Today, (December 14) the Mother Church celebrates the feast of a great mystic and the Doctor of the Church, St. John of the Church, a Carmelite Saint.
He was born on June 24, 1542, in Fontiveros, Spain. He was a Spanish mystic and poet. He became a Carmelite monk in 1563 and an ordained priest in 1567. A year later, he was summoned by St. Teresa of Avila to reform the Carmelite Order. However, due to resulting friction, he was imprisoned. During this time, St. John began writing poetry, some of his finest work outlining the steps of mystical ascent, also known as the soul’s journey to Christ. Many of his poems, including ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ and ‘The Living Flame of Love’ are considered the peak of mystical Spanish literature. He was glorified as a saint in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pius XI in 1926.
John is a saint because his life was a heroic effort to live up to his name: “Of the Cross.” As a partner with Teresa and in his own right, John engaged in the work of reform, and came to experience the price of reform: increasing opposition, misunderstanding, persecution and imprisonment. He came to know the cross deeply — to experience the dying of Jesus — as he sat month after month in his dark, clammy, narrow cell with only his God.
John is unique as mystic-poet, expressing in his prison-cross the ecstasy of mystical union with God in the ‘Spiritual Canticle.’
But as agony leads to ecstasy, so John had his Ascent to Mt. Carmel, as he named it in his prose masterpiece. As Christian Carmelite, he experienced in himself this purifying ascent; as spiritual director, he sensed it in others; as psychologist-theologian, he described and analyzed it in his prose writings. His prose works are outstanding in underscoring the cost of discipleship, the path of union with God: rigorous discipline, abandonment and purification. Uniquely and strongly John underlines the gospel paradox: The cross leads to resurrection, agony to ecstasy, darkness to light, abandonment to possession, denial to self to union with God. If you want to save your life, you must lose it. John is truly “of the Cross.” He used to say – in order to arrive at the All which is God, it is necessary that man should give all of himself, not like a slave but inspired by love. Saint John’s most celebrated aphorisms were: “In the evening of your life you will be judged by your love” and, “Where there is no love, put love and then you will find love”.
John in his life and writings has a crucial word for us today. We tend to be rich, soft, comfortable. Most of us go away from words like self-denial, mortification, purification, asceticism, discipline. We run from the cross. Message of St. John of the Cross is loud and clear: if we really want to live a life fitting to our call, we need to embrace what is not of our taste.
