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A Biography of St. John of the
Cross
While
it might appear odd to append a biographical sketch as a postscript, I have done
so deliberately. In an effort to isolate the logical and metaphysical elements
in St. John’s mystical account from any biographical overview whatever, I have
attempted to subject his doctrine to a philosophic inquiry specifically upon its
own terms. In approaching the works of St. John as a purely epistemological
enterprise, our primary focus has been a rigorous examination of the internal
consistency of the doctrines that evolve from a close and critical reading
of the text. A doctrine, however, which simply evidences no inconsistency among
the terms through which it is articulated, while persuading us of its cogency,
or even its consonance with reason, leaves us with something not so much
epistemic, as doxastic in nature. Specifically, the quantum leap from the
hypothetical if to the existential is – in other words, from the
conditional to the existential, from <P.... to
$x,
is nothing less than a leap from the qualified hypothetical to the unqualified
ontological. However splendid the architectonic that we observe in the
metaphysical edifice, the predication of being remains another matter
altogether, often attaining to something merely speculative, tentative or
altogether elusive. To complicate matters further, the canons to which we appeal
in our attempts to qualify or disqualify such phenomena as authentically ontic
in nature are themselves notoriously fluid. In this sense, philosophy is a
propadeutic to something beyond itself. It brings us to the brink of the chasm
dividing the hypothetical from the ontological, but is not itself the bridge
over which we pass. Yet if we
hope to attain to something more cogent, more compelling, than mere speculations
delivered ex hypothesi, we must earnestly acknowledge, take into account,
and attempt to respond to, some very rigorous criticisms of the epistemological
credentials we have presumed to proffer, especially philosophical critiques that
emerge outside the tradition of which the mystical doctrine of St. John has
subsequently become part. We find in the end that we have arrived at neither a
contention, nor an accommodation, so much as a confluence of ideas that
contribute to an understanding of that sublime phenomena we have come to know as
mysticism. Whether these have crystallized into something coherent I leave to
the judgment of the reader. The point I now wish to emphasize is that in making
every effort to allow St. John’s account to stand upon the integrity of its
own arguments – and apart from the personality behind the mind that forged
this remarkable doctrine, I have sought to bring impartial and objective focus
to the consistency of the doctrine – independent of the undisputed
sanctity of the man. I think that this is quite necessary. Holy men do
not necessarily make sound doctrine, as clearly was the case with Blessed Henry
Suso. There is no binding vinculum between sanctity and perspicacity, because in
large part the latter is unessential, and in the end ultimately superfluous to
the former.
Let me take another tack:
the culmination of every Christian life is the attainment of holiness, and if
erudition attends this achievement it is admirable but largely beside the point.
I am a great admirer of Russell; his perspicacity and often trenchant, critical,
insight are refreshing both in their candor and clarity; but I decidedly esteem
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or for that matter, Blaise Pascal, as having arrived
at something more estimable through, rather than having merely articulated
sterile abstractions in, the pursuit of truth.
Perspicacity, in a word, is engaging – but
sanctity is compelling. And this really brings me to the point of this preface.
Sanctity, I think, is often so compelling that we are loath to subject it to any
association with error. We are inclined, in effect, to extrapolate from sanctity
to inerrancy, as the though a defect in the latter vitiates the former, which is
not at all the case. Christ’s stinging rebuke to Peter is a sober reminder of
this.
1
But the fact remains that it is likely
in some to attenuate the genuine and unsparing critical impulse necessary to the
objective analysis of a Saint’s work – and as a consequence to forfeit
truth; a defection no less antagonistic to good philosophy than to religion.
Truth itself, it has been suggested, must be esteemed as holy – and any
defection from it a defection from the very holiness toward which we strive. And
this is simply another way of saying that we cannot hope to attain to a
consistent end through inconsistent means. And while we must be careful of a
susceptibility to this type of critical latitude in dealing with the Saints, we
must, on the other hand, and quite obviously, recognize that sanctity and
critical acumen, while not allied of necessity, have quite often found common
ground in the lives of the Saints. Even the most cursory perusal of the
voluminous Patrolgiae Latinae Cursus Completus or the Patrologiae
Graecae – to mention nothing of the great multiplicity of philosophical
and theological works within the Church that extends to the present day –
clearly attests to this. And this is simply to say, on the other hand, that
sanctity no more precludes critical acumen that critical insight precludes
sanctity. Nevertheless, it remains a common, even a persistent misconception
that a Saint’s commitment to doctrine – which, from the Catholic
perspective, is at least an integral aspect of the imputation of sanctity –
precludes, or at least impedes, hampers, confines, even compromises the
disinterested dedication to truth. But the fact of the matter is that the
sanctions incorporated into that very body of doctrine are more far-reaching,
and far more stringent, relative to a commitment to truth than those which are
selectively and subjectively appropriated outside of it according to the
individual inclination of the
skeptic. This is not to disparage the moral integrity of the skeptic, but merely
to place it within existential perspective. The historical and often heroic
commitment to truth on the part of many Catholic philosophers is, I suggest,
exemplified in a way seldom encountered by their skeptical counterparts in a
given culture– whether we consider the ancient martyrology beginning with the
early Christian philosopher St. Justin Martyr who, rather than equivocate the
truth, was scourged and beheaded in 165 AD; or in our own times, and within the
great Carmelite tradition itself, in the case of St. Teresa Benedicta of the
Cross, who as Edith Stein, the German philosopher and colleague of the
twentieth century phenomenologist Husserl, perished at the Nazi death camp at
Auschwitz in 1942, both as a Jew and a Nun, renouncing neither and suffering for
both – despised by the Nazis as a Jew and forsaken by her family as a Catholic
Nun. Both, I maintain, are paradigms in the sense that each had clear
existential alternatives, the extreme consequences of which turned exclusively
upon their uncompromising relation to truth. These, and the many examples to
which we can appeal, evidence a commitment to truth often supremely enacted; and
that commitment, I suggest, which does not blench before the prospect of death
is much less likely to be compromised in matters decidedly less final in nature.
Of course, such commitment
can be, and frequently is, dismissed, or worse yet, trivialized as
‘fanaticism’, but I think, by and large, that this explanation is much too
convenient, for we invariably see little of this trait, and much more in the way
of balanced reason evidenced in the lives of the Saints. And this essentially
brings us to the second reason that I have chosen to append St. John’s
bibliography in the way of a postscript. Bibliographies, especially within the
twentieth century, are seldom read without a good deal of psychological
conjecture, and a parallel, often narrative form, conceived in terms of the
doctrine with which we are first acquainted, accompanies and superimposes itself
upon our assessment not simply of the personality behind the
doctrine, but more importantly, of the doctrine itself which is then held to be,
by extension, an interpretation of the personality. As a result, we frequently
do not allow the doctrine, the philosophy, to be interpreted solely,
objectively, in terms of its own consistency, but rather in light of
bibliographical features presumed as contributing to, often in a psychological
way, the development of the doctrine; features which are then seized upon as an
explanatory of it. We are all familiar with one account or another in which the
personality, or more specifically, perceived defects in the personality, are
held to be explanatory of the doctrine. Interpreted psychologically in
terms of a symptomatic, rather than philosophically in terms of its
intrinsic coherence, the focus shifts altogether from philosophy (the doctrine
as logical) to pathology (the doctrine as pathological). At times this would
appear to be explanatory of at least some aspects of a given doctrine –
but seldom the entire doctrine. Nietzsche, I think stands as one example of
this, and so does Schopenauer. But one will be hard pressed to detail this type
of psychological association between St. John of the Cross and his doctrine; in
effect, to see his doctrine emerging from his personality, and not out of his
experiences. Those who would seek such an explanatory are bound to be
disappointed in the life of St. John.
Beginnings
Born Juan de Yepes y
Alvarez on what is likely the 24th of June 1542 in Fontiveros, Spain,
St. John of the Cross was the youngest of three sons born to Gonzalo de Yepes
and Catalina Alvarez. John’s father, from a proud Toledo family which had
accumulated some considerable wealth, had a bright future before him in the silk
trade from which the family fortune had been amassed, but his marriage to
Catalina, who was of humble origin, was considered by his family an unpardonable
misalliance, and Gonzalo was effectively disowned and subsequently disinherited
by his family, leaving Gonzalo with his wife and three children in great
hardship. The callous disregard of Gonzalo and his
family, now reduced to poverty, is stunning, especially in light of the untimely
death of Gonzalo in 1543, two short years after the birth of John, subsequent to
which the family turned a resolutely deaf ear to the pleas of the now destitute
widow on behalf of her small children, one of whom, the second eldest, died
within a few years of Gonzalo, leaving Catalina with John and his eldest brother
Francisco. The poverty that John was later to embrace as a religious, was
cruelly thrust upon him in childhood. Catalina’s meager earnings from
silk-weaving were not enough to feed and clothe her children who in large measure, and out of
necessity, relied upon the beneficence of a catechetical orphanage in Medina del
Campo to provide not simply the education, but the substance as well necessary
to her children. During this period, John had acquired some instruction, but no
great proficiency, in several trades with an eye toward some practical vocation,
but it was really in his youthful office as acolyte at the Convent of
Augustinian Nuns, where he served in the sacristy each morning, and not
infrequently elsewhere among other duties in the afternoon, that John’s
lifelong love of the Church very likely began. The often long and solitary hours
spent in obligations within the sacristy undoubtedly imbued the young John with
a keen sense of the sacred and an early formative acquaintance with an
atmosphere of introspective contemplation.
The
Divine Summons
At sixteen, and now working
at the nearby Plague Hospital de la Concepcion, he had matriculated at the
Jesuit College at Medino del Campo where after four years of a liberal arts
education, he entered the Novitiate of the Carmelite Order in 1563 and, as was
the custom, assumed a new name, that of Juan de Santo Matia, or John of St.
Matthias. Upon professing solemn vows he undertook further study at the
Carmelite College at San Andrés which, rather auspiciously, was located at
Salamanca. Here Fray John had the
opportunity to study under some of the finest minds of late medieval Europe at
the great University of Salamanca whose reputation as a center of learning
equaled, and in some respects surpassed, the renowned medieval Universities of
Paris and Oxford. Both at the College of San Andrés and at the University of
Salamanca, John had acquired an apparently outstanding grasp of both Scholastic
philosophy and theology, and in general excelled in his studies to such a
remarkable extent that, while yet a student, he was appointed to the post of
Prefect of Studies at San Andrés. In 1567 Fray Juan de la Cruz took Holy Orders
and entered the priesthood. On the auspicious occasion of the celebration of his
first Mass, which brought him to back his hometown of Medina del Campo, he met
Madre Teresa de Jesus – better known as St. Teresa of Avila.
This acquaintance – not
entirely fortuitous, for St. Teresa had sought out the young priest who had been
recommended to her as a likely candidate to assist her in her efforts to reform
the Carmelite Order at large, friars as well as nuns – evolved into a lifelong
friendship and alliance, and was to prove momentous to both the 52 year old
Carmelite Nun, and the young 25 year old priest whose deepening spirituality and
strong sense of interiority had compelled him at this point to consider
transferring from the Carmelites to the more austere and reclusive Carthusians.
But St. Teresa in short order succeeded in persuading the diminutive but intense
young friar that his vocation lay in the white mantle that presently stood upon
his shoulders, and not elsewhere; the Order of Our Lady, she insisted, must not
be abandoned, but reformed. And she had quite definite plans for effecting the
reform which the Mitigated Rule stood in such desperate need of, and John would
be instrumental in restoring the venerable Order to its Primitive Rule among the
friars in the way that St. Teresa had tirelessly labored to effect it among her
nuns at Valladolid. In 1568, in the company of three other Carmelite friars, St.
John changed his name at Duruelo from Juan de Santo Matia to Juan de la Cruz –
and effectively entered upon the reform of the Order. The mutual vision and
reciprocal
commitment, coupled with the deep and holy affection that bound the younger John
to the older Teresa, would sustain this collaborative effort for many years and
through much hardship.
It was not long before the
exemplary lives of the small community of reformed friars and nuns that had
gathered around St. John and St. Teresa respectively began attracting vocations,
and with the burgeoning reform, in which St. Teresa had been indefatigable, it
was inevitable that the friars and nuns of the Mitigated Rule who wished to
retain the individual latitude to which they had grown accustomed should respond
sometimes acrimoniously, even violently, to the vigorous threat which the zeal
of the reform had posed. From a larger perspective, however, the ensuing turmoil
– and it was considerable – cannot be laid entirely at the feet of St.
Teresa and St. John, though neither were loath to come to terms with the
consequences of their zeal, for the call to a general reform of all
Religious Orders had been issued by the Council of Trent a year earlier in 1568,
and was already in the process of being implemented by King Philip II in that
same year – a reform, we must remember, itself precipitated by the
Counter-Reformation which had begun a mere 8 years earlier in 1560 under the
Papacy of Pius IV.
Reformatio
in Capite et in Membris:
The Counter-Reformation
Some brief overview of this
period is necessary, I think, to understanding the historical context from which
the reform efforts of both Saints took their impetus. The lax and reproachable
state of affairs, especially concerning discipline and morals, into which highly
profiled segments of the Church had fallen, had, of course, precipitated the
Reformation some years earlier, and what had been experienced by the Church on a
much larger scale had no less been the occasion of the lapse in discipline in
the religious orders
in Spain as well. The formation and training of the clergy at large had been
seriously neglected in favor of the decidedly more immediate and provincial
interests of higher ecclesiastical dignitaries and this regrettable state of
affairs was often not unaccompanied by moral turpitude. Members of the Papal
Curia, no less than local bishops and abbots, had come to understand and so
exercise their authority in increasingly secular terms, to the neglect and
detriment of the primary spiritual offices with which they were entrusted;
offices which, at least as often as not, were as instrumental to augmenting
their income as to their acquiring the perquisites of secular power. Entire
cathedral chapters, whose ecclesiastics were beneficed through endowments
established to maintain the clergy, would often spuriously combine prebends –
salaries intended to be distributed among the clergy attached to the Cathedral
– within one individual, increasing his leverage in both power and wealth. And
conditions, regrettably, fared no better with the Religious Orders themselves.
Not infrequently, monasteries of religious women were largely congregations of
the unmarried daughters of the nobility, and for many Orders, the original
charism upon which the community had been founded, and which had provided its raison
d‘être, had been entirely lost in this lapse of orientation, or the rule
so seriously mitigated as to be unrecognizable. A recognition of the impendence
of this sorry state of affairs had existed for some time and in fact dated at
least as far back as the 14th century where the call
pro
reformatio in capite et in membris
2 had
begun slowly gathering the initial momentum that would culminate in the
Counter-Reformation in 1560. St. John and St. Teresa, while confining their
efforts at reform to the Carmelite order in particular, may in fact be seen not
simply as the product of the Counter-Reformation, but as two of the most
brilliant, articulate, energetic and successful figures that the
Counter-Reformation had produced. The influence of their efforts extended well
beyond the cloisters of Carmel; indeed, well beyond the border of Spain and
continues to exert itself to the present day within the whole of Catholicism at
large. In any event, the reform
which the two Saints had collaborated in effecting resulted in some particularly
bitter consequences for St. John who, taken captive by the Calced Carmelites –
the friars of the mitigated rule, who, unlike the newly reformed Discalced
Carmelites, wore sandals, the latter going barefooted, or discalced – and
refusing to renounce the reform, was subsequently imprisoned at the Carmelite
Priory in Toledo in 1577 for the better part of a year. The room – a closet
actually – that served as his cell, was a meager 6 foot by 10 foot area,
unheated, unventilated, and effectively unilluminated except for a small crevice
in one wall well above the head of the spare and diminutive friar who, standing
erectly, barely attained to five feet. Subsisting only on bread and water and an
occasional sardine, he was routinely scourged, not by one, but by every present
member of the Calced community following their evening refection and returned to
the darkness and cold – or stifling heat – of his cell. Having nothing but
the tattered clothes on his wounded and unhealing back, no breviary, and
probably most painfully, nothing with which to confect the species through which
he could celebrate Mass, St. John was left with the outer darkness – and the
gathering inner light, a combination which crystallized in the sublime poetry
that has made the works of St. John of the Cross not just classic in Spanish
literature, but among the most beautiful poetic works ever written.
Chronology
of St. John’s Writings
After six
months closely confined and in great privation, St. John was providentially
assigned a new jailer, Fray Juan de Santa Maria, who was much more kindly
disposed toward the gentle St. than his previous incarcerator. He appears to
have allowed him oil and a lamp, and more importantly, paper and ink upon which
to write, and in general seems to have made every effort to alleviate the
condition of the straitened friar as much
as was within his power to do so, despite the severe sanctions, under provisions
of the Order’s constitution, that would have been applied against him, and
with the same severity and exactitude with which St. John himself had become
intimately acquainted. At this time, St. John composed the first thirty-one
verses of his magnificent Spiritual Canticle, and several less well-known
poems. Two months later, in August of 1578, and under circumstances deemed by
some to have been miraculous, St. John managed to escape his captors and found
refuge in Toledo with the reformed Carmelite nuns who sheltered him from his
pursuers, bringing him south to the greater safety of El Calvario in Andalusia
where he began composing the Dark Night of the Soul and the Ascent of
Mount Carmel upon which he worked sporadically until their completion in
1585.
St.
John’s poetry, the magnificent and inimitable style of which contrasts so
sharply with his dense and often redundant
literary treatises, is widely considered among the most beautiful and
preeminent in all of Spanish literature to date. In fact, it is among the most
beautiful, most evocative of poetic literature in any language. As Fr. Kieran
Kavanaugh, O.C.D. correctly observes,
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“St. John of the Cross has received the
title, “the loftiest poet of Spain”,
not on account of his books of poetry,
but with some ten or twelve
compositions. These compositions, however, display
such variety that it
can almost be affirmed that each of them represents a
completely distinct
poetic vision and technique, a singular accomplishment in
Spanish
literature.” 3
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There are ten poems of
indubitable authenticity, all composed within a 14 year period preceding St.
John’s death in 1591. Regrettably, none of the original copies are extant. The
copies which do exist are incorporated into what is known as the Codex of
Sanlucar, which, while not in the hand of the Saint himself, were
nevertheless unquestionably reviewed and revised by St. John as attested to by
glosses and additions to the text which appear in the handwriting of St. John.
The authenticity of four other poems is also very likely. It is, I find, an
extreme irony – even a paradox – that one is more likely to arrive
at a much clearer intuition (not understanding) of something
verging upon the experience of unio mystica through any of these 14
poems, than through all the protracted, carefully nuanced, and often involuted
explications which St. John offers us through the treatises we have examined in
this work. Here we have attained to consistency. In his poetry we attain to
sublimity. The poems of unquestionable authenticity are as follows:
·
The Spiritual Canticle
(Cantico Espiritual)
·
The Dark Night (Noche
Oscura)
·
The Living Flame of Love
(Llama De Amor Via)
·
I Entered in Unknowing
(Yo No Supe Dόnde Entraba)
·
I Live, but Not in Myself
(Vivo sin Vivir en Mi)
·
I Went Out Seeking Love
(Tras de un Amoroso Lance)
·
A Lone Young Shepherd
(Un Pastorcico Solo Esta Penado)
·
For I Know Well the Spring
(Que Bien Sé Yo la Fuente)
·
The Romances
(Romances 1-9)
·
On the Psalm: “By the Waters of
Babylon” (Romance Que Va Por “Super
flumina Babylonis” (Ps. 136)
The remaining four poems,
the authenticity of which cannot be definitively established but which very
likely were composed by St. John are:
·
Without Support and With Support
(Sin Arrimo y con Arrimo)
·
Not for All of Beauty
(Por Toda la Hermosura)
·
Del Verbo Divino
(Del Verbo Divino)
·
The Sum of Perfection
(Suma De Perfeccion)
These poems are faithfully
reproduced in Spanish and meticulously translated into English by Fr. Kieran
Kavanaugh O.C.D. and Fr. Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. in “The Collected Works
of St. John of the Cross”
4,
which I highly recommend.
Death
and Canonization
St. John, in the years
ensuing, was extremely active within the newly reformed order, holding a variety
of positions as confessor, vicar, Prior, Second Definitor, Vicar-Provincial,
Definitor and Consiliario, and Deputy-Vicar General – to say nothing of the
great administrational skill he demonstrated as founder and rector of the
Carmelite College for the students of the Reform at Baeza. This activity,
however, was balanced by the contemplation he had patiently and diligently
acquired through spending long hours in prayer. As is often the case with great
saints no less than great men, the end of his life would find him persecuted by
the very cause for which he gave of himself entirely, patiently enduring the
spite of lesser men resentful of his irrepressible sanctity. Deprived, for his
conviction, of every office within the Reform, and in failing health, he
repaired to La Peñuela in 1591 only to learn that efforts were already under
way to expel the holy friar from the Reform itself which he had founded, and for
whose sake he had willingly suffered so much. This must have been a bitter
disappointment to St. John – not to find himself despised and put to naught;
indeed, it was his wish to die alone, without title, and in obscurity – but to
find his brothers in Christ at such a great distance from the heart of God, the
mind of Christ, in their enmity not just to him – but to any man. It has
indeed been well put that in the Church where the lights are brightest, the
shadows are also deepest. St. Teresa, who had died some nine years earlier in
1582 would probably have come closest to understanding the heart of St. John at
this crucial and final point in his life, but was providentially spared the pain
of this ignominy. John, whose health continued to decline, and still under the
vow of obedience, was ordered to seek medical
assistance which was available both at Baez and Ubeda, and when presented with
the choice opted for Ubeda where, he felt, he was unknown and would be accorded
no more consideration than any other friar in failing health. But even in Ubeda,
St. John’s reputation preceded him, and despite his ill health, those both
envious and suspicious of his sanctity received him coldly, brusquely assigning
him the poorest cell available while taking pains to make clear to him the
inconvenience and expense incurred of necessity by his stay at the monastery.
This must have troubled St. John as much as the festering ulcerations that had
by now progressed from his legs to his back, and before long it became apparent
that the small friar in the most dismal cell was dying. Without reproach, and in
the most earnest humility, he begged pardon of those to whom he had become such
an unwelcome burden, and parting his lips finally, uttered the words of Christ
on the Cross: “Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit”, and with this,
died. He was forty-nine. Within eighty-four years of his death on December 14,
1591 St. John of the Cross was beatified by Pope Clement X on January 25, 1675,
subsequently canonized by Pope Benedict XIII on December 26, 1726, and finally
declared a Doctor of the Church Universal by Pope Pius XI on August 24, 1926.
Something more must be said
of this great luminary, something vitally important to any adequate assessment
of the life of St. John. And it may be summed up simply in this: St. John was a
good man. For all the austerity to which he subjected himself willingly and
without murmur, his heart was singularly inaustere. Embracing poverty, and the
son of poverty from his earliest childhood, he was nevertheless pained by the
poverty he saw in others, even in the sometimes desperately poor nuns of the
Reformed and Primitive Rule for whom he himself would beg alms as a father for
his children. Knowing the needs of others, he never humiliated those in want,
but anticipating their need, set about to secure what was necessary for them,
knowing that they would never ask it for themselves. His concern, it is
important to note, did not extend simply to the spiritual welfare of
those
with whom he came in contact: he saw the whole man, the entire woman, not just
the imago Dei sequestered behind the ephemerality of the flesh, but the
Sacred Humanity of Christ which ennobled the humanity of every person. His eyes,
St. Teresa tells us, were large and dark, and in St. John they were not merely
the portals to his own soul, but the lamps of compassion that burned with a love
that seemed to embrace the totality of the person who stood before him. The
hunger that gnawed at the stomachs of his penitents was just as real as the
cancer of sin he sought to excise from their souls in the holy tribunal of
penance. The illness that racked the bodies of men and women was every bit as
real as the spiritual sickness that plagued their souls, and he sought to remedy
both as much as it was in his power to do so. His life, in short, was conformed
to the life of Christ who not simply forgave sins, but healed the sinner, and
who, in the succinct words of the Apostle Peter, went about doing good.5
St. John, in a word, was the faithful steward whose will was to do the will of
the Master. And these who gathered around him, Carmelite and lay, would in the
end be called home through the same night to the same House by the same Father,
in the one same unquenchable light that, consuming all else in a holocaust of
love, ultimately reveals the face of God.
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Epilogue
_______________________________
1
Mk.
8.33
2
literally, a reform of the head and the members.
3
The
Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, p.709, Kieran Kavanaugh,
O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite
Studies, Washington, D.C., 1979
4
op. cit.
5
Acts 10.38
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