John was born in 1542 at Fontiveros, near Avila. His father Gonzalo came from a noble Toledo family and was disowned for marrying Catalina, a humble silk weaver. ¹ The family lived in severe hardship, and John grew up poor in a way that was not chosen.

He studied at the Jesuit college at Medina del Campo from the age of eighteen, and in the summer of 1563 began his novitiate with the Carmelites, taking the name Juan de Santo Matia. ¹

In 1567, after his ordination, he met Teresa of Avila. She explained her plan for reforming Carmel, and he joined it. ¹ On 28 December 1568 they opened the first reformed community of friars at Duruelo, and he took the name by which he is known. ¹

He was twenty-six. Teresa was in her fifties and had been arguing with the order for years. What she needed was a man of the reform with unimpeachable interior credentials, and she had found one.

The reform made enemies inside the order. In 1577 John was seized and imprisoned at Toledo on false charges, and "subjected to physical and moral deprivations." ¹ He was held in a cell for months.

He composed the Spiritual Canticle there. ¹ He escaped on the night of 16-17 August 1578. ¹ The most beautiful thing he wrote was made in the worst place he was ever put, and that fact is inseparable from what he went on to teach.

His major works are The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. ¹ Together they map the soul's purification and its union with God.

The dark night is his most borrowed and most misunderstood idea. It is not depression and it is not the absence of God. Benedict XVI describes it as God's passive purification, in which the Holy Spirit "consumes every impurity." ¹ The lights going out is the work being done, not the work failing - which is precisely the reassurance a person in that state cannot generate on their own.

He died near Jaen in December 1591, was canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726, and was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pius XI in 1926 with the title Doctor mysticus. ¹

John of the Cross is the patron saint of mystics. ² In practice he is the patron of anyone whose prayer has gone dark and who needs to be told what that means.

His feast is celebrated on December 14, the day of his death. ¹²

When prayer has stopped feeling like anything. This is the exact situation he wrote for. The dryness may be purification rather than failure ¹ - and knowing which is which is the single most useful thing a person in that state can be told.

When you are being hurt by your own side. He was imprisoned by fellow Carmelites for trying to reform Carmel. ¹ If the opposition is coming from inside the Church or inside your own community, he is the saint who knows that particular wound.

When you are in a situation you cannot leave. He wrote the Spiritual Canticle in a cell. ¹ Not after. In it.

When you suspect you are too comfortable. Franciscan Media does not soften him: "We tend to be rich, soft, comfortable. We shrink even from words like self-denial, mortification, purification, asceticism, discipline. We run from the cross. John's message - like the gospel - is loud and clear: Don't - if you really want to live!" ²

When you need someone who will not flatter you. John is not a consoling writer in the easy sense. He is consoling in the harder sense: he tells you what is happening to you and does not pretend it will be pleasant.