Saint John of the Cross - Reformer - Mystic

St. Teresa later wrote of St. John,

      "I realized that he was a saint, and had always been a saint."  Before her was a figure tiny in physical stature, as the world measures, but a towering giant in the Eyes of the Lord.  She recognized the same fire burning in him that raged inside of her. 

      She was fifty-two; he was twenty-five.  She, a nun twice his age!  He, a young friar with a dream to become a Carthusian hermit.  But, as he looked at her, he knew he would do anything she asked of him.  And ask she did!  She implored him to wait to join the Carthusians until the Lord had given them a Monastery.  She continued, he was, at this time and place, to serve the Lord by working change within his Order, as she had begun amongst the nuns of the Carmelite Order. 

      What could he do?  As he later wrote, his was "a heart of one that had fallen in love."  He promised he would help and agreed to wait, to join the Carthusians, if it didn't take too long.  (Author's note:  It reminds me of Brother Joseph who came to help our ministry and never left.)

      St. John waited until autumn.  He was restless.  He wanted to be about his dream!  He struggled!  Determined to fight the magnetic pull of Teresa on him, he set out toward Salamanca.  His journey over, he looked upon the towering magnificence of the University of Salamanca and knew he had to say good-by to all his memories.  He would use all he had learned there, but the gnawing inside him, clearly told him he had to return to Medina and his promise to St. Teresa. 

      So, back again, in Medina, he meets up with St. Teresa!  She asks him to join her, as she is on her way to found a house in Valladolid for her sisters.  She had promised to do this in the hope of rescuing the soul of one Don Bernardino from Purgatory.  The first Mass celebrated there, she saw his soul rising to Heaven, and Don Bernardino thanking her for what she had done for him. 

      This accomplished, she remained in Valladolid for the winter, sending St. John ahead to Duruelo.  He stopped at  Avila to pick up a workman.  He arrived in Duruelo.  The house, St. Teresa had chosen, that he was supposed to make into a house for religious, was a broken-down shack. 

      This young man, who had studied in Salamanca, in one of the finest Universities in the world, who had enjoyed the company of fresh, young minds and been surrounded by great thinkers, who'd been cradled in the glory of God he saw evidenced in the fine churches of Vallodolid, was standing in front of a hovel which, with God's Mercy would fall apart before he had to enter it.  But it did not fall down. 

He began to clean it, dispossessing the bugs and vermin that had been its former tenants.

Jesus calls him by a new name-John of the Cross

      Like the Saints before him, in Duruelo, the Lord asked him for everything!  No more consolation!  He had been born Juan (John) de Yepes y Alvarez; he became Juan de Santo Mat¡a, when he was professed;  now he would earn a new name: Juan de la Cruz, John of the Cross.  Jesus had said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me," and John said, "Yes, Lord.  Here I am, Lord.  I have come to do Your Will." 

      He was on the road, to live what he later wrote,

"In the Cross is holiness in perfect beauty

There is no safety to the Soul,

No hope of life eternal

Save in the Cross.

Take up that Cross and follow Jesus."

      How often we do not recognize our afflictions as blessings!  The remoteness, the poverty of Duruelo, whose potential St. Teresa could foresee, became a center of religion.  Not only did the local peasants come, but this little household drew others from far and wide.  A few weeks after his arrival, St. John was joined by another Carmelite St. Teresa had invited to make a sacrifice.  As St. John was young, all of twenty plus, Friar Anthony, the new recruit, was sixty years of age.  He and St. Teresa had been friends for years.  Do you get the idea it was dangerous to be her friend or to get within range of her and her vision?  What makes a friar who lives in a comfortable house, with all the rewards of having been in an Order for many years, leave it all for the hard life of Duruelo?  She said of Friar Anthony,

      "God had inspired him with more valour than He had me, and so he answered that not only there would he dwell, but in a pigsty."

      When St. Teresa returned three months later, she found the little community singing and laughing.  Seeing the former Prior, Anthony, broom in hand, St. Teresa could not help but tease,

      "How is this?  What has become of our dignity?"

      The peasants, one by one, came and brought others.  Was it, these friars were infectious with their joy and the obvious love they had for God and through Him, for one another?  In any case, not only the poor came, but the wealthy as well.  Among them was a lord who would build a house for the now fourteen novices, in the village of Mancera. 

      It was lovely!  St. John was to take charge.  They had everything conducive to, at last, getting closer to God through nature.  The groves, the brooks, the flowers, the Sierra mountains, he was in Heaven on earth.  Now, he could get about communing with his Lord as he had planned, before...St. Teresa!

      Meanwhile, the Lord and St. Teresa were planning new projects.  I guess St. John was too happy.  Not to be the way, evidently, for John of the Cross,  he was summoned by St. Teresa to be superior of a new community! 

      St. John's stay in the new community would not last a year when, right, Teresa again!  She sent him to a house in Alcal  de Henares.  Here, as superior he would be instructing students from the university in things of the faith; and from this intellectual input, lead them to higher plains of spirituality.  Was he happy!  Here we go again!  St. John receives disturbing news of abuses coming from a man  who had been placed in charge of novices in Pastrana.  Off, St. John goes to straighten things out. 

      Although forms of mortification were used as a means of reaching perfection at that time, the man in charge who had taken the name, Angel de San Gabriel, was carrying things too far!  Being himself a victim of melancholy, he relieved his frustrations on the novices, scourging them.  Their bare backs, scarred from the frequent beatings, were not only to be tortured inside the Monastery, but in the public square.  There they could be abused mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.  The young men of the town, made a pastime of taunting the novices, as they were being chastised. 

      Friar Angel's lust for cruelty held no bounds.  Pointing to people who are guilty of spiritual gluttony, who for their own pleasure kill themselves (and others) with their penances, St. John admonished,

      "This, was the penance of beasts to which they are attracted exactly like beasts by the desire and pleasure they find in them." 

      St. John told them the devil is always there to deceive good people into doing bad things.  When doing anything, the question must always be, am I pleasing God or myself?  St. Francis of Assisi would not allow the brothers to practice forms of physical penance to the degree he did, because he said some were too immature, and others enjoyed it too much!  When there is any form of spiritual gluttony, there is less tendency of it resulting in virtue, more in vice.

      St. John hardly had time to shake the dust of the road from his habit, back in Alcal  de Henares, when yes, St.Teresa called him to Avila!  She needed him, she said, to act as spiritual director to her own convent of the Incarnation where she had been named Prioress.

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