John of the Cross

Saint John of the Cross

Mystic and Doctor of the Church
Born	April 7, 1542 in Fontiveros, Spain
Died	December 14, 1591) in Ubeda, Andalusia, Spain
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church; Church of England; Lutheran Church
Beatified	January 25, 1675 by Pope Clement X
Canonized	December 27, 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII
Major shrine	Tomb of Saint John of the Cross, Segovia, Spain
Feast	December 14; November 24
Patronage	contemplative life; contemplatives; mystical theology; mystics; Spanish poets

For the personification of the average Filipino, see Juan de la Cruz, and for another Saint who lived around the same time and area, see John of Avila

Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) (June 24, 1542 – December 14, 1591) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar and priest born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila.

He is renowned for his cooperation with Saint Teresa of Avila in the reformation of the Carmelite order, and for his writings; both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul (in the Christian sense of detachment from creatures and attachment to God) are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature. He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church.

Life

Early life and education

He was born into a Jewish converso family in a small community near Avila.^[1] His father died when he was young, and so John, his two older brothers and his widowed mother struggled with poverty, moving around and living in various Castilian villages, with the last being Medina del Campo, to which he moved in 1551. There, he worked at a hospital, and studied the humanities at a Society of Jesus (Jesuit) school from 1559 to 1563. The Society of Jesus was a new organization at the time, having been founded a few years earlier by the Spanish St. Ignatius Loyola. On February 24, 1563 he entered the Carmel order, adopting the name Fr. Juan de Santo Matía.

The following year (1564) he professed as a Carmelite (was promoted from novice status) and moved to Salamanca, where he studied philosophy at the University and at the Colegio de San Andrés. This stay would influence all his later writings, as Fray Luis de León taught biblical studies (Exegesis, Hebrew and Aramaic) at the University. León was one of the foremost experts in Biblical Studies then and had written an important and controversial translation of the Song of Songs into Spanish. (Translation of the Bible into the vernacular was not allowed then in Spain).

Priesthood and association with Saint Teresa de Jesús

Saint John was ordained a priest in 1567, and then indicated his intent to join the strict Carthusian order, which appealed to him because of its encouragement of solitary and silent contemplation. Before this, however, he travelled to Medina del Campo, where he met the charismatic Saint Teresa de Jesús. She immediately talked to him about her reformation projects for the Carmelite order, and asked him to delay his entry into the Carthusians. The following year, on 28 November, he started this reformation at Duruelo together with Fr. Antonio de Jesús de Heredia, and the originally small and impoverished town of Duruelo became a center of religion.

John, still in his 20s, continued to work as a helper of Saint Teresa until 1577, founding monasteries around Spain and taking active part in their government. These foundations and the reformation process were resisted by a great number of Carmelite friars, some of whom felt that Teresa's version of the order was too strict. Some of these opponents would even try to bar Teresa from entering their convents.

The followers of St. John and St. Teresa differentiated themselves from the non-reformed communities by calling themselves the "discalced," i.e. barefoot, and the others the "calced" Carmelites.

Imprisonment, writings, torture, death and recognition

On the night of 3 to 4 December 1577, following his refusal to relocate after his superior's orders and allegedly because of his attempts to reform life within the Carmelite order, he was taken prisoner by his superiors, and jailed in Toledo, where he was kept under a brutal regimen that included public lashing before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation in a tiny stifling cell barely large enough for his body. He managed to escape nine months after, on 15 August 1578. In the meantime, he had composed a great part of his most famous poem Spiritual Canticle during this imprisonment; his harsh sufferings and spiritual endeavors are then reflected in all of his subsequent writings.

After returning to a normal life, he went on with the reformation and the founding of monasteries for the new Discalced Carmelite order which he had helped settling along with his fellow St. Teresa de Ávila.

He died on 14 December 1591, his writings were first published in 1618, and he was canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726. In 1926 he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI. His feast day is observed on the 24 of November by Traditional Catholics.

The Church of England commemorates him as a "Teacher of the Faith."

Literary Works

St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2500 verses, two of them—the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul are widely considered to be among the best poems ever written in Spanish, both for their formal stylistic point of view and their rich symbolism and imagery.

The Spiritual Canticle is an eclogue in which the bride (representing the soul) searches for the bridegroom (representing Jesus Christ), and is anxious at having lost him; both are filled with joy upon reuniting. It can be seen as a free-form Spanish version of the Song of songs at a time when translations of the Bible into vernacular were forbidden.

Dark Night of the Soul (from which the spiritual term Dark Night of the Soul takes its name) narrates the journey of the soul from her bodily home to her union with God. It happens during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties she meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas. Canadian world music artist Loreena McKennitt composed the music for and recorded a "song" version of the poem on her 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.

St. John also wrote three treatises on mystical theology, two of them concerning the two poems above, and supposedly explaining the meaning of the poems verse by verse and even word by word. He actually proves unable to follow this scheme and writes freely on the subject he is treating at each time.

The third work, Ascent of Mount Carmel is a more systematic study of the ascetical endeavor of a soul looking for perfect union, God, and the mystical events happening along the way. These, together with his Dichos de Amor y de Paz, or "Sayings of Love and Peace," and St. Teresa's writings, are the most important mystical works in Spanish, and have deeply influenced later spiritual writers all around the world. Among these can be named T. S. Eliot, Thérèse de Lisieux, Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), and Thomas Merton. John has also influenced philosophers (Jacques Maritain), theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar), and pacifists (Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and Philip Berrigan). He is also mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's groundbreaking poem "Howl."

Notes

↑ Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconcin Press, 1995, 157, 369. ISBN 0299142302)

External links

All links retrieved November 28, 2007

St. John of the Cross and his influence on St. Therese of Lisieux
Catholic Encyclopedia on John of the Cross
The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross at Discalced Carmelites in the Australian Region
The Metaphysics of Mysticism: The Mystical Philosophy of Saint John of the Cross Biography of St. John of the Cross
Christian Classics Ethereal Library: St. John of the Cross
St. John of the Cross on the Mystical Site www.mysticism.nl
Carmelite Vocation
Poetry of John of the Cross
Thomas Merton on St. John of the Cross

This article is part of the Doctors of the Church series

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[1] Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconcin Press, 1995, 157, 369. ISBN 0299142302)

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