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Life of Saint John of the Cross

He was born in Fontiveros, province of Ávila (Spain), around the year 1542. After a few years in the Carmelite Order, he was, at the request of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the first who, from 1568, declared in favor of his reform, for which he endured innumerable sufferings and labors. He died in Ubeda in 1591, with a great reputation for sanctity and wisdom, of which his spiritual writings bear precious testimony.

Life of Poverty

Gonzalo de Yepes belonged to a good family in Toledo, but since he married a young woman of «lower» class, he was disinherited by his parents and had to earn his living as a silk weaver. Upon Gonzalo’s death, his wife, Catalina Alvarez, was left destitute and with three children. Jitan, who was the youngest, was born in Fontiveros, in Old Castile, in 1542.

He attended a school for poor children in Medina del Campo and began to learn the trade of weaver, but since he had no skills, he later went on to work as a servant for the director of the Medina del Campo hospital. Thus he spent seven years. At the same time that he continued his studies at the Jesuit college, he practiced rude bodily mortifications.

At twenty-one, he took the habit in the Carmelite convent of Medina del Campo. His religious name was Juan de San Matías. After making profession, he requested and obtained permission to observe the original rule of Carmel, without making use of the mitigations (permissions to relax the rules) that several Popes had approved and were then common in all convents.

Saint John would have liked to be a lay brother, but his superiors did not allow it. After having successfully completed his studies in theology, he was ordained a priest in 1567. The graces he received with the priesthood ignited his desire for greater retirement, so that he came to think of entering the Charterhouse.

Meet Santa Teresa

t that time Santa Teresa founded the convents of the reformed branch of the Carmelites. When she heard about Brother Juan, in Medina del Campo, the saint interviewed him, she was amazed at her religious spirit and told him that God was calling him to sanctify himself in the order of Our Lady of Carmen. She also told him that the prior general had given him permission to found two reformed convents for men and that he should be her first instrument in that great undertaking. The reform of Carmel launched by Santa Teresa and San Juan was not with the intention of changing the order or «modernizing» it but rather to restore and revitalize its original mission, which had been greatly mitigated. At the same time that they managed to be faithful to their origins, the sanctity of these reformers infused a new richness in the Carmelites that has been reflected in their writings and in the example of their lives and continues to be a great wealth of spirituality.

FALL  INTO THE WELL

Father Inocencio de San Andrés declared that he had heard the saint say that As a child, walking with other children playing around a curb of a well, leaning against the curb that was low, another boy, who was older than him, coming to want to harm him, he made him fall into the well, which had plenty of water, and just as he fell he sank to the ground; and Our Lady appeared to him and He took hold of the hand and raised it to the surface or high of the water, and was in it as if he was on some board and some distance of time passed. And shouting the children and boys who had seen him fall, people came to remedy him and leaning over the curb, saying he was already drowned, he replied: «I’m not drowned, that the Virgin has guarded me, throw me a rope ”. Ties with her under her arms and they took him out without injury or damage, very happy.

As Juan refused to abandon the reform, they locked him in a narrow and dark cell and mistreated him incredibly. This shows how little the spirit of Jesus Christ had penetrated those who professed to follow him.

Suffering and union with God

San Juan’s cell was about three meters long by two meters wide. The only window was so small and so high that the saint, to read the office, had to stand on a bench. By order of Jerónimo Tostado, vicar general of the Carmelites of Spain and consultant to the Inquisition, he was beaten so brutally that he preserved the scars until death. What Saint John suffered then coincides exactly with the penalties that Saint Teresa describes in the «Sixth Abode»: insults, calumnies, physical pain, spiritual anguish and temptations to give in. He later said: «Do not be surprised that I love suffering very much. God gave me an idea of the great value of it when I was imprisoned in Toledo.»

The first poems of Saint John, which are like a voice crying out in the desert, reflect his state of mind:

Where did you hide,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

Like the deer you fled,

having hurt me;

I came out after you crying out, and you were gone.

On the eve of the Assumption, the prior Maldonado entered that cell that gave off a foul odor under the scorching summer heat and kicked the saint, who was lying down, to announce his visit. Saint John asked his forgiveness, because his weakness had prevented him from getting up as soon as he saw him enter. «You seemed absorbed. What were you thinking?» Maldonado said.

«I was thinking that tomorrow is the Feast of Our Lady and it would be a great happiness to be able to celebrate Mass,» Juan replied.

«You will not do it while I am superior,» Maldonado replied.

On the night of the day of the Assumption, the Blessed Virgin appeared to her afflicted servant, and said: «Be patient, my son; this Test will soon end.»

Some days later he appeared to him again and showed him, in vision, a window overlooking the Tagus: «That way you will go out and I will help you.» Indeed, after nine months in prison, the saint was granted the grace to exercise for a few minutes. Juan toured

building looking for the window that he had seen. As soon as he recognized her, he returned to his cell. By then he had already started loosening the door hinges. That same night he managed to open the door and reached down on a rope that he had made out of sheets and dresses. The two friars who slept near the window did not see him. As the rope was too short, San Juan had to drop along the wall to the river bank, although happily he was not injured. Immediately, he followed a dog into a yard. In that way he managed to escape. Under the circumstances, his escape was a miracle.

Great guide and spiritual director

The saint went first to the reformed convent of Beas de Segura and then to the nearby hermitage of Monte Calvario. In 1579, he was appointed superior of the Baeza college and, in 1581, he was elected superior of Los Mártires, near Granada. Although he was the founder and spiritual head of the Discalced Carmelites, at that time he participated little in the negotiations and events that culminated in the establishment of the separate province of Los Descalzos

he Crucified has appeared to him repeatedly,

of two of which we have concrete news. In his doctrine, the Saint considers visions, locutions and revelations as accidental elements of the mystical life.

His first appearance took place in Ávila, in the Monastery of the Incarnation, where he had called him Saint Teresa as the confessor of the nuns,

In the contemplation of the Passion, he was shown the Crucified, visible to the eyes of the body, a body covered with sores and bathed in blood. So clear was his appearance that he could draw it in pen as soon as he came to. The yellowish leaf, on which he drew it, is still preserved today in the Monastery of the Incarnation1

The second apparition took place in Segovia towards the end of his life. One afternoon after dinner he took me by the hand and led me to the garden and when we were alone I noticed: “I want to tell you something that happened to me with Our Lord. We had a crucifix in the convent2 and while I was in front of him one day, it seemed to me that he would be more decently in the Church, and with the desire that not only the religious would revere him, but also those from outside, I did as I had seen fit. After having him in church as decently as I could, while one day in prayer before him, he told me: «Brother Juan, ask me for whatever you want, I will grant it to you for this service you have done me.» And I said to him: «Lord, what I want you to give me jobs to suffer for you, and for me to be despised and looked down upon»

miracle

The convent had a piece of orchard and olive grove surrounded not by walls, but by the bush itself, and outside some fields of planting. Running a good wind to deflect the fire, a brother wanted to burn the Using the demons of the occasion, they promptly turned the wind against the orchard and the convent, and lit such flames that, without resistance, they threatened a regrettable fire in the entire site. Frightened the religious, they called the Holy Father, who, making a brief prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, took the hyssop and holy water, and stood between the fence and the fire, whose flames passing over the saint, were already licking the branches of the wall, with which in a little space they lost the Saint from sight.

They were all astonished fearing him burned; but the Holy Father, fighting with God and his prayer against hell, achieved the victory that began to be shown in two singular wonders: the first, that by starting the fire in the rockrose and branches of which the fence was composed (in the likeness of the bush of Moses), it did not burn or offend them: the second, that as the flames died, they saw the Holy Father in the midst of them raised in the air, and that, stepping on them, little by little they He went down without bringing injury in person, or the smell of fire in his habits, coming joyfully towards the religious, and leaving the fire and its authors drowned all over the place.

Poetry

The poetic beauty of the work contrasts with the harshness and radicality of the proposed path of progressive renunciation of any attachment, pleasure and commitment. Radicality raised in all its crudeness in chapter 13 where we read

Always try to bend down:

not the easiest, but the most difficult;

not to the tastiest, but to the most bland;

not to the most palatable, but to what gives less taste;

not to what is rest, but to what is laborious;

not to what is comfort, but rather to grief;

not at most, but at least;

not to the highest and most precious, but to the lowest and despised;

not to what it is to want something, but to not wanting anything

not to go looking for the best of temporal things, but for the worst, and to desire to enter into all nakedness and emptiness and poverty for Christ of all that is in the world. «

In the midst of that storm, San Juan fell ill. The provincial ordered him to leave the Peñuela convent and gave him a choice between that of Baeza and that of Ubeda. The first of these convents was better supplied and had a friend of the saint as superior. In the other, Father Francisco was superior, whom Saint John had corrected together with Father Diego. That was the convent he chose.

The fatigue of the trip worsened his condition and made him suffer a lot. With great patience, he underwent various operations. The unworthy superior treated him inhumanly, prohibited the friars from visiting him, changed the nurse because he cared for him with affection, he only allowed him to eat ordinary foods and did not even give him those sent by some outsiders. When the provincial went to Ubeda and found out about the situation, he did what he could for San Juan and so severely reprimanded Fr. Francisco

DARK NIGHT OF SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ

INTERNAL STRUCTURE. The poem is divided into three parts, corresponding to each of the three ways or paths that the soul must necessarily travel for its union with God.

The first way is purgative, also called ascetic, because in it the soul frees itself of its passions and purifies itself of its sins through the denial of the senses and the intellect. In the poem, it is circumscribed to the first two stanzas

The second way is the illuminative. Through it, the soul, with the consideration of eternal goods and of the passion and redemption of Christ, is illuminated by the light of faith, which marks the safe path to God. In the poem, it corresponds to the third and fourth stanzas.

The third and final way is the unitive one, in which what Saint John himself called spiritual marriage is achieved: the union between the soul and God (often expressed as an abandonment in the Other)