Who was St. John of the Cross?

Have you ever stood in a room so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face? That momentary panic as you reach for a light switch, stumbling over familiar furniture that suddenly seems foreign and threatening? Now imagine that darkness lasting not for seconds, but for months—even years. And imagine that the darkness isn't physical, but spiritual: a profound sense that God, who once seemed so near, has vanished without explanation.

This is not the experience of someone who has lost their faith. Paradoxically, it's often the experience of those whose faith is being purified and deepened in ways they cannot yet understand. And no one understood this better than a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic whose very name has become synonymous with spiritual darkness: John of the Cross.

 

The Making of a Mystic

Today I'd like to tell the story of St. John of the Cross. I did a short biography of St. Thomas Aquinas last month, but St. John of the Cross (not as well-known) had had a lot of influence on my theology and spiritual practice, especially over the last couple of years.

Juan de Yepes y Álvarez was born in 1542 into crushing poverty in Fontiveros, Spain. His father, a nobleman, had been disinherited for marrying beneath his social class—a silk weaver's daughter. When John was just two years old, his father died, plunging the family into even deeper destitution. His mother, Catalina, struggled to feed her children, and John knew hunger as an intimate companion from his earliest days.

Perhaps it was this early acquaintance with suffering that prepared John for the profound spiritual insights he would later share with the world. As a young man, he entered the Carmelite Order, taking the name John of St. Matthias. But he quickly grew disillusioned with what he saw as the laxity and comfort that had crept into monastic life. The Carmelites of his day lived in large communities, owned property, and had grown far from their original calling to contemplative prayer and radical poverty.

John was on the verge of leaving to join the more austere Carthusians when he met Teresa of Ávila, a formidable nun twenty-seven years his senior who was spearheading a reform movement within the Carmelite Order. Teresa recognized in this intense young priest—barely five feet tall, with penetrating dark eyes—a kindred spirit and a powerful ally. Together, they would attempt to return the Carmelites to their original rule of poverty, solitude, and contemplation.

 

The Price of Reform

Reform movements rarely proceed smoothly, and John's was no exception. On the night of December 2, 1577, a group of Carmelite friars who opposed the reforms broke into John's quarters in Ávila. They kidnapped him, blindfolded him, and transported him to Toledo, where they imprisoned him in a windowless cell barely six feet by ten feet—so small he could hardly lie down.

For nine months, John endured what can only be described as torture. He was given bread and water, with occasional scraps of salt fish. Every Friday, he was brought to the refectory where, in front of the community, he was forced to kneel and eat bread and water on the floor while being flogged. His cell was freezing in winter and suffocating in summer. He had no change of clothes, no light to read by, and was forbidden any contact with the outside world.

Yet it was in this place of absolute deprivation that John composed—entirely in his memory, since he had no writing materials—some of the most beautiful poetry in the Spanish language. His "Spiritual Canticle" and portions of "The Dark Night" were born in that cramped, fetid cell. When he finally escaped in August 1578 (in a daring nighttime flight using strips torn from his blankets as a rope), he carried with him not bitterness, but luminous verses about the soul's journey to union with God.

 

The Paradox of Divine Absence

What John discovered in that prison cell—and what he spent the rest of his life teaching—was that God sometimes withdraws the feeling of His presence precisely when He is drawing us closest to Himself. This is the heart of what John called "the dark night of the soul," a phrase that has entered common usage but is often misunderstood.

The dark night is not depression, though it may feel similar. It's not punishment for sin, though the soul may fear it is. Rather, it's God's way of weaning us from spiritual consolations—those warm, comforting feelings of His presence—so that we might love Him for Himself alone, not for the gifts He gives.

John distinguished between two dark nights: the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit. In the first, God withdraws sensible consolations in prayer. Where once we felt moved to tears during worship, now we feel nothing. Where once Scripture seemed to leap off the page with personal meaning, now it seems dry as dust. The soul fears it has done something wrong, that God has abandoned it.

But John insists this is actually a sign of growth. Like a mother weaning a child from milk to solid food, God is maturing our faith. As he writes in "The Dark Night": "God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night."

 

The Deeper Darkness

The dark night of the spirit is far more intense. Here, God purges not just our senses but our very faculties of understanding and will. The soul experiences not just dryness but positive suffering—a sense of being rejected by God, of being unworthy of His love. Yet paradoxically, this suffering comes from the soul's increased proximity to God, like eyes accustomed to darkness being pained by sudden light.

John uses the metaphor of a log being transformed into fire. The log must first be dried out, blackened, and made to crack and steam before it can become one with the flame. So too the soul must be purified of its hidden attachments and self-love before it can be united with Divine Love itself.

This teaching challenges our contemporary understanding of spiritual growth. We tend to measure our spiritual progress by how we feel—how "blessed" or "close to God" we perceive ourselves to be. John suggests that feelings are unreliable guides. True growth often happens precisely when we feel we're regressing, when prayer seems pointless, when God seems absent.

 

Biblical Foundations

John's insights weren't novel inventions but profound reflections on biblical experience. Consider the Psalms, where David cries out, "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1, ESV). Or Jesus himself in Gethsemane, sweating blood in anguish, and ultimately crying from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, ESV).

The apostle Paul speaks of his "thorn in the flesh," pleading three times for God to remove it, only to hear, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV). Paul learned what John would later articulate: that divine power often manifests not in spiritual consolation but in the experience of our own poverty and need.

The book of Job provides perhaps the most extended meditation on divine hiddenness in Scripture. Job, the righteous man who loses everything, spends chapter after chapter demanding God explain Himself. When God finally speaks, He doesn't explain. Instead, He reveals Himself in His overwhelming majesty and mystery. Job's response? "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5, ESV). Paradoxically, Job comes to "see" God more clearly through the darkness of his suffering than through the light of his former prosperity.

 

The Fruit of Darkness

What emerges from the dark night, if we persevere, is what John calls "union with God"—a state where the soul's will becomes so aligned with God's will that it wants only what God wants. This isn't the annihilation of personality but its supreme fulfillment. The soul becomes most truly itself when it becomes most truly God's.

John describes this union in the language of marriage, drawing on the biblical tradition of the Song of Songs. The soul becomes the bride, and Christ the bridegroom. But unlike human marriage, where two remain two even in their unity, here the soul participates in the very life of God while remaining a creature. It's what the Eastern tradition calls "theosis" or deification—not becoming God by nature, but by grace.

This union bears practical fruit. Those who have passed through the dark night often display remarkable freedom from anxiety, extraordinary compassion for others' suffering, and an ability to find God in all things. They've learned to distinguish between God and the feelings associated with God, between faith and the consolations of faith.

 

Practical Applications

So what does John of the Cross offer to us today, living in a world he could never have imagined? How do we apply the insights of a sixteenth-century mystic to twenty-first-century life?

First, John teaches us to expect seasons of spiritual dryness and not to panic when they come. If you've been following God faithfully and suddenly find prayer difficult, Scripture boring, and God seemingly absent, you may not be backsliding—you may be advancing. God may be calling you to a deeper, more mature faith that doesn't depend on spiritual feelings.

Second, John encourages us to persevere in spiritual practices even when they seem fruitless. Continue to pray even when prayer feels like speaking into a void. Continue to read Scripture even when it seems dry. Continue to participate in community worship even when you feel nothing. These practices are like keeping a appointment with someone you can't see but trust is there.

Third, John invites us to examine our motivations in seeking God. Do we seek Him for the peace He brings? The meaning He provides? The community of believers? These aren't wrong, but they're incomplete. The dark night purifies our love, teaching us to seek God for Himself alone.

Fourth, John reminds us that suffering—including spiritual suffering—can be transformative if we let it. This doesn't mean we should seek suffering or remain in harmful situations. But when suffering finds us, as it inevitably does, we can trust that God can use even darkness as a means of grace.

Finally, John offers hope to those in the midst of spiritual darkness. The dark night doesn't last forever. And the very fact that the absence of God causes us pain is proof that we love Him. We don't mourn the absence of someone we don't love. The pain of divine absence is itself a sign of divine presence, working in ways we cannot yet see.

 

The Light Beyond Darkness

John of the Cross died on December 14, 1591, at the age of forty-nine. His final words were from the Psalms, words Jesus' also spoke from the cross: "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." He died as he had lived—in poverty, largely misunderstood by his religious community, but utterly abandoned to God's will.

His legacy lives on not in institutional success but in the countless souls who have found in his writings a map through their own dark nights. He teaches us that the spiritual life is not a steady ascent into increasing light but often a descent into darkness that proves to be a different kind of light—what he calls "the ray of darkness" that illuminates by blinding our merely human ways of seeing.

In our age of instant gratification, where we expect immediate answers to our prayers and constant feelings of God's presence, John of the Cross offers a challenging but ultimately liberating message: God is never closer than when He seems farthest away. The darkness is not the absence of light but the presence of a Light so bright our eyes must be strengthened to bear it.

The next time you find yourself in darkness—spiritual, emotional, or physical—remember the little friar from Spain who found in a windowless cell the spaciousness of divine love. Remember that darkness is often the womb where light is born. And remember that the God who seems silent may be speaking a language deeper than words, calling you to a love stronger than feelings, a faith firmer than understanding, and a hope that transcends every human consolation.

For in the end, John of the Cross teaches us that the dark night is not about darkness at all. It's about learning to see by a different light—the light of pure faith, naked hope, and love stripped of every self-seeking. It's about discovering that when all the lights we've kindled for ourselves go out, we finally see the stars.

 

God Bless,

Judah

 

P.S. Being one of my favorite Saints, I have a shirt (the back of which is pictured above) on my site.  Check it out here.