Shrine of Wisdom Magazine 83 (1940)
St John of the Cross
Twin-saint, as he has been called, to St. Teresa and filled with the same burning enthusiasm for the cause of reformation within the Carmelite Order and the extension of its work in Spain, St. John of the Cross played a greater part, perhaps, than any of her follow-workers in the establishment within the Order of a more rigidly disciplined branch of contemplatives¾the discalced or bare-footed Carmelites. This work, begun in the particular field of his own Order, was expanded by means of his writings into a more universal work¾the training of souls in mystical theology according to the universal principles on which depends a conscious experience of the Divine.
Judged solely by his external life, St. John appears as a man of great physical activity, an accomplished organizer and director, and a brilliant and successful teacher. His writings show him as a man of vigorous and highly cultured mind, trained in all the learning of the schools and turned towards the study and practice of mystical theology; a great contemplative who, through fullest self-giving in dedication to, and union with, the Divine, became a living channel of Divine Wisdom.
During the century before the birth of St. John, the vigorous life of the Renaissance had been energizing men’s minds to new activity. Spain was one of the leaders in European culture. Her great universities of Alcala de Henares and Salamanca were world-famous and attended by large numbers of students from many countries. The teachings of the great Neo-Platonists had long been brought back to Europe through the Arabian philosophers after their exile in the East. Plato and Plotinus were widely read in Latin translations, and highly valued by leaders of thought. The works of the Christian Neo-Platonist, Dionysius, were well know, and the writings of Eckhart*, Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroek were in circulation with their application to Christianity of many Neo-Platonic ideas, such as the idea of the Logos, transcendent, yet also immanent in the Divine “spark” within the soul: of the Ideal World, the eternal Thought of God in the image of which the material universe is formed; of the nature of evil as a negation or deficiency of good, having therefore no essential reality; of the ascent of the soul to union with the Divine by the stripping away of all that veils it from Him, so that alone it may approach the Alone.
In the writings of St. John, which are more concerned with the practice of the mystical art of the perfect life than with the doctrines of theology, the effect of these influences is present, but is rather implied than expressed directly, except in the case of his basic teaching of detachment, in which he closely follows St. Dionysius, though at the same time he shows that it has a certain positive aspect in addition to the negative.
Several of St. John’s contemporaries, including Juan d’Avila, Louis de Leon, Louis de Granada and Pedro Malon gave out in their writings many doctrines characteristic of Christian Neo-Platonism, but during the lifetime of St. John some of their books, with those of Tauler and Suso, were placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition, while some writers were imprisoned or else obliged to flee into exile.
Juan de Yepes, who afterwards became St. Juan of the Cross, was the son of a noble of Toledo who had been disinherited on his marriage to Catalina Alvarez, a beautiful peasant girl of Fontiveros in Old Castille.
Of their three sons, Juan, born in 1542, was the youngest. The second son died in infancy, and a few years after Juan’s birth Catalina was left a widow. By working hard at her craft of weaving, she managed to send her two sons to the village school where Juan’s exceptional ability and keen intelligence quickly brought him to the fore, while Francisco, the elder, showed so little promise that he soon left school and learned to weave. In spite of the difference between them, the brothers remained throughout their lives the closest friends, and whenever possible Francisco joined his brother, giving his labour in the service of the Church.
* Although the writings of Eckhart were prohibited soon after his death, they were circulated under other names and used by his disciples in their own works.
At any early age Juan’s love for religion had shown itself, and this may have influenced Catalina’s decision to move to Medina del Campo. A busy trading centre where her talented son would have greater opportunities. Here, again, his outstanding qualitative were quickly recognized, and at the age of fourteen the director of one of the city hospitals gave him employment on certain days of the week. In the intervals of hospital work, Juan was able to attend the new Jesuit College where, under a famous master, he studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. His special bent was towards psychology, the key to which he began to seek within his own soul through an interior life of meditation and contemplation. During these years of training he was described as attending earnestly and thoroughly to everything he did, so that both at the hospital and the college he won the confidence and good opinion of the authorities.
At the age of twenty-one he was offered the chaplaincy of the hospital but, feeling more and more strongly the call of the religious life, he entered a Carmelite monastery at Medina under the name of John of St. Matthias, taking the habit in 1563.
Although this community followed the mitigated, less severe, rule which had been sanctioned for Carmelite houses, he began here to practise the discipline of the original order. In the next year he was sent to the Carmelite college of the University of Salamanca where he studied for four years before being ordained priest. By this time he had a thorough knowledge of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and had studied the leading authorities of the Church, including St. Dionysius and St. Augustine. He had a remarkable knowledge of the Scriptures which he used continually in his writings. It is recorded in the annals of the university that he had exceptional intellectual power and that he was made lecturer in certain subjects.
Throughout these years he kept strictly the original Carmelite rule, practicing additional self-imposed discipline, and the desire grew in him to enter an order which followed a stricter rule. At the age of twenty-five, while on a visit to Medina, he was persuaded, rather against his inclination, to meet Teresa of Jesus, how fifty-two years old, who was engaged on a foundation there. At the meeting, each quickly recognized the rare quality and spirituality of the other, and Fr. John was soon satisfied that his duty lay with her in the reform of the Carmelite Order.
In a letter written soon after their meeting, Teresa said of him: “He is little in body, but to my mind great in the eyes of God. He is wise and has all the qualities required by our way of life. Though he is still quite young, everyone has some good to say of him. It is clear that God leads him by the hand; for in spite of the trying circumstances in which he has been placed and the tests to which I myself have put his virtue, the slightest imperfection has never been perceived in his conduct. He has a brave heart and great gifts of mind of which indeed he has need to embrace with so great confidence this new way of life.”
Fr. John, now John of the Cross, was the first to enter Teresa’s foundation for bare-footed friars at Duruelo. His mother and brother joined in the preparation of the cottage, and in this small and barely habitable place with a bed of straw and a stone pillow, he began a life not only of solitude and contemplation, but of active ministration to the peasants of the scattered villages.
After several months he was joined by Fr. Antonio who had been Prior of Medina, and Fr. Joseph from the same monastery. Within two years many others of a like spirit had been attracted and in 1570 they moved into a new monastery built for them at Mancera by a wealthy noble. Here Fr. John was Prior. Fr. Antonio had been given charge of the new monastery at Pastrana, and later Fr. John joined him there as master of the novices, but was soon made head of a newly-founded college for friars of the reform at Alcala de Henares, which was connected with the university of that town.
Under the leadership and example of this brilliant and sympathetic teacher who was a contemplative, an intellectual and an able administrator, the college quickly became famous, and many men of great spiritual and mental ability were sent out from it into the world.
After two years at Alcala de Henares, john of the Cross became chaplain and confessor to the Convent of the Incarnation at Avila where Teresa had been made Prioress with the difficult task of restoring order after a period of great laxity. This work was welcome to him as an opportunity for withdrawal from a life of administration to one of contemplation. With an aged friar as companion he lived near the convent and observed the primitive rule. Here he could study and meditate in solitude. The effects of his ministry were soon seen in the life of the convent and in the rapidly increasing number of the citizens of Avila who came to him for consolation and advice. Towards the end of 1572 Teresa wrote to Philip II: “The city is in amazement at the exceeding great good he is doing here. The people take him for a saint. In my opinion he is one and has been one all his life.”
His association with Teresa as her spiritual director and his knowledge and understand of the heights to which her soul had risen, and which were confirmed by his own interior experiences, must have been of the greatest value in giving him a clearer insight into the nature of the path to Divine union and all that lies within this consummation. He knew her writings well, and made references to them in his own works.
During these years at Avila, when the Reform was encompassed with difficulties and was meeting with great opposition from a section of the authorities and from the “Observant” or “Mitigated” branch of the Carmelite Order, John of the Cross was, in a sense, the centre of its life. He took no part in administration or disputes, but from his solitude there flowed a stream of spiritual strength and encouragement to his fellows.
In 1577 came a critical point in the life of the Reform. The papal Nuncio who had been sympathetic to Teresa’s ideas died and the new Nuncio, being informed through the Observant section, began a vigorous suppression of the bare-footed Carmelites. Fr. John and his companion had been licensed by the late Nuncio to live outside their own monastery, but the renewal of the licence seems to have been overlooked, and in December 1577 on a charge of rebellion the two friars were seized and removed to the Observant monastery at Avila. Next day Fr. John was sent to the Observant monastery at Toledo and was imprisoned in a cell about ten feet by six into which light and air entered only through a small opening high in the was communicating with another room. Here he had a bed of planks with a singled cover, and was given one meal of bread and water daily in the refectory, after which he was scourged by each of the brethren in turn. He was not allowed speech with anyone but the friar who guarded him. The only book he was given was his own breviary which he tried to read in the almost complete darkness of his cell. At times the friars would talk to one another outside the cell door of rumours about the complete downfall of the Reform. In time the scourging became less frequent, and at last ceased. Fr. John had borne all his sufferings with the greatest patience and without resentment. Though at times he was heavily oppressed by desolation of soul, at other times he experienced the fulness of ineffable bliss in divine union, and even the cell itself was filled with light. It was during this imprisonment that he composed the mystical poems of which the books he wrote later were explanations.
In the following summer a new warder was appointed who, impressed by the saintly character of his prisoner, did what he could to lighten his hardships. When the friars were engaged together in some distant part of the building he would allow Fr. John to walk in the room adjoining the cell. One night the saint had a vision in which he was shown a window at the end of a corridor and was told to escape through it. On the next day he was taken by the kindly guard into the corridor leading from the room in which he had been walking, and at the end of it he saw the window of his dream. That night the warder left his lantern in the cell. Fr. John made a rope from strips of his bed-cover, succeeded in opening his cell-door, passed safely several sleeping guests in the room, and let himself down through the corridor window. The rope was too short and he fell on a heap of stones two feet from a precipice above the Tagus. His own account tells of miraculous guidance through which, at last, he gained the street and reached the convent of the Reform, where he lay hidden while search was made for him. Later he went secretly to Almodovar del Campo, where he found the Priors of the Reform sitting in Chapter, discussing a crisis which had arisen. The king, hitherto their powerful friend, had been alienated by an ill-advised action of one of their leading members, and in self-defence the priors suggested the separation of the Reformed section from the main body of Carmelites by the election of a Provincial from among themselves.
Fr. John earnestly begged them not to commit this illegal act, but to seek first the Pope’s sanction. On hearing of this the authorities retaliated by excommunicating all those who had taken part in the act, and imprisoning the leading Priors. Teresa was ordered to stay in Toledo and the Observant branch was given full power over the friars of the Reform.
Fr. John, who had never sought leadership, passed unnoticed and took duty at the Monastery of Calvary at Veas. On the way there he visited the convent at Veas where the prioress asked him to write a commentary, for the instruction of her nuns, on one of the mystical poems composed in his prison, telling of the mystic’s overwhelming joy in the Divine union, and which he had used in his discourses at the convent. This formed the book A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul written in 1584. Two other mystical works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, were written in 1578 during his happy and peaceful seclusion in the beautiful surroundings of the monastery.
Here, among his friars who knew him well and were devoted to him, he led the life nearest to his heart¾that of prayers and contemplation¾and the community under his direction grew in grace and holiness. He would not allow them to beg alms, and though sometimes they seemed likely to be without food, yet their needs were always supplied.
This much-needed period of refreshment was followed by his appointment to another important directorship¾that of the new college for friars of the Reform founded in 1579 in connection with the university of Baeza. The authorities had at last sanctioned Teresa’s foundations, and the college was one of the first fruits of their approval. The members of the community were drawn from among those at the Monastery of Calvary and others who came with the desire to be admitted.
Under the inspiration and wise leadership of Fr. John the college prospered. The course followed was very similar to that at Alcala de Henares. Discussions of theological and philosophical problems were encouraged in connection with the principles studied, and in the personal and communal life the truths seen could be applied. Fr. John, though able at any time to retire into the sanctuary of his soul, never held aloof from his fellows, but with ready sympathy made himself accessible to all who sought counsel or help. Whatever austerities he saw fit to practice personally, he made sure that others did not attempt what lay beyond their strength. The influence of his humility and spirituality was soon felt among the citizens by whom the community was regarded as a body of saints, with himself as their shining example. As one writer said: “Instances of the wonderful blend in him of a great mind with a good heart, and the most complete personal detachment from creatures, with the most affectionate consideration for the needs and the utmost compassion for their weaknesses and failings, was soon spread abroad and there was not a house of the Reform but would gladly have welcomed him as Prior.”
These outer virtues were but the reflection of inner virtues which could not be entirely concealed from those around him. Often at the celebration of Mass he became entranced, and at other times his face was seen to shine with an unearthly brightness, while his words in preaching “were accompanied by a supernatural heat which without making any impression upon the senses, penetrated to the deepest recesses of the heart, there to enkindle the fire of divine love.” Yet his simplicity was such that he could bring the high truths he taught within the grasp of the most ignorant to whom his great learning could make no direct appeal. His very presence brought serenity, and it is recorded that various miracles of healing were wrought through him.
In 1581 the Papal sanction for the establishment of the Reform as a separate province came into the effect and Fr. John was made a definitor. In the same year he was appointed Prior to the Monastery of The Martyrs, Granada, where again he was in beautiful surroundings and among beloved friends. Here he wrote The Living Flame of Love as well as A Spiritual Canticle. In 1585 he was made Vicar Provincial of Andalusia with authority over thirteen houses of the Reform. This position entailed much traveling and an active interest in the organization, administration and business affairs of the communities under his supervision. While holding this office he had to do with the foundation of several monasteries. In 1589 he was set free from his position as Visitor and again made Prior of the same monastery at Granada.
In 1587 the Provincial, Fr. Nicholas Doria, acting without consultation, had drawn up a scheme for a new form of government under which the whole body of the Reform should be controlled by a Vicar General and six Consultors. The Roman Rite was to replace the Carmelite, and all affairs, including the choice of priors, sub-priors, preachers, and confessors for all the communities, were to be decided by this body. At a Chapter in 1588 Fr. Doria was elected Vicar General and the first of the Consultors was Fr. John of the Cross. When the new scheme came up for discussion he strongly opposed it for, like Teresa, he knew the need for as great a degree of freedom as possible in administration and especially in the choice of confessors and, now that she was dead, he took up the defence of her principles. This attitude brought him into disfavour with the Provincial whose distrust increased when the Mother Superior at Madrid, to whom Fr. John was spiritual director, acting on her own initiative and responsibility, appealed to the Pope against the changes in Teresa’s constitution. The brief granting her petition was an unpleasant surprise to Fr. Doria who suggested that Fr. John was the real author of the move.
In 1591 the new Pope gave another brief sanctioning more complicated rules for the government of the Reform and Fr. John was appointed Provincial in Mexico where he would be unable to use his influence in support of Teresa’s constitution. When at the general Chapter the subject of the three hundred new rules was brought forward, Fr. John pleaded for their postponement and reconsideration at a later time. This was so contrary to the general feeling that he was privately asked to resign his new position in Mexico. This he gladly did and was sent not as Prior, but as a friar to Penuela where he was warmly welcomed. Fr. John on his part rejoiced that he was free at last to spend his days in solitude and fullest communion with the Divine, but in obedience to the request of the Prior he gave spiritual discourses to the brethren at which they were encouraged to discuss their problems.
He lived now entirely in that state of union wherein God continually acts through the soul, which is an unimpeded channel for the Divine Wisdom.
In this last year of his life St. John underwent a very severe trial. Fr. Diego produced a document consisting of false and scandalous accusations based on imaginative constructions given to the answers to ambiguous questions put to certain of Fr. John’s former penitents, and the scandal spread quickly. Fr. John ignored it, taking no steps whatever to refute it. At the next meeting of the Chapter this document was presented, but so great was the outcry against it that the papers were burned on the spot. It was decided, however, to send him as one of a company of friars going to the Indies.
He received the command quietly, only asking when he was to leave Spain. Before the appointed day, however, he fell ill with severe fever, such as could not be properly treated at Penuela. The Prior was given permission to send him either to Ubeda, where the Prior was a close friend of Fr. Diego, or to Baeza, where the Prior was a devoted adherent of Fr. John of the Cross. Fr. John chose the former monastery and entered upon a period of real martyrdom.
At Ubeda, after the difficult journey, his illness increased, his body becoming a mass of painful sores. His submissiveness and gentleness at once won the love of the friar who nursed him, but the Prior visited him only to censure him and tell him of the expense and trouble that he caused, and forbade the brethren to visit one who, he said, sought only his own ease and broke the rules of the house. The friendly nurse was replaced by an unsympathetic friar, and the offer of certain ladies to provide clean dressings for his body was refused. It was evident that Fr. John could not live long, and the friar who had originally nursed him found means for sending word to the Vicar Provincial, one of Fr. John’s first brethren at Duruelo.
The Provincial, shocked at the conditions he found, severely rebuked the Prior, recalled the former nurse, and ordered that members of the community should be allowed to visit Fr. John. During the few days spent by the Provincial among the brethren the Prior’s resentment and bitterness vanished, and he bent all his energies to the task of easing the sufferings of the dying saint.
On December 13, 1591, the brethren were told that the end was at hand. Several times during the morning Fr. John asked what time it was, adding, “I keep asking because, glory be to God, I have to chant Matines with Our Lady in Heaven.” In the evening, after his last communion, he sent the brethren to bed promising that they should be called before his death. His pain ceased and he became exultant as with the spirit of triumph. When the brethren returned, the aged Provincial on his knees begged for the blessing of Fr. John upon them all. In his humility the saint kept silence until commanded by his superior. At the sound of the matins bell was heard he smiled joyfully, upon them all and said, “Farewell, I go to sing them in Heaven,” then commending his spirit to God, he passed away.
Many persons in different places testified that he had appeared to them at the moment of his death. The citizens thronged to the monastery to pay homage to his body, and on the next day the crowds were so great that the body was placed in the church so that all might go who wished. Many miracles were recorded in connection with his tomb and with relics of his body.
He was beatified in 1675, and canonized in 1726. In the Bull of Canonization he was said to be 'a wonderful man, most dear to God, feared by the demons, gentle in character, constant in adversity, renowned throughout Spain for his gifts of miracle and prophecy, and divinely instructed, like Teresa, in the secrets of mystical theology which he has explained in his writings.'
Judged solely by his external life, St. John appears as a man of great physical activity, an accomplished organizer and director, and a brilliant and successful teacher. His writings show him as a man of vigorous and highly cultured mind, trained in all the learning of the schools and turned towards the study and practice of mystical theology; a great contemplative who, through fullest self-giving in dedication to, and union with, the Divine, became a living channel of Divine Wisdom.
During the century before the birth of St. John, the vigorous life of the Renaissance had been energizing men’s minds to new activity. Spain was one of the leaders in European culture. Her great universities of Alcala de Henares and Salamanca were world-famous and attended by large numbers of students from many countries. The teachings of the great Neo-Platonists had long been brought back to Europe through the Arabian philosophers after their exile in the East. Plato and Plotinus were widely read in Latin translations, and highly valued by leaders of thought. The works of the Christian Neo-Platonist, Dionysius, were well know, and the writings of Eckhart*, Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroek were in circulation with their application to Christianity of many Neo-Platonic ideas, such as the idea of the Logos, transcendent, yet also immanent in the Divine “spark” within the soul: of the Ideal World, the eternal Thought of God in the image of which the material universe is formed; of the nature of evil as a negation or deficiency of good, having therefore no essential reality; of the ascent of the soul to union with the Divine by the stripping away of all that veils it from Him, so that alone it may approach the Alone.
In the writings of St. John, which are more concerned with the practice of the mystical art of the perfect life than with the doctrines of theology, the effect of these influences is present, but is rather implied than expressed directly, except in the case of his basic teaching of detachment, in which he closely follows St. Dionysius, though at the same time he shows that it has a certain positive aspect in addition to the negative.
Several of St. John’s contemporaries, including Juan d’Avila, Louis de Leon, Louis de Granada and Pedro Malon gave out in their writings many doctrines characteristic of Christian Neo-Platonism, but during the lifetime of St. John some of their books, with those of Tauler and Suso, were placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition, while some writers were imprisoned or else obliged to flee into exile.
Juan de Yepes, who afterwards became St. Juan of the Cross, was the son of a noble of Toledo who had been disinherited on his marriage to Catalina Alvarez, a beautiful peasant girl of Fontiveros in Old Castille.
Of their three sons, Juan, born in 1542, was the youngest. The second son died in infancy, and a few years after Juan’s birth Catalina was left a widow. By working hard at her craft of weaving, she managed to send her two sons to the village school where Juan’s exceptional ability and keen intelligence quickly brought him to the fore, while Francisco, the elder, showed so little promise that he soon left school and learned to weave. In spite of the difference between them, the brothers remained throughout their lives the closest friends, and whenever possible Francisco joined his brother, giving his labour in the service of the Church.
* Although the writings of Eckhart were prohibited soon after his death, they were circulated under other names and used by his disciples in their own works.
At any early age Juan’s love for religion had shown itself, and this may have influenced Catalina’s decision to move to Medina del Campo. A busy trading centre where her talented son would have greater opportunities. Here, again, his outstanding qualitative were quickly recognized, and at the age of fourteen the director of one of the city hospitals gave him employment on certain days of the week. In the intervals of hospital work, Juan was able to attend the new Jesuit College where, under a famous master, he studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. His special bent was towards psychology, the key to which he began to seek within his own soul through an interior life of meditation and contemplation. During these years of training he was described as attending earnestly and thoroughly to everything he did, so that both at the hospital and the college he won the confidence and good opinion of the authorities.
At the age of twenty-one he was offered the chaplaincy of the hospital but, feeling more and more strongly the call of the religious life, he entered a Carmelite monastery at Medina under the name of John of St. Matthias, taking the habit in 1563.
Although this community followed the mitigated, less severe, rule which had been sanctioned for Carmelite houses, he began here to practise the discipline of the original order. In the next year he was sent to the Carmelite college of the University of Salamanca where he studied for four years before being ordained priest. By this time he had a thorough knowledge of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and had studied the leading authorities of the Church, including St. Dionysius and St. Augustine. He had a remarkable knowledge of the Scriptures which he used continually in his writings. It is recorded in the annals of the university that he had exceptional intellectual power and that he was made lecturer in certain subjects.
Throughout these years he kept strictly the original Carmelite rule, practicing additional self-imposed discipline, and the desire grew in him to enter an order which followed a stricter rule. At the age of twenty-five, while on a visit to Medina, he was persuaded, rather against his inclination, to meet Teresa of Jesus, how fifty-two years old, who was engaged on a foundation there. At the meeting, each quickly recognized the rare quality and spirituality of the other, and Fr. John was soon satisfied that his duty lay with her in the reform of the Carmelite Order.
In a letter written soon after their meeting, Teresa said of him: “He is little in body, but to my mind great in the eyes of God. He is wise and has all the qualities required by our way of life. Though he is still quite young, everyone has some good to say of him. It is clear that God leads him by the hand; for in spite of the trying circumstances in which he has been placed and the tests to which I myself have put his virtue, the slightest imperfection has never been perceived in his conduct. He has a brave heart and great gifts of mind of which indeed he has need to embrace with so great confidence this new way of life.”
Fr. John, now John of the Cross, was the first to enter Teresa’s foundation for bare-footed friars at Duruelo. His mother and brother joined in the preparation of the cottage, and in this small and barely habitable place with a bed of straw and a stone pillow, he began a life not only of solitude and contemplation, but of active ministration to the peasants of the scattered villages.
After several months he was joined by Fr. Antonio who had been Prior of Medina, and Fr. Joseph from the same monastery. Within two years many others of a like spirit had been attracted and in 1570 they moved into a new monastery built for them at Mancera by a wealthy noble. Here Fr. John was Prior. Fr. Antonio had been given charge of the new monastery at Pastrana, and later Fr. John joined him there as master of the novices, but was soon made head of a newly-founded college for friars of the reform at Alcala de Henares, which was connected with the university of that town.
Under the leadership and example of this brilliant and sympathetic teacher who was a contemplative, an intellectual and an able administrator, the college quickly became famous, and many men of great spiritual and mental ability were sent out from it into the world.
After two years at Alcala de Henares, john of the Cross became chaplain and confessor to the Convent of the Incarnation at Avila where Teresa had been made Prioress with the difficult task of restoring order after a period of great laxity. This work was welcome to him as an opportunity for withdrawal from a life of administration to one of contemplation. With an aged friar as companion he lived near the convent and observed the primitive rule. Here he could study and meditate in solitude. The effects of his ministry were soon seen in the life of the convent and in the rapidly increasing number of the citizens of Avila who came to him for consolation and advice. Towards the end of 1572 Teresa wrote to Philip II: “The city is in amazement at the exceeding great good he is doing here. The people take him for a saint. In my opinion he is one and has been one all his life.”
His association with Teresa as her spiritual director and his knowledge and understand of the heights to which her soul had risen, and which were confirmed by his own interior experiences, must have been of the greatest value in giving him a clearer insight into the nature of the path to Divine union and all that lies within this consummation. He knew her writings well, and made references to them in his own works.
During these years at Avila, when the Reform was encompassed with difficulties and was meeting with great opposition from a section of the authorities and from the “Observant” or “Mitigated” branch of the Carmelite Order, John of the Cross was, in a sense, the centre of its life. He took no part in administration or disputes, but from his solitude there flowed a stream of spiritual strength and encouragement to his fellows.
In 1577 came a critical point in the life of the Reform. The papal Nuncio who had been sympathetic to Teresa’s ideas died and the new Nuncio, being informed through the Observant section, began a vigorous suppression of the bare-footed Carmelites. Fr. John and his companion had been licensed by the late Nuncio to live outside their own monastery, but the renewal of the licence seems to have been overlooked, and in December 1577 on a charge of rebellion the two friars were seized and removed to the Observant monastery at Avila. Next day Fr. John was sent to the Observant monastery at Toledo and was imprisoned in a cell about ten feet by six into which light and air entered only through a small opening high in the was communicating with another room. Here he had a bed of planks with a singled cover, and was given one meal of bread and water daily in the refectory, after which he was scourged by each of the brethren in turn. He was not allowed speech with anyone but the friar who guarded him. The only book he was given was his own breviary which he tried to read in the almost complete darkness of his cell. At times the friars would talk to one another outside the cell door of rumours about the complete downfall of the Reform. In time the scourging became less frequent, and at last ceased. Fr. John had borne all his sufferings with the greatest patience and without resentment. Though at times he was heavily oppressed by desolation of soul, at other times he experienced the fulness of ineffable bliss in divine union, and even the cell itself was filled with light. It was during this imprisonment that he composed the mystical poems of which the books he wrote later were explanations.
In the following summer a new warder was appointed who, impressed by the saintly character of his prisoner, did what he could to lighten his hardships. When the friars were engaged together in some distant part of the building he would allow Fr. John to walk in the room adjoining the cell. One night the saint had a vision in which he was shown a window at the end of a corridor and was told to escape through it. On the next day he was taken by the kindly guard into the corridor leading from the room in which he had been walking, and at the end of it he saw the window of his dream. That night the warder left his lantern in the cell. Fr. John made a rope from strips of his bed-cover, succeeded in opening his cell-door, passed safely several sleeping guests in the room, and let himself down through the corridor window. The rope was too short and he fell on a heap of stones two feet from a precipice above the Tagus. His own account tells of miraculous guidance through which, at last, he gained the street and reached the convent of the Reform, where he lay hidden while search was made for him. Later he went secretly to Almodovar del Campo, where he found the Priors of the Reform sitting in Chapter, discussing a crisis which had arisen. The king, hitherto their powerful friend, had been alienated by an ill-advised action of one of their leading members, and in self-defence the priors suggested the separation of the Reformed section from the main body of Carmelites by the election of a Provincial from among themselves.
Fr. John earnestly begged them not to commit this illegal act, but to seek first the Pope’s sanction. On hearing of this the authorities retaliated by excommunicating all those who had taken part in the act, and imprisoning the leading Priors. Teresa was ordered to stay in Toledo and the Observant branch was given full power over the friars of the Reform.
Fr. John, who had never sought leadership, passed unnoticed and took duty at the Monastery of Calvary at Veas. On the way there he visited the convent at Veas where the prioress asked him to write a commentary, for the instruction of her nuns, on one of the mystical poems composed in his prison, telling of the mystic’s overwhelming joy in the Divine union, and which he had used in his discourses at the convent. This formed the book A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul written in 1584. Two other mystical works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, were written in 1578 during his happy and peaceful seclusion in the beautiful surroundings of the monastery.
Here, among his friars who knew him well and were devoted to him, he led the life nearest to his heart¾that of prayers and contemplation¾and the community under his direction grew in grace and holiness. He would not allow them to beg alms, and though sometimes they seemed likely to be without food, yet their needs were always supplied.
This much-needed period of refreshment was followed by his appointment to another important directorship¾that of the new college for friars of the Reform founded in 1579 in connection with the university of Baeza. The authorities had at last sanctioned Teresa’s foundations, and the college was one of the first fruits of their approval. The members of the community were drawn from among those at the Monastery of Calvary and others who came with the desire to be admitted.
Under the inspiration and wise leadership of Fr. John the college prospered. The course followed was very similar to that at Alcala de Henares. Discussions of theological and philosophical problems were encouraged in connection with the principles studied, and in the personal and communal life the truths seen could be applied. Fr. John, though able at any time to retire into the sanctuary of his soul, never held aloof from his fellows, but with ready sympathy made himself accessible to all who sought counsel or help. Whatever austerities he saw fit to practice personally, he made sure that others did not attempt what lay beyond their strength. The influence of his humility and spirituality was soon felt among the citizens by whom the community was regarded as a body of saints, with himself as their shining example. As one writer said: “Instances of the wonderful blend in him of a great mind with a good heart, and the most complete personal detachment from creatures, with the most affectionate consideration for the needs and the utmost compassion for their weaknesses and failings, was soon spread abroad and there was not a house of the Reform but would gladly have welcomed him as Prior.”
These outer virtues were but the reflection of inner virtues which could not be entirely concealed from those around him. Often at the celebration of Mass he became entranced, and at other times his face was seen to shine with an unearthly brightness, while his words in preaching “were accompanied by a supernatural heat which without making any impression upon the senses, penetrated to the deepest recesses of the heart, there to enkindle the fire of divine love.” Yet his simplicity was such that he could bring the high truths he taught within the grasp of the most ignorant to whom his great learning could make no direct appeal. His very presence brought serenity, and it is recorded that various miracles of healing were wrought through him.
In 1581 the Papal sanction for the establishment of the Reform as a separate province came into the effect and Fr. John was made a definitor. In the same year he was appointed Prior to the Monastery of The Martyrs, Granada, where again he was in beautiful surroundings and among beloved friends. Here he wrote The Living Flame of Love as well as A Spiritual Canticle. In 1585 he was made Vicar Provincial of Andalusia with authority over thirteen houses of the Reform. This position entailed much traveling and an active interest in the organization, administration and business affairs of the communities under his supervision. While holding this office he had to do with the foundation of several monasteries. In 1589 he was set free from his position as Visitor and again made Prior of the same monastery at Granada.
In 1587 the Provincial, Fr. Nicholas Doria, acting without consultation, had drawn up a scheme for a new form of government under which the whole body of the Reform should be controlled by a Vicar General and six Consultors. The Roman Rite was to replace the Carmelite, and all affairs, including the choice of priors, sub-priors, preachers, and confessors for all the communities, were to be decided by this body. At a Chapter in 1588 Fr. Doria was elected Vicar General and the first of the Consultors was Fr. John of the Cross. When the new scheme came up for discussion he strongly opposed it for, like Teresa, he knew the need for as great a degree of freedom as possible in administration and especially in the choice of confessors and, now that she was dead, he took up the defence of her principles. This attitude brought him into disfavour with the Provincial whose distrust increased when the Mother Superior at Madrid, to whom Fr. John was spiritual director, acting on her own initiative and responsibility, appealed to the Pope against the changes in Teresa’s constitution. The brief granting her petition was an unpleasant surprise to Fr. Doria who suggested that Fr. John was the real author of the move.
In 1591 the new Pope gave another brief sanctioning more complicated rules for the government of the Reform and Fr. John was appointed Provincial in Mexico where he would be unable to use his influence in support of Teresa’s constitution. When at the general Chapter the subject of the three hundred new rules was brought forward, Fr. John pleaded for their postponement and reconsideration at a later time. This was so contrary to the general feeling that he was privately asked to resign his new position in Mexico. This he gladly did and was sent not as Prior, but as a friar to Penuela where he was warmly welcomed. Fr. John on his part rejoiced that he was free at last to spend his days in solitude and fullest communion with the Divine, but in obedience to the request of the Prior he gave spiritual discourses to the brethren at which they were encouraged to discuss their problems.
He lived now entirely in that state of union wherein God continually acts through the soul, which is an unimpeded channel for the Divine Wisdom.
In this last year of his life St. John underwent a very severe trial. Fr. Diego produced a document consisting of false and scandalous accusations based on imaginative constructions given to the answers to ambiguous questions put to certain of Fr. John’s former penitents, and the scandal spread quickly. Fr. John ignored it, taking no steps whatever to refute it. At the next meeting of the Chapter this document was presented, but so great was the outcry against it that the papers were burned on the spot. It was decided, however, to send him as one of a company of friars going to the Indies.
He received the command quietly, only asking when he was to leave Spain. Before the appointed day, however, he fell ill with severe fever, such as could not be properly treated at Penuela. The Prior was given permission to send him either to Ubeda, where the Prior was a close friend of Fr. Diego, or to Baeza, where the Prior was a devoted adherent of Fr. John of the Cross. Fr. John chose the former monastery and entered upon a period of real martyrdom.
At Ubeda, after the difficult journey, his illness increased, his body becoming a mass of painful sores. His submissiveness and gentleness at once won the love of the friar who nursed him, but the Prior visited him only to censure him and tell him of the expense and trouble that he caused, and forbade the brethren to visit one who, he said, sought only his own ease and broke the rules of the house. The friendly nurse was replaced by an unsympathetic friar, and the offer of certain ladies to provide clean dressings for his body was refused. It was evident that Fr. John could not live long, and the friar who had originally nursed him found means for sending word to the Vicar Provincial, one of Fr. John’s first brethren at Duruelo.
The Provincial, shocked at the conditions he found, severely rebuked the Prior, recalled the former nurse, and ordered that members of the community should be allowed to visit Fr. John. During the few days spent by the Provincial among the brethren the Prior’s resentment and bitterness vanished, and he bent all his energies to the task of easing the sufferings of the dying saint.
On December 13, 1591, the brethren were told that the end was at hand. Several times during the morning Fr. John asked what time it was, adding, “I keep asking because, glory be to God, I have to chant Matines with Our Lady in Heaven.” In the evening, after his last communion, he sent the brethren to bed promising that they should be called before his death. His pain ceased and he became exultant as with the spirit of triumph. When the brethren returned, the aged Provincial on his knees begged for the blessing of Fr. John upon them all. In his humility the saint kept silence until commanded by his superior. At the sound of the matins bell was heard he smiled joyfully, upon them all and said, “Farewell, I go to sing them in Heaven,” then commending his spirit to God, he passed away.
Many persons in different places testified that he had appeared to them at the moment of his death. The citizens thronged to the monastery to pay homage to his body, and on the next day the crowds were so great that the body was placed in the church so that all might go who wished. Many miracles were recorded in connection with his tomb and with relics of his body.
He was beatified in 1675, and canonized in 1726. In the Bull of Canonization he was said to be 'a wonderful man, most dear to God, feared by the demons, gentle in character, constant in adversity, renowned throughout Spain for his gifts of miracle and prophecy, and divinely instructed, like Teresa, in the secrets of mystical theology which he has explained in his writings.'