Saint John of the Cross

He was born in Fontiv Fontibère Birthplace of the saint. eros, a village near Avila, in Spain, in the year of grace 1542. His fath er was Gonzalo d Gonzalès d'Yepez Father of Saint John of the Cross. e Yepes, and hi s mother was Cata Catherine Alvarez Mother of Saint John of the Cross. lina Alvarez, wise and virtuous people. This pious mother inspired in him from an early age a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin; thus, he deserved to be delivered from several dangers by a visible protection from her whom he invoked with such fervor.

His mother, having become a widow, was left without support, burdened with three children.

She retired with them to Medina. John was sent to the college to learn the first elements of grammar. Shortly after, the administrator of the hospital, who had witnessed his extraordinary piety, took him with him, with the goal of employing him in the service of the sick. John discharged this duty with a zeal far beyond his age: his charity shone especially in the exhortations he gave to the sick to inspire in them the sentiments with which they ought to be imbued. He practiced incredible austerities in secret, and at the same time continued his studies at the Jesuit college.

When he had reached his twenty-first year, he took the habit with the Carmelites in Medina (1563); and it was his devotion to the Blessed Virgin that determined his preference for this religious Order. Never did a novice show more submission, humility, fervor, and love of the cross. His zeal, far from diminishing after the novitiate, did not cease to grow ever greater. Having been sent to Salamanca to pursue his theology, he continued to practice extraordinary austerities there. He chose to lodge in a narrow and dark cell at the end of the dormitory. A hollowed-out board, which resembled a coffin, served as his bed. He wore a hair shirt so rough that the slightest movement covered his body in blood. His fasts and other mortifications were incredible. Such were the means he employed to die to the world and to himself. But at the same time, the continual exercise of prayer, to which he devoted himself in silence and retreat, caused his soul to take flight. The fundamental maxim of perfection, which he made the rule of his conduct, and which he later established in his writings, was that he who wishes to be perfect must begin by doing all his actions in union with those of Jesus Christ, desiring to imitate Him and to clothe himself in His spirit; that he must, in the second place, mortify his senses in all things, and refuse them everything that cannot be directed toward the glory of God. He would have liked to be only a lay brother; but his superiors refused to consent to it.

His course of theology, which he had completed with success, being finished, he was ordained a priest. He was then twenty-five years old. He prepared for the celebration of his first Mass through new mortifications, fervent prayers, and long meditations on the sufferings of Jesus Christ, in order to imprint in his heart the precious wounds of the Savior, and to unite to the sacrifice of the God-Man that of his will, his actions, and his entire person. The graces he received from this first celebration of the holy mysteries increased in him the love of solitude. He deliberated on the thought that had come to him of entering the Carthusian Order.

Saint Teresa, Sainte Thérèse A mystic saint who prophesied the greatness of John the Baptist. who was then working on the reform of the Carmel, had occasion to travel to Medina del Campo. What she had heard about our holy religious inspired in her the desire to see him and to speak with him. She told him that God had called him to sanctify himself in the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel; that she was authorized by the General to establish two reformed houses for men, and that he was to be the first instrument that Heaven would employ for this important work. Shortly after, she founded her first monastery for men in a poor house in the village of Duruelo. John of the Cross withdrew there. Two months had barely passed when a few other religious came to join him. They all renewed their profession on the first Sunday of Advent in 1568. Such was the origin of the Discalced Carmelites, whose Institute was approved by Pius Carmes Déchaussés Reformed branch of the Order of Carmel founded by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. V and confirmed in 1580 by Gregory XIII. The austerities of these first

reformed Carmelites were carried so far that Saint Teresa believed it necessary to prescribe a mitigation for them. The odor of their holiness soon spread throughout all of Spain. Saint Teresa was obliged to found three other monasteries, the first at Pastrana, the second at Mancera, the third at Alcala. She transferred the one from Duruelo to Mancera.

John's example and exhortations inspired in other religious the spirit of retreat, humility, and mortification. His love for the cross shone forth in all his actions, and he increased it every day by meditating on the sufferings of Jesus Christ. He worked unceasingly to form a perfect resemblance to the crucified Jesus Christ. To purify his heart entirely, God made him pass through the most rigorous trials, both interior and exterior.

After having tasted the sweetness of contemplation, he found himself deprived of all sensible devotion. This spiritual dryness was followed by interior trouble of the soul, scruples, and a distaste for the exercises of piety, which the servant of God nevertheless never abandoned. At the same time, demons assailed him with the most violent temptations, and men persecuted him with calumny; but the scruple and interior desolation were the most terrible of all his pains. It seemed to the Saint that he saw hell open and ready to swallow him up. One finds in his book, entitled The Dark Night, an admirable description of the angu ish that this s La Nuit obscure Mystical work describing the trials of the soul. tate causes one to experience. They are known more or less to contemplative souls: this trial is accustomed to precede the communication of the special graces that God grants them. It was through this that John of the Cross arrived at that stripping, at that poverty of spirit, at that renunciation of all earthly affections, at that conformity to the will of God, which is founded on the destruction of one's own will, at that heroic patience, at that courageous perseverance. The rays of divine light finally pierced the darkness with which the holy religious was surrounded, and he found himself as if transported into a paradise of delights. But new darkness succeeded the first; the interior pains and the temptations that accompanied them were so violent that God appeared to have abandoned his servant, and to have become insensible to his sighs and tears. He fell into a sadness so deep that he would have died of grief had grace not sustained him. Calm returned and was followed by consolations. John of the Cross then felt all the advantage of sufferings and especially of interior trials; he understood how much they served to purify the soul of its imperfections; always recollected, because he was always in the presence of God, his heart burned with the fire of divine charity; he was inflamed with an ardent desire to imitate the suffering Jesus, to carry his cross, to share his humiliations, to serve his neighbor for the love of him; nothing seemed to him able to resist his courage; he enjoyed an unalterable peace, and often he was raised in transports of love to divine union, which is the most sublime degree of contemplation. Sometimes the sweetness of this love made such a vivid impression on his soul that it was as if plunged into a torrent of delights, without, however, ceasing to experience the pain he calls the wound of love. He explains this himself, by saying that it appears to the soul in this state that it is wounded by darts of fire which leave it to be consumed entirely with love; and it is so inflamed that it seems to it that it goes out of itself and that it begins to become a new creature.

The life of John of the Cross offers a continuous vicissitude of crosses and deprivations, of visits and heavenly favors. Never did he receive an extraordinary one that had not been preceded by some great tribulation. Such is, moreover, the conduct that Providence maintains with regard to those who must arrive at eminent holiness. God, by the sensible visits of his grace, excites a soul to run in the ways of his love, just as he perfects its virtue through tribulations. It is thus that the diamond receives its luster and its brilliance from the hammer and the chisel of the one who works it.

Saint Teresa made useful use of John of the Cross for the success of the reform she was establishing. She experienced great difficulties from the convent of Avila, where she had made her first profession. The bishop of that city believed it was necessary for her to be prioress there, at least to cut off the frequent visits of seculars. He sent John of the Cross there and made him director in 1576. He soon engaged the nuns to renounce the parlor and to correct all the abuses that a life of retreat and penance must proscribe. He preached with such unction that people came from all parts to hear him with eagerness. Many people of the world entrusted him with the direction of their conscience.

But God afflicted him with new pains, by allowing him to find persecutors among his own brothers. The ancient Carmelites opposed the reform, and, although it had been undertaken by Saint Teresa, with the agreement and approval of the General, they treated it as a rebellion against the Order. Thus, in their chapter held at Placentia, they condemned John of the Cross as a fugitive and an apostate. Officers of justice who came on their behalf took him tumultuously from the convent and dragged him to prison. But, knowing the veneration with which the people of Avila were filled for him, they had him taken to Toledo, where he was locked in a cell that received lig ht onl Tolède City of origin of Casilda and seat of her father's kingdom. y through a very narrow opening. During the nine months he remained there, he was given only bread, water, and a few small fish for food. He nevertheless recovered his freedom through the influence of Saint Teresa and through a visible protection of the Mother of God. He was favored, during his captivity, with the most abundant consolations of heaven, which made him say later: "Do not be surprised if I show so much love for suffering; God gave me a high idea of its merit and value when I was in prison in Toledo."

Hardly had he been set at liberty when he was established as superior of the small convent of El Calvario, situated in a desert. In 1579, he founded that of Baeza. Two years later, he was entrusted with the leadership of the convent of Granada. He was elected, in 1585, vicar provincial of Andalusia, and first definitor of the Order, in 1588. It was at the same time that he founded the convent of Segovia. The various offices he held never caused him to diminish any of his austerities. He slept only two or three hours each night and spent the rest in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. One could never tire of admiring his humility, his love for abjection, his fervor and his zeal in all his exercises, and his insatiable desire to suffer. "We see," he would usually say, "by the example of Jesus Christ and the martyrs, that to suffer for God is the distinctive mark of divine love. Persecutions are means to attain the knowledge of the mystery of the cross, a necessary condition to understand the wisdom of God and his love." Having one day heard Jesus Christ ask him what reward he desired for his labors, "Lord," he replied, "I desire no other than to suffer and to be despised for your love." The very name of the cross made him fall into ecstasy, in the presence of Mother Anne of Jesus. There were three things he often asked of God: the first, to pass no day of his life without suffering something; the second, never to die a superior; the third, to end his life in humiliation, disgrace, and contempt. The mere sight of a crucifix was enough to give him raptures of love and make him melt into tears. The Passion of the Savior was the ordinary subject of his meditations, and he strongly recommends this practice in his writings. His trust in God led him to give to the poor, several times, what was necessary for himself, and he was rewarded for it by miraculous graces. He called this trust in God the patrimony of the poor and especially of religious persons. The fire of divine love burned his heart so much that his words inflamed those who listened to him. Entirely absorbed in God, he had to do violence to himself to discuss temporal affairs, and sometimes he was incapable of doing so when he had just been praying. Then he would exclaim as if beside himself: "Let us take flight, let us rise on high; what are we doing here, my dear brothers? Let us go to eternal life." His love for God was manifested on certain occasions by rays of light that shone upon his face. A person of distinction was one day so struck by this that she immediately took the resolution to leave the world to enter the Order of Saint Dominic. A lady who was confessing to him experienced the same impression for the same cause; she suddenly renounced worldly finery and consecrated herself to God in retirement, to the great astonishment of the whole city of Segovia. His heart was like an immense furnace of love that he could not contain within himself and which burst forth by external signs over which he was not the master. One admired no less his love for his neighbor, especially for the poor, the sick, and sinners; he was filled with affection and tenderness for his enemies and he always returned good for evil; he was a rigid observer of poverty, in order to preserve himself from any attachment to earthly things. All the furnishings of his cell consisted of a paper image, a cross made of rushes, and a very coarse bed. He chose the most worn breviary and habit. The profound sentiment for religion with which he was imbued inspired in him an extreme respect for everything that belonged to divine worship. For the same motive, he tried to sanctify all his actions. He spent the greater part of the day and night in prayer and often before the Blessed Sacrament. Finally, he practiced the true devotion of which he himself traced the character, by saying that it is humble and an enemy of display, that it loves silence and flees activity; that it rids itself of all attachment; that it hates singularity or presumption; that it distrusts itself; that it follows with ardor the holy and common rules. Experience in spiritual things and even more the light of the Holy Spirit had communicated to him the gift of discerning spirits, and it would not have been easy to impose upon him regarding what came or did not come from God. He discovered more than once that alleged visions about which he had been consulted were only illusions.

In the Chapter of the Order, held in Madrid in 1591, John of the Cross spoke freely of his opinion against the abuses that some of the leaders were tolerating or wishing to introduce; this was enough to reawaken the ill-will that was held toward him. He was stripped of all the offices he held in the Order. The Saint saw himself with joy reduced to the state of a simple religious. He retired to the convent of Peñuela, situated in the Sierra Morena mountains, and very healthful.

It pleased God to perfect the virtue of his servant through a second trial that came to him again from his own brothers. John of the Cross regarded his exile to Peñuela as a blessing. He excused the authors of his disgrace, and he prevented his friends from writing to the Father Vicar General to make known the injustices of which he was the victim. He had as his principal enemies two religious of the Order who had great influence, and who were all the more formidable in that they hid their ill-will under the appearance of zeal. Swollen with pride because of their knowledge and the applause they drew to themselves by their sermons, they had shaken off the yoke of the Rule and were no longer fulfilling their duties. John of the Cross, being Provincial of Andalusia, often reproved them for this disorder. Seeing the uselessness of his representations, he used his authority; he forbade them to preach and to leave their convent. But, instead of submitting with docility, they conceived an implacable hatred against their superior. They regarded the treatment they were undergoing, quite rightly, as the effect of injustice. They complained loudly of the obstacles placed in the way of their zeal, affecting to ignore that God only blesses the functions of the holy ministry insofar as they are accompanied by self-distrust and profound humility. This presumption precipitated them into other, even more criminal excesses, which they tried to palliate under the name of virtue.

One of them, taking advantage of the Saint's current disgrace, published throughout the province that he had sufficient reasons to have him expelled from the Order, and he painted his conduct in the most odious colors. John of the Cross answered nothing to the accusations brought against him, other than that he would suffer with joy the penalties that would be inflicted upon him. He was soon abandoned. Everyone feared appearing to have any dealings with him, so as not to be caught in the same disgrace: he had no other consolation than prayer, from which he drew the graces that enabled him to bear his sufferings with patience and even with joy. The truth, however, came to light, and innocence triumphed. The Saint, during this trial, received the most signal favors from heaven: he understood by his own experience that a soul that serves God is always in joy, and that it does not cease to sing with new ardor and new pleasure new canticles of love and jubilation.

He gave himself over entirely in his retreat to the practice of austerities and the exercise of contemplation. Finally, he fell ill, and he could not long hide his condition. As he found no help at Peñuela, his provincial proposed that he leave that house, and left him the freedom to retire either to Baeza or to Úbeda. It seemed natural that he would choose the convent of Baeza, both because he would have been very comf Ubéda Place of the saint's death. ortable there and because the prior was his intimate friend. He preferred, however, that of Úbeda, which was poor and governed by one of the two religious of whom we have spoken. It was the love of suffering that determined his choice. The fatigue of the journey considerably increased the inflammation he had in one leg, which was soon accompanied by ulcers. It was necessary to resort to painful operations, which he endured without complaining and even without heaving a sigh. The fever, moreover, did not allow him to enjoy a moment of rest; in the midst of his pains, he kissed his crucifix and pressed it to his heart. The prior, forgetting all sentiment of humanity toward him, treated him in the most unworthy manner. He forbade the other religious to go see him, changed the infirmarian because he served him with charity, locked him in a small cell, and spoke to him only to overwhelm him with outrageous reproaches. He provided him only with what was absolutely necessary to keep from dying, and refused him the comforts that were sent to him from outside. John of the Cross suffered this barbaric treatment with joy. To perfect his sacrifice, God abandoned him for some time to that state of interior desolation that he had formerly experienced; and his love and his patience only became more heroic.

The provincial, having come to the convent of Úbeda, learned with indignation what was happening. He had the door of the cell where the servant of God was opened, saying that such a model of virtue should not only be known to his brothers, but to the whole world. The prior of Úbeda recognized the indignity of his conduct, asked the Saint for forgiveness, received his instructions with docility, and did not cease to deplore until his death his wanderings and his cruelty toward the servant of God.

As for John of the Cross, we cannot better paint what he experienced in his final moments than by reporting what he said about the death of a Saint: "The perfect love of God makes death agreeable and causes one to find the greatest sweetness in it. Those who love in this way die with burning ardor, and leave this world with an impetuous flight, through the vehemence of the desire they have to be reunited with their beloved. The rivers of love that are in their hearts are ready to overflow to enter the ocean of love. They are so vast and so tranquil that they appear then to be calm seas. The soul is flooded with a torrent of delights, at the approach of the moment when it will enjoy the full possession of God. On the point of being freed from the prison of the body, which is almost entirely broken, it seems to it that it already contemplates the celestial glory, and that all that is within it is transformed into love." Two hours before his death, our Saint recited the *Miserere* psalm aloud with his brothers. He then had a portion of the book of the Song of Songs read to him; and during this reading he felt the most vivid transports of joy. At the end he cried out: "Glory to God!" then, pressing the crucifix to his heart, he said: "Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit!" and expired peacefully, on December 14, 1591, at the age of forty-nine, after having spent twenty-eight of them in religious life.

Saint Teresa says, speaking of him in her letters and other works, that he was a Saint even before having embraced the reform; that he was one of the purest souls in the Church, that God had communicated to him great treasures of light, and that his understanding was filled with the science of the Saints.

Saint John of the Cross is represented: 1st, kneeling and seeing Jesus Christ appearing to him; 2nd, having near him a lily branch and books; 3rd, carried to heaven in a kind of ecstasy, having his left hand resting on a flying eagle (which holds the Saint's quill in its beak). A cross on which is this inscription: *Pati et contemni*, is in his right hand. Above his head this legend: *His sublimior alis*; 4th, kneeling before the Blessed Virgin and asking her to suffer; 5th, as a young man, pulled by the Blessed Virgin from a well into which he had fallen; 6th, an interesting engraving serves as a title for his works: on a mountain is a tree into which a knife is inserted to draw out the fragrant sap, as indicated by this inscription: *Vadam ad montem myrrhæ*. On another mountain, to the left of the Saint, is seen a cedar whose stem bears this inscription: *Tulit medullam cedri*. Hanging from the cartouche where the title is, are two angels, one holding the quill and the other the works of the Saint. In the background, a hermitage. At the foot of the tree, an open censer exhaling its perfume.

## CULT AND RELICS. — HIS WRITINGS.

After his death, his body exhaled an odor so pleasant that it surpassed all those of the earth. To satisfy the devotion of the multitude who had already taken away most of the Saint's clothing, it was necessary to distribute all the linens that had served the man of God during the course of his illness, and which were the instrument of a great number of miracles. In 1593, his body was secretly removed and transported to the convent of Segovia, with the exception of one leg, which the prior of Ubed a kept, Ségovie The saint's primary burial place. and one arm, which Anne of Penalosa obtained, at whose home the holy body had been brought in Madrid. The relics were placed in a reliquary, which was deposited in the sacristy, then in the great chapel of the church. The city of Ubeda, deprived of its most precious treasure, sent deputies to Rome to obtain from Pope Clement VIII the restitution of the property that had been taken from them. The Sovereign Pontiff ruled in favor of the city of Ubeda; but as the inhabitants of Segovia were prepared to go to the last extremities rather than lose their treasure, a compromise was reached: Ubeda obtained an arm and a leg of the Saint. These precious relics were placed in a richly adorned reliquary, which was placed under a damask canopy, decorated with embroidery. The city of Segovia erected a very beautiful sepulcher for him in a chapel, in front of which three large silver lamps were placed.

Pope Clement X placed him, by his decree of January 25, 1675, among the Blessed, and he was canonized by Benedict XIII on December 27, 1726. The same Pontiff gr anted, on A Benoît XIII Pope who established the Institute as a religious Order in 1725. pril 4 of the following year, a plenary indulgence to all those who, truly contrite, and after having received the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, would visit, on the day of the Saint's feast, from the first Vespers until the evening of the following day, any church of the Carmelite or Carmelite nuns of the Reform, and would devoutly pray there to the Lord for the ordinary intentions. This indulgence is perpetual.

The works of Saint John of the Cross are: 1° The A scent of Mount Carm La Montée du Carmel Treatise on spiritual perfection. el. This treatise is divided into three books; our Saint proposes to raise the souls who follow his doctrine to the top of the mountain of perfection. Now, the path he traces to ascend it is this: the all of God; the nothingness, the nothing of the creature; the intimate union of the soul with God and the dark night into which one must enter to be intimately united with God. This sublime doctrine is contained in twelve verses, the translation of which is as follows: 1° To enjoy everything, have no taste for anything; — 2° to know everything, desire to know nothing; — 3° to possess everything, wish to possess nothing; — 4° to be everything, have the goodness to be nothing in all things; — 5° to arrive at what you do not taste, you must pass through what does not strike your taste; — 6° to arrive at what you do not know, you must pass through what you are ignorant of; — 7° to have what you do not possess, it is necessary that you pass through what you do not have; — 8° to become what you are not, you must pass through what you are not; — 9° when you stop at something, you cease to cast yourself into the all; — 10° for to come from the all to the all, you must renounce from the all to the all; — 11° and when you have arrived at the possession of the all, you must retain it by wanting nothing; — 12° for if you want to have something in the all, you do not have your treasure all pure in God.

2° The Dark Night of the Soul. This book offers only a continuation and as it were the complement of that of the Ascent of Mount Carmel; it is the night of the senses and the night of the spirit. These are the defects into which beginners fall and which our Saint compares to the capital sins by lending them a spiritual analogy. For example, spiritual pride which makes them conceive joy in their fervor, which makes them wish that their spiritual masters esteem and approve their state, the passion to make themselves known to others, to let their interior perfections be glimpsed, to make movements of the head, gestures, etc.; spiritual avarice, which makes them never content with God, that they despair and complain of not having enough spiritual consolations, etc., etc.; spiritual lust and gluttony, or the charms, the delicious tendernesses, the satisfactions that one seeks in devotion; spiritual envy which makes them sad and afflicts them significantly because of the good of others who surpass them in spirituality: now, he wants one to renounce all these defects by entering into the dark night of the senses, by expropriating oneself from all these tastes, from all these natural passions to enter into the only straight path of union with God through an absolute stripping of everything that can only displease Him. He then passes to the night of the spirit: here the drynesses, the aridities, the deprivations, the darkness must also find their direction or rather their immolation: the spirit must consent to lose everything to gain God, to separate itself from everything to be united to Him alone; the soul must suffer like a sick person being treated, and that, through its abandonment into the hands of God, it be delivered from its defects, that it practice true virtues and become capable of receiving the impressions of divine love. This night offers, among other advantages, this one, that it humbles it and removes from it the imperfections of spiritual pride, of spiritual avarice, of gluttony of the same kind and of other spiritual vices; then the soul remembers God almost continually and fears much to regress in the ways of perfection, at the same time that it exercises itself in all virtues, excites itself to good works, rises to the sublime heights of contemplation, and receives without noticing it great sweetnesses of spirit, a very pure love, very subtle spiritual knowledge and triumphs over the violence of its enemies, of the world, of the flesh and of the demon.

3° The Living Flame of Love. Although our Saint has spoken in the two preceding books of the most eminent degree of perfection that one can acquire in this life and which is the transformation of the soul in God, here however he treats of a love even more consumed and more perfect in the same state of transformation. It is the soul that concentrates itself more and more in the love of God, such as wood that the fire burns at first, which then unites it to itself, which changes it into itself, which inflames it with more ardor, which reduces it, finally, into sparks and ashes. Thus penetrated by the divine fire, devoured by it, united to it, the soul also changes into a living flame; sparks spring from it, it is as if in ashes in the middle of the ardent brazier of love which makes it pass entirely into the love of God.

4° The Spiritual Canticles, which are forty in number, are a vivid expression of the most beautiful sentiments of a soul that is ablaze with the fire of charity.

We have used, to complete this biography, drawn from Godescard, the Life of the Saint, by Collet, priest of the Congregation of the Mission; and the Spirit of the Saints, by Father Grimes.