St.John of the Cross

St.John of the Cross belongs to one of the rare categories of saints who combine poetic gifts along with Christian holiness. He was also a great mystic and an authority on Mystical theology. He met St. Teresa of Avila in the year of his priestly ordination and the meeting with St.Teresa changed the whole course of his life. According to Ellsberg, “ He has been acclaimed as one of the Church’s great mystics and that his greatness was forged in the experience of persecution and suffering inflicted by the members of his own congregation.” What came out of this suffering and persecution was one of the most beautiful poetic flowers in the history of Christian Mystical Theology: The Dark Night of the Soul”, a poetic work of 8 stanzas of incomparable beauty detailing the gradual flowering of the soul in its love of God , culminating in a great mystical union.

Life and Works:

John’s father ,Gonzalo de Yepes ,was from a noble background. Since he married Catalina, a young woman of low standing, he was disinherited by his family. Hence the family lived in extreme poverty. Soon after the birth of John, Gonzalo passed away and from then on, it was a time of real poverty and suffering for the boy as well as for the mother. He entered a school for orphans. While he was 12 years old, he came under the influence of Don Alonso, the administrator of a hospital in Medina for poor people. John began to work in this hospital as a boy. Don paid for John’s studies at the Jesuit college in Medina. In 1563 John joined the community of Carmelite friars and was ordained a priest in 1567.

John and two other friars joined St.Teresa’s Reformed Carmelite order whose goal was to return to the original monastic traditions of penance and the practice of humility, with a strong emphasis on contemplative life. When John met St. Teresa he was only 25 years old, while she was 52 .But there developed a great spiritual friendship between these two and Teresa confided to John a lot of her mystical visions. John was also invited to be the Spiritual Director of the sisters under the care of S.Teresa of Avila. During the years at Avila, he spent his time caring for the sick and the poor and also preaching the gospel.

But after a while, things took a bad turn and the members of the new order were put under great restrictions. John’s role was misunderstood and he was taken as a prisoner from Avila and imprisoned by his own friars at a monastery at Toledo. He was confined to solitary confinement(1577).He escaped from the prison in 1578.

The newly formed reform order, was recognized later by the authorities. John was reinstated and he was transferred to the South of Spain. It was during the period of ten years that he spent there that he composed his poetry and commentaries.

Again some negative propaganda was started against John alluding that he was teaching a prayer life contrary to the spirit of the Church. John fell ill in 1591 and passed away on Dec.14,1591 The superior of the monastery where he was put up because of illness considered him a financial liability and did not take care of him. He was treated with great rudeness and cruelty. His final words were: “Into They hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.” He passed away on Dec.14,1591 and was declared a saint in 1726. He was named the Patron of Spanish poets in 1952.It can be said of him that he always was successful in changing his negative experiences into a source of creativity.

POETIC WORKS:

During his persecution and imprisonment, John underwent an experience of intimate union with God.. He was able to share these experiences through his poetry. His total poetic output comes only to 40 pages. The earliest was The Spiritual Canticle(1578) and the last was The Living Flame of Love(1585).

The Spiritual Canticle:

The first 31 stanzas were written in prison and the last eight were added between 1579 and 1584.The Canticle expresses the deep mystical experiences that came out of John’s time in prison. The soul, the bride, is called the lover who searches for the Beloved who is Christ.

The obvious influence on this poem is the Song of Songs. The opening stanza reflects the conflict going on inside John in prison. He loves God and yet feels deserted.

The Living Flame of love:

This was composed in Granada between 1582 and 1584.The poem and the commentary were written for Dona ana Y Penalosa, a devout lay woman that John directed.Here he describes the summit of mystical experience .The ecstacy,even though painful, is delightful.For John, in this poem, the one who is in union with the Beloved, is also united with the Spirit, the bond of love between Christ and the Father.

The Dark Night of the Soul:

The poem begins with the following lines: “One dark night/fired with love’s urgent longings/ah, the sheer grace/I went out unseen/my house being now all stilled.”

He wrote the poem after his escape from the monastery at Toledo.

John sees the dark night as being initiated by God. Everyone in his journey to God passes through the dark night. “The dark night is a freeing of desires so that the individual is not caught up with lesser gods.”(Wifrid Mcgreal,p.44)

The poem uses the symbol of night in a way that draws out a sense of mystery. The night recalls the darkness of John’s prison cell and the times of darkness when he must have been torn by a range of conflicting emotions…But the night is also a time of mystery when deep feelings can well up, a time to begin a journey.

The opening stanza is an expression of joy on the part of the Lover . Since the lover feels very passionately, the night does not appear to be a threat. The rapturous love inside the soul is like a light. The burning love is not only a light but is also a guiding and homing beacon. In stanza vi of the Dark Night, the Beloved rests and sleeps on the Lover’s breast because the purification has been so complete that it has become the most fitting place for union and in that closeness the wound of union takes place.

The union is expressed as a wound, as the immensity of love is painful to the human spirit as the finite is overwhelmed by the infinite.

The lover who stands for you and I as we journey to God has found perfect union with God.

The final stanza takes us to fulfillment and hints at the joy of heaven, the beatific vision. This state of union where only God matters is the mystic state, and John maintains that human beings can experience such closeness to God in this life.

The word ‘night’ appears and reappears growing richer and richer in meaning. It begins as the night that enables the Lover to start on the quest; and gradually, by the third stanza, it is linked to joy. By the fifth stanza it has become the means for the lovers’ union.

According to George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, “St. John of the Cross’s thought stands out as a colossus in the history of spirituality. Central to the heart-warming, Christ-centered experience of a man who suffered for his faith in his own time are awesome depths of spiritual life that attract us all.”