"In all the teaching of Saint John of the Cross, despite the forbidding features of its radical demands, hides a poet of sanctity who has fallen in love with God, even helplessly so. The Church may call him the Mystical Doctor in recognition of the superlative teaching in his four major treatises; yet the weight of that title is not entirely helpful. He is not proposing a speculative doctrine of mystical ascent to be mastered by careful study and strict application. Abstraction has little place or purpose in his writing, even as he makes every effort to clarify in precise language what may often me impossible lessons to convey to a reader lacking experience of what he is elucidating. Simply reading once through his work will never disclose his teaching adequately. At some point, he has to become a very loved mentor to whom one turns with increasing need over the course of years, or else he slips away quietly and will be forgotten, as he was apparently forgotten by many in his own lifetime. But if he is embraced as a trusted guide, and his direction is accepted, he can become a companion who pushes and prods us to a mysterious, unsettling desire for God, which is only a start toward greater effects over time. If he remains a friend for many years, a hunger and fire in our soul for God far beyond any initial expectation of spiritual pursuit is bound to ignite within us." --Father Donald Haggerty