The Obscure Night of the Soul, better know today as The Dark Night of the Soul, is the distilled teaching of St John of the Cross, who reintroduced and revolutionized Christian Contemplation in the 16th Century. The text remains in print until this day, and has been an inspiration to seekers for centuries. St John's method is known as the Via Negativa, defined in Wikipedia as "a type of theological thinking that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God...In brief, negative theology is an attempt to clarify religious experience and language about the Divine through discernment, gaining knowledge of what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing what God is. The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion or by the conditioned role-playing and learned defensive behavior of the outer man."
The poems of St John of the Cross, with their mystic depth and spiritual ecstasy, stand among the world's great poems of Divine Love in all traditions. St John is one of the Roman Catholic Doctors of the Church, was a reformer of the Carmelite Order, and co-founder with St Teresa of Avila of the Discalced Carmelites. Teresa invited John to follow her, and in the protocols of the times, also became her Spiritual Director and Confessor. Many of their individual works could be considered the products of their mutual support and inspiration.
John of the Cross (Spanish: Juan de la Cruz; born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; 24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591), venerated as Saint John of the Cross, was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and a Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and he is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church.
John of the Cross is known gratefully for his writings. He was mentored by and corresponded with the older Carmelite, Teresa of Ávila. Both his poetry and his studies on the development of the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and among the greatest works of all Spanish literature. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. In 1926 he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI, and is commonly known as the "Mystical Doctor".