St. John of the Cross - December 14 - Carmelite Saints
St. John of the Cross - December 14th - Carmelite Saints
Doctor of the Church. Author of Spiritual Canticles. Living Flame of Love. Ascent of Mount Carmel and poetry so sublime it is studied by Spanish literature students still! Our beloved saint was born in Fontiveros, Castile, Spain, most likely in 1540. As Dr. Lilies has pointed out, his childhood was not easy. His father, who had married a woman his family felt was beneath them died when John was about 3 years old. When she went to their uncle for help, she was refused. Two years later, Juan’s older brother, Luis, passed away, possibly from malnutrition. By 1551, his mother had moved to Medina del Campo, where she could find work. This is the place where Juan eventually met St. Teresa of Ávila. It is, even today, a small place, removed from main roads. A place set apart where two great contemplative mystics and doctors of the Church were to meet.
And there, in that quiet, humble place, a small statue above a locked door invites us into his teachings of letting go of all attachments.
For our dear St. John could have been attached to an anger against those who refused to help his mother after his father died. Or he could have become attached to a desire never to be poor to avoid the suffering he endured as a child. Instead, he walked straight into the storm, realizing that suffering purifies when endured with Christ for Christ and in Christ.
By 1567, he had joined the Carmelite order, and had sought and received permission from his superiors to live a more austere life than that commonly lived at the time. At this important moment, he met and was encouraged by St. Teresa of Jesus (or of Ávila). He formed the Discalced Carmellites Order with her and promoted it with great sufferings untl his death in 1591.
As he deepened his knowledge of what St. Teresa was doing in her reform, she invited him to be the confessor at the Monastery of "La Encarnación" (the Incarnation). The importance of his role as confessor at Encarnación cannot be ignored. All the deep connections made between a holy confessor and his penitents surely helped that convent to progress in holiness! As a testimony to his work there, he is remembered, as we see by the careful keeping of the chair he used for his work among their souls as their confessor.
The Spanish says “Chair used by St. John of the Cross when he was doing confessions in this Monastery.” Certainly, it does not look comfortable, at least to our modern eyes!
In that time of struggle for holiness, St. John was encouraged by a vision of Jesus on the Cross as seen from above. The sketch he made has influenced artists across the centuries, and contemplating it certainly causes some small awareness of the Father’s love for us that allowed the Gift of His Very Son dying on the Cross to open the gates of Heaven for us who do not deserve to be there.
Certainly this reminder of the Father’s love, the Son’s love and the Holy Spirit’s love must have strengthened St John through his imprisonment in Toledo. Probably nutritional deficiencies there as well as from childhood led to constant sufferings originating from his digestive system, which eventually led to his death at Ubeda. His remains were transferred from there to Segovia and then transferred back. Graces flowed from those remains in such an abundance that by 1603, by order of the Order’s Superior General, his works were gathered to be sent to Rome to begin the canonization process. By 1614, they were sent to Rome. Some places say he was beatified by 1667, yet at Segovia, the place where his remains were housed in an incorrupt state until his beatification, a sign says he was beatified in 1675. His sainthood was declared in 1726, and two hundred years later, in 1926, he was named a Doctor of the Church.
His many writings attest to his interior life and love of God and call us to a silence and detachment from all things earthly, for even a string, however small, will keep us from our flight to heaven (see Ascent of Mount Carmel, specifically in Book One, Chapter 11, Section 4) They show us a love that helps us to realize all that is given here calls us to that greater love that is unimaginable to us here, yet intimated by what we can perceive. He served in Segovia where the route he walked each day is still marked by plaques such as the one below:
The quote is from Spiritual Canticles Stanza 17 (p. 473 in the Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, 3d Ed. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD)
Be still, deadening north wind;
south wind, come, you that waken love,
breathe through my garden,
let its fragrance flow,
and the Beloved will feed amid the flowers.
In St. John's poem, the soul speaks here to her Beloved, Christ. What might our soul resemble if we let go of what stills our love of God? What if we were to allow the warm flow of Heaven’s air to awaken in us such a fragrant love of God that flowers should blossom in our souls? What if these flowers that feed the Lamb of God should begin to grow there? May God grant that as we sit in silence before Him in Eucharistic Adoration, we may so desire to love Him that our hearts are inflamed and our souls should become living Gardens for Jesus!
Photos courtesy of an AV Disciple from 2023 Spain Pilgrimage.
images from pilgrimage to Spain with Dan and Stephanie Burke. Taken by a pilgrim used with permission.
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