Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor – Readings
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:1-10; Psalm 36; Luke 14:25-33
The memorial Gospel reading is from Luke. We are told that large crowds were following Jesus. We might say that there were two kinds of people who were attracted by him. The first were those who were in genuine need—those who were sick in one way or another, those who were disabled (the blind, the disabled), those whose lives were governed by forces they could not control, those who were ostracised (like lepers or people with bleeding problems), those who were poor, and those who were rejected as sinners and outcasts, such as tax collectors and prostitutes.
But there was another group who followed Jesus the way ‘groupies’ run after movie or sports stars, just to see them or be near them. Jesus was a ‘superstar’. He had a reputation for performing miraculous cures and people wanted to see them happening. This group really had no interest in what Jesus was teaching. It is to these that Jesus seems to be speaking in today’s reading.
As the crowds gathered round him, he told them:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Among people for whom the family unit had first priority, these were harsh words and would certainly make them stop in their tracks. Jesus was being perfectly clear—anyone who wanted to be his disciple had to put Jesus before everything and everyone else. There could be no compromise:
Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Jesus is not asking us to carry his cross—that was an experience unique to him. But he does ask us to carry the crosses that will come into our own lives, crosses which will be the result of our following him.
So he tells the crowds that, if they want to be really with him, they should be clear about what it entails. And then he gives two examples of what he means. If a builder wants to put up a large building, he needs to sit down and calculate if he can bring it to completion. If he fails half way through, he will become a laughing stock to his peers. Similarly, if a king is going to make war on another king, it would be wise to sit down and see if his forces are capable of winning. If not, it might be better to come to terms with his enemy and make a deal.
Jesus concludes by telling the people that no one can be truly a disciple of Jesus unless he or she is ready unconditionally to let go of everything he has. That is the bottom line and how many of us have taken it seriously?
One person who did take it seriously was John of the Cross. Few people will be asked to carry the kind of crosses he bore during life, and most of these crosses came from his own brothers in the religious community. Such experience could have turned him—as it might other people—into a cynical and embittered person full of hate for others. On the contrary, it turned him into a person who saw the futility of hate, and who was renowned for his being filled with the love of God, a love which eagerly shared with others. We might ask him today to help us be that kind of person.
In the First Reading, from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks about his preaching and about the nature of true wisdom. When Paul came to Corinth he did not come gifted with any particular eloquence or wisdom of his own. What he did speak about seemed to be the very opposite—the message of Christ Jesus and of him crucified—as a message of salvation for the whole world. He came in fear and trembling because who would want to respond to such an extraordinary message? If it was heard, it was not due to his eloquence, but to the power of the Spirit working through him and them:
My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
There is, in the Gospel message, a deep wisdom. True wisdom is an understanding of what life is about and that is what Jesus came to reveal to us. It is not, as Paul tells us:
…a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed.
No, what Paul passes on is God’s wisdom, a mysterious, a hidden wisdom. A wisdom we could not find for ourselves, but needed to have revealed to us. And he adapts a quotation from Isaiah (64:3):
Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him.
How could anyone have foreseen that God’s infinite love for us would be revealed by his Incarnate Son dying on a cross?
John of the Cross was someone who was steeped in this wisdom and he helped us to understand it by his wonderful poems and books, as well as the example of his life. He knew how the pain of the cross could paradoxically be a source of peace and even joy. Let us ask him to help us have some of his wisdom.
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Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor
John (Juan de Yepes Alvarez) was born in 1542 of a noble, but impoverished family in a small community near Avila. His father gave up wealth and status when he married a weaver’s daughter and was disowned by his family. Following the death of his father at an early age, John’s widowed mother kept the poor family together as they went from place to place until they reached Medina del Campo in 1551. There John worked in a hospital for people with incurable diseases and studied humanities at a Jesuit school from 1559-1563.
On 24 February, 1563, he joined the Carmelite Order and took the name Juan de Santo Matia (John of St Mathias). In the following year, he made his first profession as a Carmelite, and went on to study philosophy and theology at the Colegio de San Andres in Salamanca. He had as one of his teachers, Fray Luis de Leon, who was an expert in biblical studies and who would influence John’s own later writing. John was ordained priest in 1567, but then felt drawn to the solitary and contemplative life of the Carthusians.
In the meantime, he met Teresa of Avila in Medina del Campo, and was persuaded by her to join the reform of the Order, which she had initiated for the Carmelite Sisters, and for which she had been authorised to include two houses of friars. John strongly supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer.
The following year, on 28 November, 1568, he started this reformation at Duruelo together with Fr Antonio de Jesús de Heredia. John, still in his 20s, continued to work as a helper of Teresa until 1577, founding monasteries around Spain and taking an active part in their government.
In 1571, he became rector of a Carmelite study house attached to the university in Alcala. From 1572 to 1577, he was confessor to the Carmel at Avila, the mother house of Teresa’s reform.
The followers of John and Teresa differentiated themselves from the non-reformed communities by calling themselves the “Discalced”, i.e. barefoot, while the non-reformed were “calced” Carmelites. (Today the Discalced carry the letters ‘OCD’ after their name while the Calced use ‘O. Carm.’)
Many traditional Carmelites felt threatened by the reform, and on the night of 3-4 December, 1577, John was taken and put in prison by the unreformed Carmelites, following a general ‘chapter’ (i.e. a meeting) in Piacenza, which rejected the reform and refused to allow houses to follow it.
John was detained in Toledo under appalling conditions, which included a lashing in the presence of the community at least once a week, and being locked in a cell six feet by 10 feet. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling. Yet in that unbearable dark, cold and desolation, his love and faith burnt like a bright flame. It was here that he composed the bulk of his most famous poem, Spiritual Canticle.
After nine months, on 15 August, 1578, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and slipping past the guard. Taking with him the poetry he had written in prison, he got out through a window using a rope made of bed blankets. Having no idea where he was, he let a dog lead him to where there were people. He hid from his pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the sisters. From that time onward, his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God’s love. Soon after his escape, the Discalced friars were separated from the Calced.
Coming back to a normal life, he continued the task of reformation and the founding of new Discalced friaries in partnership with Teresa. In 1579, John set up a college at Baeza of which he was rector for three years. From 1582, the year of Teresa’s death, he was prior at Granada, and from 1588, at Segovia. In the last years of his life, he was the object of harsh treatment from Nicolas Doria, the Discalced Carmelites’ vicar-general. He was removed from all his responsibilities and banished to Ubeda, in the province of Andalusia, in the south of Spain, where he died on 14 December, 1591.
His writings were first published in 1618, and he was canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. In 1926, he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI. Pope Paul VI moved his feast from 24 November to 14 December, the anniversary of his death.
Although physically a small man, John, as poet and mystic, was in every other way a giant. He combined in one person poetic sensitivity and eloquence, with the disciplined thinking of a philosopher and theologian. He left books on prayer and the spiritual life that are enduring classics. They include: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul, and The Bridegroom Christ.
He is considered one of the leading poets in Spanish literature. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2,500 verses, two of them—the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul—are considered by many to be among the best poetry ever written in Spanish.
John’s life of poverty and persecution could have produced an embittered person. Instead it gave birth to a mystic full of warmth and compassion. He would ask:
Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?
and
Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.
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