John of the Cross, Saint

JOHN OF THE CROSS, Saint. - "Mystical Doctor," reformer of the Carmelites, in the world Juan de Yepes, b. in 1542 at Fontiveros in the province of Avila (Spain) to the nobleman Gonzalo and the commoner Caterina Alvarez.

I. LIFE

While still very young he lost his father, and the family suffered poverty. He spent his youth at Medina del Campo, where his mother had moved for work. After vain attempts at various trades, G. took service in a hospital and at the same time studied grammar under the Jesuits. At the age of 21 he became a Carmelite religious, taking the name of G. of St. Matthias. He was sent to Salamanca where, enrolled at the University, he studied philosophy and theology. A priest at 25, desiring a more perfect manner of life, while he was thinking of the Carthusians, he met St. Teresa, who won him to the work of the Carmelite reform. With Father Antonio of Jesus he founded its first house for the religious at Duruelo, in 1568. His first task was to "form" the religious as master of novices, then as rector of the first house of studies at Alcalá (1571). From 1572 to 1577, at the request of St. Teresa, he assumed the office of confessor in the monastery of the Saint's origin, at Avila, where she was then prioress. After disputes arose between the reformed and the unreformed Carmelites following a conflict of jurisdictions, for more than eight months he was shut up in prison in the convent of Toledo and treated as a rebel. He had to suffer a great deal, spiritually as well, but when he came out of it (1578), he was a saint. From this moment the period of G.'s greatest influence began: he became superior in various convents and assumed the direction of several monasteries of Teresian nuns. At the same time he wrote his major works. He founded several houses of his Order, the last of them at Segovia (1588). In 1591, after new misunderstandings arose and he was left without any office, he withdrew into the solitude of La Peñuela at Ubeda and, after a most painful illness, died as a saint on 19 Dec. 1591. He was beatified on 25 Jan. 1675 and canonized on 26 Dec. 1726. On 24 Aug. 1926 Pius XI declared him a Doctor of the Church. Feast on 24 Nov.

II. WRITINGS AND DOCTRINE

The "minor works" comprise: 26 letters, maxims and sayings, two short treatises (Counsels to a Religious and the Precautions) and a series of poems.

The latter were written in part in the prison of Toledo. The maxims, chiselled, are very pithy. The treatise of the Precautions, written, it seems, for the Carmelite nuns of Beas, is a small practical summary of the Saint's doctrine. Of only a part of the maxims and of some letters are the original manuscripts still extant.

The "major works" are four, but the first two are complementary to each other and form, so to speak, a diptych: Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night, Spiritual Canticle, Living Flame of Love. Each comments on a poem.

No precise date can be given for the composition of the Ascent. Apparently, it was begun when the Saint was frequenting the monastery of Beas (from 1579), but the greater part was written at Granada (from 1582 onward); the work remained incomplete. The Night, also unfinished, was written later (perhaps after 1584) likewise at Granada. The Canticle, in its first form, was composed in 1584 at the request of mother Anne of Jesus; it nevertheless gathers, it seems, fragments of an earlier date. The Flame, in its first form, was written while the Saint was provincial vicar of Andalusia (1585-87) at the request of doña Anna de Peñalosa. In the manuscript tradition, these last two works have come down to us in two forms attested by an almost equal number of copies.

In recent times discussions have arisen concerning the authenticity of the second form, especially of the Canticle. The critical edition of the Canticle, published by the Benedictine dom Chevallier (1930), of more apparent than real value, has lent considerable credit to the thesis upholding non-authenticity; but so far no definitive argument has been presented on the matter and the origin of the second redaction from St. John himself remains entirely probable.

The whole doctrine of St. John hinges on union with God, toward which he wishes to set the soul on its way, in order then to describe the life that the soul enjoys once it has reached so high a goal. The journey toward union is described particularly in the diptych Ascent-Night; its various phases and degrees are set forth more fully in the Canticle and in the Flame; the notion of union, which dominates the whole work, reappears continually in the various writings.

III. NOTION OF THE UNION

In the Ascent (I, 11, 2) he defines the union: «the state of this divine union consists in the soul being, according to the will, wholly transformed into the will of God, so that in it there be nothing contrary to the will of God, but that in all and through all, whatever moves it be solely the will of God». The transformation of the soul into God, in which the union consists, results from the realization of two conditions: the first, negative, which excludes in the soul's will any contrariety to the divine will (that is: total detachment of the soul from all things and from itself); the second, positive, whereby the soul's will is always moved by the divine will and therefore no longer by its own interest. Such a soul will live only for «the honor and glory of God». Constantly the «structure» of the union is indicated by the Saint as the meeting of two elements: the first, on the part of the soul, consists in «keeping the will perfectly united to that of God» (ibid., II, 5, 7); the second, on the part of God, consists in the «communication of supernatural being» (ibid., n. 4 and n. 7), to such a degree that the soul appears as divinized and lives a divine life, moved as it is by God, in a general way, in all that it does.

IV. THE WAY THAT LEADS TO UNION

Since union presupposes total detachment as its fundamental condition and is brought about in the soul's being moved by God almost continuously, the path toward union must procure for the soul an entire purity of affection and at the same time place it gradually more and more under the divine influence. It will therefore be a path of total stripping, accompanied by a progressive taking possession on the part of God.

The stripping or purification (v.) of the soul must be accomplished both in its sensitive part ("night of the senses") and in its spiritual part ("night of the spirit"), and it is not effected only by the soul's personal application ("active night"), but requires divine intervention ("passive night"). The soul begins with an energetic mortification of its senses and sensitive appetites; but to purify it better the Lord ordinarily sends it the trial of aridity. This then for the most part contains the Lord's invitation to leave meditation in order to pass to a new form of prayer: loving attention to God, the first form of contemplation (v.), in which God already acts hiddenly in the soul. Having thus mastered its sensitive part, the soul applies itself to purifying its spirit with an eminent exercise of the theological virtues, which also draws it away from the pursuit of extraordinary heavenly favors, such as visions and revelations, in order to penetrate instead ever more deeply into the contemplation of pure faith (ibid., II and III); and here too the Lord comes to its aid, working in it passively, making it become aware, in the light of contemplation, of its still profound impurity, but drawing it to himself with infused love. The soul suffers tremendously in this state, seeing all its ugliness, but its love for God keeps intensifying, so that at the end of the trial which purifies it in this way to the very depths ("passive night of the spirit"), it is capable of being introduced into the state of union.

V. DEGREES AND STAGES OF THE UNION

In the state of union St. J. distinguishes two degrees: the first, in the metaphorical language of the mystics, is called "spiritual betrothal (or espousal)," the second "spiritual marriage." In both, moreover, one must distinguish the habitual state of the soul from the moments in which it receives particular contemplative graces from God. In the "spiritual betrothal" the habitual state consists, on the soul's part, in having said to God the perfect "yes" of a total conformity of its will to God's will, to which there corresponds on God's part the true and entire "yes" of his Grace (Fiamma, III, n. 24). The soul in this state receives, with greater or lesser frequency, God's "visits," that is, it enjoys from time to time the unitive contemplation which had been elaborated in the soul during the darkness of the night of the spirit. Nevertheless the soul, in this state, is still subject to temptations and reluctances of the senses and still suffers moments of "God's absence." But this ceases in the "spiritual marriage," in which the soul continually feels God within itself, moving it in all that it does and maintaining the whole of all its powers in an admirable harmony with which all are employed in the divine service. In this state of habitual union with God (union according to the substance) the spiritual powers are several times rapt in God (union according to the powers), and here the soul enjoys the most elevated unitive contemplations, in which it arrives at a certain participation in the divine Trinitarian life.

The first and fundamental controversy concerning the Saint's doctrine regards the notion of the union on which the doctrinal exposition hinges. Under the influence of the recent discussions concerning the ascetic or mystical nature of union with God, some have believed they must perform a vivisection, distinguishing an ascetic union to which the doctrine of the Ascent of Mount Carmel would lead and a mystical union which would be attained at the end of the Dark Night. But the text of the Ascent (III, 2) opposes such a distinction in the most formal way; it declares explicitly, in fact, that the union of which it treats is not attained except through the "passive night" (n. 14).

It must not be understood, however, that the Saint believes that all souls must arrive in the same way at enjoying the contemplative graces which, in his descriptions, accompany the soul's progress toward union. Speaking directly for contemplative souls, he describes the development of union in the manner in which it is ordinarily effected in contemplative souls; but he also knows that "God does not lead to contemplation all those who deliberately exercise themselves in the spiritual way, indeed, not even half; the reason he knows!" (Notte, I, 9, 9). In order to give an exposition of St. J.'s doctrine of which all may avail themselves, it must be pointed out that union as such is not strictly conjoined with the contemplative states.

Another controversy, or rather an error into which Baruzzi fell with his rationalistic interpretation of the Saint's doctrine, consists in having transferred the purification of the soul, preparatory to union, from a fundamentally volitional plane to a fundamentally intellectual plane.

In recent times it has also been discussed whether in the descriptions that the Saint's works give of initial contemplation (v.) two forms of it must be distinguished, one acquired and the other infused, or only one. Those who have distinguished the two forms have done so as a consequence of the vivisection of the concept of union. St. J., on the other hand, speaks only of one form of initial contemplation, and it is the one that Carmelite theologians later called "acquired," precisely because, although it is due to a hidden influence of the Holy Spirit, "practically" it is acquired by the soul of contemplative life that duly prepares itself.

A final discussion regards the nature of unitive contemplation, which some have believed must be attributed to the intervention of charisms, whereas evidently, according to St. J., it must be attributed to the intervention of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the soul, which nevertheless enjoys those "touches of union" that in mystical theology are called "substantial." For a more detailed exposition of this problem, as also for the more general one of contemplation, v. MISTICA (teologia).

Gabriele di Santa Maria Maddalena