Letting John Speak Again

This year, the Carmelite family marks a rare convergence: three hundred years since the canonisation of St John of the Cross, and one hundred years since the Church named him Doctor. These are luminous milestones, but they touch us most deeply when we meet them not in grand celebrations, but in the quiet places where John himself met God — the ordinary, unadorned texture of life.

John carried a quiet desire to live hidden in God. He did not seek reputation or prominence. His life unfolded in small rooms, in service, in prayer, in hardship, in the slow work of grace. And yet, long after his death, his words and example continued to speak — quietly, steadily, with a kind of interior authority that could not be contained.

On 27 December 1726, Pope Benedict XIII canonised him. The bull of canonisation praised his ‘knowledge of divine things’ and recognised him as a trustworthy guide for a Church seeking depth, healing, and interior renewal. John was not canonised because he was extraordinary in the world’s eyes, but because he revealed God’s extraordinary work in us — in longing, in confusion, in silence, in hope.

Two hundred years later, on 24 August 1926, Pope Pius XI declared him Doctor of the Universal Church. At the time, the world was marked by rapid change, anxiety, and the beginnings of modern secularisation. In that moment, the Church pointed to John as a trustworthy teacher of the interior life — someone whose words could help believers navigate confusion without losing God. Today there are 38 Doctors of the Church, and John stands among them as one of only three Carmelites — alongside Teresa of Jesus and Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The decree described his writings as ‘the manual and school of the faithful soul,’ recognising that his words had become a language for people searching for God in a rapidly changing world.

The Jubilee Year has tried to honour both his hiddenness and his significance. Among several things that have marked this commemorative year, four highlights seem especially worthy of note.

Two moments shaped its beginning. Last December, the Apostolic Penitentiary declared the Jubilee Year of St John of the Cross open for the Carmelite family and designated Segovia, Fontiveros, Ávila, and Úbeda as places where the faithful could obtain a plenary indulgence. The invitation was extended widely: to pilgrims who travel, to those who participate with devotion, and to the elderly, sick, and housebound who join spiritually from their homes. It was a gesture of grace offered without distance — a widening of the Church’s welcome to anyone who turns toward God with longing.

From this designation, the opening of Holy Doors in those same places followed naturally. Their opening gave the year a visible beginning: thresholds of light set into ancient walls, inviting pilgrims to step through the geography of John’s life and into the interior path he traced.

A third highlight unfolded more quietly: the Order’s guided reading texts shared over the first eight months of the year, leading towards the centenary of John’s doctorate. These reflections offered a slow, steady way of entering his teaching — not as theory, but as lived wisdom for the present moment.

A fourth highlight, tender in its simplicity, has been the sculptural reconstruction of John’s original likeness, shown below. Using his preserved skull, anatomical study, and historical descriptions, researchers and artists have given us a face: light brown, somewhat thin and rounded; a broad forehead; black eyes with a serene gaze. It is a small detail of the year, but a fitting one. For a man whose name has travelled far, it matters to remember that he had a human face — a face shaped by hardship, prayer, and grace. It helps us place a face with the name, and a life with the doctrine.

But these occurrences, beautiful as they are, are not the heart of the year. The heart is this: John still speaks.

He speaks to a world that knows its own nights — nights of conflict, loneliness, exhaustion, and uncertainty. He speaks to people who pray without feeling, who hope without seeing, who walk without clarity. He does not promise ease. He promises God. He teaches us that the night is not an erasure but a passage; that when every other light falls away, the flame of divine love can finally be seen for what it is; that God wastes nothing in us — not our wounds, not our longing, not even our confusion.

This issue of Mount Carmel tries, in varied and still limited ways, to let John speak again — not as a figure of the past, but as a companion for the present. Each article approaches him from a different angle, but all share the same hope: that his wisdom might touch the grain of our own lives and interests, where faith feels thin and prayer feels quiet.

The commemorative year will formally conclude on 27 December 2026, the anniversary of his canonisation. But the closing of a door is never the end of a journey. In the Carmelite tradition, a door closing often means another door opening — inward, deeper, towards God.

And so we pray:

May this year with St John of the Cross help you discover that the night can become light; that love, refined, becomes freedom; and that the God who shaped this friar into a teacher of the Church may continue to shape us through his wisdom.

With gratitude, and wishing each of you every blessing,

Fr Yamai Bature, OCD

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