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St John of the Cross - a general introduction
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The Teresian Ideal
In 1567, at the time of this vocational
crisis, Fray John was ordained a priest and came to Medina to sing his
first Mass. There, in the early part of autumn, the fateful meeting with
Madre Teresa de Jesús took place. In the city for the foundation of a second
community of nuns who would make profession of the Carmelite life according
to the new contemplative style that she had developed in Avila, the determined
Madre was now weighing the possibility of extending this mode of life to
the friars. Having been told of John's exceptional qualities, she arranged
for an interview with him. She was 52 at the time; he was 25. Hearing about
his aspirations toward more solitude and prayer and about his thought of
transferring to the Carthusians, she pointed out to him that he could find
all he was seeking without leaving "Our Lady's order, "
and with her characteristic zeal and friendliness she spoke to him animatedly
of her plan to adapt this new way of life for friars. Fray John listened,
he felt inspired, caught the enthusiasm, and beheld a new future opening
before him. He promised to join Teresa, but on one condition - that he
would not have long to wait. Teresa rejoiced over the eagerness of her
young recruit and his unwillingness to delay, he who was later to write
a treatise on how to reach union with God quickly. The following year,
in August, she set off with a small group from Medina to Valladolid, where
she intended to make another foundation; and travelling with them to learn
more about this new Carmelite life was Fray John, now finished with his
studies.
Teresa's ideal of founding small communities, in contrast to her former
monastery of the Incarnation at Avila where as many as 180 nuns lived,
had its background in a larger movement of reform that had spread through
sixteenth-century Spain. Certain common characteristics marked the spirit
of this Spanish reform: the return to one's origins, primitive rules, and
founders; a life lived in community with practices of poverty, fasting,
silence, and enclosure; and, as the most important part, the life of prayer.
People used different terms to designate the new communities that had these
traits: reformed, observant, recollect, discalced, hermit, contemplative.
The name "discalced " became the popular one in referring
to Teresa's nuns and friars because of their practice of wearing sandals
rather than shoes. These efforts at reforming religious life began in the
fifteenth century in response to the upheavals in religious life caused
by the Black Death. The early attempts carried an anti-intellectual strain,
placing emphasis on affectivity, external ceremonies, devotions, and community
vocal prayer. But long hours of community vocal prayer day after day became
tedious and mechanical. The only noticeable fruit was the desire for something
different, more time for interior prayer. As a matter of fact, a new practice
called "recollection, whose followers were called "recogidos,
" developed in many Franciscan houses. This spirituality made
union with God through love its most important concern, seeking nourishment
in Scripture and classic spiritual works. These latter works - by authors
such as Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard, and Bonaventure - appeared
in print at the time from newly established presses. The Franciscan friar
Francisco de Osuna elaborated this spirituality in The Third Spiritual
Alphabet, a book that inspired Teresa and initiated her into the way of
interior prayer. Osuna taught that to advance spiritually you must practice
recollection in imitation of Jesus Christ, who went alone into the desert
to pray secretly. By this recollection, also called mental prayer, Osuna
explained, you withdraw from people and noise and enter within yourself.
But the mystical graces God began to give Teresa (despite her waverings
and after she persevered for many years through countless struggles to
devote two hours to mental prayer each day) taught her more than all her
books. Only with Jesus Christ could she enter the inner castle through
prayer; there he became increasingly present as she advanced toward the
inmost dwelling place. Presence to Christ was what made prayer for Teresa,
in the beginning stages, in the middle, and in the highest as well. "Never
leave Christ in whom the human and divine are joined, and who is always
one's companion, " she warned the theologians who began to come
to her to learn about contemplation. "He is the one through whom
all blessings come. He is always looking at you; can you not turn the eyes
of your soul to look at him? Her communities, too, had no meaning without
Jesus Christ in the centre. They were to be small communities; only 12
nuns at first, gathered around Christ as his friends. No class distinctions!
These class divisions characterized women's cloisters in those times, ruled
by the nobility, as was the case at the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ all
were to be equal, Teresa insisted, and the superior the first to take her
turn sweeping the floor.
By this time the Madre had written two books of her own: one for her
spiritual directors, her Life, in which she carefully analysed all the
stages of prayer and explained many of the mystical graces given her by
God, bearing testimony that His Majesty never tires of giving; the other
for her nuns, The Way of Perfection, in which she laid out the kind of
life and prayer they were to live together, not only for their own sanctification
but for the Church whose troubles distressed her as much as the thought
of Christ's own sufferings. For Teresa the sufferings of the Church were
the sufferings of Christ.
How much there was, then, for John of St. Matthias to learn from this
humble, simple, awesome nun. Teresa, for her part, marvelled as she got
to know the small friar better. "Though he is small in stature,
I believe that he is great in God's eyes," she wrote at the time.
John was speaking so knowingly and brilliantly about the wonders of God
and the mysteries of the divine goodness that the group began to refer
to him as “God’s archives.”
There were also differences between the Madre and her first friar, and
she admits to having become vexed with him at times. She had wanted learned
men for her new communities of friars so that they might be good guides
not only through experience of the same style of life but through their
learning. Having suffered much from the vincible ignorance of her confessors,
Teresa was keen to spare her daughters anything similar. John, at the time,
tended to stress the limitations of learning. Teresa thought an expert
was a person with a degree who knew a lot about something; John didn't
seem to think anybody knew much about anything - an expert was someone
who knew the mistakes that could be made and how to avoid them. Fearing
that austerities and penances might frighten university students away from
her new friars, Teresa insisted on a balanced life in which the Christian
virtues such as charity, detachment, and humility would receive far more
favour than austerities. Austerities in those times were closely associated
with sanctity, and John, though recognizing Teresa's claims, leaned toward
austerities, which reforming friars also liked to think of as the manly
path. Later, in his writings, John too was to treat austerities with a
certain scepticism, pointing out how, along with so many other good things,
they can end up wrecking the spiritual life. Teresa thought that Christian
joy ought to permeate her communities; the nuns took time for recreation
together each day, and sang and wrote poetry for one another. There was
no reason for them to be sombre. "Be affable, agreeable, and pleasing
to persons with whom you deal, " Teresa warmly counselled, "so
that all will love your conversation and desire your manner of living and
acting. " John needed time to get used to this. Recitation of
the Divine Office was much simpler in Teresa's communities than it had
been at the Incarnation. This allowed an hour in the morning and an hour
in the evening for mental prayer. Like the early hermits on Mount Carmel,
the nuns lived their day mostly in silence and solitude, alone in their
cells, engaging in the manual labour of spinning to help support themselves.
But Teresa's friars' daily routine would differ because she wanted them
to engage in study and preaching and the ministry of the sacraments.
As in her writings, then, during these days from mid-August to October,
Teresa energetically fulfilled her role as teacher, although she confessed
she felt that Fray John was so good she could have learned more from him
than he from her. On finishing his brief "novitiate "
under the Madre's guidance, John of St. Matthias left Valladolid with a
new Teresian ardour to start work on converting into a monastery the little
farmhouse Teresa acquired for her first friars. It was situated in a lonely
spot called Duruelo, midway between Avila and Salamanca. By the end of
November Fray John had transformed the small house with its porch, main
room, alcove, garret, and tiny kitchen into the first monastery for discalced
Carmelite friars. On November 28, 1568, with a young deacon and Fray Antonio
de Heredia (who had been prior in Medina), in the presence of the provincial,
Fray John of St. Matthias embraced the new life, promising to live without
mitigation according to the ancient Carmelite Rule. At that time he changed
his name to John of the Cross. The following spring the provincial appointed
Fray Antonio prior and Fray John novice master, and in the autumn two novices
arrived. The house then became too small, so the community moved to the
nearby town of Mancera de Abajo in June 1570. In this year John also travelled
to Pastrana to help organize another novitiate, and within a year moved
to Alcalá de Henares to set up a house of studies for the new friars near
the famous university of Alcalá. He became its first rector, guiding the
students in their studies and spiritual development. Right from the beginning,
then, John dedicated himself to a task of immediate urgency, spiritual
direction. With his Bible, his experience, and his penetrating grasp of
both philosophy and theology, he began to ponder spiritual growth, observing
the ways of human beings, discerning the ways of God.
His work now had to expand. Teresa, who had recently been sent by the
visitator, Pedro Fernández, to take up duties as prioress at the Incarnation
in Avila, received permission to enlist the help of Fray John of the Cross
as confessor and skilled spiritual director for the large number of nuns
there. It was a community weighed down with many economic and social problems.
Fernández, a Dominican, was acting as visitator to the Carmelites in Castile
by order of Pope Pius V, who entrusted their reform to Dominican friars.
Another Dominican, Francisco Vargas, was responsible for the Carmelites
in Andalusia. These visitators had ample powers. They could move religious
from house to house and province to province, assist superiors in their
offices, and depute other superiors from either the Dominicans or the Carmelites.
They were entitled to perform all acts necessary for the "visitation,
correction, and reform of both head and members of all houses of friars
and nuns. " A deep mutual respect and easy working relationship
developed between the tactful and diplomatic Fernández and Teresa.
Toward the end of May 1572, John of the Cross arrived in Avila and entered
the feminine religious world, a world that was to become his special field
of spiritual ministry. This ministry included guiding Teresa herself. From
her he received as much as he gave in those years of profound and open
conversation, a conversation that once on Trinity Sunday so soared that
the two not only went into ecstasy but were seen elevated from the ground.
On November 18, 1572, while John was her director, Teresa unexpectedly
received the grace of spiritual marriage. She was now in the seventh and
final dwelling place of her spiritual journey; there in the centre room
of the interior castle she came to know the highest state of intimacy with
God. The experience of those years, when from so privileged a position
the confessor could see God's work in Teresa, left more of a trace in John's
later writings than one might first suppose. With the exception of the
Bible, Teresa provided a source more enlightening than all of the books
Fray John had studied. And she herself did not hold back from extolling
the gifts of her director, referring to him in a letter as a "divine
and heavenly man " and affirming that she had found no spiritual
director like him in all Castile. There they were in Avila, Teresa and
John; so much alike, so very different, destined in their writings to complement
each other. John's spiritual direction ministry also extended into the
city, to a wide range of people, including well-known sinners. He tried
to find time for everyone, even the children of the poor. Remembering his
own childhood, he gathered these children and taught them to read and write.
Purchase the official
English translation of the Collected Works of St John of the Cross, at ICS Publications,
Washington DC.
 Now
also on CD-Rom - Digital Library
The following information has been provided courtesy of ICS Publications. The
copyright of all materials is held by the Washington Provinceof the Discalced
Carmelites. Permission is hereby granted solely for private use of these texts
on which ICS Publications hold the copyright.
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