Pavel Vojtěch Kohut OCD
Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the museum at the Monastery of the Incarnation outside the walls of Ávila, the monastery where Saint Teresa originally entered (cf. Ž 4:1). Among other things, I encountered a drawing of The Crucified Christ, created by Saint John of the Cross. It is a small piece set in an ornate reliquary located in a spacious room filled with sacred items.
Yet my encounter with this drawing by John was unforgettable. Yes, I must write "encounter," for from the first moment I saw it, I distinctly felt that looking at it was a living contact with Christ in the mystery of Redemption. As if he longed to enter into the life of the one who gazes upon it.
1. Basic Information about the Drawing
The drawing The Crucified Christ (as it is most commonly referred to) is indeed small – measuring only 57 × 47 mm – and is merely sketched in black ink. However, in terms of artistic expression, it is entirely exceptional. Salvador Ros describes it as follows: “It truly is a unique and brilliant drawing that depicts Christ dying on the cross at the moment he gives up his spirit. Here lies its evident pathos, that striking impression from dislocated limbs, hands torn by nail wounds, and the weight of the lifeless body hanging forward, as if it wishes to lean down. The head bowed over the chest, making the face barely visible. The loincloth is tightly drawn, and the legs twisted under the weight of the body that can no longer bear it. And all this seen from the side, from above, from an oblique conical perspective, from a viewpoint positioned in the upper right corner. This is undoubtedly the most notable and original aspect of the drawing, for this oblique perspective, this viewpoint compels the author to transcend the rules of aesthetics and to give from above the presented image new proportions (from the foot to the palm of the left hand measures only 20 mm, while for the right it is 60 mm), resulting in a unique, truly unusual scene.”
It is also very interesting to note the discovery made during the restoration of the piece in 1968: The drawing was not created on a single piece of paper, but rather on two – the upper, larger portion depicts the cross and the body of the Crucified up to the loincloth, while the lower shows the legs and the lower part of the cross. Personally, I consider it plausible that this was the saint's own intervention: he might have simply torn away the lower part of the original drawing (the original execution of which did not satisfy him?) and replaced it with another. Of course, this is merely speculation.
The circumstances of the drawing's creation are also unclear, so we can say that we know more about it than we do. We have a few testimonies available, but unfortunately, they are very vague. Father John of Saint Joseph, a Carmelite of the original observance, testified that the saint gave the drawing to his penitent, Sister Anna Maria of Jesus, who entrusted it to him for a time but later requested it back. Father Alphonsus of the Mother of God, the saint’s confidant, attempts to reconstruct in his biography of John of the Cross how it came to be. However, it is clear from his account that he lacks precise information. The hypothetical nature is also present in the testimony of another biographer of the saint, Father Jerome of Saint Joseph, who writes: “To see him [= the crucified Christ] like this, it is easy to deduce and believe that the servant of God was in some window or on a balcony, which are often found on the sides of the high altar in convent churches, and there it is assumed he had the vision, facing the people. But why like this and not turned toward the venerable father himself? It can be believed that it was so that his eyes could see from that elevated view the so lamentable and dislocated figure, than how it would appear to him from a direct view.”1
Regarding the drawing's creation, we can therefore say with certainty that sometime between 1572 and 1577 (i.e., during the time when Saint John of the Cross was the confessor for the nuns at the Incarnation and lived in a house nearby), most likely in the latter half of this period, John of the Cross most likely had a vision of the crucified Christ in that unusual perspective and form, as he recorded, and gifted the resulting drawing to Sister Anna Maria of Jesus. She then passed her treasure on to another nun, Maria de Pinel, who mentioned it in the convent chronicle and had it placed in a reliquary around 1630. In 1969, this original reliquary was replaced by the current one, created by the Madrid goldsmith José Puigdollers.
What impression does a person have when gazing at the drawing? The aforementioned Father Jerome of Saint Joseph emphasized: “On this drawing, there are three things worthy of contemplation: the first is the position in which our Lord Christ is presented, and which the venerable man had before him when he saw it; the second is the skill of the sketch; the third is the piety it represents and evokes.” And the contemporary author, Juan Bosco San Román, compellingly interprets the drawing when he writes: “The Father here gazes at the Son, who is more worm than man, in whose body there is no healthy place, who is tortured and crushed for human sin, leaning toward the world for which he died.”
Modernly speaking: in the drawing, one can admire and evaluate the theological statement, artistic expression, and spiritual message. Let us try to discover them based on a dialectical reading of John's works and this drawing and subsequently articulate the message of the drawing in relation to our spiritual lives.
2. John's Drawing and His Writings
Whoever observes John’s drawing is struck by both the unusual perspective and the simple, almost rough strokes of the drawing, as well as the expression of the depicted body’s position. The Crucified Christ of Saint John thus captures both Jesus's suffering, his love with which he dies, and his relationship with the Father, who is the first to behold the scene.
For these reasons, it is difficult to associate this drawing with the works of two prominent painters who were inspired by it. Both artists, muralist José María Sert (1874–1945) and surrealist Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), became acquainted with the saint’s drawing thanks to Father Bruno of Jesus and Mary (Frossairta, 1892–1962). The former concluded that we were looking at the drawing wrongly, and therefore turned it 90 degrees to the left, so that in his interpretation Jesus appears to hang in a horizontal position, pinned to an imaginary ceiling, the whole body facing down. It is, however, questionable why Saint John would want to depict Christ in this position, what he wanted to convey. Salvador Dalí, however, moved even further away from John’s drawing. His Christ of Saint John of the Cross from 1951 has in common with the saint’s drawing only the name and the unusual perspective, but even that is not maintained within John’s intentions. The view of the crucified Jesus is here taken from a bird's-eye perspective, which spontaneously offers a completely different interpretation than in John’s drawing. Moreover, the depicted Christ here has more the impression of an athlete, a demigod hero with beautifully shaped muscles. The twisted position, curled legs incapable of supporting the weight of the body, bloody wounds are absent… The black background is immensely effective, yet together with the hint of the ground at the lower part of the image, it rather distances the Crucified from the world. It is no wonder that the great connoisseur of the saint’s teachings, Federico Ruiz, expresses skepticism about these scenes: “Regardless of such authority, I am still convinced that the position, as intended by the saint, is vertical, as it has always been assumed.”
However, let us attempt to understand John’s drawing based on his own works. I believe that his own thoughts will help us come closer to it more than foreign commentaries or our own impressions.
The Love-Wounded Shepherd under the Loving Gaze of the Father
A fundamental interpretation is given to John’s drawing based on a popular poem of four stanzas, to which the mystical poet only added the last, fifth stanza. This, however, completely transforms it, as the original poem about the unrequited love of a little shepherd (Pastorcico) for an ungrateful shepherdess becomes a Christological allegory: Jesus, suffering from the fact that lost humanity does not reciprocate his love, climbs the "tree" of the cross, on which he dies “with a heart wounded by love.” The Crucified Christ in John’s drawing is thus the Shepherd whose love for sinners leads to the sacrifice of his own life, as we read in the author’s last stanza: “And after a long time, he reared up / on the tree, where he spread his beautiful arms, / and dead remained hanging on them, / his heart wounded by love.” The first key to interpreting the drawing is therefore Christ’s saving love for humanity.
At least two more poems of the saint help us interpret his drawing correctly: these are the romances On the Gospel In principio erat Verbum and the poem I Know Well the Spring. In the first, a loving dialogue between the Father and the Son about creation forms the basic perspective (cf. stanzas 3 and 4) and about the Incarnation (cf. stanzas 7 and 8). Both divine persons, bound by mutual love (i.e., by the person of the Holy Spirit), wish to create the world and draw it closer to God by taking on human nature. These romances conclude with the birth of the Lord in Bethlehem (cf. stanza 9), yet nothing prevents us from “extending” this line all the way to Jesus’s death on the cross. In that case, the second key to interpreting John’s drawing becomes the Father’s love for the Son, which largely clarifies the unusual perspective of the view from above, where the observer (or rather the Observer!) is close to the Crucified and does not look down “coldly from above” (as in Dalí's depiction), but rather with love and participation.
In the poem I Know Well the Spring, we find a supplement to this perspective of love between the Father and the Son with the Father's love for humanity through the Son: The Spring (= the Father) pours out in streams (i.e., in the Son and the Spirit) and creates the world, only to finally give himself to all who desire in the “living bread” (i.e., in the Eucharistic Christ). This perspective can also be applied to John’s drawing. In summary, it can be said that this simple representation embodies the love between the Father and the Son (and thus also the Holy Spirit), which collectively offers itself to sinful humanity, so that through the acceptance of Christ's saving death, they might cling to this love and partake in it.
Even in the prose texts of the Mystical Teacher, we find this perspective on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. In the Spiritual Song, the cross is spoken of as an apple tree where “the Son of God redeemed, and thereby subsequently betrothed human nature to himself, and thus subsequently each soul, so that he gave her grace and a pledge on the cross.” (DP 23:3) Elsewhere, Saint John presents love and the cross as inextricably linked (DP 36:13; ŽP 2:28). When we add the perspective of the famous 22nd chapter of the 2nd book The Ascent of Mount Carmel, in which the saint presents Christ as the only word of the Father, we can conclude that the view of Jesus’s cross is the same in John’s poetry and prose: Jesus responds to the Father’s love by suffering and dying to save lost humanity, which leads the Father to lovingly bend down to him, accepting redeemed humanity with his pierced limbs and heart tenderly. It is as if we are directly offered a guide on how and in what spirit we should gaze upon John’s drawing.
From the Perspective of the Crucified Love
The perspective can also be reversed, and we can read John’s writings based on his drawing. Already because the drawing was created before the vast majority of writings. When reading them, it is therefore necessary to keep in mind this profound spiritual experience of John, based on which he sketched the suffering body of Jesus from the loving gaze of the Father. After all, this is an extraordinary experience linked to the first phase of the saint's mystical life.
Already reading the poems with regard to John’s drawing allows us to read them unequivocally in a Christological perspective. The thesis that the poem Where Have You Hidden, Beloved? or the poems On a Dark Night and O, Living Flame of Love were first written as expressions of worldly romantic love, and only subsequently “spiritualized” by the author in his commentaries, cannot be accepted.
However, the drawing The Crucified Christ is also an important interpretative key to understanding the outline in The Mount of Perfection. Often, due to the teachings illustrated and described in the treatise The Ascent of Mount Carmel (especially in 1V 13), the Mystical Teacher is accused of un-Christian asceticism, which does not take into account Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice. Yet careful reading of the programmatic chapter 13 of the first book of The Ascent rebuts this. John clearly states here: “First, the soul must have a constant desire (un ordinario apetito) to follow Christ in all her affairs by resembling his life, of which she must meditate, so that she may imitate him and proceed in everything as he would.” For the second, to do this well, she must renounce any pleasure that comes to her senses unless it is purely for the glory and honor of God; let her renounce it and remain empty of it for the love of Jesus Christ, who did not have or desire in this life any other pleasure than to do the will of his Father, and this he called his food and sustenance” (1V 13:3n). It is clear that all ascetic effort is made with regard to Christ and his fulfilling of the Father’s will (cf. also 1V 13:6). When, alongside these texts, we position John’s drawing, it becomes evident what leads him to such radical demands on those who wish to achieve union with God, who descended upon the peak of The Mount of Perfection to meet those who wish to ascend to him.
The significance of the drawing for the second part of the diptych, The Dark Night, although it may be presented as complex, is even more useful and necessary. This work of the Mystical Teacher has been repeatedly accused of a Christological “lack,” as it contains few mentions of Jesus Christ, and the vast majority of biblical citations are from the Old Testament. However, The Dark Night forms a diptych with The Ascent of Mount Carmel, where the situation from this perspective is very different, and both works must be read together. John of the Cross was likely led to that restrained referencing to Christ by a certain intention: to allow the reader to “immerse” themselves in the atmosphere of the painful experience of the passive night. As if the horizon of a person’s union with God in Christ entirely disappeared before the soul undergoing purification. In reality, however, going through the dark night means growing in participation in the trinitarian love, which reveals itself on the cross, as we have contemplated over John’s drawing. Moreover, in the preface, the author presents a perspective valid for the entire writing: the soul has already passed through the night and is in a state of perfection because it has let itself be moved by Christ to enter the narrow way to eternal life (cf. N, preface to the reader). What has moved her, then, so that she would enter this narrow path? Surely love, which she could glimpse on the cross.
Also regarding the last two great works, The Spiritual Song and The Living Flame of Love, it must be noted that they reflect the logic of the author’s drawing. John perceives the soul’s search for the Beloved as her response to His initiative of death on the cross: The betrothal of Christ to all humanity is realized in his redemptive death, and a person opens to him through the acceptance of baptism and can experience this spiritually, mystically, even during earthly life (cf. DP 23:2.6).
The trinitarian perspective of the conclusion of The Spiritual Song and the entirety of The Living Flame of Love is also linked to the drawing of The Crucified Christ. Life in the Trinity is opened to us by Jesus Christ through his beauty (cf. DP 36), and the entrance gate is the cross: “Oh, if only it were possible to fully understand how one cannot reach the thicket of God’s gifts, which are very varied, other than by entering into the thicket of varied suffering, and in that the soul will have its comfort and longing! And how the soul that truly longs for divine wisdom first desires to suffer in order to enter it, into the thicket of the cross. (...) Because the entrance to these riches of his wisdom is through a narrow gate, the cross. And of those who desire to enter through it, there are few. Whereas many desire the delights which come through it” (DPB 36:13). For this reason, he also emphasizes in The Living Flame of Love: “Oh, souls, who wish to walk safely and with comfort in spiritual matters! If you knew how it befits you to suffer and endure to achieve this safety and comfort, and how without that it is impossible to achieve that which the soul desires, but rather that it is more like retreating, you would seek no comfort either from God or from creatures. Rather, you would bear the cross, and if you had it, you would wish to drink only gall and vinegar from it! And you would consider it a great fortune to see how, through this dying to the world and to oneself, you live for God in the delights of the spirit. And if you patiently and faithfully endured the little external things, you would deserve that God would turn his gaze upon you and purify you and refine you in your innermost being with certain inner spiritual pains, so that he could give you inner goods” (ŽP 2:28).
It is therefore clear that we will not err when we read the entirety of John’s works through the perspective of crucified Love: the love of the Son for the Father and for creation, the love of the Father for the Son and for creatures in him, the love that is the Holy Spirit.
3. The Message of John’s Drawing to Us
John’s drawing The Crucified Christ can and should speak into our spiritual lives. I would like to at least hint at a few basic motifs by which it can benefit us.
First of all, there is the motif of the crucified Christ. Occasionally, Christians tend to emphasize only the comforting elements of Christianity, so the cross discourages them. They like the baby Jesus in the manger, Jesus as a preacher and miracle worker, the risen Jesus, but Jesus on the cross? Yet without the cross, the Son of God is incomplete! Saint John reminds us of this when he writes to one of his brothers: “Do not seek Christ without the cross” (K 24). We cannot understand Christ and accept his salvation without the cross (and not only in his but also in our lives). In the spirit of the Mystical Teacher, we might also add: “Do not seek the cross without Christ,” meaning that the cross (in the sense of unjust suffering) does not exist separately from Christ and his saving love for us. Therefore, Saint John advises: “Practice the virtues of mortification and patience with the desire to somewhat resemble our great God, humbled and crucified, for if this life is not an imitation of his, it is not good” (K 25).
Furthermore, there is the motif of suffering, anger, but also love. Jesus's body in John's drawing is brutally disfigured. This may initially frighten, but it corresponds to the historical reality of crucifixion, and moreover, it enhances our gratitude to the Lord: He accepted this way of dying and death out of love for us! Christ's wounds testify not only to the magnitude of human sin but – and this is primarily! – to the greatness of God's and Jesus's love for humanity. Saint John of the Cross comments on Jesus's abandonment by saying: “In this way, he achieved a greater work than throughout his entire life on earth and in heaven with his miracles and deeds, when he reconciled and united humanity with God by grace. And that was, as I say, at a time and moment when the Lord was most destroyed” (2V 7:11). And Jesus undergoes this suffering out of love for the Father, as well as out of love for us.
And last but not least, there is the motif of the Father's love for the Son, as well as his love for us. I have repeatedly mentioned that the peculiar perspective of the Crucified seems to correspond to the Father's gaze upon his beloved Son at the moment of his dying. It is clear that it is not the Father who “bloodthirstily” awaits the Son's death as a condition for His forgiveness of sinners, but rather the Father who—though as God cannot suffer—still seems to die with his Son. It is as if the Father wanted to tell us, through John’s drawing: “Fix your gaze only on him, because in him I have told you and revealed everything, and in him you will find even more than you desire and wish. (...) If you wish that I would answer you with any comforting word, look to my Son, submitted to me and subjected to others out of love for me and tormented, and you will see how much that answers you” (2V 22:5n). Unfortunately, even believing Christians are often confused in their view of the cross and imagine God as a cruel Ruler who demands the death of his Son and is indifferent to his suffering. It is understandable that in relation to such a God, they hesitate to turn to Him in prayer and call him Father. It is difficult to believe that God would love and protect us if he cynically consigned his “beloved” Son to suffering and death. John’s drawing, supported by the texts we examined earlier, can serve as an effective antidote against similar distortions of our view of the mystery of redemption.
I believe that there are still other motives for correct perception and experiencing Jesus’s Passion, but these will suffice to convince us that that insignificant image, only lightly sketched by John of the Cross in connection with the profound mystical experience given to him, will greatly benefit all who are at least somewhat spiritually open and artistically sensitive.
Recommended and referenced literature:
KOHUT Pavel Vojtěch, “Eucharist: Revelation of the Father’s Love and the Gate to the Trinity. Mystical Poem of John of the Cross I Know Well the Spring”, Salve 2 (2005), pp. 75–99;
—, “To Live the Life of God. Introduction to Trinitarian Spirituality According to St. John of the Cross”, Salve 3–4 (2006), pp. 143–171;
—, “St. John of the Cross – The Only Word of the Father”, in: K. BAUER, P. JANDEJSEK and I. NOBLE (edd.), Seeking the Face of Jesus. Christological Reader, Prague: Jabok 2008, pp. 57–63;
ROS GARCÍA Salvador, “The Original Symbol of John of the Cross: His Drawing of Crucified Christ”, Revista de Espiritualidad 217 (1995), pp. 573–583;
SAN ROMÁN Juan Bosco, “The Christ Drawn in Ávila by St. John of the Cross”, in: Federico RUIZ (ed.), God Speaks in the Night. Life, Words, Environment of St. John of the Cross, Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad 1990, pp. 146–149;
(A more extensive version of this article by Father Vojtěch Pavel Kohut will be available on the website of the Prague Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites: bosekarmelitky.cz)
