One of the greatest Christian Mystics was St John of the Cross (1542-1591). It is in the documentation of his experience that one can achieve a good idea of what mysticism precisely Juan de Yepes was born in Spain in the Castilian town of Fontiveros in 1542. Soon after his birth his father died, and his mother had to struggle to keep her three young sons alive. This poverty probably played a role in the death of one of John's brothers and the move of the family to Medina del Campo, where John was placed in an orphanage. Upon leaving the orphanage in his teens he s

erved as a nurse in a hospital of incurables, and attended the Jesuit College. At 21 he decided to enter the Carmelite monastery in Medina del Campo. After being ordained as a priest he was at the point of leaving the Order for a more rigorous and secluded one when he met Teresa of Avila who had already initiated a reform movement for the sisters, and was planning one for the friars as well. She convinced him to help her in this new work, and he started the first house of the new reform and went on to hold many positions in this growing movement. In 1577, while in the midst of an extended stay as a confessor and spiritual director at St. Teresa's convent at Avila, he was kidnapped by the friars who opposed the reform and was imprisoned at Toledo. Buried in a dark cell and treated brutally, he began to fear for his life. Here he suffered what he later named “a dark night of the soul” out of which was born some of his most beautiful poetry. After more than eight months of torment he escaped and went south to Andalusia. Charged with the spiritual direction of St. Teresa's sisters, he began to teach and write maxims as aids to their devotion, and eventually undertake his prose works which were intended to be commentaries on his major poems. After many years, dividing his time in administering the growing reform and dedicating himself to the task of spiritual direction, he again fell afoul of some of his fellow friars.

St John of the Cross argues in his work The Ascent of Mount Carmel that the Prayer of Purgation is an essential preliminary to engaging in the my

Some topics in this essay:
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