THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
Three Stages of the Spiritual Life
Part Two: Dark Night
By Brother Joseph of Mary, OCDS
Imperfection occurs in a thing for the reason that it is found to be in a state of privation. The separation man has from God is just such privation. Since the fall, man has been deprived of that relationship with God, which was previously enjoyed. The spiritual life has for its goal the restoration, as far as possible in this life, of that state of union with God man previously enjoyed. Death for a saint takes on new meaning. Such a death is not privation from the things of this world but fulfillment and perfection of that which is to be, a complete child of God.
There are two extrinsic principles of human acts: God and the devil. The devil inclines to evil. God inclines to good. God’s influence is twofold. God instructs us by law and moves us by grace. To illustrate this, God instructs us through natural law that we must eat, sleep, and exercise or we will risk the loss of the gift of health and our sense of well being. To act intelligible and reasonable is not contrary to the spiritual life or union with God. The reader must here recall that in a certain sense the efforts made towards union with God are simply steps taken to overcome the effects of sin and restore our fallen and wounded nature to it’s earlier condition. That state of being prior to the fall, when our nature was unwounded, is known as original justice.
Reason and common sense are never excluded from the ordinary way of the spiritual life that God and the soul inhabit. Grace always builds upon nature. To illustrate this consider how God appointed the first judges of Israel without visions, dreams or voices. Moses though he was speaking to God, was never told by God directly to appoint other and lesser judges. God was silent on instructing Moses in this need. Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, saw the burden Moses faced in judging and instructing people from morning till night and instructed Moses that Moses would become ill and lose health if Moses persisted in this conduct. Jethro provided a cure and further said that Moses should appoint lesser judges to share the burden, reserving for Moses only the most difficult problems to judge. [Ex.18:13-26] St. John of the Cross cites this example of Jethro to illustrate and remind us that God will not use extraordinary means to instruct a soul in matters that are well within the bounds of that soul’s reason. To be sure, if a soul enjoys favor with God, that soul must be wary of prideful presumption when it seeks from God answers through an extraordinary means at a time God has previously determined the soul’s intellect and reason are sufficient. During purgation, souls must hold fast to this principle of never abandoning common sense.
During purgation, souls can not always trust their judgment about themselves. They may believe themselves far from God when actually God is embracing them and they do not recognize Him since now His embrace is oppressive, where before He was a delight and sweet. God is moving them off the sweet breast of sensory satisfaction and comfort to the darkness of faith. Souls do not grasp or understand how to act or respond to God now that God has changed. This experience is referred to as a dark night for the soul. The soul’s prayer will be dry and it will feel unproductive. The soul will suffer arridities in this purgation.
Because the origin of these arridities may not be the sensory night and purgation, but sin and imperfection, or weakness and lukewarmness, or some other indisposition or melancholy (depression), St. John of the Cross give three clear signs for discerning whether dryness is the result of purgation or one of these other defects.
The first sign is that souls do not receive satisfaction or consolation from the things of God or out of creatures either. Since God is drying up the sensory appetites, He allows the soul to find delight in nothing. Since depression could be the source, another sign is necessary.
The second sign is that the memory turns to God solicitously and with painful care, and the soul thinks it is not serving God but turning back because it is aware of the distaste it has for the things of God that is of its aversion and dryness. This sterling sign of the soul’s pain at not serving God indicates the possible presence of God’s embrace. The lukewarm or depressed show no such sign of deep solicitude.
The third sign is that of one’s powerlessness, in spite of efforts, to meditate and make use of the imagination, the interior sense as was one’s previous custom. At this time, God does not communicate Himself through the senses by a synthesis of ideas but begins to communicate Himself through pure spirit by an act of simple contemplation, in which there is not discursive succession of thought. In the beginning, it is true that the purgation of some souls is not always continuous such that they are always deprived of sensory satisfaction and the ability to meditate. Ordinarily, this contemplation imparts to the soul an inclination to remain alone and in quietude. The soul will not be able to dwell on any particular thought nor will it have the desire to do so. If those in whom this occurs know how to remain quiet without care or solicitude about interior or exterior work, they will soon in this idleness experience interior nourishment. Contemplation is active while the soul is in idleness and unconcern. It is like air that escapes when one tries to grasp it. This is contrary to the beginning of the spiritual life with all of its attendant activities. Here God works in the soul and those who enter contemplation by God’s grace are considered proficient. To St. John of the Cross, the spiritual life is contemplation. Purgation ends in contemplation, ordinarily. For God does not bring to contemplation all who exercise themselves in the way of the spirit for reasons He best knows.
God makes the exchange, withdrawing the soul from the senses, placing it in the life of the spirit. Souls grow weary thinking God has abandoned them. The soul no longer has the power to work or meditate on the things of God as was the activity they did before. Souls find support in nothing, much like poor Job of the Bible. Such souls believe they are doing nothing when they remain idle in prayer drinking in the goodness of God which gives them peace and tranquility. Meditation is now useless for them because God is conducting them along another road, which is contemplation. They fatigue and overwork themselves, thinking they are failing God through negligence. If there is no one to understand these souls they either turn back and abandon the road or lose courage, or at least hinder their progress because of excessive diligence in treading the path of discursive meditation. They are like children being carried by a parent and instead of being docile they begin kicking and screaming in a desire to walk alone by themselves, or like a man who has peeled an orange and instead of delighting in the fruit he continues to just keep peeling since that is the only activity known. No one has told the soul how to respond to the fruit. The correct response is to taste and see the goodness of the fruit. You enjoy it. Those who are in this situation should feel comforted; they ought to persevere patiently and not be afflicted. Let them trust in God who does not fail those who seek Him with a simple and righteous heart.
Attitude required in the night of sense: pay no attention to discursive meditation, since this is not the time for it. Remain in rest and quietude even though the soul may seem to be doing nothing and wasting time, and even though the soul thinks the disinclination to think of anything is due to laxity or laziness, care not about thinking and meditating, for God will liberate the soul from the impediment and fatigue of ideas and thoughts. The soul must be content with a loving and peaceful attentiveness to God and live without the concern, the effort and desire to taste or feel Him. All these desires disquiet the soul and distract it from the peaceful quiet and sweet idleness of the contemplation which is being communicated to it. Consider how, if a model for the painting or retouching of a portrait should move because of a desire to do something, the artist would be unable to finish, and his work would be disturbed. Similarly in purgation resulting in contemplation, God is bestowing gifts, be still. The night of purgation ends with the dawn of illumination, which is the second stage and the topic of our next article.
Authorities: Scripture and tradition; see Rev. Adolphe Tanquerey, “The Spiritual Life”, pp.297-299; St. John of the Cross, “The Dark Night”, Ch. 8,9,10-14; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, “Treatise on Law”, Q 90, Art. 1-4, Pt. 1-11.
The stages of the spiritual life should be considered in conjunction with the seven levels of prayer, which division is here over simplified in order to provide a framework to build on. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC 2558 is an excellent source about prayer.
First stage of contemplation, effects a conforming to God’s will. Second stage effects a transformation into a new person, the old man dies, a new man is born.