiled,
beckoning me out on the water, and into the light he radiated. I understood that he was not going to
leave me stranded—somehow this would work out! I stepped out of the boat, and as I walked towards
him I felt certain attachments fall away. My heart was filled with desire to continue along this path that
he was calling me to, and my will was made firm in this resolve. Years before, he asked me to leave
everything to follow him. Now, he was asking me to leave myself behind as well, and to live in him and
in the radiance of his light.

As we grow in our spiritual life, God teaches us to love as he loves. This is the love we
contemplate in the Trinity, where each person is poured out to the other in total self-donation and
entirely for the sake of giving the other joy. St. John Paul II comments on how this love entails a death
to self; “Love consists of a commitment which limits one’s freedom- it is a giving of the self, and to give
oneself means just that: to limit one’s freedom on behalf of another” (Wojtyla 135). To love is to be led
like St. Peter to the cross—that is, “where you do not wish to go” (Jn 21:18)—and yet it is where we
yearn to go to be with the Lord. Loving in this way requires a detachment from self that is not possible
without God’s transforming grace. In this paper, I explore three aspects of this journey to union with
God, drawing from the wisdom of the saints. The first aspect is how the Lord pours his love into the soul
in the prayer of union, with the effect of the soul desiring to live for him alone. The second is how the
soul is led to seek and embrace God’s will as the desire of union moves it to no longer seek itself in
anything but to seek only what God wants. The third aspect is forged in times of trial or suffering, where
the soul abandons itself to Divine Providence. It chooses to believe in God’s love, goodness, and
wisdom in the midst of darkness and contradiction, and this purification of the spirit brings it to a
profound transformation: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself up for me” (Gal 2:20). It is truly the power of God that transforms us and makes us capable of
loving as he loves; it brings us to forget ourselves in the joy of loving him.

The prayer of union is “not something that is primarily about technique or having certain
experiences, but it’s about growing in relationship” (Martin 298). The experience of this prayer creates
such a desire for God that we are ready to do anything he asks and whatever will most console his heart.
St. Elizabeth describes this desire for God while contemplating her crucifix after making her profession,
“And now I have only one desire, to love Him all the time, to be zealous for his honor as a true bride, to
give him joy, to make him happy by preparing a dwelling and a refuge for Him in my soul, so that he may
forget, by the strength of my love, all the abomination of the wicked” (Trinity). The saints speak of being
overcome by the love of God and inundated by his presence, his beauty, and his goodness, to the point
that they want nothing else but God alone. St. John of the Cross describes this longing for the Beloved
as a wounding of the soul. “Why have you struck it so sharply as to wound it so deeply, and yet not
healed it by killing it utterly with love?” (Cross Loc 11231). The soul so desires to be one with the Lord
that it is no longer afraid of anything that may happen to it. The soul even asks for death after the
wounding so that it may live only for him. Detachment from creatures and from self is one of the gifts
received in the experience of infused prayer. The loving contemplation of God delivers the soul from
everything that had kept it ensnared in self-enclosed selfhood (Hein Blommestijn 103). This disposition
of being willing to suffer anything for love of the Lord will sustain the soul on the journey still to come.

The experience of God in the prayer of union moves the soul to seek him in all things, especially
in the fulfillment of his holy will. St. Teresa explains that although the prayer of union can be very
helpful in bringing the soul into conformity with God’s will, it is not the end, for although “death to self
is essential; the prayer of union isn’t” (Martin 300). In the chapter on the grades of prayer, Aumann
explains that a soul can be experiencing mystical contemplation and still struggling with defects, for
although this prayer helps the soul to seek God in all things and detach from the world and the flesh, it
does not instantaneously produce a saint (Aumann 335). In fact, the soul must seek after him with great
determination. St. Teresa exhorts her nuns, “Courage my daughters! Let’s be quick to do this work and
weave this little cocoon by getting rid of our self-love and self-will, our attachment to any earthly thing,
and by performing deeds of penance, prayer, mortification, and of all the other things you know”
(Martin 298). The soul’s task is to be obedient and faithful to the interior motions of the Holy Spirit
“who will guide you into all truth” (Jn 16:13), especially the truth of where the Lord is to be found in
situations, relationships, and tasks. Ardently in love and determined to be with the Lord wherever he is,
the soul will not rest until it finds him, “as soon as we realize he wills anything, we desire it ourselves
with all our might, and take the bitter with the sweet” (Aumann 354). Jesus spoke passionately of
fulfilling God’s will when he declared, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish
his work” (Jn 4;34). He would carry out the will of the Father to the end, giving his life as a ransom for
many, in an ignominious death on the cross. We see in the lives of the saints that this is where the soul
will also be led, if it truly desires to be with the Lord where he is.

When the soul reaches this stage in its following of Jesus, it has become part of his inner circle
and enjoys great intimacy with him. Before bringing the soul to the cross, Jesus will again make the
invitation to greater surrender, beckoning it to step out on the water. The soul, now ardently in love,
responds without hesitation, “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:67-
68). And in the measure that the soul desires deeper union with the Lord, it gives him permission to do
with it as he sees best. This implies a total surrender to Divine Providence, allowing for three types of
suffering described by St. John of the Cross: “trials, discomforts, fears, and temptations from the world;
temptations, aridities, and afflictions in the senses; and tribulations, darknesses, distress, abandonment,
temptations and other trials in the spirit” (Aumann 351). The soul looks to Jesus on the cross and
keeping its focus on him, “follows him through the darkness” (Aumann 359). Jesus’ abandonment on
the cross is the disposition that the soul clings to in its journey. St. John of the Cross describes this as
follows: “Even though his whole being experienced the desolation of the crucifixion in all its sensory and
spiritual dimensions, the ‘higher’ part of his soul remained in the peace of the beatific vision (Aumann
367). And for St. Therese: “In a word, everything was sadness and bitterness. And still peace, always
peace, reigned at the bottom of the chalice” (Aumann 367).

The soul clings to the most basic and simple truths that it has learned throughout its journey
thus far; God is good, God is wise, God is faithful, God is love, God is all powerful, and God is with me.
God will only allow in his providence what is good for me. The soul that has experienced infused
contemplation will know these truths in the depths of its being and will be faithful. Even if the soul
should remain in this hell of purification for the rest of its life, if it knew that was pleasing to God, it
would accept this purification and find joy in consoling him. Once the soul is brought to the point of no
return, St. John of the Cross describes the transformation that occurs: “When you chastise your touch is
gentle, but it is enough to destroy the world…you have wounded me in order to cure me, O divine hand,
and you have put to death in me what made me lifeless, what deprived me of God’s life in which I now
see myself live” (Martin 370). What the soul desired and could not do for itself, God has done. God has
transformed the soul, making it capable of loving as he loves; for the sake of the other. The soul is freed
from the chains of sin, and the roots of this sin in the tendency to seek the self, and is opened up to a
freedom to love that before was unknown to it. God has cleared the way, emptied, and expanded the
capacity of the soul to receive his love. He is now able to fill the soul with his Holy Spirit, the love of God
that is poured out into our hearts. The soul is now freed from self to make God the center of its life and
responds with the same outpouring of love, living for him alone, and in him, for others.

In my reading of the Fulfillment of all Desire, I was deeply moved by the witness of the saints,
who, sustained by the grace of God, went all the way in their following of Christ. When we give God
space to act in our lives and in our souls, there is nothing that he cannot use for good, even our own sins
and the sins committed against us by others. We are moved from a position of self-centeredness or self-
protection into a disposition of security and abandonment, because we know him in whom we have put
our trust (2 Tim 1:12). This knowledge of him is a gift that comes through prayer, and in a special way
through the prayer of union where we taste and see the goodness of the Lord. This gift of prayer infuses
great strength and desire in the soul, for we know the Lord with an interior knowledge, and not only by
what we have heard and believed in faith. This prepares the soul to go forward in selfless fidelity, living
to please him in everything, seeking him in his will, and giving to him in love. The purification of the soul
is not complete until the Lord brings it through the dark night of the spirit. Everything up until now has
been a preparation for the soul to endure this purification that will bring it to the freedom it has been
praying for and most deeply desires. The prayer of abandonment, written by Charles de Foulcauld,
beautifully expresses the disposition needed to follow the Lord through the darkness: “Whatever you
may do, I thank you. I am ready for all. I accept all you ask. Let your will be done in me, I wish no more
than this.” Now the soul not only has good desires and dreams of giving its life to God, it has been made
capable of it by his transforming grace. St. Bernard uses the story of the widow’s mite to explain how
this is possible: “Although the creature loves less, being a lesser being, yet if it loves with its whole heart
(Mt. 22:37) nothing is lacking, for it has given all” (Martin 380). The Lord only needs our faithful
cooperation, our obedience, and our willingness. We take one step at a time, out on the waters, and
one day we will reach that place of union where we live in him, through him, and for him, in the
radiance of his light and his love.