“We need a great devotion to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Everything is in the Passion. It is there where one learns the knowledge of the saints’[1]”[2], our proper law indicates this. It also gives us the noble note: “We should not want to know anything except Jesus Christ and him crucified[3]”[4], since it is precisely the mystery of Christ’s self-emptying in His Passion –a supremely priestly act–[5] where one learns the sublime knowledge of dying in order to live, of being buried in order to rise, of suffering in order to rejoice, of losing one’s life in order to find it, of humbling oneself in order to be exalted, of sacrificing oneself in order to attain oneself, of subjecting oneself in order to be free. It is such that we can say “the language of the Cross teaches us that, in the rigor of truth, the reality is different than what it appears to be, because the Cross changes the meaning of things. It authentically teaches us to surpass the meaning of things, because, in reality, the Cross gives things another end, the Cross surpasses the end of reality”[6].
However, that this devotion would not remain idyllic or as an abstract consideration, our proper law compels us also toward this practice: “This devotion is realized: with the knowledge and love of the gospel stories of the Passion[7]; in the theology of the Passion and Redemption; in the contemplation of the Holy Places of Jerusalem, the crucifixes, the Way of the Cross, the beautiful texts of the “Imitation of Christ” which speak about it; in the Eucharistic perpetuation of the Passion and Cross; in the second act of the one drama of the Redemption; in the cross in our life that is so well explained in the “Letter to the Friends of the Cross” by Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort; in the fervor to bring the grace of Redemption to all reality”[8].
For the Christian, and in a very special way for the religious, the Passion is an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom; it is a guide and model for our entire life. This is why St. Peter Claver said: “The only book which must be read is the Passion”[9]; and the great St. Thomas wrote: “Whoever wishes to lead a perfect life needs only to despise what Christ despised on the Cross and to desire what He desired”[10].
St. John of the Cross, who “habitually contemplated the mystery of the Cross of Christ, [also] invites us to do so too in the poem of El Pastorcito (The Shepherd Boy)” [11]. This poem describes “Christ who suffered for the soul”[12]. It is a unique and precious text, which, with singular beauty and depth, poetically and mystically describes the centrality of Christ’s heart and His incomprehensible love for souls.
In the midst of the Lenten season and in light of the forthcoming celebration of the Greatest Week of Christianity, we esteem that a balanced and reflexive consideration of the deep and regal doctrine of the Crucified succinctly contained in these 20 verses, shall profit our souls, “in order to nail in our heart the One who was nailed to the cross for us”[13], as the great St. Augustine beautifully said.
1. The Crucified in the spiritual tension of the poet
Before we dedicate ourselves to the poem, we would like to note that Christ Crucified was the model that the poet[14], St. John of the Cross, sought to conform his entire life to. From his childhood, he learned to know himself and to read the events of his life in the light of the Cross.
Fray Diego de la Concepción was prior at La Peñuela when fray John of the Cross, on his way to Mexico, was there and became sick from the erysipelas which eventually caused his death. He went to visit him at Ubeda as the saint was gravely ill. In a letter he says that when the saint had five open sores on his foot, he and those who accompanied him heard him comment: “I give you thanks, my Lord Jesus Christ, for the five sores that Your Majesty had on his feet, hands and side, you have wanted to give to me in this single foot. Where did I deserve such great mercy?” And Fray Diego commented in reply: “Despite such great pain, he did not complain, but he carried everything with great patience”[15].
We likewise see in his daily life, and in the life of faith, the mystery of the Cross of Christ was habitually his point of reference and norm of living[16]. This is exactly what the Mystical Doctor recommended to all souls, as many witnesses testify. Among these was M. Francisca de la Madre de Dios, who always carried with her some little papers with some phrase which the Saint had given to her:
“Crucified inwardly and outwardly with Christ, you will live in this life with fullness and satisfaction of soul, and possess your soul in patience[17]”[18]. “Let Christ Crucified be enough for you and with him suffer and take your rest, and hence annihilate yourself in all inward and outward things”[19]. “Have great love for trials and think of them as but a small way of pleasing your Bridegroom, whom did not hesitate to die for you”[20]. “Bear fortitude in your heart against all things that move you to that which is not God, and be a friend of the Passion of Christ. He who seeks not the cross of Christ seeks not the glory of Christ”[21].
On their part, all the friars who went to and lived with Fray John of the Cross, knew his conduct and consequently proclaimed in their Declarations: “He said that two things served as wings for the soul to ascend to union with God, these are: affective compassion for the death of Crist, and for one’s neighbors; and if the soul is detained in compassion for the Lord’s Passion and Cross, it will remember that He was alone in this, working our redemption, as it is written: Torcular calcavi solus[22] (Is 63: 3). From here he would draw out and offer to others most profitable reflections and considerations”[23].
The letters which he wrote while suffering the harshest persecution, a period which corresponds according to some [24]–, to the same “moment” when he wrote the Pastorcico, speak further of this. He wrote to the Carmelites of Beas: “Serve God, my beloved daughters in Christ, following in his footsteps of mortification, in utter patience, in total silence, and with every desire to suffer, becoming executioners of your own satisfactions, mortifying yourselves, if perhaps something remains that must die and something still impedes the inner resurrection of the Spirit who dwells within your souls”[25]. The chapter in Madrid in 1591 subjected the Saint to the Cross in such a way that he wrote to M. Ana de Jesús: “…pass the time in the virtues of mortification and patience, desiring to resemble somewhat in suffering this great God of ours, humbled and crucified. This life is not good if it is not an imitation of his life”[26].
As St. John of the Cross was “master and model through his life and writings” [27], we hope that the assiduous reading of his works and the attentive consideration of the example of his life may not only be a great profit for the assimilation of the doctrine of the Cross, the foundational stone of our spirituality[28], but furthermore, that it may show us the “necessity of the Cross in our lives”[29]. As our proper law says: “Jesus is loved and served on the Cross and crucified with Him, not by any other way”[30].
2. The poem[31]
A Shepherd Boy[32]
Stanzas applied spiritually (by the same author) to Christ and the soul.
A lone young shepherd lived in pain
withdrawn from pleasure and contentment
his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl
his heart an open wound with love.
He weeps, but not from the wound of love,
there is no pain in such affliction,
even though the heart is pierced;
he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.
That one thought: his shining one
has forgotten him, is such great pain
that he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land,
his heart an open wound with love.
The shepherd says: I pity the one
who draws herself back from my love,
and does not seek the joy of my presence,
though my heart is an open wound with love for her.
After a long time he climbed a tree,
and spread his shining arms,
and hung by them, and died,
his heart an open wound with love.
The Shepherd Boy says in few and shocking verses what is Christ’s Night. In this poem, St. John of the Cross speaks of a profound aspect of the kenosis mystery, the same which St. Paul describes and which our proper law makes copious reference to: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name”[33].
“The three allegoric elements of this song, the shepherd, the shepherd-girl, and the tree, represent Christ, the soul, and the tree of the Cross”[34]. According to studies, the theme of “the imitation and following of Christ, which [St. John of the Cross] indicates at the beginning of the Ascent of Mount Carmel, are simplified in this poem. It is the emblem and permanent claim of the supreme Humility of God, inviting the soul to meet Him, there on the Cross”[35].
St. Edith Stein comments in the Science of the Cross that “in the Song of the shepherd the movement of the soul is not expressed immediately. The poet has seen a picture and has given it artistic form. He sees Christ the Crucified, he hears his lament about the souls, ‘who have arrogantly spurned his love’. He forms it into a shepherd’s Song, as was beloved in his time and as he did in grand style in the Canticle. If there, the Song of Songs gave the impetus- is there not here the remembrance of the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep? (Jn. 10) And is the lament of the shepherd about the disdainful shepherdess not an echo of that sorrowful call, as the Savior wept over Jerusalem? (Mt. 23:37) The ever recurring words El pecho del amor muy lastimado (his heart an open wound with love) give the basic feeling”[36].
1.A lone young shepherd lived in pain
withdrawn from pleasure and contentment
his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl
his heart an open wound with love.
The first stanza sets the scene and places us in it. The poem is, from the very beginning, an invitation to tenderness and gratitude: the shepherd boy is alone. In his solitude, as God and as Patient [one who suffers]. God is by his nature the Holy One, without match, unsearchable in His judgments. For this reason He is ‘foreign’ and must, upon becoming incarnate, feel as if ‘in a foreign land’ (v. 11)
It is interesting to note St. John of the Cross’s detail in personifying Christ as a shepherd boy. Fray Luis de León, in his book The Names of Christ, indicates that “the life of the shepherd is innocent, peaceful, and pleasant; the nature of his condition inclines him to love; and his activity consists in governing by nourishing, by adapting his government to the particular reality of each person. For those whom he governs, he is the only one who is necessary, and his actions never had any other purpose that to keep his one flock.
[…] But if Christ is shepherd by the circumstances of His life, how much more would He be by the nature of His character and by His loving tenderness about which no language and no praise could express the intensity not even remotely? […] Beyond all his actions there is the love, affection and tenderness of his heart, the disquiet solicitude of His love, the ardor and force of His will which inspires the same acts of love which He accomplishes for us, exceeding everything that we can imagine and say. There is no mother so attentive, no wife so affectionate, there is no amorous heart so tender and so submissive, no friendship more proven and carried to such a point of refinement”[37].
Christ, though he was in the form of God[38], allows himself to be seen and treated in history as a penitent (penado). This word has a double meaning, which better explains the divine Patient. One meaning is the one who is located in a penitentiary, a maximum-security prison for the punishment of those sent there. The other meaning is the one that expresses the sentence, with its consequences, the reason for which he is there, penitent and awaiting a resolute judgment. He feels culpable and condemned to pay, out of obedience to the Father, the debt of all mankind.
The pleasure and contentment of his divine nature appear withdrawn here, and being himself withdrawn (estranged) from men, he nonetheless thinks of them, moved by his love: his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl. How much beauty is contained in this verse! What exacerbates his situation the most is his love and search for his shepherdess (the soul), seeking her where she should be but is not; it is the cruelest saga for one in love, because he is not willing to see himself downtrodden by heartbreak. This is why St. John of the Cross teaches that “if anyone is seeking God, the Beloved is seeking that person much more”[39]. It is the absence of the shepherdess which makes his heart an open wound with love.
In this verse, his heart an open wound with love, which is repeated with slight variations at the end of each stanza, excluding the second, he would like us to note the wounded and sorrowful condition of the heart of the Shepherd boy, dwelling upon his heart, the Tabernacle of merciful love, which directs itself toward Calvary. All of the stanzas allude to the same point, that of observation and of hope.
2.He weeps, but not from the wound of love,
there is no pain in such affliction,
even though the heart is pierced;
he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.
We could say that this second stanza solemnly proclaims the profound drama. Here the Shepherd boy lets us hear that his wounded heart, that he weeps, he is wounded, afflicted, pierced, and forgotten. In a sketch, the Mystic author has encapsulated all the dimensions of the redemptive suffering of Christ. The most apparent, which tends to impress us greatly and symbolically contains all the others, is his weeping. He tells us the reason for his crying: knowing he’s been forgotten by his shepherd-girl. His physical sufferings do not seem to be the principal cause of his pain, but the forgetfulness of his shepherd-girl is what really makes him grieve deeply.
To see that, in his human nature, God cries for us is impressively moving and compelling. This is how St. John of the Cross unveils the Divine and wounded Heart of Our Lord so that so that we may experience that, in its pain, this Heart is tenderly caressing; and it is maternal in its way of loving, of enduring, of waiting, nourishing, and forgiving its forgetful and rebellious children.
This Heart, so wounded, dwelling in the bosom of love, tells us clearly that only a paternal-maternal heart is able to conceive of, to measure the distance and absence, to feel and cry for the immense pain it causes God to feel forgotten by mankind.
But, instead of expanding upon the reason of his pain, he encapsulates the reservoir of his tears into a maximum expression of pain, saying: He weeps, but not from the wound of love…he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.
3.That one thought: his shining one
has forgotten him, is such great pain
that he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land,
his heart an open wound with love.
His “great pain” is exactly this: That one thought: [he has been forgotten], and this is the reason why he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land. This great pain provokes the sorrowful weeping which Christ could not stifle in the Garden of Olives nor while expiring upon the Cross. Thinking only that his [beautiful shepherdess] has forgotten him He takes upon himself all the sufferings, slavery, poverty, humiliations, outrages, pains and injustices, calumnies, deaths… of all men and women, children, religious, priests, missionaries, monks, brothers, novices…slaves in the prisons of their egoism, together with all that it means to be abused, in order to recover such a lamentable loss and walk with his heart an open wound with love.
How can we contemplate His Heart, an open wound with love, and not be moved to weep and have compassion for Christ in His Passion!
We cited in the beginning the thoughts of St. Peter Claver, that great devotee of the Passion of Our Lord. It is said of him that, “at night, before lying down, he would sit up in bed with a chair at his side and the book of the Passion open thereupon. At times he would kneel in order to read it and reading a verse he would begin to cry. Other times he would rise at night, and carrying a Cross on his back he would go to the chapel, where he would remain before the tabernacle, praying and crying. The Passion really was for him not a distant, remote event, but something present, living, vital, real, now, in this moment; just as it is mysteriously and sacramentally in the Mass.
Today, if something may befall religious life, or if something may befall priestly life, it is because consecrated souls have ceased to consider what Our Lord has suffered in the Passion. The Via Crucis is hung upon the walls, but, what consecrated soul is in harmony with what is represented on those walls?”[40].
4.The shepherd says: I pity the one
who draws herself back from my love,
and does not seek the joy of my presence,
though my heart is an open wound with love for her!
These four lines are like an abridgement of the Gospel.
The shepherd says… He is the Word. His office is to speak, to repeat, to advise, to alert, to watch over, to clear all the paths and directions, to become a crossroad of all crossroads, to prevent the risk and danger of deviation. The soul’s absence on account of sin exponentially multiplies the possibilities of evil. That’s why he says: I pity the one who draws herself back from my love, and does not seek the joy of my presence. The Shepherd laments that the lost soul cannot enjoy the happiness that Divine Love has destined for her, and for this reason his heart is an open wound with love for her.
5.After a long time he climbed a tree,
and spread his shining arms,
and hung by them, and died,
his heart an open wound with love.
After a long time…how long must this adorable Shepherd wait for the return of his beloved shepherd-girl? The expression after a long time denotes infinite patience, waiting without anxiety, a constant and uninterrupted of love, persevering without reproach. It also shows that it is God who decides His hour and ours, that of Calvary and of our encounter. As our proper law says: “He alone knows everything, even our soul, our feelings, our character, the secret impulses that are necessary to be moved in order to bring us to heaven, and He knows the effects that such and such a thing will cause in us, and He has all the means at his disposal”[41].
For this reason, it seems to us that this long time, rather long indeed, is the length of forgetfulness, the absence and waiting which we men interpose to the offer which the Shepherd makes us from the Cross.
The tree, [where he] spread his shining arms, is none other than the Cross where the Divine Lover continues to await his beautiful shepherdess with open arms, hanging on the tree in order to, one day, ‘absorb’ her “powerfully and mightily in the unfathomed[42] embrace of the Father’s sweetness”[43].
From beginning to end, the Shepherd boy invites the soul to rest in its center: the bosom of the Beloved where the Good of all goods dwells; until the day when the shepherdess recognizes “that infinite knowledge and that hidden secret. What peace, what love, what silence is in that divine bosom… !”[44] and, falling in acquiescence upon her knees, could say: “Who can free themselves from lowly manners and limitations if you do not lift them to yourself, my God, in purity of love? How will human beings begotten and nurtured in lowliness rise up to you, Lord, if you do not raise them with your hand that made them?”[45].
In his infinite Mercy and ineffable love, the Shepherd boy seeks, invites, awaits the soul, his beautiful shepherdess, without throwing in her face her errors, her ingratitude, her rudeness and forgetfulness, without appealing that the soul contemplate the heart so wounded with love, as if telling the soul to have compassion on Him, that consoling Him she would be infinitely happy, and would see “how lofty the science God teaches there [in the divine bosom]”[46]. Our Constitutions speak clearly in this regard, saying that it is our duty to cry for Jesus Christ[47] and so as not to cause our God any sorrow, it exhorts us that “the memory and recollection of Him must never be separated from our hearts. It must come when we sleep and when we dream. Our heart is always falling in love, and our memory never occupied on anything else but Him”[48].
The Shepherd boy in the solitude of his love and sorrow, attempts to provoke the encounter with his shepherdess. This is why St. John of the Cross makes solitude the condition, circumstance and specific trait of one’s love. This solitude from all creatures (in the sense of detachment) is the master key to intimacy. It is the inexcusable invitation to enter into the mystery. Hence, he writes: “Love alone, which at this period burns…, is what guides and moves her, and makes her soar to God along the road of solitude”[49]. God communicates and unites himself to the soul is in “resounding solitude” and “divine rest”[50]. The reason for this is because love a union between two alone, they desire to commune with each other alone, “because the Beloved is not found except alone, in solitude”[51].
Only alone can the soul “be capable of attaining the delights of the embrace of union with God”[52], an embrace which has the characteristic of hiding the soul in itself, where the soul can see so secretly when it is raised above all temporal creatures[53]. Once this embrace is produced, St. John of the Cross says, the soul is placed in “the heart of the science of love”[54], this is the science of the Cross.
3. The school of the Cross
The Cross, in its silent eloquence, speaks with a special strength. St. Paul says that Jesus taught him this science of the Cross: … My power is made perfect in weakness. So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor 12: 9-10).
In the encounter with Christ Crucified, contemplating the figure of that Shepherd boy who climbed a tree and spread his shining arms, and whose heart was so afflicted, so wounded and embosomed with love, we can do no less than imitate him and desire effectively to make ourselves bear the image of Christ carrying the Cross and crucified. Conformed to his Cross, let us be modeled after Him. This is why the Saint of Fontiveros recommended: “If you desire to be perfect […] follow Christ to Calvary and the sepulcher”[55].
This demand becomes even more imperious if we consider that we have been called to be “other Christs”, according to this same standard we shall be judged one day. Fray Luis de León says: “If it is fitting for the shepherd to serve in humiliation, to live with a despised dress, and to be neither adored nor served, then Christ— similar in clothing to His sheep and dressed in their humble fleece—served to gain His flock. […] He descended from heaven and He became man-shepherd, as He Himself says, to seek out man. […] He died for the good of His flock, which no other shepherd did, and that He snatched us from the teeth of the wolf; He consented to offer Himself as victim to the wolf”[56].
This is why, in his Letter to the Friends of the Cross, which our own proper law recommends for us to read[57], St. Luis María Grignion de Montfort says to the “disciples of a crucified God” that the science of the Cross “is the great mystery which you must learn to practice at the school of Jesus Christ”[58], and he continues: “Become proficient, therefore, in this super-eminent branch of learning under such a skillful Master. Having this knowledge, you will be possessed of all other branches of learning, for it surpassingly comprises them all. The Cross is our natural as well as our supernatural philosophy. It is our divine and mysterious theology. It is our philosopher-stone which, by dint of patience, is able to transmute the grossest of metals into precious ones, the sharpest pain into delight, poverty into wealth and the deepest humiliation into glory. He amongst you who knows how to carry his cross, though he know not A from B, towers above all others in learning. […] You can rejoice, then, if you happen to be a poor man without any schooling…! for if you know how to suffer with joy, you are far more learned than a doctor of the Sorbonne who is unable to suffer as you do![59]”[60].
To become proficient in this science, beyond contemplation of the mystery of Christ in His Passion, the Eucharist is a concrete moment during the day in which we can learn a little more of the science of the cross. “There Christ makes himself the victim, under a foreign species, perpetuating the sacrifice of the Cross. There we offer him as Victim to the father, and we offer ourselves as victims together with Him. There, at communion, we participate intimately in his sacrifice, making ourselves victims, Eucharistically, with Him. There is nothing like daily Mass in order to know Jesus better and let his love enflame us”[61].
Finally, “we shall never know the Cross better than when we confront some sorrow, some suffering, some persecution. That is the moment to experiment, in some way, that which Jesus experimented in his Passion and His Cross”[62]. That is why, the very Cross which is suffered becomes a source of joy: I am overjoyed in all our afflictions[63].
*****
Man’s “return”, his search for Christ, presupposes numerous attempts, always beginning again, starting again. Being a question of love, is there something more fragile or fickle than the human heart? The Shepherd boy wanted to count on it. His shepherd-girl will continue being beautiful, even though she leaves him alone. The true return to Him shall begin when the soul recognizes its disordered appetites and affections and “resolutely submits to the carrying of the cross, if [she] decidedly wants to find and endure trial in all things for God”[64]. As the Saintly Doctor teaches -and we want to convince ourselves of this- “the road leading to God does not entail a multiplicity of consideration, methods, manners, and experiences- though in their own way these may be a requirement for beginners. but demands only the one thing necessary: true self-denial, exterior and interior, through surrender of self both to suffering for Christ and to annihilation in all things. In the exercise of this self-denial everything else, and even more, is discovered and accomplished. If one fails in this exercise, the root and sum total of all the virtues, the other methods would amount to no more than going around in circles without getting anywhere, even were one to enjoy considerations and communications as lofty as those of the angels. A person makes progress only by imitating Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one goes to the Father but through him”[65].
Christian mortification, to which the Church especially invites us in the time of Lent, is figuratively night, subjectively (united to Christ), it is death; but objectively and finally it is resurrection.
The entire process is oriented toward the ‘embracing of Easter’ –not in a sensible way- but a mystic embrace which forms part of God’s plan, and which is none other than the radiant goal of union with God. The Shepherd boy who remained with his arms spread open, clinging to the Cross, speaks to us of the illusion of this embrace. It is the image of divine waiting, of the hoped-for offer that God makes to man.
After having contemplated the Shepherd boy, who is there who would not turn to Him, who would not feel engaged? The Savior of the world hangs on the Cross! Christ hangs on the tree of the Cross with his heart so wounded!
Where ever we may go or wherever this writing may find us, let us embrace the Cross which God has been pleased to send us, and let us count on the fact that the definitive triumph is always of Jesus crucified and of those crucified with Him.
May the Most Holy Virgin, who experienced this reality at the foot of the Cross, obtain for us from her Only Son, today and always, the grace to desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified[66].
Wishing you a fruitful Lenten and a very Happy Easter!
[1] Cited by Carlos Almena, San Pablo de la Cruz, 282.
[2] Directory of Spirituality, 137.
[3] 1 Cor 2: 2.
[4] Directory of Spirituality, 140.
[5] Constitutions, 12.
[6] Servidoras II, Parte IV, 5.
[7] Mt 26:27; Mk 14:15; Lk 22:23; Jn 18:19.
[8] Directory of Spirituality, 137.
[9] Ángel Valtierra – Rafael M. de Hornedo, San Pedro Claver, BAC (Madrid 1985), pp. 86.89.
[10] Commentary of the Creed, IV, 60. Cited in Directory of Spirituality, 143.
[11] St. John Paul II, Master In the Faith, 16.
[12] Códice del Sacromonte (Granada); citado por Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia, El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994, p. 9.
[13] Directory of Spirituality, 135; op. cit. cf. De Sancta Virginitate, 54-55.
[14] He was declared patron of Spanish poets by St. John Paul II in 1993.
[15] Carta desde Bujalance al P. Bernardo, provincial, 15 de noviembre de 1603. Ms. 12738 (BN), f. 1037. Citado por Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia, El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994, p. 13.
[16] Cf. St. John Paul II, Master In the Faith, 16.
[17] Lk 21: 19.
[18] St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love 87.
[19] Ibidem, 92.
[20] Ibidem, 94.
[21] Ibidem, 95 and 102.
[22] I have trodden the wine press alone.
[23] Dictámenes de Espíritu, dictamen undécimo; https://sanjuandelacruz.online/dictamenes/
[24] Cf. Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia, El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994, p. 14.
[25] Letters, Letter 7, To the discalced Carmelite nuns of Beas, November 18, 1586.
[26] Letters, Letter 25, To M. Ana de Jesús, July 6, 1591.
[27] St. John Paul II, Master In the Faith, 19.
[28] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 78: “…We could say that our spirituality should be the spirituality of …the hymn of the kénosis”.
[29] Directory of Spirituality, 143.
[30] Ibidem, op. cit. Bl. Luis Orione, “Letter of June 24, 1937”.
[31] We take freely from a commentary by Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia, found in El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994.
[32] Probably composed between 1584-1585 in Granada. Cf. Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia, El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994, p. 17.
[33] Phil 2: 5-9.
[34] Federico Ruiz Salvador, Introducción a San Juan de la Cruz, cap. 6, p. 161.
[35] Lucinio Ruano de la Igle:sia, El misterio de la Cruz, BAC, Madrid 1994, p. 31.
[36] The Science of the Cross, chp. 23 Spiritual Renunciation, p. 292.
[37] Fray Luis de León, The Name of Christ, New York, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 90, 92.
[38] Phil 2: 6.
[39] Living Flame of Love, 3, 28.
[40] Servidoras III, cap. 2, 2.
[41] Directory of Spirituality, 67.
[42] Abismal.
[43] St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, 1, 15.
[44] St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 139.
[45] St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 26.
[46] St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 166.
[47] Cf. Constitutions, 209.
[48] Ibidem.
[49] St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book 2, chp. 25, 4.
[50] St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book 1, chp. 1,5; Book 2, chp. 7, 5; chp. 17, 6.
[51] St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, stanza 36, 1; Living Flame of Love, 4, 3; Dark Night, Book 2, chp. 14, 1.
[52] St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, chp. 4, 7.
[53] St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book 2, chp. 17, 6.
[54] Ibidem.
[55] St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 165.
[56] Fray Luis de León, The Name of Christ, p. 101-102.
[57] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 137.
[58] St. Luis María Grignion de Montfort, Carta circular a los amigos de la Cruz, [26].
[59] Mt 11: 25; Lk 10: 21.
[60] St. Luis María Grignion de Montfort, Carta circular a los amigos de la Cruz, [26].
[61] Servidoras II, Parte IV, 5.
[62] Servidoras II, Parte IV, 5.
[63] 2 Cor 7: 3-4.
[64] St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, chp. 7, 7.
[65] St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, chp. 7, 8.
[66] 1 Cor 2: 2.
