Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 in the village of Fontiveros in Castile about 30 miles from Avila. His father, Gonzalo de Yepes, was disowned by his family when he married a humble weaver, Catalina Alvarez, they considered beneath their class. But it was a marriage of true love which had a deep influence on the first and most formative years of Juan’s life, although his father became seriously ill and died when Juan was only seven years old. Soon afterwards his mother with her two sons moved to Arevalo and then to Medina del Campo. John’s family meant so much to him. He always introduced his brother Francisco as "my brother, who is the treasure I value most in the world." At Medina, showing no aptitude for any practical trade Juan was put to study instead. Quick to learn he soon found a patron who adopted him at fourteen, sending him to a new Jesuit school where he flourished under the influence of one of the masters. When he was seventeen he began to work also in the hospital where his adopted father was warden. This close contact with suffering brought out his innate sensitivity and compassion as he nursed the patients and collected alms for those of them who were poor, while struggling to find enough time for his studies. His family ‘once went to look for him at midnight and found him studying among the faggots.’ By the age of nineteen he had also discovered his vocation to the contemplative Carmelite Order, which he entered in 1563 at their house in Medina. Professed the following year he was sent to the University of Salamanca, one of the four leading universities of Europe at that time. There he read Arts as well as studying theology and after three years was ordained priest.

That same year at twenty five he met Teresa of Avila, herself fifty two, who had been licensed by the General to found two houses for men as well as those she was founding for women to follow the radical way of life of her Reform. She accepted Fr John and the older Fr Antonio as her first friars, finding a house for them at Duruelo, regretting it was so inadequate. She took John with her to her new foundation in Valladolid so that he could see for himself the spirit in which the nuns lived under the new Rule. When he left to go to Duruelo she gave him a letter of introduction which could not have praised him more highly – ‘…though small in stature, I know he is great in God’s eyes... he is prudent and well-fitted for our way of life, to which I believe our Lord has called him…his life in the Order has been one of great penitence. The Lord seems to be leading him by the hand.’

In the extreme poverty and solitude of this first friary of the Reform, John and Antonio together with a younger recruit were supremely happy and content, completely detached from everything as they lived their contemplative life and practised their apostolic ministry, journeying into the surrounding countryside for most of each day to preach and hear confessions. Welcomed by everyone, they were soon offered a new house at Mancera where they established the first community with others who had joined them and then founded another friary at Pastrana. Appointed confessor at the Incarnation John worked with St Teresa who had herself been sent back there and the community improved greatly under their influence while at the same time Teresa’s ‘little Seneca’, as she called him, became ‘the father of my soul’.

Meanwhile dissensions had been growing between the friars of the Observance and the Reform, with the General supporting the Observance. However the Nuncio as well as King Philip II supported the Reform. When the disagreements became outright war John was arrested by the Mitigation and imprisoned in a tiny cell at Toledo under brutal conditions for several months, with mental harassments that could have broken him down. Astonishingly in this terrible situation he composed the most sublime mystical poetry including 31 stanzas of the ‘Spiritual Canticle’; and after he escaped he began writing a commentary and further stanzas at the request of the nuns at Beas. Later he wrote his poem, ‘One Dark Night’ and then the long prose works ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’ and ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ and finally ‘The Living Flame of Love’. These had a pastoral purpose for he wanted to show the people to whom he ministered ‘the pure and reliable road leading to union.’ He has been described as ‘one who had an experience of the cross in the transforming power of divine love.’

Asked by his beloved Master what reward he would like for his services John replied ‘Lord, what I wish you to give me are sufferings to be borne for your sake, and that I may be despised and counted as nothing.’ His prayer was answered, as he himself had foretold to one of the nuns in Segovia, when at the General Chapter at Madrid in 1591 he was ‘thrown into a corner like an old rag.’ But ‘as to my affairs daughter’ he wrote to her, ‘let them not trouble you… Think only that God ordains all. And where there is no love, put love and you will find love.’ Enduring further and scandalous defamation he also fell seriously ill with a fever and travelled in great pain the long road to Ubeda to find a cure. The prior there treated him with hostility, even during the agonising surgery he had to undergo. Preparing calmly for death in the afternoon of 14 December 1591, he said ‘I shall sing Matins in heaven.’ As he waited for midnight he asked them to read him some verses from the Song of Songs and at the first stroke of the bell he died. In Teresa’s words, ‘he was so good a man, a real saint.’

‘It always seemed that his soul was at prayer’ wrote another of the nuns. ‘His words had great efficacy and he spoke in a most lofty manner of the love of God and of prayer and of contemplation.’ Invariably most gentle and kind, he was always serene and joyful, for ‘my only occupation is love.’

Canonised in 1726 he was later declared a Doctor of the Church. Pope Paul VI in 1967 called St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Jesus ‘the two great masters of Catholic mysticism.’

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