St John of the Cross

14^th December is the saint’s day of St John of the Cross, a 16^th-century Spanish mystic who was an important reformer of the Carmelite Order.

Born in 1542 into a family of converted Jews in central Spain, Juan de Yepes y Álvarez was educated by Jesuits and entered a Carmelite monastery in 1563. He found the Carmelites to be too lax in their religious observances for his liking and gave serious though to transferring to the much stricter Carthusian order.

However, a meeting with Teresa of Avila made him have second thoughts. She was a Carmelite nun who was intent on reforming the Order, and she inspired John to join her in this quest. When Teresa established a reformed nunnery, John (who now adopted the name John of the Cross) followed suit with a monastery for Carmelite friars.

The reforms that Teresa and John favoured involved going back the original principles of the Order, which included allowed more time for prayer and contemplation and, for friars, more work outside the monastery evangelising local people.

However, the reforms were not universally popular, and in 1577 John was arrested on the instructions of the general of the Carmelite Order in Spain and imprisoned in a tiny cell in conditions that were little short of torture. He escaped in 1578 and was able to resume his work alongside Teresa in developing what would become a new branch of the Carmelites known as the “Discalced Carmelites”. “Discalced” meant “barefoot”, which was one of the characteristics of the movement towards asceticism that John favoured.

John spent the rest of his life travelling and founding new religious houses, for both men and women. He died in 1591. He was beatified in 1675 and canonised in 1726.

While in prison, John of the Cross wrote a poem entitled “Spritual Canticle” that details the journey of the soul from the moment of death to its union with God. He wrote many other poems and prose works that developed his mystical philosophy, in which he envisioned a process by which every individual undergoes a form of crucifixion before entering God’s presence.

St John of the Cross is revered as being a “Doctor of the Church” because of his writings.

© John Welford