A picture by St. John
St. John of the Cross, whose feast day is Dec 14, is a saint for Advent. A saint of darkness and uncertainty, a saint of prison cells and flickering candlelight, a saint of secret ladders and lacerated muscle, a man whose tenuous existence was barefoot and moonless, St. John spent his days being pulled to pieces. From the shambles of his old life arose the phoenix of hope, undeterred and unbowed.
I’ve been climbing Mount Carmel with St. John. Or, let’s say, I’m attempting to drop a few of my sensible attachments with his encouragement. We’ll see. At the least, we can glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel together.
I’ve only read his poetry in translation, but it seems to me that it is very profound and very beautiful, arriving from somewhere deep within his personal suffering. When he speaks of leaving the house in the dead of night and slipping away while the inhabitants are asleep, he is speaking of the mystical ascent of the soul from sensible attachment towards union with the divine, yes, but he is also speaking of his literal escape from the angry, abusive monks of his own religious order. Even his torture and betrayal assist his mystical ascent.
This is our time, Advent, to plunge headlong into the abyss with him, to confront our demons and make straight our roads, to beat a path in a trackless desert. Down that road comes Love, and the suffering and agony of our attempts top make ready for him or, if it’s been a bad year, simply to confront the despairing sadness of the fecklessness of our own hearts, this is all part of the poetry. We work it out with fear and trembling, for how else can God enter under our roof?
Here is St. John’s marvelous poem about Advent. I’ve found it worth contemplation.
UPDATE: There are some serious questions about the translation of this poem (by Daniel Ladinsky) and to what extent it is properly attributed to St. John. See the discussion in the comments for more.
If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the Holy and say,
“I need shelter for the night.
Please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.”
Then, under the roof of your soul,
you will witness the sublime intimacy,
the divine, the Christ, taking birth forever,
as she grasps your hand for help,
for each of us is the midwife of God, each of us.
Yes, there, under the dome of your being,
does creation come into existence eternally,
through your womb, dear pilgrim,
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help:
for each of us is His beloved servant never far.
If you want, the virgin will come walking down the street,
pregnant with Light, and sing!
This is wonderful, Fr! Thank you so much for sharing it. But on behalf of all my translator friends, whose constant cry this is: please credit the translator!
Basically, I did an amateurish search on the internet for the text of this poem but only came up with uncredited reproductions of the text. Your point is well taken though.
It’s a wonderful poem in any case. Thanks again!
This new-age ‘poem’ is misattributed all over the web and was written in 2002. It is not, of course, St. John of the Cross, apart from the opening lines from The poem “Del verbo divino”: “The virgin, weighed / With the Word of God / Comes down the road: / If only you’ll shelter her.”
Thanks for the additional insight. I did some digging into the source.
The translator is Daniel Ladinsky, who is well-known for his translation of The Gift (https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Hafiz/dp/0140195815/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544879334&sr=1-3&keywords=daniel+ladinsky)
However, many readers of Hafiz claim that “The Gift,” is not so much a translation as it is a parody. (http://home.jps.net/~nada/hafiz.htm) The book, however, only claims to be a translation.
Ladinsky also wrote this book (https://www.amazon.com/Love-Poems-God-Twelve-Compass/dp/0142196126/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544879334&sr=1-1&keywords=daniel+ladinsky) in which you find a translation of the poem “If you want” by St. John of the Cross on pg 306. So, yes, it is officially attributed to St. John, and this is the source for the popular translation of the poem (I don’t have eyes on the actual book, but it is referenced as the source in a few spots). Ladinsky has been accused of editing and modifying it as well to the point that it should no longer be considered “by St. John.”
Without having the book in my hand, though, I’m curious about what original poem of St. John’s that Ladinsky actually used, and if there is anything out there that remotely resembles anything by St. John.
It’s funny, I read The Gift many years ago, totally unaware of this controversy, and thought all this time that I liked the poetry of Hafiz. In fact, I may not have even read him!
Thank you for this remarkable poem! I, too, enjoyed reading The Gift a year ago after reading a fascinating interview with Ladinsky. That book inspired my own delving further into Hafiz and inspired some poetry of my own.
Concerning the controversy over the translation, translating poetry is an even bigger problem than translating scripture. You can get the words right, yet the poetry evaporates. This is what Robert Bly was indicating years ago when he handed Coleman Barks a copy of poems by another Sufi poet, Rumi. He told Barks, “These birds need to be freed from their cages.” What he meant was that though Rumi had been translated by academic linguistic scholars, those scholars were not poets. The poetry had been lost in translation. Coleman Barks set out to convey the poetry of Rumi, and the rest is history. We can have all the right words, but if we don’t have the poetry, we have missed the soul of their content.
Thank you, Michael. I’m looking at the picture of the crucifixion that accompanied your post. It says it’s by St. John. I think Salvador Dali must have borrowed his extraordinary perspective from this picture–which I had never seen before. May I ask for the source of this? It’s lovely.
You’re spot on with the Dali connection. He was very much a fan of this little drawing by St. John.
Here’s some of the fascinating background to the picture: https://aleteia.org/2017/09/22/discover-the-crucifix-drawn-by-saint-john-of-the-cross-after-a-mystical-vision/
Thanks! I never saw this poem of his before.
What do you think of this?? It’s a bit odd to me that Our Lady is portrayed as needing to grasp his hand, since the Church teaches Jesus was not born the normal way. I would assume a midwife wasn’t needed.
Another aside: the way I understood it when I was studying St. John of the Cross, “when he speaks of leaving the house in the dead of night and slipping away while the inhabitants are asleep,” he is also explicating a verse from the Song of Songs.
I haven’t read any commentaries on Ascent of Mount Carmel. John himself doesn’t mention Song of Songs in his explication of the poem, but of course, it may be that Song of Songs is well-known enough that the connection would have been assumed. The poetic text can certainly bear many layers of meaning
If you want….If you want… I find those three words in this poem so moving. Always our choice. Never does God force His way in. . That He waits for US to decide. I needed this piece of beauty today. Thank you!