Juan de Yepes y Alverez was born into a Converso family near the town of Avila on the 24th of June, 1542. He died in the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Ubeda today, the 14th of December in 1591.
We generally know him as John of the Cross, or more properly St John of the Cross.
Juan’s father died when he was three and the family struggled to survive. He was able to attend a school dedicated to the poor, where he was given a rudimentary education. Later he worked in a hospital while continuing to study at a Jesuit school. At twenty-one he entered the Carmelite Order.
The order sent him to Salamanca University. And he was ordained a priest in 1567. In the same year he met the Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila.
Teresa invited him to join her in the restoration of a more strict form of the Carmelite rule. One noticeable feature was forgoing shoes, hence “Discalced Carmelites.” After reflection and prayer he joined her. Soon he established the first monastery for friars in the reformed order.
As the reformed order emerged, John became Teresa’s spiritual director and confessor. Although from this distance its hard to say who was the teacher and who the student. I suspect they took turns. What we can see is a powerful collaboration, and a flowering of mystical Christianity. A flowering that has yet to wither.
He worked hard and suffered some persecution, including an imprisonment and torture. H also wrote, becoming one of the world’s great poets of the heart. He and Teresa are among the thirty-six people in Catholic history to be designated “doctors of the church.
John is principally remembered as the author of the Spiritual Canticle, the Dark Night of the Soul, and the Ascent of Mount Carmel. The Ascent starts as a commentary on the Dark Night, but quickly becomes one of the great spiritual maps of the intimate way.
Wikipedia begins a list of the more prominent spiritual writers he influenced, including “T. S. Eliot, Thérèse de Lisieux, Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) and Thomas Merton. John is said to have also influenced philosophers (Jacques Maritain), theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar), pacifists (Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan and Philip Berrigan) and artists (Salvador Dalí). Pope John Paul II wrote his theological dissertation on the mystical theology of John of the Cross.”
One of the great gifts to world culture and to anyone who wishes to follow the intimate way.
Endless bows
The image of John of the Cross is by Brother Robert Lentz. His icons are available here.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In