Celebration of the Liturgy of the Word in Honor of Saint John of the Cross (4 November 1982)

On Thursday, 4 November 1982, the Holy Father celebrated the Liturgy of the Word in Segovia, in honor of Saint John of the Cross. In his homily, the Pope spoke of how much he owed to the Saint for his own spiritual formation. He quoted from The Ascent of Mount Carmel on Christ as “the definitive Word of the Father and totality of revelation” (II, 22, 5).

1. “By analogy the author of them is known from the greatness and beauty of creatures. . . if they are struck by their power and activity, let them think how much more powerful is he who formed them. . .; if, amazed by their beauty. . . let them think how superior their Lord is, because the same author of beauty created them" ( Wis 13, 5.4.3).

We proclaimed these words from the book of Wisdom, dear brothers and sisters, during this celebration in honor of Saint John of the Cross, next to his tomb. The book of Wisdom tells us about the knowledge of God through creatures; of the knowledge of visible goods that reveal their Creator; of the news that it brings to the Creator starting from his works.

We could very well put these words on the lips of John of the Cross and understand the profound meaning that the sacred author wanted to give them. They are words of a sage and a poet who knew, loved and sang the beauty of God's works; but above all, words of a theologian and a mystic who knew his Author; and who draws with incredible radicality from the source of goodness and beauty, saddened by the spectacle of sin which breaks the original balance, clouds reason, paralyzes the will, prevents contemplation and love towards the Author of creation.

2. I give thanks to Providence which allowed me to come to venerate the relics and to evoke the figure and doctrine of Saint John of the Cross, to whom I owe so much in my spiritual formation. I have learned to know him since my youth and entered into an intimate dialogue with this master of faith, with his language and his thoughts, culminating in the elaboration of my doctoral thesis on "Faith in Saint John of the Cross". Since then I have found in him a friend and teacher, who showed me the light that shines in the darkness, to always walk towards God, "with no other light or guide / than the one that burned in my heart / This guided me / more certainly the light of midday" (St. John of the Cross, Notte Oscura , 3-4).

On this occasion I cordially greet the members of the province and diocese of Segovia, their Pastor, the priests and men and women religious, the authorities and all the people of God who live here, under the clear skies of Castilla, as well as those who have come from the surrounding areas and other parts of Spain.

3. The saint of Fontiveros is the great "master of the paths that lead to union with God". His writings continue to be current and in a certain way explain and complement the books of Saint Teresa of Jesus. He indicates the ways of knowledge through faith, because only such knowledge in faith disposes the intellect "to union with God living".

How many times, with a conviction that springs from experience, does he tell us that faith is the proper and suitable means for union with God!

It is sufficient to quote a famous text from the second book of the Ascent of Mount Carmel: “Faith alone is the closest and most proportionate means for the soul to unite with God. . . because just as God is infinite, it proposes him to us as infinite; and just as He is Triune and One, He proposes to us that He is Triune and One. . . and thus by this means alone, God manifests himself to the soul in divine light, which surpasses all understanding. And therefore the more faith the soul has in God, the more united it is to Him" ​​(St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel , II, 9, 1)

With this insistence on the purity of faith, John of the Cross does not want to deny that the knowledge of God can be achieved gradually starting from creatures, as the book of Wisdom teaches and Saint Paul repeats in the Letter to the Romans (cf. Rm 1, 18-21 ; cf. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle , 4, 1). The mystical doctor teaches that in faith it is also necessary to deprive oneself of creatures, both those that are perceived through the senses and those that are reached with the intellect, in order to unite in a cognitive way with the same God. This path that leads to union, passes through the "dark night" of faith.

4. The act of faith is concentrated, according to the saint, in Jesus Christ, who, as Vatican II stated, “is simultaneously the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” ( Dei Verbum , 2). Everyone knows the wonderful page of the mystical doctor on Christ as the definitive Word of the Father and totality of revelation, in that dialogue between God and men: "He is all my speaking and my answer, He is all my vision and my revelation. In Him I have already spoken to you, responded, manifested and revealed, giving Him to you as brother, companion and teacher, price and reward” (St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel , II, 22, 5).

And so, collecting well-known biblical texts (cf. Mt 17, 5; Heb 1, 1), he summarizes: “Because in giving us, as he has given us, his Son, who is one of his Words and has no other, he has said everything at once in this one Word, and has nothing more to say” (St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel , II, 22, 3). For this reason, faith is the loving search for the "hidden God" who reveals himself in Jesus Christ, the Beloved (cf. St. John of the Cross, Cantico spiritual e, I, 1-3.11).

Furthermore, the doctor of faith does not fail to point out that "We find Christ in the Church", Bride and Mother; and that in his magisterium we find the sure rule of faith, the medicine for our wounds, the source of grace: "And so", writes the saint, "in everything we must let ourselves be guided by the law of Christ the man and of the Church and its ministers , humanly and visibly, and through this way remedy our ignorance and spiritual laziness; since in this way we will find abundant medicine for everything" (St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel , II, 22, 7).

5. In these words of the mystical doctor we find a doctrine of absolute coherence and modernity.

John of the Cross invites the man of today, anguished by the meaning of existence, often indifferent to the preaching of the Church, perhaps skeptical regarding the mediations of God's revelation, to an honest search, which leads him to the very source of the revelation which is the Christ, the Word and the Gift of the Father. He persuades him regardless of anything that might be an obstacle to faith and places him before Christ. Before Him who reveals and offers the truth and divine life in the Church, which in its visibility and humanity is always the Bride of Christ, his Mystical Body, absolute guarantee of the truth of faith (cf. St. John of the Cross , Living flame of love , Prol., 1).

For this reason he urges us to undertake a search for God in prayer, so that man "realizes" his temporal limitations and his vocation to eternity (cf. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle , 1, 1). In the silence of prayer the encounter with God takes place and we listen to that Word that God tells us in eternal silence and which must be listened to in silence (cf. St. John of the Cross, Words of light and love, 104). Great concentration and interior abandonment, combined with the fervor of prayer, open the depths of the soul "to the purifying power of divine love".

6. John of the Cross followed in the footsteps of the Master, who retired to pray in solitary places (cf. St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel , III, 44, 4). He loved the sonic solitude where you listen to silent music, the noise of the source that flows and gushes even if it is night. He did it during the long prayer vigils at the foot of the Eucharist, that living bread that gives life and leads to the source of Trinitarian love.

We cannot forget the immense solitudes of Duruelo, the darkness and nakedness of the Toledo prison, the Andalusian landscapes of Peñuela, Calvario, de los Mártires, in Granada. The beautiful and sonorous Segovian solitude of the hermitage, in the rocks of this convent founded by the saint. Here dialogues of love and faith took place; up to that last, moving one, which the Saint confided with these words spoken to the Lord who offered him the reward for his works: "Lord, what I want is that you grant me to suffer for you, and that I be despised and taken into little account."

Thus until the consummation of his identification with the Crucified Christ and his glorious Easter in Ubeda, when he announced that he was going to sing matins in heaven.

7. One of the things that most attract attention in the writings of Saint John of the Cross is the clarity with which he described human suffering, when the soul is struck by the luminous and purifying darkness of faith.

His observations surprise the philosopher, the theologian and even the psychologist. The mystical doctor teaches us the need for a passive purification, of a dark night that God causes in the believer, so that his adherence to faith, hope and love is purer. In fact it's so. The purifying force of the human soul comes from God himself. And John of the Cross was aware, like few others, of this purifying force. God himself purifies the soul to the deepest abysses of his being, lighting in man the living flame of love: his Spirit.

He contemplated with an admirable depth of faith, and starting from his own experience of the purification of faith, the mystery of Christ Crucified; until the culmination of his abandonment on the cross, where he is offered to us, as an example and light of the spiritual man. There, the beloved Son of the Father “needed to exclaim: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? ( Mt 27, 46)
That was the greatest abandonment he had ever felt in his life. And in it Jesus worked the greatest miracle that he could ever have worked in his life, neither on earth nor in heaven, and which consisted in reconciling and uniting the human race with God" (cf. St. John of the Cross, Ascent of the Mount Carmel , II, 7, 11).

8. Even modern man, despite his achievements, in his personal and collective experience comes close to the abyss of abandonment, the temptation of nihilism, the absurdity of so much physical, moral and spiritual suffering. The dark night, the test that brings to light the mystery of evil and requires the openness of faith, sometimes acquires dimensions of an era and collective proportions.

Even the Christian and the Church itself can feel identified with the Christ of Saint John of the Cross, at the height of his pain and abandonment. All these sufferings were assumed by Christ in his cry of pain and in his confident surrender to the Father. In faith, hope and love, night turns into day, suffering into joy, death into life.

John of the Cross, with his experience, invites us to trust, to let ourselves be purified by God; in faith interwoven with hope and love, the night begins to know "the lights of dawn"; becomes luminous like an Easter night - “O nere beata nox”, “Oh night more lovable than the dawn” - and announces the resurrection and the victory, the coming of the Spouse who unites the Christian to himself and transforms: “Beloved in 'Beloved transformed'.

If only the dark nights that are gathering on the individual consciences and communities of our time were lived in pure faith; in the hope “that obtains as much as it hopes for”; in the ardent love of the strength of the Spirit, so that they may become bright days for our grieving humanity, in the victory of the Risen One who liberates with the power of his cross!

9. In the reading of the Gospel we recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah, which Christ made his own: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for this reason he anointed me, and he sent me to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberation to prisoners and sight to the blind; to set free the oppressed, and preach a year of favor from the Lord" ( Lk 4, 18-19).

Even the "holy Brother John" - as Mother Teresa called him - was, like Christ, a poor man who evangelized the poor with immense joy and love; and his doctrine is like an explanation of that gospel of liberation from the slavery and oppression of sin, of the brightness of faith that heals all blindness. If the Church has venerated him as a mystical doctor since the year 1926, it is because it recognizes him as the great master of the living truth regarding God and man.

The “Climb of the Mountain” and the “Dark Night” culminate in the joyful freedom of the children of God in participation in the life of God and in communion with the Trinitarian life (cf. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle , 39, 3-6 ). Only God can free man; the latter totally acquires dignity and freedom only when he experiences in depth, as Saint John of the Cross indicates, the redeeming and transforming grace of Christ. The true freedom of man is communion with God.

10. The text of the book of Wisdom warned us "If they were able to know enough to scrutinize the universe, why didn't they find its master sooner?" ( Wis 13, 19). Here is a noble challenge for contemporary man who has explored the ways of the universe. And here is the response of the mystic who from the heights of God discovers the footprint of the Creator in his creatures and contemplates in advance the liberation of creation (cf. Rm 8, 19-21).

All creation, says St. John of the Cross, is bathed in the light of the Incarnation and the Resurrection: "In this raising of the Incarnation of his Son and the glory of his Resurrection according to the flesh not only has the Father partially embellished the creatures , but we can say that he completely clothed them with beauty and dignity” (St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle , 39, 5.4). The God who is "Beauty" is reflected in his creatures.

In a cosmic embrace that unites heaven and earth in Christ, John of the Cross was able to express the fullness of Christian life: "You will not take away from me, my God, what you once gave me in your only son Jesus Christ in whom you gave me given everything I want. . . The heavens are mine and the earth is mine; the people are mine; the righteous are mine, and the sinners mine; the angels are mine, and the Mother of God and all things are mine, and God himself is mine and is for me, because Christ is mine and everything for me” (St. John of the Cross, Words of light and love , 29-31).

11. Brothers and sisters: with these words of mine I wanted to pay a tribute of gratitude to Saint John of the Cross, theologian and mystic, poet and artist, "celestial and divine man" - as Saint Teresa of Jesus called him - friend of the poor and wise spiritual director of souls. He is the father and spiritual master of the entire Teresian Carmel, the shaper of that living faith that shines in the most illustrious children of Carmel: Teresa of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Raffaele Kalinowski, Edith Stein.

I ask the daughters of John of the Cross, the Discalced Carmelite nuns, to know how to live the contemplative essence of that pure love which is eminently fruitful for the Church (cf. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle , 29, 2-3). I recommend to his children, the Discalced Carmelites, faithful custodians of this convent and animators of the Spirituality Center dedicated to the Saint, fidelity to his doctrine and dedication to the spiritual direction of souls, as well as to the study and deepening of spiritual theology.

For all the children of Spain and of this noble Segovian land, as a guarantee of ecclesial regeneration, I leave these magnificent universally valid instructions from Saint John of the Cross: insightful intelligence for living the faith: "One thought of man is worth more than the whole world ; therefore only God is worthy of it” (St. John of the Cross, Words of light and love , 32).

Fearless will to exercise charity: “Where there is no love, put love and you will obtain love” (St. John of the Cross, Letter 25 , to Mary of the Incarnation). A solid and comforting faith, which constantly moves you to truly love God and man; because at the end of life, “when the evening comes you will be judged on love” (St. John of the Cross, Words of light and love, 64).

With my apostolic blessing for all.

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