Carmelitana Collection

John of the Cross was born at Fontiveros, a small village in Castile, on June 24th 1542.  John’s father, Gonzalo de Ypes, came from a family of wealthy silk merchants—quite possibly like Teresa of Avila’s family, Jews who had converted to Christianity rather than leave Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews and Muslims from their kingdom in 1492.  The family disowned John’s father when he married the weaver, Catalina Alvarez.  The bride was seen as being far to low on the social ladder to be acceptable to the wealthy merchant family, but there are some who theorize that  the social consequences of the marriage would only serve to draw attention to the Ypes family who were anxious to conceal their lack of a Christian pedigree.  Nevertheless, being the fruit of a marriage of love undoubtedly left its mark on John. 

Being the son of a disowned merchant certainly left its mark on the boy.  The family was desperately poor—all the more so when Gonzalo died only a few years after the birth of John—the youngest of the three children, all boys.  Catalina did her best to provide, but the family was so poor that the one brother died, probably the effects of malnutrition.
John found employment working in the plague hospital at Medina del Campo where he so impressed the director that he was encouraged to attend the local Jesuit college.  He studied there from 1559 until 1563.  The director then offered the hospital chaplaincy to John if he would study for the diocesan priesthood, but John felt called to the religious life.  He entered the Carmelites where he was given the name John of Saint Mathias.  He was sent to study at the University of Salamanca, one of the finest schools in Europe.  In 1567 he was ordained, but then decided to leave the Carmelite in order to seek a more contemplative life as a Carthusian monk.  It was at this crucial juncture that Fray John met Teresa of Avila.  She recruited him for her reform movement, assuring him that he could find everything in Carmel that he had hoped to find as a Carthusian.  With Fray Antonio of Jesus, John—now retitled John of the Cross—moved to the small town of Duruelo where they formed the first community of Discalced Carmelite friars. 

 

 

John became one of the best known and most loved of the reformed friars, but on the night of December 3-4 1577, he was kidnapped by the friars of the old observance and held prisoner in the friary of Toledo.  John—who had never showed anything but patience and charity towards anyone—was kept in confinement under the most miserable conditions.  Locked into a closet for most of the day and all of the night, with but one tiny window high in the wall to admit air and little light, he was given only the minimum of food and regularly taken to the friary refectory to be beaten and humiliated by the community. The following August, after nine months of this treatment, he managed to escape.  He fled to the monastery of Carmelite nuns who hid him from the friars until it was safe for him to escape the city.  It was during this imprisonment that he composed his great poem, the Dark Night of the Soul.

 

John returned to a more normal life, but it was not long before his brothers in the reform began treating him almost as badly as the friars of the old observance had.  After the death of Saint Teresa, there was a power struggle between those whose chief value was the contemplative life—and this party would include John—and those who saw the highest value in discipline and rigorism of life.  The Rigorist party under the leadership of Nicholas Doria prevailed and they wanted to rewrite the history of the Reform.  All of Teresa’s disciples were pushed aside—some, such as Jerome Gracian, were even pushed out of the Order.  Initially John was to be sent to Mexico, but this never came to pass.  Perhaps he was already too sick for the mission.  He was sent instead to La Peñuela in Andalusia—this was somewhat of an internal exile.  After only six weeks he was sent to Ubeda, where the prior went out of his way to persecute John—who by this time was dying.  He assigned John the most uncomfortable cell in the convent, complained about the expense of a sick brother, he made no provisions for John’s comfort, offered no special care.  John, for his part,  called the prior in and begged  his forgiveness for having caused the prior and the community so much trouble.  It was only then that the superior saw the sanctity of the man he was mistreating.   John’s final weeks were made all the more painful by rumors that he was to be expelled from the Reform—that Doria and his cronies were gathering evidence against him to cast him out from the movement to which he had given so much of his life.  John died shortly before midnight on Friday, December 14, 1591.  He was 49 years old.  John died as he had prayed to: without honors, without material comforts, and with great suffering.

He was canonized in 1726 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1926. 

As for any of the great mystics, it is impossible to sum up John’s teaching in a few words.  Perhaps these few lines from his great poem, the Ascent of Mount Carmel sum up his teaching best:
I went forth…
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday,
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me
-- A place where none appeared.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

 

John explains to us that the soul is drawn by the inner light of Grace  to that solitary place within itself, that place known only to God and to the self, where God waits for us and in the ensuing intimacy the soul is joined so deeply to God that the soul is transformed into God.  This idea would be almost blasphemous were it not for the patristic Tradition that God became (hu)man so that (hu)man(s) might become God—the doctrine of Theosis.  In fact, John explains this transformation further when he compares the union of the Divine Will with our will to the phenomenon of an ember.  In the ember one can no longer distinguish wood from flame—in the ember where is there wood that is not flame, and where is there flame that is not wood?  So too in the soul united to God in perfect love—where is there the human will is that not divine will and where is there the divine will that is not the will of the one who loves God perfectly? 

There is much more that one could say about John and his spiritual doctrine.  Perhaps his most dramatic insight is that of Nada.  To love God, the soul must love nothing for God is nothing, i.e no thing,  As long as we are attached to a thing—anything, even good things such as virtue—we cannot be attached to God.  This doctrine of Nada provides a bridge for dialogue with Buddhism.  The Buddhist concept of nothingness is by no means the same as the doctrine of John of the Cross.  The contexts of the two concepts are so remarkably different that they must not be equated.  Yet, Christian and Buddhist scholars agree that while there are crucial differences, there does seem at the same time to be a certain viewing of a single truth from two remarkably different perspectives 

 

Reveal Thy presence,
And let the vision and Thy beauty kill me,
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Thy presence and before Thy face

 

John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I  chapter 13, section 6

Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;
Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;
Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;
Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;
Not that which is consolation, but rather that which makes you disconsolate;
Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;
Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;
Not that which is a desire for anything, but that which is a desire for nothing;
Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.
Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ's sake.

And

 

John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I  chapter 13, section 11

In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, Desire to have pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything, Desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything,   Desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything, Desire to know nothing.

In order to arrive at that point where you take no pleasure, you must go by a way that gives no pleasure. 
In order to arrive at that point where you know nothing, you must go by a way you do not know.   
In order to arrive at that point where you are free of possessing, you must go by a way you do not possess. 
In order to arrive at that point at which you are nothing, you must go through that which you are not.  

 

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