Saint John of the Cross is one of Christianity’s greatest poets and mystics. Nevertheless, his subject matter and writing style, coupled with his use of Scholastic terminology, can make his prose difficult to understand and intimidating. Readers of The Ascent of Mount Carmel: Reflections will thank Father Marc Foley for making John’s thought accessible and refreshingly contemporary. The author shares with contemporary spiritual seekers his seasoned wisdom, gleaned from years of reading and teaching John of the Cross. He deftly weaves together insights from psychology, theology, and literature to make The Ascent of Mount Carmel both understandable and relevant to daily life.

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THE Carmelite Order was originally devoted to a purely contemplative life. Its members lived as hermits on Mount Carmel, striving to imitate the holy prophets Elias and Eliseus. According to their Rule—which, given about A.D. 1210, records the customs observed by these hermits since they became a body corporate—they spent their time in or near their cells, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, repairing only once a day to the oratory to hear mass. They said their office or their Paters privately, and took their more than frugal meals in solitude. James de Vitry thus speaks of these hermits: ‘Others, following the example of Elias, that holy anchorite and great prophet, embraced the eremitical life on Mount Carmel, chiefly on the part overlooking the town of Porphyry, now called Caiffa, near the fountain of Elias, not far from the monastery of S. Margaret, Virgin. There living in small cells, like bee-hives, they made a sweet spiritual honey Aeterna Press

A hauntingly powerful piece about the soul's journey to the place of God, known in this work as Mount Carmel. Although this book refers to the Dark Night that the soul must pass through, it also refers to many situations and realities that the soul must pass through in its conflict with this world and union with God.

This book is a 16th-century treatise to the poem The Dark Night of The Soul by the Spanish writer John of the Cross. It gives a commentary on the poem and practical advice on the ascetical life, the final aim which is the union with God. Part of the advice is based on the author's experience of the spiritual search. Together with the poem and the other treatise The Dark Night, this work belongs to the most important writings of the Spanish spiritual mysticism.

This work presents an outline of Christian perfection from the point at which the soul first seeks to rise from the earth and soar upward towards union with God. As a poet St John of the Cross was able, in the realm of mysticism, to push the frontiers of human xpression beyond any other writer.