Dark Night of the Soul
There comes a time when both body and soul enter into such a vast darkness that one loses light and consciousness and knows nothing more of God’s intimacy. With longing and distress, we are reminded of our nothingness. Mechthild of Magdeburg
I’ve encountered a number of Christian friends in the past years who are struggling with life and find God has fallen silent. It is a hard place to be when you are facing testing and trials and can hear nothing from God. I have spent my own difficult time wandering in the spiritual desert. I have encountered seasons of separation from God myself with some regularity over the years.
I remember a saying from attending a spiritual retreat called Cursillo (now Via de Christo) many years ago, “If you feel distant from God, guess who moved?” Over the years, I have come to know that my own willfulness distances me from God. Often, when I am reluctant to let something go, my own stubbornness brings distance in my relationship.
But, I have encountered seasons where I think God is distant for other reasons. There are times when I am standing at the edge, looking at the shapes in the mist, asking, “God is this really the next step?” And I hear nothing. Only when I have taken a step out in faith do I hear confirmation.
We humans would like to see where the trail will end up before we start. God just asks us to trust him and take the first step, without seeing further. If God’s word is a lamp unto our feet, it will never illuminate more than the next two steps, until you start moving. The end of the trail is lost in the mist and darkness. Will you trust and take a step. Quiet moments of deciding.
Then there is the dark night of the soul. Times when we wander in the spiritual desert, thirsting, longing for God’s presence and hearing nothing in the darkness. It is reassuring to learn that even the saints experienced these times, these seasons of silence, dwelling out of any awareness of God’s presence.
I wonder if these times are not God’s way of exercising our faith muscle? I’ve heard it explained this way. God reveals himself to us and through an experience of God, we come to believe. Early in our Christian walk, God graces us with His presence more often, deepening our commitment and faith. Then, as we walk with God for some time, he periodically draws away for periods of time. During these times, tests and trials will come that call for faith to overcome. Our faith is tested when God draws away, and our faith muscle is strengthened in the process.
The funny thing is, even our faith is a gift from God. It is God’s touch on our lives that gives us faith in the first place. So, it might be better to say we discover in these times that God has graced us with the faith to endure. Each time we endure such a season, we come to trust it will end. While it continues, each day we can pray to the Spirit for the faith to trust God even when he’s absent. We learn to lean on His promise in scripture that, “I am with you always,” even when we can’t sense or hear anything.
And, one day, hope will turn its face to you, and your dark night will come into a new dawn. So, take heart, friends, you are in fine company as you wander in the spiritual desert. All the saints have trod there before you. Sara Groves is one of the most talented Christian songwriters I’ve heard. She describes this journey beautifully in her song, “It might be hope.”
And, here is a short audio introduction:
Journaling Prompts
How do you keep going when God is distant and has fallen silent? What have you learned from time in the Dark Night? How has your faith grown stronger in times of God’s absence?
Scripture
Moses entered the darkness where God dwelled.
Exodus 20:21
The Lord has said he would dwell in thick darkness.
1 Kings 8:12
Because of his love for us, God urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No one will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night.
John of the Cross, RENOVARE Bible notes on Job, OT p. 766
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul , and have sorrow in my heart all day long? But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, Because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalm 13:1-2, 5-6
God made the darkness his dwelling place.
Psalm 18:11
You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through sleepless nights, Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.
Psalm 56:8 The Message
Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious, compassionate, and righteous.
Psalm 112:4
In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
Jonah 2:2, Jonah’s Dark Night of the Soul
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:5
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
2 Corinthians 4: 8-10
It is God alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to Him be honor and eternal dominion.
1 Timothy 6:16
Ancient Writings
We pray that we may come into this darkness that is beyond light, and, without seeing and without knowing, see and know what is above vision and knowledge through the realization that by not-seeing and by not-knowing we attain true vision and knowledge. This is like those who, carving a statue out of marble, abstract and remove all the surrounding material that hinders the vision which the marble conceals and by that abstraction bring to light the hidden beauty.
Dionysius, The Divine Names, Chapter 2
Do not fear if for a little while he turned his face away from you. These things all work together for your good, and you profit from his coming in and from his withdrawal. He comes to you, and then he goes away again. He comes for your consolation, he goes away to put you on guard, for fear that too much consolation should puff you up, and that you should begin to attribute consolation not to his grace but to your natural powers. And so he withdraws himself. He is absent that he may be desired more, that being desired he may be sought more eagerly, that having been sought for he made it last be found with greater thankfulness.
Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, trans. College, p. 77
There comes a time when both body and soul enter into such a vast darkness that one loses light and consciousness and knows nothing more of God’s intimacy. At such a time when the light in the lantern burns out the beauty of the lantern can no longer be seen. With longing and distress, we are reminded of our nothingness.
Mechthild of Magdeburg, Woodruff, Meditations with Mechthild of Magdeburg, p. 60-61
No person is in such darkness as to be completely devoid of divine light. The divine light shines on in the darkness and radiates upon all.”
Thomas Aquinas. Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 87. Even in the darkest of circumstances, the darkest of dark nights, the divine light shines and radiates therein. Even when we cannot see it. This takes some hard believing, some deep trusting.
Dionsyius exhorted his disciple Timothy: ‘My dear son Timothy, you should soar above yourself with untroubled mind, above all your powers, characteristics, and states, up into the still, secret darkness, so that you may come to know the unknown God above all gods. Forsake everything. God despises ideas.’
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 1
A man should flee his senses, turn his powers inward, and sink into a forgetting of all things and himself. “Withdraw from the unrest of external activities, then flee away and hide from the turmoil of inward thoughts, for they create but discord.” (Anselm, Proslogion 1). And so, if God is to speak his word and himself in the soul, she must be at rest and at peace.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 101, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mystics, p. 417
What surpasses all reason involves a contradiction. Hence when I assert the existence of the infinite, I admit a light that is dark, a knowledge that is ignorant, and something necessary that is impossible. Because we admit to an end to the finite, we necessarily admit the infinite, an end without an end.
Nicholas of Cusa, On the Vision of God, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 351
I can’t seem to resist thinking that those who make such a big deal about periods of aridity as being somewhat lacking in humility.
St. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle, trans Mirabai Starr, p. 72
A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it.
St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Prologue, 1
This night, which as we say is contemplation, produces in spiritual persons two sorts of darkness or purgation corresponding to the two divisions of man’s nature into sensual and spiritual.
The first night of purgation will be sensual, in which the soul is purified according to the senses, subjecting them to the spirit. The other is that night that is spiritual, in which the soul is purified and stripped in the spirit, and which subdues and disposes it for union to God in love.
The dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul, which cleanses it of its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural, and spiritual. Contemplatives call it infused contemplation by which God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in the perfection of love, without effort on its own part or or understanding how this happens. Infused contemplation is the loving wisdom of God by unifying and enlightening it, this contemplation prepares the soul for union with God in love.
St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of the Christian Mystics, p. 386
Modern Writings
Therese of Lisieux underwent profound changes in her experience of faith during Easter of 1896. Before that time she thought that atheism was a flaunted position, a sham. ‘I could not believe that there really were godless people who had no faith at all: it was only by being false to their own inner convictions that someone could deny the existence of heaven.’ Her eyes were opened to realize that unbelievers really exist.
She experiences the sense of the darkness, such impenetrable darkness, a darkness which cannot recognize the King of Light. She does not cease to participate in the light of faith and at the same time she participates in the darkness in which unbelievers live. She is immersed in suffering never experienced previously and in joy greater than shew ever felt before.
She thinks that if Jesus has made her see the reality of unbelief, it is only so that she may turn the tables: so that she may live this state of darkness for the sake of unbelievers themselves. For her it is a new joy that she had never experienced-the joy of not living the joy of faith so that these ‘others’, these unbelievers who do not know this joy, might finally attain to it: ‘What does it matter that I should catch no glimpse of heaven’s beauties, here on earth, if that will help poor sinners see them in heaven.’
Jean Francois Six, Celtic Daily Prayer, p 618
In this greatest perfection of faith the infinite God Himself becomes the Light of the darkened soul and possesses it entirely with His Truth. And at this inexplicable moment the deepest night becomes day and faith turns into understanding.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
When we are united with God in silence and darkness and when our faculties are raised above the level of their own natural activity, and rest in the pure, tranquil, incomprehensible cloud that surrounds the presence of God, our prayer and the grace that is given to us tend of their very nature to overflow invisibly through the mystical body of Christ; and we who dwell together invisibly in the bond of the one Spirit of God affect one another more than we can ever realize by our own union with God, by our spiritual vitality in Him.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 272
Dark night is like a depression, because it is a loss, the loss of the customary presence of God in your life. God is weaning you off these dependencies. If you don’t panic, you can pass through these states.
If you could really see, you would see that fear has no foundation. God is infinitely woven into your sorrow. Fear would not have tyranny over your heart. Our prayer becomes, Lord, that I might see.
James Finley, Living School Teaching
The more experience in living we have, the more we sense that closeness grows in the continuous interplay between presence and absence.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 9/23/20
People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 11/3/20
There is a light in us that only darkness itself can illuminate. It is the glowing calm that comes over us when we finally surrender to the ultimate truth of creation: that there is a God and we are not it. . . . Then the clarity of it all is startling. Life is not about us; we are about the project of finding Life.
At that moment, spiritual vision illuminates all the rest of life. And it is that light that shines in darkness. Only the experience of our own darkness gives us the light we need to be of help to others whose journey into the dark spots of life is only just beginning. It’s then that our own taste of darkness qualifies us to be an illuminating part of the human expedition.
Without that, we are only words, only false witnesses to the truth of what it means to be pressed to the ground and rise again. The light we gain in darkness is the awareness that, however bleak the place of darkness was for us, we did not die there. We know now that life begins again on the other side of the darkness.
Joan Chittister from the CAC Morning Devotion, 12/4/19
John of the Cross says that the dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 2/4/21
The goal of the dark night of the soul is to draw the will beyond ego to full transfiguration and union into God. The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
“The only action left to the soul, ultimately, is to put down its self-importance and cultivate a simple loving attention toward the Beloved.” Mirabai Starr. God needs to catch us by surprise, because our very limited preexisting notions keep us and our understanding of God small. What I’ve learned is that not-knowing and, often, not even needing to know is a deeper way of knowing and a deeper form of compassion. That’s why John of the Cross called faith ‘luminous darkness.’
Contemplation is a different form of knowledge that emerges inside the ‘cloud of unknowing.’ You find freedom, grace and comfort in not needing to know which opens up to a much deeper consciousness that we would call the mind of God. For the most part, my prayer is a continual practice of surrender. In the dark night, when all other practices and beliefs about God lose their meaning, keep returning to silent contemplative prayer. It will keep you empty and ready for God’s ongoing revelation of an ever-deeper love.
Richard Rohr, A Spring Within, p. 332-333
The sense of joyful, flowing oneness that so marks the final years of Thomas Keating’s life didn’t “just happen.” For most of us—including for Thomas himself—it comes at the end of a painful season of stripping and purification that has classically been called “the Dark Night of the Spirit.”
Cynthia Bourgeault, CAC Morning Devotion, 10/22/20
The dark night, which deprives us of our customary ways of experiencing God, draws us into an infinitely richer, more luminous, and ultimately boundaryless way of experiencing God, of finding our way to perfect union through love.
James Finley
God is the light by which all human wisdom is apprehended and understood. And yet, God remains mystically hidden beyond the limits of human wisdom.
Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. 147
Our soul lives at the fulcrum of light and darkness. God is both in darkness and light. We cannot deny the dark side, our shadow. Our soul will not expand and grow if we deny the dark and try to live only in the light.
Mark Ritchie, Spiritual Director
Darkness is the place where egoism dies and true unselfish love for the “other” is set free. Moreover, it is the birthplace of a vision and a hope that cannot be imagined this side of darkness.
Constance Fitzgerald, Impasse and the Dark Night
The dark will be your womb tonight.
David Whyte
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
Theodore Roethke