Saint John of the Cross

Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 at Fontiveros in Castile. His father died when he was a baby, and his mother struggled to feed her three sons. The family moved to Medina del Campo, where John worked in a hospital for the poor and studied at a new Jesuit college. In 1563 he entered the Carmelite friars, taking the name John of Saint Matthias, and he studied at the University of Salamanca.

He was ordained in 1567 and was thinking of leaving to join the stricter Carthusians when he met Teresa of Ávila. She persuaded him to help her bring her reform to the friars. In 1568 he and a few companions began the first house of Discalced Carmelite friars at Duruelo, and he took the name John of the Cross.

The reform was bitterly resisted. In December 1577 friars opposed to it seized John and imprisoned him in their monastery at Toledo. For about nine months he was kept in a tiny cell with almost no light, fed on bread and water, and flogged. In that darkness he composed some of the most beautiful poems in the Spanish language, among them most of the Spiritual Canticle. In August 1578 he escaped by night, lowering himself from a window on strips of blanket.

He went on to serve as prior and spiritual director, and he wrote commentaries on his poems: The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. They teach how the soul, stripped of everything that is not God, comes to union with him in love. He died at Úbeda on 14 December 1591, was canonized in 1726, and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.