John of the Cross was born of godly parents at Fontibere, near Avila, in Spain in 1542. It began soon to appear that he was foreordained to be an acceptable servant to the Virgin Mother of God. At five years of age he fell into a well, but the hand of the Mother of God took him up and saved him from all hurt. So burning was his desire to suffer that when he was nine years old he gave up any softer bed, and used to lie on potsherds. In his youth he devoted himself as a servant in the hospital for the sick poor at Medina del Campo, and embraced with eager charity the meanest offices there, his readiness likewise exciting others to imitate him. In 1563 he obeyed the call to higher things and entered the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, wherein, by command of his Superiors, he received Priest’s Orders. By their leave and his own strong desire for the sternest discipline and the strictest life, he adopted the primitive Rule. Full of the memory of what our Lord suffered he declared war against himself as his own worst enemy, and carried it on by depriving himself of sleep and food, by iron chains, by whips, and by every kind of self-torture. And in a little while he had crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof. He was indeed worthy that holy Theresa should say of him that he was one of the purest and holiest souls by whom God was then enlightening His Church.
The strange hardness of his life and the might of his graces, joined to the unceasing concentration of his mind on God, had the effect of often subjecting him to daily and extraordinary trances. So burning was his love of God that the fire sometimes could not be kept bound within, and broke forth, so that his face shone. The salvation of his neighbours was one of his dearest longings, and he was unwearied in preaching the Word of God, and in administering the Sacraments. As strong in so many good works and glowing with zeal to make discipline harder, he was given by God to be an helpmate to holy Theresa, and he aided her to set up again the primitive observance among the brethren of the Order of Mount Carmel, as she had already done among the sisters. In doing God’s work, he and God’s handmaid together went through toils that cannot be numbered. No discomforts or dangers held him back from going throughout all Spain to visit all and each of the convents which the care of that holy Virgin had founded, and in them, and in very many others erected by her means for spreading the renewed observance, he strengthened it by his word and example. He is indeed worthy to be reckoned second only to the holy Theresa as a professor and founder of the Order of discalced Carmelites.
He remained throughout all his life a clean man and when some shameless women tried to beguile his modesty, he not only foiled them, but gained them for Christ. In the judgement of the Apostolic See he was as much taught of God as was holy Theresa, for explaining God’s hidden mysteries, and he wrote books of mystical theology filled with heavenly wisdom. Christ once asked him what reward he would have for so much work, to which he answered: “Lord, that I may suffer, and be disesteemed for your sake.” He was very famous for his power over devils, whom he often scared out of men’s bodies, for discerning of spirits, for the gift of prophecy and for eminent miracles. He was extraordinarily lowly and often entreated of the Lord that he might die in some place where he was unknown. In accordance with his prayer, he was sent to Ubeda where for three months the Prior imprisoned and cruelly ill-used him during his last sickness. To crown his love of suffering, he bore uncomplainingly five open sores in his leg, running with water.
At last, on the 14th of December 1591, being the day, and at the hour foretold by himself, after having in godly and holy wise received the Sacraments of the Church, hugging the image of that crucified Saviour of whom his heart and his mouth had been used to be full, he uttered the words: “Into your hands I commend y spirit,” and fell asleep in the Lord. As his soul passed away it was received into a glorious cloud of fire. His body yielded a right sweet savour, and is still incorrupt where it lies, held in great honour, at Segovia. He was famous for very many miracles both before and since his death, and Pope Benedict XIII numbered his name among those of the Saints.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Let us go with the Church to Mount Carmel and offer our grateful homage to John of the Cross who, following in the footsteps of Teresa of Jesus, opened a safe way to souls seeking God.
The growing disinclination of the people for social prayer was threatening the irreparable destruction of piety when, in the sixteenth century, the divine goodness raised up Saints whose teaching and holiness responded to the needs of the new times. Doctrine does not change: the asceticism and mysticism of that age transmitted to the succeeding centuries the echo of those that had gone before. But their explanations were given in a more didactic way and analysed more narrowly. Their methods aimed at obviating the risk of illusion to which souls were exposed by their isolated devotion. It is but just to recognise that under the ever fruitful action of the Holy Ghost the psychology of supernatural states became more extended and more precise.
The early Christians, praying with the Church, living daily and hourly the life of her Liturgy, kept her stamp upon them in their personal relations with God. Thus it came about that, under the persevering and transforming influence of the Church, and participating in the graces of light and union and in all the blessings of that one Beloved so pleasing to the Spouse, they assimilated her sanctity to themselves without any further trouble but to follow their Mother with docility, and suffer themselves to be carried securely in her arms. Thus they applied to themselves the words of our Lord: “Unless you become as little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” We need not be surprised that there was not then, as now, the frequent and assiduous assistance of a particular director for each soul. Special guides are not so necessary to the members of a caravan or of an army: it is isolated travellers that stand in need of them, and even with these special guides, they can never have the same security as those who follow the caravan or the army.
This was understood, in the course of the last few centuries, by the men of God who, taking their inspiration from the many different aptitudes of souls, became the leaders of schools, one it is true in aim, but differing in the methods they adopted for counteracting the dangers of individualism. In this campaign of restoration and salvation where the worst enemy of all was illusion under a thousand forms with its subtle roots and its endless wiles, John of the Cross was the living image of the Word of God, more piercing than any two-edged sword, reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, for he read, with unfailing glance, the very thoughts and intentions of hearts.
Let us listen to his words. Though he belongs to modern times, he is evidently a son of the ancients. “The soul,” he says, “is to attain to a certain sense, to a certain divine knowledge, most generous and full of sweetness, of all human and divine things which do not fall within the common sense and natural perceptions of the soul. It views them with different eyes now, for the light and grace of the Holy Ghost differ from those of sense, the divine from the human. The dark night, through which the soul passes on its way to the divine light of the perfect union of the love of God — so far as it is in this life possible — requires for its explanation greater experience and light of knowledge than I possess. For so great are the trials, and so profound the darkness, spiritual as well as corporal, which souls must endure, if they will attain to perfection, that no human knowledge can comprehend them, nor experience describe them.
The journey of the soul to the divine union is called night, for three reasons.
The first is derived from the point from which the soul sets out, the privation of the desire of all pleasure in all the things of this world, by an entire detachment therefrom. This is as night for every desire and sense of man. The second, from the road by which it travels. That is, faith, for faith is obscure like night to the intellect. The third, from the goal to which it tends, God, incomprehensible and infinite, who in this life is as night to the soul. We must pass through these three nights if we are to attain to the divine union with God. They are foreshadowed in holy Scripture by the three nights which were to elapse, according to the command of the angel, between the betrothal and the marriage of the younger Tobias (Tobias vi. 18). On the first night he was to burn the liver of the fish in the fire, which is the heart whose affections are set on the things of this world, and which, if it will enter on the road that leads to God, must be burned up and purified of all created things in the fire of this love. This purgation drives away the evil spirit who has dominion over our soul because of our attachment to those pleasures which flow from temporal and corporeal things.
The second night, said the angel, you will be admitted into the society of the holy Patriarchs, the fathers of the faith. The soul having passed the first night, which is the privation of all sensible things, enters immediately into the second night, alone in pure faith, and by it alone directed: for faith is not subject to sense.
The third night, said the Angel, you will obtain a blessing — that is, God, who in the second night of faith communicates Himself so secretly and so intimately to the soul. This is another night, inasmuch as this communication is more obscure than the others. When this night is over, which is the accomplishment of the communication of God in spirit, ordinarily effected when the soul is in great darkness, the union with the bride, which is the Wisdom of God immediately ensues. O spiritual soul, when you see your desire obscured, your will arid and constrained, and your faculties incapable of any interior act, be not grieved at this, but look upon it rather as a great good, for God is delivering you from yourself, taking the matter out of your hands. For however strenuously you may exert yourself, you will never do anything so faultlessly, so perfectly and securely as now — because of the impurity and torpor of your faculties — when God takes you by the hand, guides you safely in your blindness, along a road and to an end you know not, and whither you could never travel guided by your own eyes, and supported by your own feet.”
We love to hear the Saints describe the paths which they themselves have trodden, and of which, in reward for their fidelity, they are the recognised guides in the Church. Let us add that “in sufferings of this kind, we must take care not to excite our Lord’s compassion before His work is completed. There can be no mistake about it, certain graces which God gives to the soul are not necessary for salvation, but they must be obtained at a price. If we were to make too many difficulties, it might happen that, to spare our weakness, our Lord would let us fall back into a lower way. This, to the eye of faith, would be a terrible and irreparable misfortune.”
“For the interests of holy Church and the glory of God, it is more important than we are able to say, that truly contemplative souls should be multiplied upon the Earth. They are the hidden spring, the moving principle of everything that is for the glory of God, for the kingdom of His Son, and for the perfect fulfilment of His divine Will. Vain would it be to multiply active works and contrivances, yea, and even deeds of sacrifice. All will be fruitless if the Church Militant has not her saints to uphold her, saints still wayfarers (in via), which is the state in which the Master chose to redeem the world. Certain powers and a certain fruitfulness are inherent to the present life. It has in itself so few charms that it will not have been useless to show, as we have done, that it has also some advantages.”Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
The birthday of St. Chrysogonus, martyr. Chrysogonus was imprisoned at Rome in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. There he lived for two years on the alms of the holy Anastasia. She was suffering much persecution from her husband Publius for Christ’s Name’s sake, and was used to write to Chrysogonus to ask for the help of his prayers, and he in return comforted her by his epistles. Presently the Emperor wrote to Rome commanding the rest of the Christians who were in prison there to be put to death, and Chrysogonus to be sent to himself at Aquileia. When he was brought there, he said to him: “I have sent for you, O Chrysogonus, that I may increase your honours, if only you will bring thy mind to worship the gods.” Thereto Chrysogonus answered: “With my mind and with my prayers I worship Him Who is God indeed, but such gods as are nothing but images of devils, them I hate and curse.” Then was the Emperor kindled to fury at this answer and commanded Chrysogonus to be beheaded at Aquae Gradatae on the 24th day of November. His body was cast into the sea but found a little while afterwards washed up upon the shore, and the Priest Zoilus took it and buried it in his own house.
At Rome, St. Crescentian, martyr, whose name is mentioned in the Acts of the blessed Pope Marcellus.
At Amelia in Umbria, during the persecution of Diocletian, St. Firmina, virgin and martyr, who, after being subjected to various torments, to hanging, and to burning with flaming torches, yielded up her spirit.
At Corinth, St. Alexander, martyr, who fought unto death for the faith of Christ under Julian the Apostate and the governor Sallust.
At Cordova, the saintly virgins and martyrs Flora and Mary, who were for a long time confined in prison and slain with the sword in the persecution of the Arabs.
At Perugia, St. Felicissimus, martyr.
At Milan, St. Protasius, bishop, who defended the cause of Athanasius before the emperor Constans, in the council of Sardica. Having sustained many labours for the church entrusted to him and for religion, he departed this life to go to the Lord.
In the castle of Blaye, St. Romanus, a priest, whose holiness is proclaimed by glorious miracles.
In Auvergne, St. Portian, an abbot, who was renowned for miracles in the time of king Theodoric.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
