Born near Avila, Spain in 1542 to Katrina and Gonzalo Alvarez, his father had been rejected by his family for marrying into a lower class. 

At the age of three, John lost his father and the family struggled in poverty that was so severe his brother, Luis, may have died from malnutrition. 

His mother moved the family to find work as a weaver and John entered a school for the children of the poor. 

While at the school he was selected to serve as an Acolyte at a nearby monastery of Augustinian nuns, Later, he found work at a hospital and spent four years studying humanities at a new school run by a new religious order, The Society of Jesus. 

John had long heard the Call of The Lord and in 1564 professed his vows as a Carmelite and was ordained three years later with the intention of joining the Carthusians because he liked their strictness, solitude, and contemplation. 

Then, he met St. Theresa of Avila. 

Theresa convinced John to help her reform the Carmelite order and return it to its original rule, suspended a century earlier. 

In 1568, John and Theresa led the effort to open the first house of the Discalced Carmelites and John adopted a new name: John of The Cross. 

As the two continued to lead efforts to reform the Carmelites, those efforts were severely opposed and John was arrested and imprisoned at a monastery in Toledo where, each week, he was publicly lashed and forced to live in severe isolation. 

John had always been a great poet but his imprisonment and isolation united him much more deeply to Christ and provided a connection to the journey of Jesus that would change John and, through him, the rest of us, as he would go on to author: “The Spiritual Canticle” and “Ascent to Mt. Carmel” which would include; “The Dark Night of the Soul”. 

These works, along with “Sayings of Light and Love” by St. Theresa, have been the source for deep spiritual growth for many great Saints, across the centuries, to this very moment. 

He died on this day in 1591 at the age of just 49. 

St. John of The Cross, please pray for us.