Skip to Content

John of Cross

St. John of the Cross, Mystic of the Light

johnofcorss2.jpg

Lawrence S. Cunningham

There are so many mistaken notions about St. John of the Cross (1542-91) that we might do well to clarify some of them at the outset. He is, of course, most identified with the phrase dark night of the soul, but in fact he never uses the term. John does speak of the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit in his treatise titled simply The Dark Night.

John of the Cross: Practical Considerations

johnofcross4.jpg

Father Francis Xavier Weninger

I. St. John asked of God, in his first Mass, the grace of remaining free from all mortal sin; and at another time, he begged to suffer, to labor, and to be despised for Christ's sake. Oh! how different from this is the object of your prayers!

Silence Enflamed: John of the Cross and Prayer

johncross3.jpg

Kerrie Hide

Download PDF

I shall lead her into solitude and there speak tenderly to her heart [Hos2:14] (F3.34).

Prayers of St. John of the Cross

johncross.jpg

Let Your divinity shine on my intellect by giving it divine knowledge, and on my will by imparting to it the divine love and on my memory with the divine possession of glory.

Let us so act that by means of this loving activity we may attain to the vision of ourselves in Your beauty in eternal life. 

On Dec. 14, Church remembers Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross

johnofcross.JPG

By Benjamin Mann

Dec. 14 is the liturgical memorial of Saint John of the Cross, a 16th century Carmelite priest best known for reforming his order together with Saint Teresa of Avila, and for writing the classic spiritual treatise “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

In the Darkness of Advent

adventdarkness.jpg

Rebecca from a solitary bird

What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love.  –St John of the Cross

Advent is a time of waiting…waiting in the darkness where it is still and quiet. This season is also a time to establish the conditions I need to have in order to bring Christ into my life.

Influence of St. John of the Cross in the 17th Century

John of Cross 2.JPG

Carmelitana Collection

The first disciples of St. John of the Cross, unaffected by the scholasticism which was to prevail afterward, follow his Trinitarian schema. José de Jesús Maria (Quiroga) wrote Subida del alma a Dios (Madrid  1656-59) and Inocencio de San Andrés  (d.1620) wrote  Teologiá  mística y espejo de la vida eterna. Cecilia del Nacimiento  (1570-1646) wrote De la transformación del alma en Dios.

St. John of the Cross

john of Cross.JPG

Carmelitana Collection

When the confessors and learned men were Teresa’s own friars, their voice was familiar to her and it had the sound of her own traditions and of the doctrines and teachings of the Institutio. As men, they were inclined to approach and explain the reformed life and Carmelite spirituality in theological,

Nescivi – A Cry of A Heart in Love with God

jesus-on-the-cross-at-sunset_600x400.jpg

Anthony Lilles

“Nescivi!”  This is the Latin for what it seems the Shulamite Bride of the Canticle of Canticles sings in 6:12.  The passage is OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAdifficult to translate.  One 16th Century Doctor of the Church, Saint John of the Cross, understood it to be the declaration of a lover captivated with thoughts of her Beloved.  The Latin means “I no longer know (anything)” although some modern English translations of this obscure passage render this “Before I knew it…”

St. John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church (Feast)

Feastday: 
Thursday, December 14, 2017
John of cross.JPG

Saint John was born, probably in 1540, in Fontiveros, near Avila in Spain. His father died when he was very young and he had to move with his mother from one place to another, while he tried as best he could to continue his education and, at the same time, to earn a living. In Medina in 1563 he was clothed in the Carmelite habit and, after a year's novitiate, was given permission to follow the unmitigated Carmelite Rule. 

Syndicate content
As Carmelites We live our life of allegiance to Jesus Christ and to serve Him faithfully with a pure heart and a clear conscience through a commitment to seek the face of the living God (the contemplative dimension of life), through prayer, through fraternity, and through service (diakonia). These three fundamental elements of the charism are not distinct and unrelated values, but closely interwoven. 

All of these we live under the protection, inspiration and guidance of Mary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whom we honor as "our Mother and sister." 

 


by Dr. Radut