Editorial: In love with God and his creation

Sydney
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Editorial: In love with God and his creation

“My sisters, help me thank God, because we already have a friar and a half for our Reform!” St Teresa joked happily. That ‘half friar’ was a Doctor of the Church – like Teresa herself – and next Friday is his feast. St John of the Cross is being rediscovered today by his Carmelite Order, the whole Church and many outside Christianity.

When it comes to prayer, there is a hole in us where our hearts ought to be, and it is mystics like John, who can teach us to fill that hole with the love of God. Don’t be scared off by that word ‘mystic.’ Evelyn Underhill, in her book Practical Mysticism, writes: “Mysticism is the art of union with reality” – not just the survival, rat race realities – but birds, animals, people – and the ultimate reality – God himself. The life of John is a shining example of how we too can achieve that union, that falling in love.

From his father Gonzalo de Yepes, John learnt the heroism of “leaving everything for love”, for that is what Gonzalo did in marrying Catilina, a poor weaver of great beauty and courageous love. His family disowned him. He had been a businessman; now he had to learn weaving and become a poor man. John thus had a living example of what he was to call ‘nakedness’ (denudez), stripping oneself of all things for love. In this poor home, where hunger was the way of life, the rule was “not to eat without giving others to eat”. Gonzalo’s early death reduced the family to destitution.

Desperately trying to provide for her three sons, Catilina was cruelly rejected by Gonzalo’s family. Then, Luis, the second child, died. Catilina and Francisco, the eldest son, were not earning enough. Alonso Alvarez gave John, aged 12, a job at Medina Hospital looking after people with contagious diseases. John’s compassion, gentleness and good humour with the patients so impressed him that Alonso later paid for him to study at the Jesuit College.

John was gently influenced in his teens by his big brother, Francisco, a kindly prankster, singer, guitar player and dancer who would pick up homeless people and bring them home; or he would bring sick people to John at the hospital where they would care for them together. He had little, but shared everything with ‘the street people’. At John’s request, when he was opening the first monastery of the Reform (St Teresa called it a hovel), Francisco attended with his wife and his mother to help establish the community. When important visitors came, John would introduce the shabbily dressed Francisco (to the community’s embarrassment) as “my brother, the most precious jewel I have in the world”. He was gifted with a rich capacity for friendship. He would walk 50 miles to see a friend.

John joined the Carmelites, and was ordained priest in 1567 after studies at Salamanca. He was considering joining the Carthusians when he met St Teresa of Avila. Teresa persuaded John to stay with Carmel and help her in the renewal of the Order. She wanted friars who would help her nuns by hearing confessions and giving them guidance. She helped John to see that academic life had overshadowed the playful, creative side of his nature, and to reassert this characteristic.

But there were Carmelites who felt threatened by the Reform; some kidnapped and imprisoned John, who was punished according to the statutes of his Order: solitary confinement and flogging. He escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard, lowering himself on rope made from strips of blankets and following a dog to a convent where the nuns gave him sanctuary. Gradually, the differences in the Order were ironed out and two groups emerged. The Reform were called Discalced (Barefoot); the rest, Observants.

John now had 10 happy years in Andalusia. He enjoyed cracking a practical problem. A priory in Granada had a water supply problem of longstanding. John built an aqueduct which brought water from the Alhambra.

For John, the first element is to be Church. Union is between the Church-in-Christ and God. We pray as the Church. The second element is the search for God in everything. The third element is detachment from self and things to leave room for God.

As John was dying, the Song of Songs was read to him. Thus died a man whose whole life was a lyrical anthem of love for his God and all creation. The Church declared him a saint in 1726 and a Doctor of the Church in 1926. In 1952 he was named patron of Spanish poets.