“Supernatural union exists when God’s will and the soul’s are in conformity, so that nothing in the one is repugnant to the other. When the soul rids itself completely of what is repugnant and unconformed to the divine will, it rests transformed in God through love. … A soul makes room for God by wiping away all the smudges and smears of creatures, by uniting its will perfectly to God’s; for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God. When this is done the soul will be illuminated by and transformed in God.” (Ascent of Mount Carmel)

Saint John of the Cross will teach repeatedly a particular lesson that must be mastered over time. The refusal to give into the desire for the gratification of the appetites is the underlying principle that must motivate all practices of self-denial. Deprivation of the senses has value only inasmuch as it purges and purifies the will in its craving and coveting for immediate satisfactions. The goal is a nakedness of desire, a poverty of desire, so that interior desire is consumed, instead, with an intense longing for God. Desire does not die like a fire with no fuel to feed it; rather, it becomes a concentrated fire of greater desire that can be directed to God and his pleasure. Self-denial of all kinds can pave this inner transformation. –Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation