Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Date of this Version
1986
Citation
The Thomist 50 (1986), pp. 300-306.
Abstract
This work, though only recently published in English, was written in 1946-1948 us a doctoral dissertation. It was directed by the renowned Reginuld Garrigou-Lagrange, and presented at the Angelicum University in Rome. Originally composed in Latin, the work was speedily translated into several modern languages upon Wojtyla's election to the Papacy in 1978, and thus it is now available in English. The subject is the thought of St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite known as reformer of his order, as mystic, as poet, and honored also as Mystical Doctor of the Church. Wojtyla thus traces “the nature of the virtue of faith as described in the writings of St .John of the Cross" (p. 29) through the latter's tetralogy: The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love.