P. Salvador Ros García, OCD
2. Plot: the central decade (1572–1582)
At the beginning of June 1572, Mother Teresa and Brother John of the Cross met again, this time in Ávila at the Incarnation convent and during a common mission entrusted to them by the apostolic visitor, Father Pedro Fernández: to instill a reform model among the shoed, she as prioress and he as chaplain and confessor of the convent. In September, four months after his arrival, Saint Teresa recorded the first good results from Brother John: “This barefoot Carmelite, who confesses here, is greatly beneficial; it is Brother John of the Cross.”1 And a little later, she repeated it again: “One of them has been confessing here for a longer time, very holy; he has caused great progress.”2
At that time, John of the Cross was exactly thirty years old, had been a priest for five years, and had practically been a barefoot Carmelite in the Teresian reform for five years as well. His stay in Ávila would extend for another five long years (1572–1577), which have not yet been thoroughly studied but will be decisive for many things, especially the first three of them, when he shared common experiences with Saint Teresa and they enriched each other. This was the longest period that these two mystics were allowed to live in immediate mutual contact and when – it can be said – John deeply understood the Teresian spirit and Teresa's writings, particularly the Book of Life. There exists compelling documentation about this.
First of all, we know that around mid-November 1572, thanks to Brother John of the Cross, Mother Teresa reached the peak of her mystical journey. This happened through the grace of spiritual marriage, an event mentioned at the beginning and described by her in these words:
“When I was at the Incarnation, in the second year of my time as prioress, during the octave of Saint Martin, when I received Communion, Brother John of the Cross – who was giving me the Most Holy Sacrament – broke the host for another sister. I thought that he did not have enough hosts, but that he wanted to mortify me, because I told him that I was pleased when the hosts were large (not that I did not know that this does not change the fact that the entire Lord is there, even if it were a very small piece). His Majesty said to me: ‘Do not be afraid, daughter, for no one can separate you from Me’ (cf. Romans 8:35); thereby he indicated to me that it is not important. Then, he made the image present to me through a vivid vision as before, very deep within, and he extended his right hand to me and said: ‘Behold this nail, which is a sign that from today you are my bride. Until now you did not deserve this; from this moment on, however, you will strive for my honor as your Creator and as your King and your God, but as my true bride: my honor is yours and yours is mine’ (cf. Song of Songs 6:3). This grace had such an effect on me that I was beside myself with wonder and remained as if I were out of my mind and I said to the Lord to either expand my lowliness or not to bestow such grace upon me; for it certainly seemed to me that nature could not bear it. I remained so very absorbed the entire day. Later, I felt great progress and greater confusion and dejection when I saw that I was of no use in the face of such great graces” (R 34).3
We also know that they both experienced certain graces together, as was the case with the episode that occurred on May 17, 1573, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, when Sister Beatrix of Jesus surprised them during ecstasy in the parlour of the Incarnation convent:
“When he was with our holy mother in the parlour of the Incarnation, and I was before her, a rush of prayer took hold of him, so that he rose from his chair and remained standing. When our holy mother asked him if it was about prayer, he simply replied: I think so.”4
It was precisely about the mystery of the Trinity that they both would write in 1577: she in the convent of Saint Joseph in Ávila while describing the last two abodes of the Interior Castle and he in the convent prison in Toledo, in the Romances “In principio erat Verbum”, a poetic composition of three hundred ten verses, the longest of all his poetic works, where he summarizes and crystallizes his entire mystical theology.
The relationship between Brother John and Mother Teresa of Ávila would become decisive not only for his spiritual teaching but also for his literary production, which was born precisely at the time when her work peaked. It was then, in this framework of spiritual sharing and community recreations, that John’s first poems were born, such as Entréme donde no supe (“I entered where I did not know”) or “verses regarding strong contemplation ecstasy,” where he perfectly describes his mystical experience, both from the perspective of his own life (the first three stanzas) and from a didactic perspective (the remaining five), speaking of a science that his Salamanca teachers could say nothing about, about “understanding in ununderstanding, / surpassing all knowledge,” which resembles what Saint Teresa described in the Book of Life:
“Well then, let us come to what the soul feels within. Let someone express it who can, for it cannot be understood, much less expressed! I thought, when I wanted to describe it (immediately after communion, when I remained in this prayer that I am describing), what the soul does at that time. And the Lord told me these words: ‘The whole is disintegrating, daughter, so that it may be more introduced into Me. It is no longer she who lives, but I’ (cf. Galatians 2:20). Since she cannot fully grasp what she comprehends, it is understanding in ununderstanding. Whoever has tasted this will understand something of it, for it cannot be expressed more clearly, since what happens here is so dark. I can only say that she is made present, that she is with God and that she remains in her with the certainty that she can in no way cease to believe this. Here all powers fail and shut down, so that in no way – as I said – do they feel that they are working. If she thinks of any passage,5 it slips from her memory as if she had never had it there; reading, she can recall nothing from it or even stop at it; reciting prayers similarly. So that the insistent murmurs here burn their wings; she can no longer flutter on. The will must be fully engaged in love, but she does not understand how she loves. The mind, if it understands anything, does not understand how it understands; at least it cannot comprehend anything of what it comprehends. It does not seem to me that she understands, for – as I say – she does not understand. Nor do I fully understand this” (Ž 18,14).
Another poem by Saint John from this period, which also relates to Saint Teresa, is the gloss Vivo sin vivir en mí (“I live without living in myself”), prompted by the same spiritual situation and shared experiences and written as a joint project, including the same number of stanzas (8) and verses (59), albeit with different focuses: John's poem is a song of hope as a solution to his “painful longing to see God,” while Teresa’s is rather a song of love.6
And his first work, written in prose form, also owes its origin to a fortunate Teresian circumstance when the saint in 1576 from Toledo suggested to four of her Ávila conversation partners (Francisco de Salcedo, Julián of Ávila, Lorenzo de Cepeda, and Brother John of the Cross) that each of them write their explanation or commentary on the words: “Seek yourself in Me.” All four read what they had written in the parlour of the convent of Saint Joseph in the presence of the local bishop Don Álvaro de Mendoza, who took their comments and sent them to the saint for her evaluation. Her reply, in a humorous spirit and with the intention of not praising any of them, is the famous Vejamen (“Pamphlet”), from whose text it emerges that John's writing must have been quite long: “However, I forgive him his mistakes” – the saint concludes the section devoted to Julián of Ávila – “for he did not write as extensively as my father, Brother John of the Cross” (no. 5), and about “very good teaching for anyone who would like to carry out exercises, as they do in the Society of Jesus” (no. 6); especially, however, it is clear from the text that he had already begun to use the terminology and basic themes of his future mystical system: “seeking God,” “dead to the world,” “becoming one with God in unity,” “perfect contemplation,” “speaking constantly of God,” etc.7
It is unfortunate that this work intended for the saint, the first of Saint John's prose works, did not reach us, as it would have allowed us to verify the extent to which John had already developed his mystical system (we are primarily certain of the existence of three key concepts: denial, unity, and contemplation). Furthermore, this humorous statement by John of the Cross must also be placed in the human and spiritual context, in which he said to Mother Teresa's sisters that “when she (Teresa) confesses, she greatly excuses herself.”8
When Saint Teresa ended her three-year term as prioress at the Incarnation convent, she continued her founding activity in Andalusia (in Beas de Segura and in Seville), but then she returned to Ávila at the beginning of July 1577, determined to change the jurisdiction of the convent of Saint Joseph. And from there, she re-established spiritual contact with John of the Cross, who was still the chaplain and confessor of the Incarnation convent. This began another period of intense relationship between them, which lasted five months.
The saint arrived from Toledo and brought with her a manuscript of the work The Interior Castle, which she began writing there in early June. She had already written forty-five pages (up to the third chapter of the fifth abodes) and makes several references to her beloved teacher John of the Cross. For instance, at the beginning of the fourth abodes:
“I struggled with that clamor of thoughts, sometimes quite troubled, and it has been about four years since I understood from experience that thinking (or imagination, to put it better) is not the intellect, and I asked one scholar about this and he confirmed to me that it is so, which was no small satisfaction for me” (4H 1,8).9
She also mentioned him when speaking of the signs of true love, from those she knew to be well-known spiritual persons:
“I know of people who walk the way of love as they ought to, only to serve their crucified Christ, so that they not only do not ask for taste, nor do they long for it, but they even ask Him to not grant it to them” (4H 2,9).
Already in Ávila, after a long pause lasting “almost five months from the time I began until now” (5H 4,1), she wrote the rest of the Interior Castle in one go: sixty-five pages, from the fourth chapter of the fifth abodes to the concluding climax of the seventh; a total of sixteen new chapters out of the twenty-two that the book contains. When she began writing again, she started employing bridal symbolism in this middle section of the book, with another reference to John of the Cross, for whom this bridal symbolism undoubtedly represented a favored theme in his talks and conversations:
“Surely you have often heard that God spiritually marries souls. Blessed be His mercy, which is willing to humble itself so much! And even though it is a coarse comparison, personally, I find no other that better conveys what I intend to explain than the sacrament of marriage” (5H 4,3).
And in the sixth abodes, when speaking of certain extraordinary mystical phenomena, she mentions two persons with the same experiences and the same opinion on the matter. They are herself and John of the Cross:
“I know of one person whom the Lord has granted some of these graces, even about two – one of whom is a man – who desired so much to serve His Majesty for their own account, without these great gifts, and were so eager to suffer that they complained to our Lord that it was given to them this way, and if they could, they would avoid receiving these gifts” (6H 9,17).10
Saint Teresa completed the book The Interior Castle on November 29, 1577, and just three days later, in the night from December 2 to 3, Saint John of the Cross was abducted. Thus, it is inconceivable to imagine that he could have managed to read this manuscript of Teresa's book at that time. The relationship between the two mystics was interrupted for a long nine months of John's imprisonment in Toledo; and these months were long for both Mother Teresa and for the Reform, which was threatened from all sides and was on the brink of extinction.
Teresa's entire correspondence, from the first day of John's imprisonment until his escape, is an explosion of tenderness and concern for her first barefoot Carmelite. In the letters to everyone willing to listen to her (including the king), Teresa strongly shows her fear for his life, repeating that she would prefer him to fall into the hands of the Moors, “because they might have more mercy”; she seeks possible influential contacts; counts the days of his absence, when she has no news of him, because ignorance of where he is grinds her down the most (during the entire imprisonment, she never learned where John was)11 and despairs over how his brothers have abandoned him, over the inactivity of the leaders of the Reform, and over the fact that no one cares about his fate: “I am frightened by the enchantment of Brother John of the Cross (...) I do not know what is happening that no one remembers this saint”.12
Later, when she was already certain that John was free again, she hurried to inform this news to Father Gracian in a colorful letter worth quoting here, since it is the most widespread version and because it makes the first barefoot Carmelite a symbol of martyrdom:
“I tell you that I still have before my eyes what they did to Brother John of the Cross, and I do not know how God can bear such things, for neither do you, Father, know everything. For the whole nine months he was in such a tiny cell that he could not even fit in it, although it is so small, and during all that time, he could not exchange even a tunic, although he was near death. Three days before he escaped, the sub-prior gave him one of his shirts; and very cruel beatings, without anyone being able to see him. I greatly envy him. I would dare to wager that our Lord found great wealth in such martyrdom! And it is good for this to be known, so that we may be more cautious of these people. God forgive them, amen. Information should be gathered to show the nuncio what they did to that holy brother John, who is innocent, which is truly regrettable. Tell Brother Herman and he will do it, for he is very capable in this” (D 249 to Father Gracian dated August 21–22, 1578).13
And when he, still exhausted, was sent by the brothers to chapter in Almodóvar, she further expressed her tenderness and watched (as the only one!) over his life in another anthology letter:
“It pained me greatly what sort of life Brother John had to lead and that they now left him in such bad shape to go there. May it please God that he does not die on us. Take care, Father, that he is pampered in Almodóvar, and do me the favor that he does not have to go further from there right away. And do not forget to greet him. See that you do not forget that. I tell you that few will remain like him, Father, if he dies” (D 255 to Father Gracian from mid-September 1578).
Neither on this nor on other occasions was Mother Teresa heeded by her beloved Father Gracian. Brother John was sent to Andalusia. Brief later meetings and especially contact through letters helped Mother Teresa and Brother John maintain the progress they had achieved (in understanding each other) despite geographical distance. In their mutual admiration, they even read each other's relevant writings, as the saint did on her way to Medina del Campo in mid-1579, when she took with her notebooks of “spiritual songs” composed by John of the Cross in the Toledo prison and left a copy of them there and encouraged the nuns to read and sing them. Here is the testimony in which Teresa is introduced as a precursor to the readers of the Spiritual Songs:
“When our holy mother Teresa stayed in this convent, she spoke of him with great respect. And besides other holy and good things she said about the mentioned venerable father in the presence of me and many other religious of this convent, she said that the mentioned venerable father reached the highest perfection to which a person can attain through his great virtue and holiness. And the religious from this house, who shared and conversed with him, said great things about his life and holiness. And when he was imprisoned in Toledo for a long time, he wrote and composed the Songs of the Bride in his prison. That mentioned holy mother brought them to this convent and requested the religious that it would please her if they devoted themselves to them and sang them. And since then they have been sung and continue to be sung.”14
Translated from Spanish by Father Vojtěch of St. Hedwig OCD,
edited.
