I was late to discover Arturo Paoli, and what I’ve read has made me wanting more to be available—both in general and in a language that I can read. But as I was reading the book of his that I both have enjoyed the most and been challenged the most by, I came to the following passage:

Saint John of the Cross has described his terrible climb up the icy wall to reach the pinnacle inaccessible to human beings—to reach “pure act,” that burning solitude where one must simply remove one’s shoes and adore. But when he reaches the top, he finds fields of flowers, deer, and brooks, making his sojourn delightful. Then he rediscovers painful solidarity with the men and women of his time and history. He returns to his “brothers,” who let him languish in prison in Toledo, and there in his cell he rediscovers what an exhilarating yet painful, miserable yet sublime, adventure it is to build communion where none exists.[1]

This I found neither enjoyable nor challenging. The reading experience was the exact opposite of both.

Up until the final sentence quoted, this passage reads, I think, as a legitimate description of the spiritual trajectory of John of the Cross, at least as far as he narrates it to us in surviving documents. The sanjuanist path does seem largely individual—but never individualistic, always in concert with the exercise of the virtues with and for others—until it explodes into the majestic proclamation:

Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth. Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. (Sayings 27)[2]

When God is possessed surely, and we are possessed by God surely, then even in the most contemplative vocation, it becomes apparent that all is for all, I am for all, and all are for me. Creaturely common origin becomes ever-present. Creaturely community becomes paramount. Contemplation cannot deny the action of all and for all. I understand this as an interpretation of the itinerary of John of the Cross.

But what I can’t fathom is writing this sentence: “He returns to his ‘brothers,’ who let him languish in prison in Toledo, and there in his cell he rediscovers what an exhilarating yet painful, miserable yet sublime, adventure it is to build communion where none exists.”

This sentence is messed up from front to back. Consider the phrases one by one.

People “let him languish”? In fact, his confreres abducted him and put him there in the first place. Then, they didn’t just not take action and thereby passively let him languish; they kept him in solitary confinement, which is to say actively psychologically tortured him, and in the brief periods he was let out of solitary, they beat him.

“He returns”? He tries to “build communion where none exists”? In reality, John escaped when the opportunity arose. He removed himself from the abusers’ power. The proper response to oppression is first of all to make clear, as John does in Toledo, that what is transpiring is below the dignity of everyone involved: victim, perpetrator, and indifferent personality. To say that John “returns” to these particular, specific people who were abusing him—and to only mention these people and no others—is so boneheaded as to be perverse. To suggest of our own initiative that he was “in his cell” sufficiently well detached from the ongoing abuse that he might be mentally absent and thus able to “return” to creaturely reality, as if he was not at any level and to any extent constantly immersed in it and experiencing it as a kind of hell on earth, is completely uncalled for. Even if it were true because of John’s extreme sanctity, framing it this way irreparably deforms the dimension of abuse in the story.

There are still more turns of phrase to notice.

We should remark “what an exhilarating yet painful, miserable yet sublime, adventure it is” when John is “in his cell”? I could understand the meaning well if we mentioned the escape, the community that welcomed John when he got free, and the dignity that he asserts. I could appreciate saying something like that. But to only mention that he “returns” to abusers while “in his cell” and “builds communion” with them, seemingly as one isolated atom in the face of an armada of violence, is absurd and invites all kinds of new waves of abuse. It also has nothing to do with the reality of John of the Cross himself.

Of course, I understand that these words were written decades ago. I understand that yes, the sanjuanist trajectory as a whole is sufficiently well described. I agree with the socio-political point about building communion. But for the love of God, could a priest not tell us how privileged one would be to “build communion” by oneself, alone, solo with priests when one is suffering actual, immediate abuse of power, physical abuse, and psychological torture at the hands of those priests themselves? And could we not completely block out from memory the fact that the first, necessary remedy that John himself had recourse to in the social world was, not to spiritually “return,” but to physically escape and join a community within whose ranks communion already existed? Toledo is arguably one of the most important moments in the history of humanity. Certainly it is one of the most important in the history of Christian spirituality. But it can also become a complete caricature of itself if we mangle the story.

Some days, I lose nearly all patience with the way the abuse crisis has been handled, particularly in the scholarship and more general writing that touches on the lives of saints and other holy people. If we actually identified—properly, clearly, and directly—cases of abuse for what they are, the way we talk about our common Christian history would quake.

On the one hand, there would be a great deal more trepidation in the hearts of those who pray to members of the Communion of Saints whose personal history of abuse they butcher with their words and actions.

On the other hand, we would find a lot more heavenly friends for survivors. Mine have always been John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and (especially) Marcel Văn. If anyone else is as convinced in their bones that the passage I’ve just quoted is an example of “how not to write about Toledo,” I invite you to pray to these three—and others besides—to lead us through this crisis along all the paths, big and small, muddy and well swept, active and contemplative, that fit the will of the Father, Son, and Spirit to whom we are all precious and beloved.

Image in header: El Greco’s Toledo including the priory in which John was held captive.

[1] Arturo Paoli, Gather Together in My Name: Reflections on Christianity and Community (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 190.

[2] The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 3^rd ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2017), 87–88.