He shows us how to be reflective in our distracting world.
When I first encountered St. John of the Cross—in a theology course on the Carmelites—I found him rather unappealing. St. John is a true Christian radical, calling us all to live lives of ascetic simplicity and deep prayer. His words are stark and make no allowance for human weakness. I found John out of step with our times and wrote him off as interesting but irrelevant.
However, recently I took another look at John, both his writings and his life story. I have now come around to the opinion—shared by many Catholics over the past 400 years—that St. John of the Cross is an authentic witness to the Gospel. Juan de Yepes was born in Spain in 1542. His father died when John was 2 years of age and the family fell into extreme poverty, which eased slightly when his mother found work as a weaver. Nevertheless, because John impressed his religious educators, he had a few options upon reaching maturity (including joining the Jesuits). John chose to join the Carmelite Order and was ordained a priest.
None of this is unusual—poverty was widespread at this time, as were religious vocations. What is unusual is John’s subsequent rise to fame. By the time of his death in 1591, after an adult life completely consumed with the affairs of the Carmelites, he was widely known as a religious reformer and spiritual guide.
After his death, John’s reputation grew even larger, when his spiritual writings were distributed beyond his order. In 1926, the diminutive monk—John was less than 5 feet tall—was named a Doctor of the Church. St. John Paul II considered St. John of the Cross to be an essential spiritual guide.
Carmelite Reformer
The Carmelite Order, or the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was founded on that mountain in Palestine in the 12th century by a group of hermits. The order, which adopted an extremely strict “rule”—imposing rigorous fasting and forbidding its members to wear shoes—spread to Europe and grew throughout the Middle Ages.
However, by the time John joined the order, the observance of the rule had grown lax. In fact, after ordination, John was considering leaving the Carmelites to join a stricter order—until he had an encounter that had a profound impact both on his life and on the history of the Carmelites. He met a member of the female branch of the order, the nun known as Teresa of Jesus. Teresa, older by 27 years and more experienced, told the young priest about the reforms that she was pursuing. John decided to stay.
From that day forward, Teresa—known to history as St. Teresa of Avila—and John toiled as kindred spirits in the 16th-century reform of the Carmelite Order. Inspired to witness their view of the Gospel by adopting a radically simple way of life, Teresa (as foundress) and John (her lieutenant) shepherded the breakaway Discalced Carmelites.
Derived from Latin, the term discalced literally means “barefoot.” While the Carmelite reformers did not interpret this regulation in its strictest sense—their followers substituted sandals for shoes—the decision to observe the original practice showed their commitment to return to a strict interpretation of the order’s rule.
The lives of these two saints are truly a paradox. Teresa and John loved the calm and silence of contemplative prayer, yet they traveled frequently and took on leadership positions within their religious communities. They combined the stillness of a carefully observed regimen of prayer with the frenetic organizational activity required to manage a religious order through a tumultuous transition.
The transition was indeed tumultuous, and John found himself in physical danger more than once. In 1577, he was kidnapped and imprisoned by opponents of reform—until he escaped nine months later using bed linens twisted into a rope.
Spiritual Guide and Writer
The prayer lives of Teresa and John resulted in extensive writings—intended as guidebooks for their followers—in which they set out in considerable detail the painstaking course of a believer’s journey toward God. John’s writings, such as The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, and The Living Flame of Love, comprise a rigorous and systematic approach to Christian life. For John, every movement of hand, heart, and mind must be directed toward God.
Therefore, we must detach ourselves from everything that does not lead us toward that goal.
Conveying his perspective in a passage from The Ascent of Mount Carmel, John writes, “Some are content with a certain degree of virtue, perseverance in prayer, and mortification, but never achieve the nakedness, poverty, selflessness, or spiritual purity (which are all the same) about which the Lord counsels us here.”
Christian Mystic
Yet John combined such stern instructions with the imaginative flair of a mystic. In his poetry, John expressed a passionate yearning for God. In the following stanza from The Dark Night of the Soul, he explores the delight that awaits the believer who perseveres in prayer and spiritual discipline: “I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.”
At times, there is even a suggestion of mystical eroticism, as in the following passage from The Living Flame of Love: “O you, then, delicate touch, the Word, the Son of God, through the delicacy of your divine being, you subtly penetrate the substance of my soul and, lightly touching it all, absorb it entirely in yourself in divine modes of delight and sweetnesses unheard of in the land of Canaan and never before seen in Teman!”
For John, this experience of the intimate presence of a living, loving God is the goal of our spiritual life. He believes that the love of God is not simply a fact that needs to be acknowledged; it is a reality that the Christian can and should experience in prayer. John not only calls God “my Beloved,” he also seeks an experience of loving tenderness with God.
In fact, John fervently believes that it is possible to attain a spiritual union with God in prayer. He calls this union “spiritual marriage.” “This spiritual marriage is . . . a total transformation in the Beloved, in which each surrenders the entire possession of self to the other with a certain consummation of the union of love. The soul therefore becomes divine, God through participation, insofar as is possible in this life.”
John’s Message for the Modern Catholic
At first glance, there is little in the life or writings of St. John of the Cross to attract the interest of contemporary Catholics. As a reformer within a religious order, he advocated a form of asceticism that is far from the lifestyles—or the aspirations—of today’s lay Catholics. Which of us would choose to steadfastly avoid all the nonessential foods we enjoy—such as ice cream, cake, and chocolate—or choose to wear only the plainest clothes?
As a spiritual writer, John recommended a rigorous pursuit of contemplative prayer with the experience he called “spiritual marriage” as its ultimate goal. Now, this is certainly not my own approach to prayer—nor do I know anyone else who prays this way!
So why should we look to John for guidance? Let’s consider the “signs of the times” that relate to spiritual life in today’s world. We live busy lives—balancing competing priorities (like work and family), commuting longer and longer distances, and dealing with a myriad of distractions.
Those distractions now include forms of electronic communication—such as smartphones and computers— that our grandparents never dreamed of. Not only do we have many demands on our time and energy, but, increasingly, those demands operate on a 24/7 schedule, making no allowance for the normal rhythms of human life.
The result is that many of us race through the day at a speed that allows little opportunity for conscious reflection. Then, when we find time for prayer or spiritual reflection, it can be difficult to change gears and become attuned to spiritual rhythms.
The key message of St. John of the Cross is that the spiritual life consists not only of our prayer and worship times, but all of our time. John insists that how we live every moment of the day is somehow connected with how we relate to God. It follows that our prayer and reflection opportunities can only be rich and satisfying if the rest of our day is lived with a sense of conscious purpose.
The Ascetic and the Poet
The contrasts in John’s life of faith—between the ascetic and the poet—were evident until the very end. When he fell ill with an ulcerated leg and a fever in September of 1591, John knew that he needed to travel to a monastery that could provide medical assistance.
However, he did not want the special treatment that might be provided by monks who knew him, so he chose to go to the Carmelite monastery at Ubeda (where he was not known). Alas, there John encountered a hostile prior who provided no treatment at all.
Over the next few months John’s condition worsened, until, on December 13, he was approaching the end. As John lay on his deathbed that evening, the Carmelites began to recite the somber prayers for the dying. But the afflicted man spoke up, pleading with his brothers to instead recite words from the Old Testament book that describes the communion of humans with God in vividly sensual imagery—the Song of Songs.
Hearing the words, St. John of the Cross is said to have cried out, “Oh, what precious pearls,” celebrating the beauty of the biblical poetry even as he lay dying.
Living with Conscious Purpose
Living this way is even more challenging in the 21st century than it was in the 16th! Life was simpler then, and distractions were fewer. Nevertheless, there are things we can do to apply John’s message to our lives.
✦ If we cannot choose to be less busy, we can sometimes choose how to spend our busy time. Instead of listening to the radio or reading a magazine while commuting, I can listen to or read spiritual material.
✦ Rather than using break times at work or school to check my e-mail, I can say a silent prayer or go for a walk and collect my thoughts.
✦ While embracing the opportunities for sharing offered by new technologies, I can steer clear of elements that are spiritually destructive, such as pornography.
✦ When considering whether to adopt a new pastime, I can calculate the effects: What must I cut out to allow time for the new activity, and how will that affect my prayer life and my relationships?
✦ I can choose to turn off my cell phone, computer, and television for an hour or two and experience silence.
