John of the Cross

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God is the Beloved who hides and gives himself in dark faith

A personal GodStated explicitly

For John of the Cross, God is the Beloved: someone who wounds, hides, calls and finally unites himself to the soul. The Spiritual Canticle opens with the question «Where have you hidden, Beloved?», and the Living Flame of Love describes the soul's transformation in the Holy Spirit, who works in it as a flame. The Trinity lies at the centre of union: in the commentary on the Flame, the soul shares in the life of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. At the same time, no concept or image reaches this God: the Ascent of Mount Carmel teaches that the only means proportionate to union with him is faith, which is dark to the intellect. The Absolute is thus personal and loving, but known in darkness, through love rather than representation.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The soul is a creature that can become God by participation

A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

John of the Cross thinks of the self as a created soul, with its faculties —intellect, memory and will— and a «centre» that is God himself. The Ascent of Mount Carmel offers the decisive image: a clean window, struck by a ray of sunlight, looks like the ray itself without ceasing to be a window; so the soul, once purified, «seems more God than soul, and is even God by participation», though its natural being remains distinct from God's. The path requires emptying the faculties of every appetite and every possession, including that of spiritual experiences. The self is not dissolved: it is transformed by love without losing its creaturely condition.

Why do we suffer?

The dark night hurts because it purifies for union

Separation from GodStated explicitly

John of the Cross distinguishes two kinds of suffering. The first comes from the appetites: in the Ascent of Mount Carmel he describes how they weary, torment, darken, defile and weaken the soul, because they bind it to what is not God. The second is that of the dark night, which God himself works: infused contemplation, entering a still impure soul, is darkness and torment to it, as excessive light blinds a diseased eye. That pain —feeling abandoned, dry, undone— is not punishment but purification. Suffering arises from the distance between the soul and God and is also the path by which that distance is cancelled.

What happens after death?

I die because I do not die: death is meeting the Beloved

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

John of the Cross awaits eternal life as the consummation of the union of love. In the stanzas «I live without living in myself» the present life is exile and the soul dies because it does not die, longing to see God. The first stanza of the Living Flame of Love asks God to tear the veil of this sweet encounter, that is, the mortal life that separates the soul from vision; and its commentary states that the death of those who have reached this state, though natural, is far sweeter and gentler than their life, for they die in impulses and encounters of love. Death is not an end: it is the passage to seeing God face to face.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

The soul disposes itself in the night; God works the union

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

John of the Cross describes liberation as union with God through love, and distinguishes two movements. In the active night, treated in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, the soul does what it can: it denies its appetites, empties its faculties and walks by faith, hope and charity, with the watchword of desiring to taste nothing in order to come to taste everything. But the decisive purification is passive: the Dark Night shows that it is God who, through infused contemplation, purges what the soul cannot reach. In the Living Flame of Love he insists that the principal agent and guide is the Holy Spirit. Effort prepares; union is a gift.

Is a teacher necessary?

A good director helps; the principal guide is the Holy Spirit

Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

John of the Cross attaches great importance to spiritual direction and, at the same time, criticises it harshly. In the Sayings of Light and Love he compares the soul that is alone and without a master, even if virtuous, to a burning coal left alone, which cools rather than kindles. But in the Living Flame of Love he devotes severe pages to spiritual masters who, not understanding the ways of contemplation, force the soul to go on meditating when God is already leading it by another path, and compares them to blacksmiths who only know how to hammer. He recalls that the principal agent and guide of souls is the Holy Spirit; the human director must serve him, not hinder him.

Is the world real?

God passed through the groves and left them clothed in beauty

A good and real creationStated explicitly

John of the Cross holds at once the beauty of the world and its nothingness before God. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, compared with God's infinite being, all creatures are nothing, and the soul that binds itself to them becomes like what it loves; hence one must pass through the night of sense. But the Spiritual Canticle sings of creatures as traces of the Beloved: pouring out a thousand graces, he passed through these groves in haste and, looking at them, left them clothed in beauty by his gaze alone. In consummated union, the soul knows creatures from God and finds them more beautiful. The world is good; what hinders is possession.

What is love?

Living flame of love: the longing that wounds and unites

Longing and unionStated explicitly

John of the Cross is, in the Spanish language, the great poet of love as longing for union. In the Spiritual Canticle the soul is the wounded bride who goes out after the Beloved, seeks him over mountains and riverbanks and rests only in union; the Dark Night recounts the beloved's going forth, «inflamed with love», until she lies with her face reclined upon the Beloved. The Living Flame of Love describes consummated love as the fire of the Holy Spirit wounding tenderly in the soul's deepest centre. That love is also a criterion of life: in the evening, says one of his sayings, you will be examined on love. And in a letter he advises putting love where there is none in order to draw love out.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Union is the conformity of two free wills

Real free willInferred from their doctrine

John of the Cross does not treat the problem of determinism, but his whole doctrine presupposes a free will. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel he defines the union he seeks not as substantial union but as union of likeness, which occurs when two wills, the soul's and God's, are conformed in one, with nothing in the one repugnant to the other. To reach it, the soul must freely deny its voluntary appetites: not the natural ones, which do not depend on it, but those it consents to. In the passive night, God works where the soul cannot reach, but the will goes on cooperating through its consent and its love.

Why meditate or pray?

From meditation to loving attentiveness in God

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

John of the Cross distinguishes two moments of prayer. At the beginning, discursive meditation is fitting, using images and reasoning to fall in love with God. But a time comes when that meditation dries up, and the Ascent of Mount Carmel gives three signs to recognise it: one can no longer reason, one has no desire to fix the imagination on other things, and the soul delights in remaining alone with loving attentiveness to God, without particular considerations. Then reasoning must be set aside and one should remain in that loving, quiet and passive knowledge. Prayer culminates in a communication of love between the soul and the Beloved, which the Spiritual Canticle describes as the intimacy of spouses.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Transcending all knowledge: God is reached by dark faith

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

John of the Cross, trained at the University of Salamanca, does not despise theology, but denies that the intellect can reach God by its own powers. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel he maintains that nothing the imagination and intellect can conceive is a proximate means to union, because God falls under no distinct form or knowledge; the only proportionate means is faith, which is dark night for the soul. His stanzas «I entered where I did not know» sing it: whoever truly arrives there faints from himself, and remains unknowing, transcending all knowledge. Reason serves to discern and to avoid deception; union takes place beyond it.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Forgetting the created, remembering the Creator

Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

John of the Cross is the master of solitude and nakedness. His brief Summary of Perfection condenses it into four lines: forgetfulness of the created, remembrance of the Creator, attention to what is within, and remaining in love with the Beloved. The Precautions advise the religious to guard against the world, the devil and the flesh, and not to meddle in what is not his concern. The Spiritual Canticle sings of solitude: in solitude the dove lived, and in solitude her beloved guides her alone. Yet John did not live in a cave: he was a reformer, prior, confessor, tireless traveller and prisoner. The withdrawal he asks for is above all inward: detachment from everything, so that nothing takes God's place.