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June 9 - July 6, 2023
He pointed out the twelve columns, symbolizing the martyred group, and reminded us of John’s desire that the little lake area be kept as a shrine. An aqueduct designed and built by John still provides the lake’s water.
I exclaimed to the bar owner how difficult it was dealing with everyone in a language not your own. To which he replied "Nothing is difficult when people treat you well." I remember his words as a fine ending to a special morning; I could not help recalling how John in his last days had won over the abusive prior of Ubeda by treating him well, after Fr. Crisóstomo had treated him so poorly. "Where there is no love," John used to say, "put love, and there you will draw out love."
A great poet, theologian, mystical doctor, philosopher, and literary genius, John is unquestionably one of the most balanced individuals among the Church’s saints.
When Teresa first met John in Medina del Campo she recognized not only the depth of his spiritual life, but his leadership abilities, too. When John went to open the first house of the Teresian reform in Duruelo, he showed his practical building and painting skills in remodelling the house. He was good at finances, too, and Teresa said that she and John had several arguments about the business side of their ventures.
When first taken prisoner in Avila, John was resourceful enough to escape briefly and go back to the Incarnation to destroy correspondence that could incriminate others.
Once events turned against him again, John could assess things well and avoid awkward situations, as when he resisted going back as prior of Segovia, where he would have been in the middle of political disputes among the friars.
In effect, though each has a distinct title, the Ascent and the Dark Night together form one work, which must be understood as a unity in life and doctrine.
narrow path presents the climber with many ups and downs. Lest we do injustice to John by stressing his seven "nothings"—he has been called Doctor of the nadas—it is more correct to say that the radical attitude necessary in ascending the middle path up the mountain is "all-nothing" (todo y nada), since the climber is dedicated to attaining the fullness of life to which the sacrifices of the climb lead. This radical attitude is explained at the bottom of the diagram where the three spiritual powers—will (tasting or receiving satisfaction), intellect (knowing), and memory (possessing)—are
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The Ascent and the Dark Night are complementary, forming a diptych, two parts of the one journey to God. The Ascent deals primarily with the active nights of sense and spirit, while the Dark Night deals with the passive nights of sense and spirit. These are not two distinct paths between which seekers can choose, but two aspects of one unique active-passive journey to God. In fact, the Prologue to the Dark Night speaks of the same path leading to the summit of Mount Carmel, and adds "this narrow road is called a dark night."
His was not a historical-critical approach to the Bible, as we have today, but he had so thoroughly absorbed the biblical messages, and quotes so many books of Scripture so often, that his works have been described as a kind of "Spanish Vulgate."
John neither despises the suitable objects of sensory experience nor the appropriate exercise of senses. In fact, he is one of the few mystics who insists that for those who reach the state of union even the senses are renewed in the enjoyment of their natural objects (A, 3, 20, 2). Thus, senses are not destroyed or put to death (as the etymology of the word "mortification" might seem to imply), but reeducated and redirected to God.
John never speaks disparagingly of human nature; rather, he always sees human nature as a gift from God, with great potential. Basically, the journeys of active and passive purification will develop the good in us, or else the refusal to be committed to the narrow path of the ascent will cause our potential for evil to flourish. There is no middle ground in this quest for authentic growth.
One might well paint over a dirty wall in a house, but would hardly do the same to the dirty walls of a gothic cathedral. In the latter case sandblasting is needed in order to uncover the prior beauty of the stone and discover a masterpiece. For John, our authentic self is found by removing the encrustations of false attachments and scraping away the accumulations of absolutized possession. After all, people are not the sum of their possessions, whether material, religious, moral, or spiritual.
Moreover, even when describing the resulting transformation, John avoids the pantheistic overtones that some other mystics slip into. There is no absorption but rather a wonderful transformation of the human person, involving human fulfillment (A, 1, 9, 3). In this union, the person receives "fortitude, wisdom, love, beauty, grace, and goodness, and so on.
John also claims that only the person who is not possessive toward a particular object can truly enjoy it and find a God-directed satisfaction in it. "Those, then, whose joy is unpossessive of things rejoice in them all as though they possessed them all" (A, 3, 20, 3).
As we have repeatedly noted, John’s journey of faith, with its purification of all false images of God, is not a way of increased conceptual knowledge, through which individuals study the nature of God and progressively clarify the notion of divinity. Many individuals are attracted by this intellectual exercise that satisfies their need to possess God and brings the transcendent into their grasp.
