In 1577 church authorities, resentful of John, had him kidnapped, and he was imprisoned for nine months in a windowless six-by-ten-foot cell, with a ceiling so low he couldn't stand up. The stone cell was unheated in winter, unventilated in summer. Malnourished and flogged weekly, John was constantly ill.
Yet it was during this dark time that, by the light of a three-inch hole high in the wall, in this dying of imprisonment, John wrote his two greatest poems, The paradox! In the darkness of the dungeon, John’s spirit came into the Light "Cantico Espiritual" (Spiritual Canticle, 1578) and "Noche Oscura del Alma" (Dark Night of the Soul). These two extraordinary pieces illumined both his own darkness and the mystery of his path.
After nine months, John managed to pry his cell door from its hinges and escape.
"Turn not to the easiest, but to the most difficult … not to the more, but to the less; not towards what is high and precious, but to what is low and despised; not towards desiring anything, but to desiring nothing."
St. John of the Cross, Spanish San Juan de la Cruz, original name Juan de Yepes y Álvarez, (born 1542). John became a Carmelite monk at Medina del Campo, Spain, in 1563 and was ordained priest in 1567. St. Teresa of Ávila, the celebrated mystic, enlisted his help (1568) in her restoration of Carmelite life to its original observance of austerity. A year later, at Duruelo, he opened the first Discalced Carmelite monastery. Reform, however, caused friction within the order and led to his imprisonment.
In “Noche oscura,” perhaps his best-known work, he describes the process by which the soul sheds its attachment to everything and eventually passes through a personal experience of Christ’s Crucifixion to his glory.
"Cantico Espiritual" aims to combine the old "Song of Songs" with the Francesco Petrarca influences, resulting in mystical poetry. John uses profane love as a basis, embodied by the figures of two lovers, used as resources to depict the mystical feeling of the union with God. Because the content is so complex and inscrutable, the author published several explanatory texts in which he also modified some of his postulates.
He died in 1591 after suffering skin severe infection in his right foot. When the friars began to recite the prayers for him John begged, "No, read some verses from the Song of Songs," and then exclaimed, "Oh, what precious pearls!" At midnight, without agony, without struggle, he died, repeating the words of the psalmist: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." The favors he had asked for in his last years he had now received: not to die as a superior, to die in a place where he was unknown, and to die after having suffered much.
He was canonized and declared doctor of the church by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726.
References
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/innertravelers/john-of-cross.html
https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=65
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-of-the-Cross
http://www.spainisculture.com/en/obras_culturales/cantico_espiritual.html
https://www.icspublications.org/pages/saint-john-of-the-cross-conflicts-of-jurisdiction
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-john-of-the-cross
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