When Powerhouses Meet

C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien

Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony

Desmond Tutu & Nelson Mandela

Ralph Waldo Emerson & Henry David Thoreau

Marie Curie & Albert Einstein

I find tremendous joy whenever I discover that two powerhouses are friends with one another. People who are influential enough as indidividuals, but their shared friendships and mutual respect shape movements, ideas, or institutions.

Today we commemorate the life of the sixteenth century Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross. Unlike so many other mystics, Juan de Yepes was not born into money. His father was a weaver who died while John was quite young. His mother took over the looms, and John was sent to a local school for ‘extremely poor children and orphans.’ When he wasn’t in school, John was an alms collector for a local charity hospital and an altar boy at the local church. It’s here that John’s intellect and spiritual gifts were noticed by a wealthy benefactor who paid for a Jesuit education.

When John enrolled in the University of Salamanca, Teresa of Avila was well on her way to reforming Carmelite orders all over Spain. Teresa felt that the Carmelites, including her own convent in Avila, had grown too lax in their faith and spiritual practices. So in 1562, she founded the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, which would adhere to a stricter ascetic rule of life.

She met John soon after he was ordained a Carmelite priest in 1567, and urged him to join her quest. Teresa was a fiery, extroverted 52-year-old nun, and John was an introspective, poetic 25-year-old priest, and together they took on the unreformed parts of their order. They shared a lot of success, but the Carmelites who did not want to reform, really opposed the idea. The pair suffered angry backlash, and John was taken prisoner by church emissaries who whipped him with leather straps and tortured him with sleep deprivation and long durations within tiny enclosed spaces. It is around this time that he took the name John of the Cross as a symbol of his devotion to taking up his cross and following Jesus Christ.

Until I taught a formation class on Christian mystics a few years ago, I didn’t realize that Saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila were even contemporaries. Learning that they not only knew each other but supported one another spiritually, emotionally, and physically took my breath away. I think of Teresa reaching out to shiny, newly ordained John and recognizing in him a shared longing for God and a shared frustration with the status quo of their order. She wrote in one of her letters, “What a wonderful thing it is for two souls to understand each other, for they neither lack something to say, nor grow tired.”

Parenting is a calling that thrives in community. This time of year is complete chaos for anyone raising children from pre-school to high school. It’s too much to do on our own. And yet, we don’t need a “perfect parent friend” to make it through – just someone who shares our longing for a meaningful, joyful, faithful life. A friend whose courage strengthens us on the hard days. Someone we can pray with, cry with, laugh with, or ask for help without embarrassment.

John and Teresa understood that a trusted friend pulled them toward God. We know from our own experiences that wise companions keep us honest and courageous friends help us choose love when we’d rather burn it all down.

The big things in your life might not be monastic reforms or global movements. They instead might look like raising empathetic humans, reclaiming your identity outside of work and parenting, and maintaining hope in a weary world. These are quiet but holy revolutions, and ones you should not take on alone.

_{[Image Credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.]}