By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The abandonment of worldly attachments by the mystic St. John of the Cross served as an inspiration to the future Pope John Paul II as a young man in Nazi-occupied Poland, a speaker told a Zoom meeting of the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT) here.
In another of the ICT’s presentations examining the spiritual influences on the future Polish Pope, Claire Dwyer described the sixteenth-century Spanish friar’s adventurous life dedicated to following the will of God despite numerous challenges.
The ICT is an evangelization program based at St. Thomas the Apostle Church here.
ICT director Eric Westby, Ph.D., told the May 1 meeting this was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started causing shutdowns in 2020 that people were allowed to attend this ICT session in person at the institute’s classroom on the St. Thomas campus, while the sessions continued to be shown through Zoom.
Westby said the day’s speaker, Dwyer, received her undergraduate degree in theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and is author of a book from Sophia Institute Press, This Present Paradise: A Spiritual Journey with St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.
The publisher says regarding the book: “Decades before Vatican II called for the sanctification of the laity, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity prophetically claimed that holiness is not exclusively the domain of priests and nuns but is truly for everyone.”
Dwyer told the May 1 meeting that young Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was introduced to the life of St. John of the Cross by his Polish youth religious leader, Jan Tyranowski.
Tyranowski died in 1947 and was lifted to the rank of venerable as a possibility for canonization by Pope Francis in 2017.
Catholic commentator George Weigel wrote that amid the madness of the Nazi occupation of Poland, Wojtyla saw the example of St. John of the Cross’ abandonment to God as an answer to the Nazi will to power, Dwyer said.
At Vatican II, Dwyer said, Wojtyla contributed significantly to the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes.
Wojtyla was so inspired by St. John of the Cross that he viewed the stripping away of other attachments not as a way to leave a person feeling empty, but to be filled with God, Dwyer said.
After he became Pope, John Paul II pointed to St. John of the Cross’ teachings “as a necessity as we entered the new millennium,” she said.
In the current times as the twenty-first century arrived, despite widespread secularization, the Pope said people have to go back to authentic spirituality when there are so many false spiritualities, Dwyer said. She added that John Paul II said St. John of the Cross is our traveling companion for this crossroads in history.
People need to draw near to God, the Pope said, or they’ll be unable to fulfill their missionary and apostolic work, she said.
As John of the Cross sought a wise path for himself in religious life in the sixteenth century, he turned down opportunities that would have given him a more secure time as a hospital chaplain and an invitation to become a Jesuit, Dwyer said, but he instead entered a Carmelite monastery.
However, he had a period of feeling great dissatisfaction and asked for a leave of absence to study the original, primitive rule of the Carmelites instead of the more lax, “mitigated” rule they currently lived under that, for instance, allowed them to eat meat three times a week and leave their cells more often to congregate with others, she said.
“We’re not supposed to be like everybody else,” John of the Cross and others like him believed who were dissatisfied with this rule of life, she said, and the future saint considered joining the ascetic Carthusian order. But God “had other plans” for him.
Another future saint, the nun Teresa of Avila, had heard of him and asked to meet with him, then told John of the Cross that he could achieve what he wanted with a reformed Carmelite life she was establishing — actually a return to the original Carmelite rule, Dwyer said.
John of the Cross went to the Monastery of the Incarnation, where Teresa was prioress, and served as a confessor and spiritual director, she said.
He was only 4 feet 11 inches tall and not a gifted public speaker, she said, but “if you ever talked to him in person, you would never forget him. . . . He was just a natural spiritual director.”
There were tensions between Carmelites who followed the reformed rule and the mitigated rule, Dwyer said, adding that the latter believers captured John of the Cross, took him to their monastery and threw him into a small cell with only a tiny crack up high to provide light.
His captors gave him only bread and water and whipped him, leaving blood on a cloak that he couldn’t change for nine months, she said, and Teresa of Avila didn’t know where he was.
Prayer And Mortification
John of the Cross was released for brief periods from his cell, and noticed a window that he was able to escape through and return to the nuns’ monastery, Dwyer said.
He wrote that the primary ways of attaining union with God “are prayer and mortification,” she said.
During a question period after her talk, Dwyer said, “Suffering is a part of our life because sin is a part of our life. . . . The Lord allows suffering so that we can become like Christ.”
Reaching out for union with God while still on Earth, “It is in this life that we begin our Heaven,” as God intends, she said.
Reflecting on Dwyer’s talk, one notices that St. John of the Cross had to make his own escape from captivity by the other friars. Unlike angels in the Bible, none came to burst open his door of imprisonment. One can see a balance between prayer, hope, and the active life.
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