There is a way of reading and presenting John of the Cross that, while incredibly popular, I hold deep suspicions of. The thing that doesn’t sit well with me is not easy to put into words, because it’s more of a mentality than a theory. But if I were to try to explain it, I’d say that I’m suspicious whenever John of the Cross lands with a thud.

It’s not clear? Probably not.

I have in mind all those times that somebody tells me they are a fan of the Doctor of Segovia—but their favourite prose work is the Ascent or maybe the Dark Night, rather than the Spiritual Canticle or the Living Flame. Then there are those instances where someone’s go-to image from the corpus is the little bird who is tied down by a single thread and so cannot fly (Ascent 1.11.4). Alongside these, there stand the purveyors of vast rules or negatives and nos drawn from the two partial commentaries on the Night. In short, John lands with a thud when he’s presented as someone who shows us all the obstacles and as someone whose main interest in the spiritual life is to stress the doing-nothing or self-annihilation that we have to accomplish.

The real sanjuanist road ends with complete transfiguration of every nook and cranny of the soul (and much of the body, too, though complete permeation of divine light into the body is presumably reserved for heaven). That’s the destination sung of in the Canticle and the Flame. And it is in view of the goal that everything else has any meaning. To separate out preliminary stages, especially piecemeal recipes and ad hoc solutions to specific problems which different human individuals may or may not have, is stifling. It’s definitely a deficit-based theology, rather than an asset-based one. The teaching becomes a maze rather than a vista. Spiritual doctrine petrifies into an ideology.

While John, as a spiritual director, makes a detailed inventory of difficulties that can present themselves along the way, his ultimate intent is to show, as the Canticle and the Flame—namely, the only completed commentaries on the entirety of a poem—show, that God will take everything. Nada, nada, nada y en el monte nada—but when that happens, it is not nothing that we know and experience; God is all and in all.

It’s as if there are two Johns. One is the John that people read when they’re lost in the thickets. The other is the John that people know when they’ve made their way enough out of the thickets—or rather, been pulled far enough out of the thickets by the divine hand—both to take stock of the entangled branches and to see the sun and the horizon.

That could sound all too harsh and judgmental. But it’s exactly what the Mystical Doctor himself tells us. His statements to this effect are multiple. Consider, though, just this one:

Readers of this commentary should be attentive for, if they have no experience, it will perhaps seem somewhat obscure and prolix; but if they do have experience, it will perhaps seem clear and pleasant to read. (Living Flame 3.1)[1]

In other words, if you know you know. There is a potential step change in our understanding. You will interpret things as dark and complicated, if you are on one side of the breakthrough. From the other side, however, all these seeming complexities will be illuminated with a simple light. The light is that love of the Beloved which takes all of us, the Living Flame which consumes the whole wood into itself.

And woe—for John gives plenty of woes to spiritual directors and teachers—woe to the one whose M.O. would throw us with a thud into the thicket.

John of the Cross, on this your feast day, pray for us.

[1] The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 3^rd ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2017), 673.