St. John of the CrossThe Man and the Mystic

Presence

“During these days, let your heart be taken up in wanting the Holy Spirit to come…You owe it to your heart to give it this peace and stillness, since your heart is a place where the Spirit is pleased to dwell.” ~ Letter to a Carmelite nun

Contemplation of the face of Christ

The renewal of Church in the Third Millenium

Rediscovery of the “universal call to holiness”

Our Christian communities must become genuine "schools" of prayer

A return to the riches of the mystical tradition

Novo Millenio Inuente, Saint Pope John Paul II

Part I: The Man

ChildhoodBorn Juan de Yepes y Álvarez in Fontiveros

(near Avila) in 1542.His father Gonzalo came from a wealthy

family. Rejected by his family for marrying Catalina, a young girl from a lower class.

Family tragedies. Gonzalo died when John was only seven years old.

Lived on the road, settling at Medina del Campo, where he worked in a hospital.

Statue of John of the Cross in Fontiveros

Religious Life

John was encouraged by the hospital director to seek religious life

Attracted to the life of prayer in the Carmelite Order; entered in 1563

Studied at the University of Salamanca; ordained a priest in 1567

Considered leaving for the Carthusians until he met Teresa of Avila

The Carmelites

The Carmelite Reform of St. Teresa

First male house founded at Duruelo in 1568.

1572-1577: Invited by Teresa to be the spiritual director and confessor for the 130 nuns at the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila.

During this period John had a vision of the Crucified Christ, which he sketched. This image inspired Salvador Dali.

Agony and Ecstasy

1575-1577: High tension between the Carmelite branches.

A group of Carmelites captured John and imprisoned him in Toledo. Accused of disobedience.

Terrible living conditions. Composed The Spiritual Canticle and several poems.

Escape and Return

9 months later John escaped from his prison. Fled to a local reform Carmelite convent where he was nursed back to health.

He shared his poems, which were greatly loved by the nuns. They would later ask him to explain them. How the commentaries came about.

Ministry

1578: The Discalced Carmelites formally separated from the Carmelite Order

1581: 300 friars and 200 nuns1582: Teresa of Avila diesJohn continued serve as administrator,

spiritual director, and founder of houses

Last YearsJohn’s last years were difficult. He

disagreed with the leadership of the new Vicar General, Father Nicholas Doria.

Removed from his position and exiled to an isolated monastery. Fell sick and traveled for treatment to a monastery in Ubeda. The prior of the monastery did nothing for him.

Juan de la Cruz passed on from this earth December 14, 1591

Part II: The Mystic

The Poet

His writings are born from personal experience

The highest expression of his experiences are found in his poetry

One of the greatest poets in the Spanish language

His love for God and nature seen in his poetry

The Major Works

The Spiritual CanticleThe Living Flame of LoveThe Ascent of Mount Carmel The Dark Night

Our Need for God

JPII: To understand the human person, one must pass through the theology of St. John of the Cross

The deepest truth of the human person is that we have been created with a need for God

This need, is our first resource, leading us to God

God Seeking

“Because it is so necessary, not only for those people who are doing so well, but also for all the others who are seeking their beloved, I wish to say it….If the person is seeking God, much more is her Beloved seeking her.” – Living Flame, 3.28

The Living Flame of Love

O Living Flame of Love that tenderly wounds my soulin its deepest center!...if it be your will:tear through the veil of thissweet encounter!(Stanza 1)

Our Desire

What prepares the soul to be united with God is: the desire for God. (Living Flame, 3.26)

So the soul must desire with all her desire to come to what in this life lies beyond her mind or the capacity of her heart. (Ascent, Book II, 4.6)

God’s Desire

God’s desire in all the good things he does to her...is to prepare her for further anointings....[so] that she merits union with God. (Living Flame 3.27-28)

Pouring Out

…But to all those I answer, that the Father of lights, whose hand is not shortened, and who pours himself out abundantly, without partiality, wherever he finds space, like a ray of sunlight, and joyfully discloses himself to people on the footpaths and highways. (Living Flame, 1.15)

Making Space

Not so much about how much we do, but how receptive we are to the God who seeks us out.

Image of ascending the mountain. There is a need to take steps towards the encounter.

May God save us from such unhappy burdens that prevent us from the freedom He offers us!

From the Heart

It is important in these matters to put your heart into it, and try to align your will to want it, because if you work at it with the heart, very quickly you will come to find great delight and comfort. (Ascent, Book I, 13.7)

God wants to pour out his gifts. Are we free to receive them?

Blockages

…it is not the things of this world that take up space in the person or do her harm...No, it is the will and hunger for them that dwells inside her. (Ascent, Book I, 3.4)

When desires are disordered, these disorders restrict our openness to others, to God.

When people, things, events are loved within God, there is harmony, freedom.

We become as big or as small as the objects of our love. When the horizon out of which I am living is God, there is room to breathe. When it is less than God, the world can become suffocating. (Fr. Iain Matthew)

Nada

To come to savor all seek to find savor in nothing;To come to possess all, seek possession in nothing;To come to be all, seek in all to be nothing…To come to what you know not you must go by a way where you know not…To come to what you are not you must go by a way where you are not. (Ascent, Book I, 13.11)

God Within

Be glad, find joy there, gathered together and present to him who dwells within, since he is so close to you; desire him there, adore him there, and do not go off looking for him elsewhere…There is just one thing: even though he is within you, he is hidden. (Spiritual Canticle, 1.7-8)

Contemplation

Contemplation is nothing but a hidden, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love. (Dark Night, 10.6)

Praying from our Need…

Our need, our weakness, our brokenness is a way of prayer.

The place of poverty within us is the threshold where Christ desires to encounter us.

Let Him meet you there!

Night

The image of night that John uses expresses not gloom, but mystery and beauty. It is a comforting yet painful darkness that purifies and renews.

There is a sense of seeking, the pain of loss, the hope for encounter and new birth.

It is where the deepest encounters with God occur.

Of Senses and Spirit

Journey of surrender to sense and spirit. A surrender that is a dying to self which leads to transformation.

4 fold pattern: Active night of sense, passive night of sense; active night of spirit, passive night of spirit

Faith grows through the “night”

The Dark Night One dark night,

fired with love’s urgent longings

-ah, the sheer grace!-

I went out unseen,

my house now being all stilled. (Stanza 1)

O guiding night!

O night more lovely than the dawn!

O night that has united

The Lover with his Beloved.

Transforming the beloved in her Lover. (Stanza 5)

Where have you hiddenBeloved, and left me moaningYou fled like a stagAfter wounding me;I went out calling you, but you were gone (Stanza 1)

Spiritual Canticle

Seeking my loveI will head for the mountains and for watersides… (Stanza 3)

O woods and thickets,Planted by the hand of my Beloved!O green meadow,Coated, bright, with flowers,Tell me, has he passed by you (Stanza 4)

Pouring out a thousand graces,He passed these groves in haste;And having looked at them,With his image alone, clothed them in beauty

(Stanza 5)

You looked with love upon meAnd deep within your eyes imprinted grace;This mercy set me free,Held in your love’s embrace,To lift my eyes adoring to your face.

(Stanza 32, Spiritual Canticle Iain Matthew trans.)

The Gaze of God

Prayer is a response to the gaze of God upon us, a gaze of love and mercy.

A gaze that transforms, heals, and enlightens“the soul obtains all that she hopes for from

Him.” (Dark Night, 21.8)For God to gaze is to love, and to work

favors. (Spiritual Canticle, 19.6)

The Journey is Real

The spiritual journey we are on is real. John and Teresa do not so much provide a rule of prayer, as show us through their experience the possibility of encountering the Living God.

Who can free himself from his meanness and limitations,If you do not lift him to yourself, my God, in purity of love?How will a personbrought to birth and nurtured in a world of small horizons,rise up to you Lord,if you do not raise him by your hand which made him?

You will not take from me, my God,what you once gave mein your only Son, Jesus Christ,in whom you gave me all I desire;so I shall rejoice:you will not delay, if I do not fail to hope. ~ Sayings of Light and Love, 26

Reading JohnJohn of the Cross: Man and the Mystic by

Richard P. HardyThe Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of

the Cross by Father Iain MatthewFire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the

Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer by Thomas Dubay, SM

The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD