Our Call to Holiness - 3

Love by its very nature effects union. But when God loves, the union produced by his love is transforming union "Oh night which united lover with Beloved, lover transformed in the Beloved." [St. John of the Cross - Night, stanza 5]

St. John of the Cross quite effectively synthesizes his theology of transforming union in these words: "To love is to work for God at being stripped of all that is not God. The soul then remains illuminated and transformed in God." In fact, "God so communicates his supernatural being to it that the soul seems to be God himself, possessing whatever God himself has." Moreover, "so perfect is this union that all the things both of God and of the soul are one in participant transformation." Thus, "the soul seems more God than soul. Indeed it is God by participation." Yet the soul always remains truly distinct from God. Actually it reaches the pinnacle of its personal individuation in this transformation.

Nemeck & Coombs