Saint John of the Cross: The Mystic Who Endured Nine Months of Flogging by His Own Brothers

Saint John of the Cross: The Mystic Who Endured Nine Months of Flogging by His Own Brothers

It is midnight in Toledo, year 157. In a cell so small that a man can barely stand up, a thin, tortured friar breathes with difficulty. Her hands tremble with cold. His back is covered in open wounds that never seem to heal. Because every Friday without fail they take him out of that dark hole and his own religious brothers whip him until the blood runs. They are not his enemies, or are they Carmelites like him, members of his same order, men who have taken the same vows as him, and yet they beat him with hatred and contempt. They insult him, humiliate him, leave him without food for 9 months, 9 months in almost total darkness, not knowing if he will ever see the light again. But tonight, in the midst of that hell, something extraordinary is happening, because Juan, instead of cursing, is composing poetry. In his mind, without paper or pen, he is creating the most beautiful verses ever written about the love of God. And when he finally escapes from that prison, he will not emerge broken, he will emerge a saint. This is the story of Saint John of the Cross, the man who transformed the darkest night into the brightest light. And if you stay here tonight, you will discover how the deepest suffering can become the gateway to the most sublime love.

Take a deep breath. Get comfortable, because this is not just the story of a suffering saint, it is a testament to how God is found precisely where all seems lost. By the end of this night you will have met John of Lepes, the poor boy who saw his brother die of hunger, the young friar who sought God in silence, the prisoner who found freedom in a dark cell, and the mystic poet whose words continue to console millions of souls going through their own nights. You will learn that the dark night of the soul is not a punishment, but an invitation, that when God seems absent, He is closest, working deep within your being. So rest, let this story envelop you like a cloak of peace and allow Saint John to teach you something the world cannot understand: that in the deepest darkness is where love burns brightest. In 1542, in the small Castilian village of Fontiveros, the wind blew gently through the wheat fields. It was a place where time seemed to move to the rhythm of the church bells, where life was simple, hard, but full of faith. Juan de Lepes Álvarez was born there in a house so humble that it barely had any furniture. His father, Gonzalo de Lepes, was born into a wealthy family of silk merchants, but committed what his family considered an unforgivable sin. He fell in love with Catalina Álvarez, an orphan, a poor weaver, a woman without a dowry or surname. When Gonzalo asked his family for permission to marry her, the response was brutal. If you marry that woman, never set foot in this house again. You’re dead to us. Gonzalo chose love and paid the price. He was completely disinherited, expelled from his family, erased from his history. And so Gonzalo and Catalina began their life together in utter poverty, working as weavers from sunrise to sunset, barely earning enough for a hard loaf of bread and some water. Juan was the third child of that marriage, a boy with deep eyes and a calm gaze. Even as a child there was something different about him, a seriousness that did not correspond to his age, as if his soul already knew that life would be difficult. When Juan was barely two years old, his father Gonzalo died, it is not known exactly from what, perhaps from illness, perhaps from exhaustion from so many years of work and sacrifice on his back, perhaps from a heart broken by the rejection of his family, but he died young, leaving Catalina a widow with three small children and with nothing, absolutely nothing. Poverty became even more severe. Catalina knitted day and night. His fingers were bleeding from working so hard. But often there wasn’t enough food.

The children went to bed hungry. And one night Luis, Juan’s older brother, didn’t wake up. He died of malnutrition. A child, a life extinguished by lack of bread. Juan was 7 years old when he saw his brother die, and that experience left a deep mark on his soul. Suffering is not something abstract, it is real, it is hunger, it is cold, it is seeing those you love die. But even then, even in the midst of that tragedy, Catherine taught him something that John would never forget. Every night, before going to sleep, she would kneel her children on the cold floor and say to them in a soft but firm voice, “Even if we have no bread, we have God and he never abandons us.” John learned to pray before he learned to read. He learned to trust before he learned to doubt. And he learned that God is especially close to those who suffer. Desperate to give her children a chance to survive, Catalina moved with them to Medina del Campo, a bigger city, more job opportunities, more hope. There, Juan attended a school for poor children run by the Jesuits. The teachers immediately noticed something special about this thin, quiet boy. His intelligence was extraordinary, but more than that, there was a spiritual depth in him that was not normal in a child. At the age of 14, Juan began working at the Conception Hospital, a place where the most abandoned of the abandoned went: lepers with rotting flesh, syphilitics rejected by their families, dying people whom no one wanted to touch. Juan’s job was to take care of them, wash their wounds, feed them, comfort them, and he did it with a tenderness that left everyone amazed. He not only fulfilled his duty, he loved those sick people, he saw them as people, as children of God. When washing the most disgusting wounds, he did so with infinite care. When feeding those who could not eat on their own, she did so with patience. And when he held the hand of a dying person in their last hours, something happened. The sick people said they felt the presence of Christ, that when John touched them it was as if God himself were touching them. One day, a man was dying alone in a corner of the hospital. Nobody wanted to go near him because he smelled bad and was covered in sores. John sat down next to him, took his hand, and began to pray in a low voice. The man opened his eyes for the last time and whispered in a whisper, “I have seen the light. Thank you.” And he died peacefully. That moment changed something in Juan. He realized that his life was not his own. It was a gift that I had to give completely to the service of God, to the service of those who suffer. At the age of 21, Juan entered the Carmelite convent in Medina del Campo. The hospital administrator had offered to pay for his studies to become a diocesan priest. It was an extraordinary opportunity for a poor young man. But John felt that God was calling him to something more radical, to religious life, to silence, to continuous prayer. He took the name Juan de San Matías and began his training. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Salamanca, one of the best universities in Europe. But as the years went by, Juan felt increasingly restless. The Carmelite order, which had originally been founded to live in radical poverty and contemplative prayer, had become lax over the centuries. The friars lived in comfort, they owned property, and had riches. The life of intense prayer had given way to a more worldly existence. John, who had chosen this life precisely to seek God in silence, felt deeply disappointed. He seriously considered leaving the Carmelites and joining the Carthusians. A much stricter order. But then he met Teresa of Ávila. It was 1567. John was 25 years old. Teresa was 52. She was a Carmelite nun who had begun a reform of the female branch of the order, returning to the primitive rule of Carmel. Radical poverty, deep contemplative prayer, austere life. She had founded several convents of Discalced Carmelites, so called because they wore sandals instead of shoes as a symbol of poverty and humility. When Teresa met Juan, something extraordinary happened. They recognized each other as soulmates.

Teresa saw in that young, thin, and quiet friar a spirit of fire, a thirst for God that was identical to her own, and she proposed something bold to him. Brother John, do you want to be the first, the first friar of the Discalced Carmelites? Help me to extend this reform to men as well. Juan didn’t hesitate for a second. Be a mother. That is exactly what my soul longs for. And so in November 1568, together with two other friars, John founded the first convent in Duruelo, a place so poor and small that Teresa joked that it looked more like a stable than a convent. Juan changed his name to John of the Cross and finally found what he had been looking for. A life of absolute poverty, deep contemplative prayer, rigorous penance, and a passionate search for union with God. He would spend hours on his knees in the chapel, sometimes all night, motionless like a statue. But inside, inside there burned a fire that consumed everything that was not God. For the next 9 years, Juan worked tirelessly on the reform. He founded convents, trained young friars, and served as confessor and spiritual director of the Discalced Carmelite nuns. His reputation as a spiritual guide grew rapidly. Those who came to him were amazed by his wisdom, by his deep understanding of the human soul, by his ability to guide people towards God. But not everyone was happy. The Calced Carmelites, the ancient and unreformed branch of the order, viewed the Discalced Carmelites as rebels, as implicit critics of their relaxed lifestyle, as a threat. Tensions increased. There were legal disputes about authority, about who had the right to found convents, about whether the Discalced Carmelites were a separate order or simply a rebel. The situation became increasingly hostile and on the night of December 2-3, 157 everything exploded. Juan was sleeping in the convent of the Incarnation in Ávila, where he served as confessor to the nuns. It was midnight when he heard violent knocking on his door. Before he could get up, the door burst open. A group of Carmelite friars burst into his room, accompanied by a bailiff. They dragged him out of his bed. You are under arrest for rebellion and disobedience, they told him harshly. John, bewildered, asked, By whose order? By what authority? On the orders of the apostolic nuncio, the Pope’s representative in Spain, Juan, trusting that it was a misunderstanding, did not resist. They first took him to a convent in Ávila. They tried to convince him to renounce the reform, to return to the Discalced Carmelites. Juan refused politely, but firmly. My vocation is the austere contemplative life; I will not abandon it. Frustrated, they decided to move him to Toledo and lock him up until he changed his mind or died, whichever came first when they arrived in Toledo.

They locked him up in the convent of the Discalced Carmelites, but not in a normal room. They locked him in what had been a closet or pantry, a tiny cell, approximately 2 meters wide by 3 meters long. It had no window. The only light that came in was a narrow slit near the ceiling, so high that Juen couldn’t reach it, even standing on tiptoe. In summer, the heat was stifling, the air became unbreathable. In winter the cold was penetrating, it chilled you to the bone. There was no bed, only the stone floor. In one corner there was a latrine that was never cleaned, filling the space with an unbearable stench. Juan spent 23 hours a day there in almost total darkness, with the nauseating smell, with extreme cold or heat, with nothing to do, with no one to talk to, with no books to read, just existing in that dark hole. But the worst part wasn’t the cell, the worst part was Fridays. Every Friday without fail they would take him out of his cell and bring him to the refectory, where all the friars were eating. And there, on the ground, Juan had to eat only bread and water, while the other friars ate normally. After eating he had to remove the top part of his habit, kneel down and receive the discipline. The friars formed a circle around him and each one struck him on the back with a leather strap. The blows were severe, so severe that Juan’s back was covered in wounds, wounds that never healed completely, because the following Friday he would receive more blows on the open wounds. The pain was indescribable, but worse than the physical pain was the humiliation. Seeing the faces of his religious brothers filled with contempt and hatred as they beat him and then returned him to his dark cell, to his solitude, to his constant hunger, because the ration of bread and water was insufficient. Juan lost a lot of weight. His body weakened terribly. The wounds on his back became infected. He developed dysentery due to the unsanitary conditions. There were times when he was so ill that the friars thought he would die. But he did not die. And he didn’t just survive physically. Something happened that defies all explanation. Instead of breaking down, Juan was transformed. Instead of despairing, John prayed. Instead of becoming bitter, John fell more deeply in love with God. In the total darkness of that cell, Juan experienced what he would later call the dark night of the soul. That state in which God seems completely absent, where prayer becomes barren, where all consolations disappear, where the soul feels lost in a terrible emptiness. But John discovered something that would change the history of Christian spirituality. That dark night is not a punishment, it is a purification. It is God removing all crutches, all sensible consolations, all pleasant feelings so that the soul learns to love Him for Himself, not for what it feels, but for pure faith. And in that cell, without paper or pen, Juan began to compose poetry in his mind, poetry of such extraordinary beauty that centuries later it would be recognized as the pinnacle of Spanish mystical literature. She composed the verses mentally, memorized them, polished them in her mind again and again, on a dark night filled with longing, in love, inflamed. Oh, blissful adventure. I left unnoticed, once my house was quiet. These were not just words, it was the cry of a soul that has found God in the darkness, that has discovered that the night, the night is where God hides to be found. The months passed, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, 8 months in that cell.

But in August 1578, John knew in his heart that it was time to escape. A new jailer had been assigned. A young friar who felt compassion for John began to treat him more kindly. I brought him a little more food. It allowed him to have an oil lamp for brief moments. He gave him a needle and thread so that Juan could mend his torn habit. Juan used that needle and thread for something completely different. For several nights, he worked in silence. He loosened the screws on his door lock using the nail that held the oil lamp, millimeter by millimeter, with infinite patience. He was finally able to remove the lock completely, but getting out of the cell was only the first step. He was still on the second floor of the convent, surrounded by friars who were watching over him. John prayed for guidance and waited for the perfect moment. On the night of August 15, 1578, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, Juan felt it was the moment. The friars were in the choir singing matins. Juan left his cell in complete silence. His heart was beating fast, but his steps were sure. He walked down the dark hallway until he reached a window. It was located next to an interior courtyard. Using strips of cloth he had torn from the blankets in his cell and had been secretly braiding for weeks, he improvised a rope, tied one end to a hook in the window and began to descend, but the rope was too short. When he reached the end, he was still several meters off the ground. There was no time to hesitate. Juan let go and fell. He landed hard on the wall surrounding the courtyard. Dazed, in pain, but unharmed, he looked around. It was in a courtyard enclosed by high walls. There was no visible exit. The friars would soon finish their prayers and discover his absence. John prayed desperately and then he saw something, a guard dog sleeping near a small door in the wall. Juan approached carefully. The dog raised its head, looked at him, and went back to sleep as if an invisible hand had calmed it. Juan tried the door, it was unlocked, he opened it and went out onto a street in Toledo. He was free, but in grave danger. I was in a city I didn’t know, in the middle of the night, weak, sick, dressed in a tattered habit that identified him as a friar. If the Discalced Carmelites found him, they would return him to prison. Or worse. Juan walked through the dark streets praying, trusting, and finally arrived at the convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Toledo. He knocked on the door. The nuns, astonished to see him alive, immediately hid him and sent an urgent message to the Discalced Carmelite friars, who came that same night and took Juan to a safe place. News of the miraculous escape spread quickly. Teresa of Ávila, who had been praying for him during the 9 months of his imprisonment, wept with joy when she learned that he was alive and free. Juan needed several months to recover physically, but spiritually he had been transformed. The prison experience, far from destroying him, had purified him, had raised him to mystical heights that few saints have reached. And now I had to share what I had learned. He began to write. The words flowed from him like a river. They weren’t dry theological treatises, it was poetry, it was fire, it was pure love. He wrote four major works: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, Flame of Love. In these works, Juan vividly described with scientific precision and poetic beauty the soul’s journey to union with God. He explained the stages of the spiritual life, the obstacles encountered, the necessary purifications, and finally, the transformative union with God. His most famous concept is the dark night of the soul. Those periods in the spiritual life, when God seems absent, when prayer becomes barren, when all consolations disappear. Juan taught that these dark nights are not punishments, they are not signs that something is wrong, but precisely the opposite.

These are signs that God is taking the soul to a deeper level of union with him. John explained, “Just as the eyes need to adjust to the darkness to see at night, the soul needs to pass through spiritual darkness to perceive God more deeply.” Despite his evident wisdom and holiness, John always considered himself the least of the friars. He preferred the humblest tasks: sweeping, washing dishes, working in the garden. When he was prior, he never used his authority for his own benefit. He ate the same simple food as the other friars. He slept in the smallest cell and was always available to listen and advise anyone who needed it. He loved walking in the countryside, contemplating the beauty of creation. He said that every creature, every flower, every tree, every bird was a word from God and that contemplating nature was reading the book of creation written by the finger of God. The friars who lived with him remembered his kindness, his sense of humor, his love for nature, and above all, his profound peace. That peace that comes from having found God in the darkest place and knowing that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from His love. In 1591, when John was 49 years old, new tensions arose within the order of the Discalced Carmelites. Some friars, jealous of his influence, began to speak out against him. There were accusations, rumors, and attempts to discredit him. Juan, who had suffered so much at the hands of the Calced Carmelites years before, now suffered rejection from some of his own Discalced brothers. But Juan did not defend himself; he accepted the suffering in silence, offering it to God, as he had learned to do in that cell in Toledo, in September 1591. Juan became seriously ill. She developed a high fever and painful ulcers on her legs. He asked to be sent to the convent in Úbeda, a place where he was unknown, so that he could die in peace without causing any trouble. The Prior of Úveda, a tough man named Francisco Crisóstomo, had no sympathy for Juan. He treated him coldly. He gave him the poorest cell and complained about the expense of caring for a sick friar. Juan suffered terribly in his last months. The ulcers on her legs became infected, causing unbearable pain. The medical treatments of the time, which included cauterizing wounds with hot irons, only increased their agony. But Juan never complained. When the friars asked him how he was, he would reply with a smile, “Very well, I’ve never been better.” On the night of December 13-14, 1591, John knew that his death was near. He asked for the last rites. After receiving the last rites, he asked that passages from the Song of Songs be read to him, the biblical book that celebrates the love between the lover and the beloved, and which John had always interpreted as an allegory of the love between God and the soul. As he listened to those words of love, Juan smiled. At 11 o’clock at night, John said, “Tonight I will sing matins in heaven.” Shortly afterwards, at midnight on December 14, 1591, John of the Cross died. He was 49 years old. His last words were today I am dying of not dying and then more softly into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. Immediately after his death, something extraordinary happened. Prior Francis Chrysostom, who had treated John so harshly, entered the cell where the body lay.

And when she saw John’s face, transfigured by a supernatural peace and beauty, she fell to her knees weeping, beating her chest, asking forgiveness for how she had treated a saint. Juan’s body emanated a soft perfume that filled the entire convent, and the church bells began to ring on their own without anyone touching them. John of the Cross was beatified by Pope Clement X in 1675 and canonized by Pope Benedict I in 1726. In 1926, Pope Pius XI declared him a Doctor of the Church, officially recognizing that his teachings are of universal value for the entire Church. He is one of only 37 Doctors of the Church in the entire history of Christianity and is considered one of the greatest masters of the mystical life. His writings have comforted millions of souls throughout the centuries. People who are going through their own dark nights, who feel that God is absent, who struggle with spiritual dryness, and who find in John’s words hope, comfort, and a light in the darkness. The teachings of Saint John of the Cross are as relevant today as they were in the 16th century, in a world full of noise, distractions, and a constant search for experiences. John teaches us the value of silence, of solitude, of inner purification. It teaches us that the path to God is not always easy or comforting, that sometimes it requires going through the dark night, where everything seems lost, but that on the other side of that night awaits us a union with God deeper and more transformative than we ever imagined. John teaches us that suffering, when accepted with faith and love, is not destructive, but transformative. His own life is proof. Nine months in a dark cell, tortured by his own religious brothers, did not destroy him. They transformed him into one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church. It teaches us that God can use even the most painful experiences in our lives to take us to spiritual heights we would never reach otherwise. John teaches us about detachment. In a culture obsessed with the accumulation of possessions, experiences, and achievements, John shows us that true freedom comes from letting go, from emptying our hands and our hearts of everything that is not God so that God can fill us completely. His famous saying, to come and possess everything, don’t want to possess anything at all. It sounds paradoxical, but it expresses a profound truth. Only when we stop clinging to created things can we fully embrace the creator. And above all, John teaches us about love. His entire spiritual doctrine can be summed up in one word: love. The goal of the spiritual life is not to have extraordinary experiences or reach high mystical states, but to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. John wrote, “At the evening of life you will be judged on love. Everything else, all spiritual practices, all disciplines, all experiences are only means to this end: to grow in love.” Dear friend who hears this story in the stillness of the night, perhaps you too are going through your own dark night. Perhaps God seems distant to you. Perhaps prayer has become dry. Perhaps you have lost the consolations you once had.

If so, St. John of the Cross tells you something important tonight. This is not a sign that something is wrong, but precisely that something is going very well. God is taking you deeper. He is removing the crutches so that you may learn to fly. He is emptying your cup so that He can fill it with something infinitely better. The dark night is not the end of the road; it is the beginning of the most beautiful transformation your soul can experience. So rest now. Rest in the loving arms of your Heavenly Father. Let sleep come gently like a blessing descending from heaven. Let every muscle in your body relax. Let every worry dissolve in love of God. Your breathing becomes slower and deeper. The peace of God that surpasses all understanding guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Before you close your eyes, let me share with you the words of St. John himself. “I remained and forgot myself. I laid my face upon the beloved. All things ceased and let me go, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.” Tonight you too can lie upon the beloved. You can cease from all your worries. You can leave yourself in God’s hands, knowing that He cares for you with a love more tender than any mother’s for her child. Sleep in peace, beloved child of God. Sleep in peace, knowing that even in the darkest night, God is at work in you. Sleep in peace, trusting that the same God who transformed John in a dark cell is transforming you at this very moment. And so, my friend, we come to the end of this tale, the story of John of Lepes, who became John of the Cross, the poor boy who knew hunger and loss, of the young friar who sought God in silence, of the prisoner who found freedom in a dark cell, and of the mystic poet whose voice continues to console millions. Before we say goodbye, I want to invite you to something very simple. If you wish to continue resting in peace, here on the channel you have another story waiting for you, another profound tale to rest upon, another life of faith like that of Saint Anthony of Padua or Saint Charbel Makhlouf to accompany you a little longer tonight. Thank you so much for sharing this moment. Thank you so much for opening your heart to the story of John of the Cross. And always remember his words: Where there is no love, put love and you will draw love from it. May God grant you a peaceful night, a deep rest, and may the peace of Saint John of the Cross, the peace he found in the darkest night, accompany you this holy night and every day of your life. And may silence reveal to you what noise never could. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.