14th December is the saint’s day of St John of
the Cross, a 16th-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
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