John of the Cross, Saint

GIOVANNI della CROCE, saint. — “Mystical Doctor,” reformer of the Carmelites, in the world Juan de Yepes, born in 1542 at Fontiveros in the province of Avila (Spain) to the nobleman Gonzalo and the commoner Caterina Alvarez.

I. LIFE

At a very young age 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 unsuccessful experiments in various trades, G. entered the service of a hospital and at the same time studied grammar with the Jesuits. At the age of twenty-one he became a Carmelite religious, taking the name of G. di S. Mattia. He was sent to Salamanca, where, enrolled at the University, he studied philosophy and theology. Ordained a priest at twenty-five, and desiring a more perfect manner of life, he was considering entering the Carthusians when he met s. Teresa, who won him over to the work of the Carmelite reform. Together with p. Antonio di Gesù he founded its first house for religious at Duruelo in 1568. His first task was to “form” the religious, first as master of novices and then as rector of the first house of studies at Alcalà (1571). From 1572 to 1577, at the request of s. Teresa, he took up the office of confessor at the monastery where the Saint had begun her religious life, in Avila, where she was then prioress. Disputes arose between the reformed and unreformed Carmelites following a conflict of jurisdictions; for more than eight months he was confined in prison in the convent of Toledo and treated as a rebel.

He suffered greatly, including spiritually, but when he emerged (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 Teresians. 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, when new misunderstandings arose and he had been deprived of every office, he withdrew into solitude at La Peñuela near 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: 24 Nov.

II. WRITINGS AND DOCTRINE

The “minor works” comprise 26 letters, counsels, and sayings, two brief booklets (Counsels to a Religious and the Precautions), and a series of poems.

The latter were written partly in the prison of Toledo. The sayings, lapidary in style, are very rich in substance. The booklet of the Precautions, written, it seems, for the Carmelite nuns of Beas, is a brief practical summary of the Saint’s doctrine. Only the manuscripts of a part of the counsels and of some letters are still extant in the author’s hand.

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

A precise date cannot be assigned to the composition of The Ascent. Apparently, it was begun when the Saint was frequenting the monastery of Beas (from 1579), but most of it was written at Granada (from 1582 onward); the work remained incomplete. The Dark Night, likewise unfinished, was written later (perhaps after 1584), also at Granada. The Canticle, in its first form, was composed in 1584 at the request of Mother Anna of Jesus; it nevertheless seems to incorporate fragments from an earlier period. The Flame, in its first form, was written while the Saint was provincial vicar of Andalusia (1585–87), at the request of Doña Anna da Peñalosa. In the manuscript tradition, these last two works have come down to us in two forms, each 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), more impressive in appearance than in reality, has lent considerable support to the thesis maintaining its inauthenticity; but so far no definitive argument has been produced on the matter, and the origin of the second recension in the same s. G. remains entirely probable.

The whole doctrine of s. G. is centered on union with God, toward which he wishes to lead the soul, and then on describing the life it enjoys once it has reached so exalted a goal. The path toward union is described especially in the Ascent–Dark Night diptych; its various stages and degrees are set forth more fully in the Canticle and the Flame; the notion of union, which dominates the entire work, continually reappears in the various writings.

III. THE NOTION OF UNION

In the Salita (I, 11, 2) he defines union as follows: “the state of this divine union consists in having the soul, with regard to its will, completely transformed into the will of God, so that there is nothing in it contrary to the will of God, but that in everything and through everything which moves it, it is solely the will of God.” The transformation of the soul into God, in which union consists, results from the fulfilment of two conditions: the first, negative, excludes from the soul’s will any opposition to the divine will (that is: the soul’s total detachment from all things and from itself); the second, positive, means that the soul’s will is always moved by the divine will and therefore

no longer by its own interest. Such a soul will live solely for “the honour and glory of God.” The “structure” of union is constantly 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 an extent that the soul appears divinised and lives a divine life, being moved by God, in general, in everything that it does.

IV. THE PATH LEADING TO UNION

Since union presupposes total detachment as its fundamental condition and is realized in the soul’s being moved by God almost continually, the path toward union must procure for the soul a complete purity of affection and, at the same time, gradually place it ever more fully under divine influence. It will therefore be a path of total self-stripping, accompanied by a progressive taking-possession by God.

purification (v.) of the soul must be accomplished both in its sensitive part (“night of sense”) and in its spiritual part (“night of the spirit”); and it is effected not only through the soul’s personal application (“active night”), but also requires divine intervention (“passive night”). The soul begins with an energetic mortification of its senses and sense appetites; but, in order to purify it more thoroughly, the Lord ordinarily sends it the trial of aridity. This, in turn, generally contains the Lord’s invitation to abandon meditation and pass to a new form of prayer: loving attention to God, contemplation (v.), in which God is already working secretly in the soul. Having thus mastered its sensitive part, the soul applies itself to purifying its spirit through an eminent exercise of the theological virtues. This also distances it from the pursuit of extraordinary heavenly favors, such as visions and revelations, so that it may instead enter ever more deeply into the contemplation of pure faith (ibid., II and III). Here too the Lord comes to its aid, working passively within it, making it aware, in the light of contemplation, of its still profound impurity, while drawing it to himself through infused love. The soul suffers terribly in this state, seeing all its deformities; but its love for God grows increasingly intense, 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 able to be introduced into the state of union.

V. GRADI E PASI DELL'UNIONE

In the state of union, s. G. distinguishes two degrees: the first, in the metaphorical language of the mystics, is called «spiritual betrothal (or engagement)», 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 «spiritual betrothal», the habitual state consists, on the part of the soul, in having said to God the perfect «yes» of total conformity of its will to that of God; this is matched, on God's part, by the true and complete «yes» of his Grace (Fiamma, III, n. 24). In this state the soul receives, with greater or lesser frequency, God's «visitations», that is, from time to time it enjoys unitive contemplation, which had been developed within the soul during the darkness of the night of the spirit. Nevertheless, in this state the soul is still subject to temptations and resistances of the sensibility, and still suffers moments of «absence of God». But this ceases in «spiritual marriage», in which the soul continually feels God within itself, moving it in all that it does and maintaining all its faculties in an admirable harmony, by which they all devote themselves to divine service. In this state of habitual union with God (union according to substance), the spiritual faculties are repeatedly rapt in God (union according to the faculties), and here the soul enjoys the highest unitive contemplations, in which it attains a certain participation in the divine Trinitarian life.

The first and fundamental controversy concerning the doctrine of the Saint regards the notion of union around which the doctrinal exposition is centered. Under the in-

fluence of recent discussions concerning the ascetical or mystical nature of union with God, some have thought it necessary to perform a vivisection, distinguishing an ascetical union to which the doctrine of the Ascent of Mount Carmel would lead, and a mystical union that would be attained at the end of the Dark Night. But the text of the Ascent (III, 2) formally rules out this distinction; indeed, it explicitly declares that the union in question is attained only through the «passive night» (n. 14).

It should not be understood, however, that the Saint believes that all souls must arrive in the same way at the enjoyment of the contemplative graces which, in his descriptions, accompany the soul's progress toward union. Speaking directly to contemplative souls, he describes the development of union in the manner in which it ordinarily takes place in contemplative souls; but he also knows that «God does not lead all those who deliberately undertake the spiritual path to contemplation, indeed, not even half of them; the reason is known to him alone!» (Night, I, 9, 9). In order to present an exposition of the doctrine of s. G. that can be useful to everyone, it must be pointed out that union as such is not strictly connected with contemplative states.

Another controversy, or rather, an error into which Baruzzi fell through 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 one.

In recent times it has also been debated whether, contemplation (v.) found in the Saint's works, two forms of it should be distinguished, one acquired and the other infused, or only one. Those who have distinguished the two forms did so as a consequence of the vivisection of the concept of union. S. G., on the other hand, speaks of only one form of initial contemplation, namely that which Carmelite theologians later called «acquired», precisely because, although it is due to a hidden influence of the Holy Spirit, it is «practically» acquired by the soul of contemplative life as it duly prepares itself.

A final discussion concerns the nature of unitive contemplation, which some have thought should be attributed to the intervention of charisms, whereas evidently, according to s. G., 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 well as of the more general question of contemplation, V. MISTICA (teologia).