The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics

Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The vast stretches of farmland were overflowing with corn and fruit orchards. Here, in the house where I spent all the summers of my childhood, everything goes slowly; silence reigns far from the highway that crosses the north of Spain from east to west. The smell of furniture bent by humidity and the passage of time encourages reading and contemplation. 

My days in the country could not be more different from my life in the city. After arriving at the house, I wound up the old grandfather clock. Many homes used to have one of these clocks, and their tireless ticking and chimes marked the rhythm of each day—a kind of memento mori. I think our grandparents had greater awareness that our time on earth is just a whisper before eternity. 

There’s wisdom in this house that I can take back with me to my busy life. The dusty attic library preserves a row of books dedicated to the mystics of the Golden Age of Spanish literature: St. John of the Cross, Luis de León, St. Teresa of Jesus, and Francisco de Osuna. As the grandfather clock doled out the seconds and the hours, I sat in the library to revisit these old poets.

After 780 years of struggle, the Christian reconquest of Spain ended in 1492 with the last victories over the Muslim invaders. The Spanish empire expanded throughout the world with the discovery of America, and philosophers, painters, and poets flourished. It was the Golden Age, but it wasn’t the explorers, conquerors, and artists who made it so: It was largely due to the mystics, who took poetry to new heights and the soul into ecstasy.  

This poetry describes the three stages that the soul traditionally goes through on its journey toward union with God. The first is the purgative stage, in which, according to St. John of the Cross, one must be “stripped of the desire for all things.” The second is the illuminative stage, which seeks to elevate the soul’s understanding of God now that it is free from worldly attachments. Finally, there’s the unitive stage, in which the mystic empties himself of his own will in order to fill himself with God. 

The first poet to emerge in Spain’s Golden Age was Francisco de Osuna. In his literary journey of union with God, he sought not only to address other friars, but also those living in the world. He writes in The Third Spiritual Alphabet: “I, too, intend in this book to teach not only people who live in [contemplative religious communities], but everyone else, especially those in the world, among whom are many who greatly desire all that is good, and who do not lack the opportunity, but instruction, as to how to approach God in secret prayer.”

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish town of Avila gave birth to one of Christendom’s greatest spiritual writers: St. Teresa of Jesus. The three opening verses of her poem “I Live Without Living In Me” alone explain the whole mystical tradition, and still offer today’s Christians a beacon of faith, a path toward union with God: “I live without living in me, / and I expect a life so high, / that I die because I do not die.” 

A peer of St. Teresa’s was Augustinian friar Luis de León, who saw the contemplative life as a foretaste of the celestial life. Reading him, as the silent fields outside my window swayed in the wind, brought me a sense of spirituality that is hard to find in the big city. The friar was steeped in the Stoic and Neoplatonic traditions and turned the contemplation of creation into a spiritual discipline. His poem “The Life Removed” is more pertinent than ever in this overstimulating age of digital urgency. He wrote:

How tranquil is the life
Of him who, shunning the vain world’s uproar,
May follow, free from strife,
The hidden path, of yore
Chosen by the few who conned true wisdom’s lore!

De León was ahead of his time. If he once spoke to those who sought God in monastic life, today he seems to address those who simply seek spiritual nourishment and relief in this jungle of modern distractions. 

St. John of the Cross completes this stellar cohort of mystics. The previous three examine the condition of the soul that yearns for God. In “The Dark Night of the Soul,” St. John of the Cross shows us the soul that rejoices in having already reached union with God. The poem narrates the soul’s ascent to heaven. The Beloved, once she has left her home in peace, through penance, rises toward God during the night of the senses, and then finds the divine light marking the way to Christ:

In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest . . .

O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.

It is easy to understand why these mystics inspired hundreds of young people who, following their example, took the habit in the Golden Age of Spanish literature. 

I read these works for hours in the attic, until the grandfather clock reminded me it was time to pack my suitcase and return to the buzz of the city. I carefully replaced the collection of mystical poems on the shelf and bid them farewell. But my heart lingered in the orchard of St. John’s monastery, in Luis de León’s silent fields, in St. Teresa’s interior castle. 

One can never return to the mystics too many times. Now perhaps more than ever, their writings soothe the spirit, silence the frivolity of our days, and awaken the sleeping soul to the divine reality that exists beyond the noise, beyond the screen.