The Beloved Will Guide You: St. John of the Cross and the Triple Dark Night of Our Times

Matthew Fox’s new book offers a powerful new interpretation of the great Christian mystic, John of the Cross. By employing the four paths of Creation Spirituality, he makes him come alive again. John only had access to the traditional paths of purgation, illumination, and union to interpret his profound poetry, and he had the Spanish Inquisition breathing down his neck, so his writings are sometimes misunderstood—or not seen clearly. Matthew Fox shows how John was in fact way ahead of his time.

Fox recognizes some of John's greatest poems including the legendary “Dark Night” and "Spiritual Canticle" as prison literature, part of his prophetic vocation or the Via Transformativa path of Creation Spirituality, the struggle for justice. The Via Creativa also proves paramount since John is considered one of the best poets in the Spanish language to this day. The Via Positiva is stunningly present in his poems as is the Via Negativa and John’s profound sense of the apophatic divinity that names the ineffable darkness and mystery of Divinity. Matthew Fox brings all of this alive for spiritual seekers today and brings John of the Cross into fresh, immediate relevance. The four paths reset John’s  spiritual gifts and genius just when we need them the most: as we find ourselves in a triple dark night—that of soul, society (democracy), and Mother Earth beset by global warming at the hands of humanity.