John of the Cross

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Saint John of the Cross<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;"> Image:JohnCross.jpg </td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;background-color:gold;">Mystic and Doctor of the Church</td></tr>
Born	June 24, 1542 in Fontiveros, Spain
Died	December 14, 1591) in Ubeda, Andalusia, Spain<tr><td>Venerated in</td> <td>Roman Catholic Church; Church of England</td></tr><tr><td>Beatified</td> <td>January 25, 1675 by Pope Clement X</td></tr><tr><td>Canonized</td> <td>December 27, 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII</td></tr><tr><td>Major shrine</td> <td>Tomb of Saint John of the Cross, Segovia, Spain</td></tr>
Feast	December 14<tr><td>Patronage</td> <td>contemplative life; contemplatives; mystical theology; mystics; Spanish poets</td></tr>
Image:Gloriole.svg Saints Portal

For the personification of the average Filipino, see Juan de la Cruz.

Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) (June 24, 1542 – December 14, 1591) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila.

He is renowned for his cooperation with Saint Teresa of Avila in the reformation of the Carmelite order, and for his writings; both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul (in the Christian sense of detachment from creatures and attachment to God) are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature. He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church.

1 Life
- 1.1 Early life and education
- 1.2 Imprisonment, writings, torture, death and recognition
2 Literary works
3 External links

[edit] Life

[edit] Early life and education

As a child he lived in various Castilian villages, with the last being Medina del Campo, to which he moved in 1551. There, he studied the humanities at a Jesuit school from 1559 to 1563, and then entered the Carmel order, adopting the name Fr. Juan de Santo Matía.

The following year (1564) he professed as a Carmelite and moved to Salamanca, where he studied at the University and at the Colegio de San Andrés. This stay would influence all his later writings, as Fray Luis de León taught biblical studies (Exegesis, Hebrew and Aramaic) at the University. León was one of the foremost experts in Biblical Studies then and had written an important and controversial translation of the Song of Songs into Spanish. (Translation of the Bible into the vernacular was not allowed then in Spain).

[edit] Imprisonment, writings, torture, death and recognition

On the night of 3 to 4 December 1577, following his refusal to relocate after his superior's orders and allegedly because of his attempts to reform life within the Carmelite order, he was taken prisoner by his superiors and jailed in Toledo, where he was kept under a brutal regime that included public lashing before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation. He managed to escape nine months after, on 15 August 1578. In the meantime, he had composed a great part of his most famous poem Spiritual Canticle during this imprisonment; his harsh sufferings and spiritual endeavours are then reflected in all of his subsequent writings.

After returning to a normal life, he went on with the reformation and the founding of monasteries for the new Discalced Carmelites order which he had helped settling along with his fellow St. Teresa de Ávila. He died on 14 December 1591.

His writings were first published in 1618. He was canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726. In 1926 he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pius XI. The Church of England commemorates him as a "Teacher of the Faith".

His feast day is December 14.

[edit] Literary works

St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2500 verses, two of them—the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul are widely considered to be among the best poems ever written in Spanish, both for their formal stylistic point of view and their rich symbolism and imagery.

The Spiritual Canticle is an eclogue in which the bride (representing the soul) searches for the bridegroom (representing Jesus Christ), and is anxious at having lost him; both are filled with joy upon reuniting. It can be seen as a free-form Spanish version of the Song of songs at a time when translations of the Bible into vernacular were forbidden.

Dark Night of the Soul (from which the spiritual term Dark Night of the Soul takes its name) narrates the journey of the soul from her bodily home to her union with God. It happens during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties she meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas.

St. John also wrote three treatises on mystical theology, two of them concerning the two poems above, and supposedly explaining the meaning of the poems verse by verse and even word by word. He actually proves unable to follow this scheme and writes freely on the subject he is treating at each time. The third work, Ascent of Mount Carmel is a more systematic study of the ascetical endeavour of a soul looking for perfect union with God, and the mystical events happening along the way. These, together with his Sayings of Love and Peace and St. Teresa's writings, are the most important mystical works in Spanish, and have deeply influenced later spiritual writers all around the world. Among these can be named T. S. Eliot, Thérèse de Lisieux, Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), and Thomas Merton. John has also influenced philosophers (Jacques Maritain), theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar), and pacifists (Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and Philip Berrigan). He is also mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's groundbreaking poem "Howl."