Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)

A father who lost his rank for marrying a poor weaver

John was born on 24 June 1542 at Fontiveros, a town in Old Castile near Ávila.^[8][9] His father, Gonzalo de Yepes, belonged to a family of silk merchants in Toledo — a family of conversos, that is, Jews converted to Christianity. An accountant in the service of his wealthy relatives, Gonzalo fell in love with Catalina Álvarez, a humble weaver, orphaned and without a dowry. For marrying her, he was disowned by his own kin, lost his rank, and was himself reduced to the weaver's trade.^[10][11][12] John's holiness is thus rooted in a love story that chose poverty over the honour of the world.

The father's death and hunger

Gonzalo died in 1545, when John was about three years old, leaving Catalina alone with three sons.^[13] The widow, without resources, moved from town to town seeking work at the loom. The family knew utter destitution: the father died in 1545, and John's brother Luis in 1547.^[14] This endured poverty would forever mark John's spirituality, for whom detachment would never be a schoolroom theory, but a bodily experience of want transfigured into desire for God alone.

The hospital, the school for the poor and the Jesuits

Around 1551, Catalina settled the family at Medina del Campo, a great commercial centre of Castile. John entered the College of the Doctrine of Christian Children, a school for poor children, where he learned to read and received his first education. He tried several manual trades without success — carpenter, tailor, carver, painter — then found his place serving the sick at the Hospital of the Conception, as a nurse and alms-collector.^[15][16]

While serving the sick, the young man attended from 1559 to 1563 the classes of the recently founded Jesuit college at Medina, where he received a solid formation in letters, rhetoric and philosophy.^[17] The double school of the hospital and the humanities forged a man at once charitable and lettered, later capable of writing the highest mystical theology in the purest language.

Entering Carmel in 1563

In 1563, John entered the Carmelite convent of Medina del Campo and took the habit under the name of Brother John of Saint Matthias (Juan de Santo Matía).^[18][19] The Carmelite Order, born in the 12th century on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, then lived according to a "mitigated" rule, softened over the centuries. The young religious, for his part, aspired from the outset to a more rigorous, poorer, more contemplative life — a presentiment of the reform he would soon carry forward.

The student of Salamanca

From 1564 to 1568, John studied philosophy and theology at the University of Salamanca, then one of the most prestigious in Europe and a home of the great Spanish scholasticism. There he acquired the Thomist rigour and the knowledge of Scripture that would structure his entire work: beneath the poet there is always a precise theologian.^[20][21]

The ordination of 1567 and the Carthusian temptation

Ordained a priest in 1567, John celebrated his first Mass at Medina, with his mother present.^[22] But the young soul was tormented: the mitigated Carmelite life seemed to him too lax for the thirst for the absolute that burned within him. He seriously considered leaving Carmel for the Carthusians, the most austere order of silence.^[23][24] It was that very temptation that would lead him, providentially, to his true vocation.

Saint Teresa of Ávila: "my brother and half my soul"

That same year, 1567, at Medina del Campo, John met Teresa of Ávila.^[25][26] The great reformer of the Carmelite nuns, who had already founded several monasteries of Discalced sisters, was seeking friars to extend her reform to the male Carmel. Struck by the spiritual quality of this young priest, she persuaded him to give up the Carthusians and to help her. Teresian tradition holds that she regarded him as one of the purest and holiest souls she had ever known.^[27]

"Although he is small, I hold him to be great in the eyes of God." — Saying attributed to Saint Teresa of Ávila by tradition^[28]

From this meeting was born one of the most fruitful spiritual friendships in the history of the Church: two mystics, two Doctors, who together would refound Carmel.

Duruelo: the first convent and the name "of the Cross"

On 28 November 1568, in a lent hovel in the hamlet of Duruelo, John and two companions opened the first convent of Discalced Carmelite friars, living according to the primitive rule of Carmel in radical poverty.^[29][30] It was there that Brother John of Saint Matthias changed his name: henceforth he would be John of the Cross, Juan de la Cruz — a programmatic name summing up his whole doctrine, for in his eyes there is no union with God without passing through the Cross of Christ.

"To come to the pleasure of all, seek the pleasure of nothing. To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing. […] For to come from all to all, you must deny yourself of all." — Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I^[31]

Spiritual director at the Incarnation of Ávila

From 1572 to 1577, John was confessor and spiritual director of the great monastery of the Incarnation at Ávila, which counted nearly one hundred and thirty nuns and of which Teresa herself had been appointed prioress.^[32] There, in the confessional and in the direction of souls, the theologian became a master of the interior life: his science was never abstract; it was born of the concrete discernment of the soul's paths towards God.

The war of the two Carmels

The reform did not come without clashes. The Calced Carmelites (of the mitigated observance) looked very unfavourably on these Discalced friars who implicitly reproached them with lukewarmness. The conflict, legally complex, set nuncios, superiors and chapters against one another.^[33][34] John of the Cross, loyal to the Teresian reform, became a target. The crisis would culminate in the hardest trial of his life: prison.

The seizure of December 1577

In the night of 2 to 3 December 1577, Calced Carmelites seized John, arrested him and led him by force to their convent at Toledo. He was ordered to renounce the reform; he refused.^[35][36][37] He was then treated as a rebellious brother.

Nine months in a dungeon

John was locked in a dark closet about two metres by three, without a window, formerly used as a latrine or storeroom, adjoining the meeting room. There he suffered from cold, hunger and vermin, and each week, in the refectory, underwent the public discipline — beatings with whips by the brethren.^[38][39] Deprived of everything, the mystic lived there his own dark night, in absolute destitution where God alone remains.

The Spiritual Canticle composed in darkness

It was in that dungeon, without books and without light, that the most luminous paradox of his life occurred: John composed from memory the first stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle, an amorous paraphrase of the Song of Songs, in which the soul seeks its Beloved.^[40][41] Poetry sprang from prison like water from the rock. The kindest gaoler supplied him with writing materials; the saint transcribed what suffering had made sing within him.

"Where have You hidden Yourself, my Beloved, and left me moaning? You fled like the hart, having wounded me; I went out after You, crying, and You were gone." — Saint John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, stanza I^[42]

The escape on the Assumption (August 1578)

After some nine months, in the night of 14 to 15 August 1578, on the eve of the Assumption, John escaped. Having patiently loosened the hinges of his door, he let himself down along the ramparts by means of a rope made of blankets, and found refuge with the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Toledo, who hid him.^[43][44] The man who came out of the dungeon, half dead, carried within him the highest mystical song of the Spanish language.

Freed, John set down in writing, in the years that followed, the commentaries on his poems: these are his four great treatises, in which the highest poetry is wedded to the most rigorous theology. Together they form a true map of the soul's journey towards union of love with God.

The Ascent of Mount Carmel: the "nada" and the active night

The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Subida del Monte Carmelo) describes the active purification of the soul: everything that man must, by grace, cut away within himself — disordered appetites, attachments, sensible consolations, even spiritual favours — so as to lean on nothing but naked faith.^[45] Here bursts forth the famous doctrine of nada ("nothing"), summed up in the drawing of Mount Carmel that John sketched for those he directed:

"To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing. To arrive at knowledge of all, desire knowledge in nothing. To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing. To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing in all things." — Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13^[46]

The Dark Night: the passive purification

The Dark Night (Noche oscura) continues the Ascent: it describes the passive purification, the one God Himself works in the soul without its being able to do anything about it, stripping it of all consolation to lead it to pure faith. John distinguishes the night of the senses from the night of the spirit, deeper and more painful.^[47] This "dark night of the soul", an expression that has become universal, is not despair but a trial of love: God withdraws sweetness in order to give Himself.

"O night that guided me! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that joined the Lover with His beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover!" — Saint John of the Cross, The Dark Night, stanza V^[48]

The Spiritual Canticle: the soul's nuptials

The Spiritual Canticle (Cántico espiritual), born in prison, sings in forty stanzas the journey of the soul-bride seeking the divine Bridegroom, from anguished searching to mystical marriage and transformation in God through love.^[49] It is the most lyrical of his writings, in which theology becomes pure nuptial song.

The Living Flame of Love: the transforming union

The Living Flame of Love (Llama de amor viva) describes the highest state of union, when the Holy Spirit sets the soul ablaze like a fire that no longer burns to purify but to transform into joy. There John unfolds the image of the cautery that heals and of the flame which, far from consuming, divinizes.^[50]

"O living flame of love, that tenderly wound my soul in its deepest centre! […] O sweet cautery! O delightful wound! O gentle hand! O delicate touch, that tastes of eternal life!" — Saint John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, stanzas I-II^[51]

Here are the four great treatises presented together, with their own spiritual subject:

The "todo y nada": all through nothing

The heart of his doctrine is a dialectic of all and nothing (todo y nada). The soul is made for the All who is God; yet no creature is God. As long as it clings to a finite good — even a good, even a spiritual one — it cannot be filled by the Infinite.^[52] Detachment is therefore not contempt for the world but the logic of love: one makes emptiness so that God may give all.

Naked faith, a light in the night

For John, the proper and immediate means of union with God is neither visions, nor consolations, nor reasonings, but faith, which he calls a "night" for the intellect — not because it is dark in itself, but because it surpasses all natural light.^[53] He sternly warns against attachment to extraordinary phenomena: the soul's safety lies not in sensible favours, but in pure faith, hope and charity.

The union of love: "In the evening of life, love"

All asceticism has but one goal: love. The night, detachment and the cross are worthwhile only as paths towards the union of love, which is man's end. Hence his most famous maxim, which has become a universal spiritual proverb:

"In the evening of our life, we shall be judged on love." — Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 64^[54]

This spirituality of total abandonment to God's action, which strips the soul of itself so that it may live only by the divine will, prepared from afar the great paths of interiority in Catholic spirituality, down to the way of trust and abandonment of later centuries.

The tireless founder in Andalusia

After his liberation, John held high responsibilities in the now recognized reform. He governed the convent of El Calvario, founded the college of Baeza (1579), became prior of Granada where he completed his great treatises, then provincial vicar of Andalusia (1585) and finally prior of Segovia (1588).^[55][56] The mystic was also an organizer, a builder and a guide of men.

The conflict with Nicolás Doria and disgrace

On Teresa's death (1582), leadership of the reform passed to Nicolás Doria, a partisan of a more centralized and rigid government. John, faithful to the Teresian spirit and defender of the nuns, opposed him. At the chapter of 1591, he was stripped of all his offices and relegated to the solitude of La Peñuela, in the Sierra Morena.^[57][58] The reformer knew, at the end, oblivion and humiliation — his last dark night.

Death at Úbeda, 14 December 1591

Stricken with erysipelas (a leg infection) at La Peñuela, John was transferred to the convent of Úbeda to be cared for. There he was at first received without gentleness by a prior prejudiced against him. Wasted by disease and sores, he died in the night of 14 December 1591, aged forty-nine, after asking for the Song of Songs to be read to him.^[59][60] Tradition reports his last words, full of the trust of a man who had lived only for love:

"This night I shall say Matins in Heaven." — Last words attributed to Saint John of the Cross by tradition^[61]

From beatification (1675) to canonization (1726/1727)

John of the Cross's reputation for holiness quickly prevailed. He was beatified on 25 January 1675 by Pope Clement X, then canonized on 27 December 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII (the solemn act is sometimes dated 1727 in the collections).^[62][63][64] His feast was fixed on 14 December, the day of his death.

The "Mystical Doctor" (1926)

On 24 August 1926, Pope Pius XI proclaimed John of the Cross a Doctor of the universal Church, bestowing on him the singular title of Doctor mysticus, the "Mystical Doctor".^[65][66] The Church thus recognized that this poor little Carmelite had given the theology of the interior life its highest and surest expression: a guide for every soul seeking union with God.

The poet and posterity

John of the Cross is not only a theologian: he is one of the greatest poets of the Spanish language, to the point of being declared patron of Spain's poets in 1952.^[67] His influence spans the centuries, from the Carmelites to philosophy (Edith Stein, who became a Carmelite, wrote on him The Science of the Cross) to modern art — Salvador Dalí's famous Christ of Saint John of the Cross was inspired by a drawing by the saint himself.^[68] But his true posterity is that of souls: for four centuries, The Dark Night has accompanied those who pass through the trial of faith.

"Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love." — Saint John of the Cross, Letters^[69]

• Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) — his friend, mother of the Carmelite reform, a Doctor of the Church like him.
• Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) — founder of the Jesuits, whose college at Medina educated the young John.
• Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595) — another great figure of the Catholic Reformation, a contemporary of John.
• The Catholic Reformation — the movement of the Church's regeneration, of which the Carmelite reform was one of the jewels.
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563) — the contemporary council that refounded Catholic doctrine and discipline.