How St. John Helps Us Embrace the Cross
Susan Muto, PhD
Dr. Muto is executive director of the Epiphany Association and Dean of the Epiphany Academy of Formative Spirituality. She is a renowned speaker, author, and teacher. She does church-related ministry in the Epiphany Association and has led many conferences, seminars, workshops, and institutes throughout the world.
In the treasury of classical Christian literature, there is one saint and Doctor of the Church who teaches us by virtue of his own life the meaning of each crucifying epiphany the mystery strews in our path. Here is a man of God, born in 1542, who carried his cross without the least complaint from childhood on. His father died when he and his two brothers were young boys; then one of them, Luis, died, too. The other, Francisco, was sent to live with relatives, leaving him and his mother to find sustenance on their own. To help make ends meet in their hometown of Medina del Campo, he worked in an orphanage-hospital taking care of the poorest of the poor and in the process learning the meaning of compassion for humanity wounded by sickness and sin. Around the age of twenty-two, he entered the Carmelite community; and after his novitiate, he was sent to study at the University of Salamanca where he completed his thesis on the theme of fidelity to the doctrine of the Church.
After his ordination in 1567, he met an older woman who would change his life as much as he would change hers. St. Teresa of Avila shared with the newly-ordained friar, Juan de la Cruz, her dream of reforming the Carmelite Order by returning to its original, unmitigated rule. One distinguishing feature of her reform would be the wearing of sandals, not shoes, to symbolize the poverty she wished her sisters to embrace. John was so gripped by her vision of their being Discalced Carmelites that he conceded in 1568 to Mother Teresa’s request to open a house for future friars committed like her to the reform.
Being now the first master and spiritual director of the Discalced Carmelites did not endear John to his Order. Plans were soon set in motion, politically and ecclesially, to squelch the reform. It seemed inevitable amidst such animosity that, by December of 1577, this future saint would be asked by God to enter the darkest night of his life. He was kidnapped and imprisoned in the convent at Toledo where he endured severe physical deprivation, the starkest solitary confinement, and cruel punishment at the hands of his own brothers. Yet it was in this prison that he found his poetic voice, composing there the first of his great lyrics, The Spiritual Canticle, the opening stanza of which is as haunting as it is unforgettable:
Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag
After wounding me;
I went out calling you,
But you were gone.
Miraculously, about nine months later, Fray Juan escaped from his tiny cell and was led to safety, thanks to the help of the nuns. He composed his second great poem, One Dark Night, shortly after he literally leapt to freedom. Much as he longed for peace, the internal battles between the two branches of the Order did not cease until June of 1580 when Pope Gregory XIII signed the documents officially declaring that the Discalced was a separate province within the Order, allowing John himself to be elected one of the provincial counselors.
While continuing to provide superb spiritual direction for the nuns, he composed two poems that reflected his experience of God while he was in prison, his commentary on them, and a third lyric, The Living Flame of Love, that seemed to have been written in a state of ecstasy. The four books that resulted, The Ascent of Mount Carmel; The Dark Night; The Spiritual Canticle; and The Living Flame of Love represent the greatest collection of wisdom one could hope to find in the field of ascetical and mystical theology. All were products of the last fourteen years of his life when his intellectual and spiritual gifts had come to full flowering. He had passed through the nights of sense and spirit with the afflictive force of their purgative fires. He experienced in his darkness the illumination of his intellect, memory, and will. He had enjoyed the union of lover and Beloved. Though he was at peace inwardly, he could not hide from the shadows of unrest and suspicion that plagued the new Order. In the last year of his life, he was sent to the "desert" of Peńuela and that summer suffered both physically from an ulcer in his foot and emotionally from a persistent campaign to discredit him. This perennial bearer of the cross died as he had lived on December 14, 1591, happy to have drunk from the cup of Christ’s own suffering and thereby, in his words, to have penetrated "deep into the thicket of the delectable wisdom of God."
Were we able to reduce these crucibles of suffering to the nectar of the divine wisdom that flows through all of them, what would we find? Are there sonic condensations of St. John’s teachings that form the motifs of his symphony of suffering? It appears to me that he distilled this not-so-secret path to God in two of his minor works, namely, his four counsels on how to reach perfection and his three cautions on how to cope with the foes that oppose our best intentions to cling faithfully to the cross of Christ. A summary of his counsels will be followed by an expanded version of his cautions, both of which are variations on major themes that open even the hardest of hearts to the essence of spiritual living.
The Counsels
According to St. John of the Cross, the call to discipleship requires of us that we practice a virtue with which people used to instant gratification have little first-hand knowledge. It is resignation, which implies, in a word, minding not our own business but the work of God in us. We have to resign ourselves minute by minute to the guiding force of his love-will and put a stop to our own willful second-guessing of his plan for our life. One way John put his own counsel into practice, since he lived a community life, was to guard his heart by not getting overly involved (he uses the word meddling)—neither by word nor by thought—in the business of others. He would never have risked the loss of his inner tranquility and quietude of soul by "engaging in local gossip around the water cooler!’’
His second directive for true discipleship, with its embrace of the cross, is mortification. St. John reminds the religious he counsels and, by extension, we ourselves that our Christian existence is not meant to be an easy deal or a popularity contest. He believed he had entered the monastery to be worked and tried by others so he could grow in virtue. He dared to say that those in the monastery are to be seen as craftsmen placed there by God to mortify one another by working and chiseling at their pride-form with their words, deeds, temperaments, and thoughts. We, too, no matter where we are, in our family or at the office, are to suffer these mortifications and annoyances with inner patience, being silent for love of God. Diverse as our callings to follow Christ may be, their ending is the same: to live in such a way that we may be made worthy of heaven, not to seek our own comfort, honor, reputation, and ease. We are to live in Christ by dying to ourselves. Trials will never be lacking on this path to discipleship, for it is only in and through them that we learn the meaning of suffering and the reason not to lose hope.
The third stage in this itinerary on how to follow Christ concerns the practice of virtue. We are to be constant, not whimsical, in our religious observances without any undue concern for what others think of us. We are never to let the goal of personal gratification or functional satisfaction mar the transcendent joy of following Christ for the sheer love of doing so. We are to undertake any and all tasks with only one aim in mind: to please God. This intention will often lead us to choose the more difficult way than the easy one, the more rugged than the smooth, the more distasteful than the delightful. Such practices make us strong disciples, willing, if necessary, to endure persecution, as Christ did, to defend our faith.
The fourth opening to intimacy with our Savior is solitude. Alone with the Alone, we come to see that what the world says will guarantee our happiness turns out to be empty of truth. To follow Christ means to leave behind us the pleasures and possessions, the proofs of earthly power that we once sought as ultimate values. This stance of inner solitude, detached from crowd and collectivity, does not diminish our pursuit of Christian excellence in the working places of family, church, and society. In fact, it is the best guarantee that we will fulfill the duties of our state with all necessary and possible care. What matters to us is not personal gain but generous commitment. We do what we do to the best of our ability, with a pure heart, and leave the outcomes in God’s hands. In the hermitage of our heart, we practice ceaseless prayer. We do not abandon intimate oneness with God for any reason. Whether we speak or remain silent, we do so with our hearts fixed on His Majesty. As St. John reminds us, these four counsels are interdependent steps on the common ladder of faith deepening. If we miss one, we miss the others; if we gain in one, we gain in the others.
(Note: If you want to read the entire article on "A Not So Secret Path to God: How St. John Helps Us Embrace the Cross," you may do so by ordering a copy of the Fall 2007 Issue of Carmelite Digest – see below.)
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