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A Disciple of St John of the Cross
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2024
Extract
There can be few saints more unlike at first sight than St Teresa of the Child Jesus and St John of the Cross. Their personalities, their ‘ways’ of perfection, their appeal, are outwardly at the poles of recognised Christian spirituality. And this first impression seems confirmed by a glance at their respective cults, the extreme difference of their ‘clientèle'. How few, how very few, of the real devotees of either saint extend at all the same devotion to the other!
Yet both were contemplatives, both Carmelites and, more than that, the teaching of St John of the Cross was formative in a special degree, explicitly, in the spiritual life of the ‘little’ St Teresa.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1947 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The influence of St John in St Teresa is often obscured by the external dissimilarity, but Père Philipon, O.P. draws full attention to it: ‘On peut dire qu'après l'Evangile aucun maitre n'eut sur l'âme et la doctrine de St Thérèse une influence egal à St Jean de la Croix'. (St Thérèse de Lisieux, p. 31.)
2 This is the line taken by M. Baruzzi in his otherwise interesting study of La Mystère de St Jean de la Croir.