Daily Reflection Memorial of St. John of The Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church

For I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand; it is I who say to you, 'Fear not, I will help you.' Isaiah 41:13

 How appropriate that this verse which begins our first reading from the prophet Isaiah in the Lectionary today launches our celebration of the Memorial of Saint John of the Cross -- one of the Church's great mystics whose spiritual insights were forged in the experience of persecution and suffering. How appropriate that the memorial of this priest and Doctor of the Church -- whose genius was recognized only after his death -- is celebrated deep in the heart of Advent, where we too wait in yearning yet joyful hope for the fullness of God's irruption, God's inbreaking, in our present and in our future.

Born into poverty, John (Juan de Yepes) was still able to receive an education and at the age of twenty-one became a Carmelite friar. Juan de la Cruz, John of the Cross. The Carmelites, a prominent religious order in Spain, were known for their special commitment to interior prayer, but by the mid -16th century they had become lax and complacent. John's great life-turning point, coming in the year of his ordination, was his introduction to Teresa of Avila. Their spiritual affinity, their deep and sacred friendship, would become a partnership for the ages. United in their commitment to reform the Carmelite order, John would serve as Teresa's confessor and spiritual director at the convent in Avila. 

Institutional reform was dangerous business then, where nonconformity was labeled heresy by Spanish Inquisitors. Yet the greatest opposition for both Teresa and John came from within the traditional wings of their Carmelite orders. John spent nine months in an unreformed Carmelite monastery in penal confinement, kidnapped, beaten, abused. Near the point of death, he managed to make a miraculous escape by dark of night, an experience that informed one of his potent metaphors for the spiritual life. He continued to find himself in the middle of petty conflicts within his community, and he was stripped of any leadership roles by jealous rivals determined to denigrate his extraordinary gifts. He died on this date in 1591, alone and virtually ignored in the congregation he had helped to found.

John's greatest work, Dark Night of the Soul, can serve as a treatise for the Bleak Mid-Winter of our troubled times, where the horrors of war and suffering feel like a prison indeed. We too cry out to a God who can appear hidden in the helplessness, the hopelessness of the international landscape. Our collective spirits suffer from dryness and despair. 

But John won't let our pondering and lament end there. "Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw love out," he wrote. In the dark nights, the deserts of our hearts and neighborhoods, our families and communities -- can we find the courage to put love there? The Advent wreath glows with two candles of light now. How might we magnify that light into the darkness? Put love there.