Sharing in the Glory of the Dominions
Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses” (De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19). This earthly knowledge includes all sense knowledge we have gained about the Gospel stories. We read and meditate on them, listen to sermons, and learn much about God through rational deduction. As we arrive at certain truths of the faith, those truths are proposed to the will, which chooses them as goods, resulting in growth in faith, hope, and charity.
The truths we discern through our senses and rational thought primarily concern knowledge about God, rather than an immediate experience of God Himself. While our earthly understanding can lead us to recognize certain truths about God, God’s true essence remains beyond the grasp of our natural way of understanding. Thus, to truly know God in His essence—before we experience the fullness of this knowledge in the afterlife through the Beatific Vision—we must be drawn into a form of deep spiritual contemplation that is given to us as a grace. This kind of contemplation, known as infused contemplation, elevates our souls beyond their natural capabilities, allowing us to receive a direct illumination of divine truth. This takes place in a new and profound way on the sixth step.
Step Six perfects the Illuminative Way of the Proficient. Associated with this stage are the Dominions, the highest choir of the central triad. The soul who enters into this stage continues to experience the Prayer of Union, gazing heavenward in habitual contemplation. Saint Thomas Aquinas speculated that the angelic choir of the Dominions does not directly interact with us or the physical world but is fully occupied with the contemplation of God and communication with the Celestial Hierarchy. Though the three highest choirs—Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—most directly contemplate and illumine God’s pure love, wisdom, and authority, they communicate the knowledge they receive from the Trinity to the Dominions who act as their intermediary to the five lower choirs tasked with the things of the world.
As we ponder the human participation in the glory of the Dominions, we recognize that any such participation is a sharing in divine mysteries through infused contemplation. Rather than the Dominions coming to interact with the human soul, the human soul is invited to ascend to the glory of the Dominions to participate in their other-worldly contemplation.
The name “Dominion” implies a lordship, or ruling authority, by which they govern the Celestial Hierarchy with pure love, wisdom, and authority, establishing dominion over all of creation as the highest mediators of God’s will. When a human soul is drawn into their level of glory, it appears reasonable that the soul also shares in their authority over the spiritual world and becomes a powerful instrument in establishing God’s dominion over all. Though the Principalities directly act upon the world, the Dominions govern from the heavenly realm. We can only prayerfully speculate how humans who enter this realm through mystical prayer will share in that mediation of God’s dominion.
Because the mysteries we ponder in this stage are otherworldly, we will meditate upon the Ascension of our Lord for insight. The Ascension marks the moment when the humanity of Christ entered fully into Heaven, urging every sanctified soul to follow through pure contemplation.
As explained in more detail in Part One, Chapters Six and Eight, Saint John of the Cross describes this stage in the Active Night of the Spirit where the soul seeks God in new ways, recognizing earthly insufficiency for union with God and realizing that a second death, or purification, must take place. In the Sixth Dwelling Places, Saint Teresa of Ávila explains that “delicate and subtle impulses” within the soul passively purge it, and various contemplative graces are received in the form of interior ecstasies, raptures, trances, and intellectual visions, leading to a “fiery dart” which leads to Betrothal. Saint Bonaventure assigns “commanding” to this stage. Divine grace now governs the soul as truth is assimilated by self-contempt and mortification. The intensity of Christ’s sufferings are understood, and all-consuming hope drives the soul to follow Him into a final spiritual purification.
Ascension: The Soul’s Ascent to Higher Realms
Quotes in this reflection are taken from the RSV-CE translation
“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.’ And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:6–9).
Prayerfully try to imagine the Apostles standing on the ground and looking up as our resurrected Lord ascended into Heaven. What was going through their minds? Perhaps they hoped Jesus would descend again. Perhaps there was a sense of loss. And perhaps they wanted to follow Him. The interior disposition of the Apostles’ minds and hearts gives us much to ponder as we consider this sixth step on the spiritual journey.
Recall that after Jesus’ Resurrection, He appeared to Mary Magdalene and said, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:15–17). That prophecy had come true. Jesus ascended to the Father in their sight. Though they might have hoped He would return, they likely knew in the depths of their spirits that He would not. There would have been a sense that His Ascension was definitive, marking an end of their earthly relationship with Jesus and a new beginning to that which awaited them—a new, profound, transforming, and purely spiritual relationship by which they would cling to Him as He clings to them from Heaven.
The new beginning they would soon experience was shrouded in mystery. Jesus’ final words to them were, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Though they did not yet understand what He meant, they would have certainly had a holy curiosity about and hope in what was next.
As we ponder Jesus’ Ascension, it’s useful to join the Apostles in their heavenly gaze. Once a soul has conquered sin and every habitual attachment to sin, and is sharing in the new life of the Resurrection, its eyes must turn to Heaven in anticipation of ascending with our Lord to the heavenly realm to be with Him there through the prayer of union.
When Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to hold onto Him, he qualified it with, “I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Now that Jesus has ascended, we must cling to Him in a new way. In the earlier stages of spiritual development, we are similar to Mary Magdalene and the Apostles during Jesus’ public ministry. As we study and learn the faith, learn to meditate, and engage in apostolic works, there is excitement and insight gained that produces zeal. However, as we have seen, our initial conversion produces many spiritual attachments that now need to be purged. We become attached to the idea of God, to our conceptual understanding and insights, and to the good feelings we experience by serving Him. In this stage, Jesus is saying to us, “Do not cling to any of those initial experiences any longer because I have ascended to my Father, and I wish you to follow so that you may know me in my most pure form.” How do we follow our Lord in His Ascension? We begin by gazing to Heaven, knowing that we must die even more fully to everything in this world if we are to be with Him in His ascended form in Heaven.
The angelic choir of the Dominions acts as a bridge between Heaven and Earth. They gaze upward toward the Trinity and receive the pure light of the Beatific Vision. In this stage, it seems that Saint Thomas’ teaching that “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses” no longer applies because the light they receive in their intellect is above all earthly and sensory concepts. They also turn toward Earth, implementing the divine will with loving care. The holy souls who share in their glory do the same. In part, they engage in pure acts of contemplation, becoming enlightened by divine mysteries that are beyond what any knowledge gained on Earth through the five senses can convey. Those mysteries are then communicated through them in this world in ways that are far above the use of human reason. They participate in the establishment of God’s dominion over the world in mysterious ways that even they cannot articulate in human language.
Saint Teresa of Ávila refers to the experience in this stage as a “delicious death.” While describing the prayer of union exercised in the Fifth Dwelling Places, she says:
This is a delicious death, for the soul is deprived of the faculties it exercised while in the body: delicious because, (although not really the case), it seems to have left its mortal covering to abide more entirely in God. So completely does this take place, that I know not whether the body retains sufficient life to continue breathing; on consideration, I believe it does not; at any rate, if it still breathes, it does so unconsciously (V.I #3).
This is the way we share in the Ascension of our Lord—by following Him into the heavenly realm. Though few attain this depth of prayer and union with God, it is entirely possible. While on earth, our bodies are incapable of sharing in the highest forms of union with God. For that reason, in order to ascend to where our Lord resides, the perfected souls will be drawn to the heavenly realm in their spirits, in a sense, leaving their bodies behind. Recall Saint Paul’s description of this experience: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:2–4).
The “third heaven” Saint Paul speaks of appears to refer to a mystical experience in which a soul temporarily ascends to the heavenly realm by prayer to enter into greater union with our Lord. In pondering this level of union, Saint Paul’s words are helpful because he describes the experience as hearing “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” In other words, this level of communion with God is beyond what can be explained with human concepts. It can only be understood by experiencing it within our spirits.
As the Apostles gazed toward Heaven after Jesus ascended, they experienced a sense of loss. This sense of loss marks the beginning of the prayer of union because it is a transition to something new, necessitating death to that which was formerly enjoyed. Saint John of the Cross explains that this Dark Night of the Spirit is exceptionally painful, even more painful than the initial Dark Night of the Senses. As the spirit is invited to ascend with our Lord to the heavenly realm by infused faith, hope, and charity, it realizes that there is a new death it must experience. The intellect, will, and memory—the spiritual parts of man—must undergo a complete transformation, leaving earthly knowing, remembering, and loving behind, so as to know and love in a new and supernatural way. Though this new death will not be fully accomplished until the soul enters the highest stages, it must begin now by acknowledging this new sense of spiritual purification by which the former self dies so that the spirit can be caught up to God in the “third heaven.”
“Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:12–14).
After Jesus ascended, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem with the Mother of God and some other women and went to the upper room where they had celebrated the Last Supper. There they, “with one accord devoted themselves to prayer.” This must be our disposition if we want to ascend with our Lord in the prayer of union. This does not mean that we must become cloistered nuns or monks; it means that we must practice interior prayer all day, every day. Our minds must become wholly turned to God, and our wills must continuously rest in His divine will. We must pray constantly, without ceasing, rejoicing in God’s continued presence in our lives. We must look for Him everywhere, in every person, loving Him in all we do.
For those who live an active life, consider Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Though she was a nun, attended Mass every day, and engaged in Eucharistic adoration every day, her contemplative life also consisted of constant activity. She tirelessly cared for the poorest of the poor, the sick, and the abandoned. As she did so, she sought out the face of Jesus everywhere and said that she found Him in the “distressing disguise of the poor.”
No matter what your vocation is or how your day is occupied, it is possible to become a true contemplative in the midst of the world. Jesus is all around us. He is present in the sinner and the saint, the poor and rich, the powerful and weak, in everyone and in every situation in which we find ourselves. To find Him, we must let go of many former ideas, experiences, and spiritual habits. Just as a sinner must transition to a perpetual state of grace, in this stage the grace-filled person must transition from being holy to being a pure contemplative.
The beginner finds Jesus on retreats, at parish missions, in daily prayer time, in study, and in many other religious activities, all of which are good and necessary. As the person’s faith grows, that flame must be protected so that it will continue to grow. However, in this stage of spiritual development, which perfects the Illuminative Way, the soul must become so inflamed with God’s love that it is impossible to extinguish. The soul must begin to seek out Jesus in new ways, bringing Him to others, loving sinners, forgiving without hesitation, distributing mercy in the face of rejection, enduring every hardship with love, and doing so relentlessly and with supernatural zeal.
The key to this transitional stage, parallelled by the Dominions, is to actively accept the transition. Be willing to let go of anything that draws you back to the beginning stages. Remain free from all habitual sin. Don’t even allow yourself to consider it. Be at peace with a new life of charity that looks only at the other, completely forgetting about yourself. Just as the Apostles gazed at our Lord as He ascended beyond their eyes, we must let go of our Lord as we used to know and love Him. We must join the Apostles, the holy women, and the Mother of God in the upper room for prayer and anticipate being drawn up to the “third heaven” with Saint Paul where we come to know our Lord in a new and far more ordered way.
Summary of Step Six: Perfect Illumination
Directed by the Dominions, the soul reaches a higher level of spiritual maturity. It starts to perceive the world through the lens of divine wisdom and understands its place within the greater cosmic order. The soul’s decisions and actions are increasingly guided by a desire for God’s glory rather than personal gain. It begins to experience a foretaste of heavenly realities, longing for full union with God, and realizes that there is more to come. The soul longs to be taken from this world and into the next, but seeks God’s glory and the salvation of souls above all else. It anticipates the glories of the Kingdom and yearns for its firm establishment.
The grace needed for this stage can be found modeled in the second Glorious Mystery, the Ascension, where the soul ascends to higher realms.
The divine mysteries in which one is called to participate during this sixth step of the journey begin to probe the supernatural in such a way that the soul must enter into a new spiritual death. Though it is a beautiful death, it is also all-consuming as the soul prepares to enter a more profound depth of habitual contemplation by experiencing moments of the prayer of union.
If this stage is beyond what you can comprehend, then you are on the right track. It truly is incomprehensible, at least to human concepts. The only way to understand this depth of union is to experience it. Even then, the experience cannot be translated into human language. Be at peace with this incredible life to which we are all called, and remain hopeful that God will bestow it upon you if you fully cooperate with all the graces leading up to this step.
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