St. John of the Cross, "I Give Myself"

St. John of the Cross, "I Give Myself"

St. John of the Cross was a religious reformer acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as was his contemporary, St. Teresa of Avila, with whom he worked in Segovia, Spain. He labored to restore piety and true spirituality among the Carmelite Order of religious in the Church of his time. Reformers are unpopular among the wayward they attempt to reform, as history clearly points out. Reformers are very often persecuted and even killed by their own, as were most of the prophets and Christ, himself. The Carmelite friars looked on John’s endeavors as a rebellion against the Order itself, and so condemned him as a fugitive and an apostate. They tracked him down, put him into prison, and treated him severely.
 

Through it all, John demonstrated the deepest humility and patient endurance bonding himself totally to God’s divine love. This trust was highly rewarded. Through his ordeal, God favored him with spiritual insights given to few others. He once said to St. Teresa, “Be not surprised if I show so great a love for sufferings: God gave me a high idea of their merit and value when I was in the prison of Toledo.”
His desire was to so completely unite himself with the “suffering Christ” that he would frequently ask three things of God: (One) That he might not pass one day of his life without suffering something; (Two) That he might not die superior of the Order; (Three) That he might end his life in humiliation, disgrace, and contempt. At the very name of the cross he fell into ecstasy.
 

Hearing Christ once say to him, “John, what compensation do you ask of me for your labors?” He answered, “Lord, I ask no other recompense than to suffer and be condemned for your love.”
One day, a lady coming to confession to him was so struck with a heavenly light which radiated from his soul and penetrated her own. She immediately laid aside her jewels and gaudy attire, and consecrated herself to God in strict retirement, to the astonishment of the whole city of Segovia.



God rewarded and exalted him during and after his death with many miracles. He was twice miraculously rescued from drowning in his childhood and preserved from many dangers through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom he had a special devotion. The saint evidenced other mystical experiences witnessed by others such as the time he was observed at prayer in the chapel levitating in a state of ecstasy with his head touching the ceiling, a sign of divine favor experienced by such other saints as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Alphonsus of Liguori, St. Joseph of Cupertino to name a few. He describes other mystical experiences in his work Living Flame of Love, including the spiritual wounding of the heart, transverberation, the perfected union with Christ in the “Mystical marriage”, and receiving the visible wounds of Christ in the Stigmata.

St. John of the Cross - "Transcending all knowledge" 

Following his death at the age of 49, friars witnessed a brilliant light emanating from his tomb. The saint’s body was found to be intact when it was ordered to be moved to another burial location. To hasten decomposition of the flesh in order to later retrieve the bones as relics, the body was covered with a layer of lime and reburied. Nine months later the tomb was again opened and the body was still found to be perfectly preserved, as it today enshrined in a reliquary of marble and bronze in Segovia, Spain.

His masterful spiritual writings, still sold in book stores today, rank among the highest mystical and theological works in the history of the Church. These include The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul and The Spiritual Canticle. St. John of the Cross was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726, and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI in 1926.

 

I give myself as your spouse for ever

From a Spiritual Canticle (2) by Saint John of the Cross, priest (1542-1591)

 The soul united to God and transformed in him draws from within God a divine breath, much like the most high God himself. And God, abiding in the soul, breathes forth the life of the soul as its exemplar. This I take to be what Paul meant when he said: Because you are children of God, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, “Abba, Father”; this is what takes place in those who have achieved perfection.

One should not wonder that the soul is capable of so sublime an activity. For if God so favors her that she is made God-like by union with the most Holy Trinity, I ask you then, why it should seem so incredible that the soul, at one with the Trinity and in the greatest possible likeness to it, should share the understanding, knowledge and love which God achieves in himself.

How this is possible no other power or wisdom can express, save by explaining how the Son of God obtained this sublime state for us and won for us the power to be the children of God, as he asked of the Father: Father, I desire that where I am those you have given me may also be with me, that they may see the glory you have given me, that is, that they may share with certainty the very task I perform.
And then he said: “Not for them alone do I ask but also for those who will come to believe in me through their teaching, that all may be one as you, Father, are one in me and I in you, that they may be one in us; that the world may believe that you have sent me. And the glory you have given me I have given them that they may be one as we are. I in them, you in me, that they may be made perfect, and the world will know that you sent me and as you have loved me, so I have loved them.”

The Father thus gives them the same love he shares with the Son, though not by nature as with the Son, but through unity and transformation of love. One should not think that the Son is asking the Father to make the saints one with him in essence and nature as the Son is with the Father, but rather that they be united with him in love, just as the Father and Son are one in the essential unity of love. Accordingly, souls possess the same goods by participation that the Son possesses by nature. As a result, they are truly divine by participation, equals and companions of God.
 

Thus Peter said: May grace and peace be perfected in you in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord. For all things of his divine power, which are given to us for our life and goodness, are given through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and power, by which he has given us great and precious promises, that by these we may be made partakers of the divine nature. So the soul, in this union which God has ordained, joins in the work of the Trinity, not yet fully as in the life to come, but nonetheless even now in a real and perceptible way.

O my soul, created to enjoy such exquisite gifts, what are you doing, where is your life going? How wretched is the blindness of Adam’s children, if indeed we are blind to such a brilliant light and deaf to so insistent a voice.

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings – Friday Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 The Dark Night of the Soul 

The Dark Night of the Soul by St John Of the Cross

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–
A place where none appeared.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.