The Security of Darkness
Today's Lenten reading comes from St. John of the Cross' spiritual classic, The Dark Night. As an aside, by default I consistently now type that as The Dark Knight, and then have to fix it. In this passage he is commenting on the line, "In darkness and secure," from the poem that provides the setting for his treatise. In St. John's spiritual vision, he recognizes two dark nights, each with two forms (active and passive), through which a soul must advance. The first night is the night of the senses, through which the appetites of the soul are mortified and the soul grows in perfect detachment. The second night is the night of the spirit, through which even the interior part of the soul finds itself in darkness, so that God may perfectly communicate Himself to the soul. This is not an easy thing for Christians to accept, because we often want to believe that to the faithful soul God's presence will always be intimately and immediately perceived. In reality, this dark night becomes necessary because the means by which we ordinarily perceive God are simply insufficient for his perfect, self-same communication, as the finite is incapable of receiving the infinite. In this passage he is commenting on the latter night. Understand that this night to which he is referring is an experience of those who are very advanced in the spiritual life, very advanced in contemplation, and so it is going to appear perhaps even repulsive to many of us. However, I share it here because there are many who are indeed advanced in the spiritual life and turn away when they begin to experience this night, because they do not recognize what God is doing in them. I hope this can be of some help:
1. We already said that the darkness the soul mentions here relates to the sensory, the interior, and the spiritual appetites and faculties, because this night darkens their natural light so that through the purgation of this light they may be illumined supernaturally. It puts the sensory and spiritual appetites to sleep, deadens them, and deprives them of the ability to find pleasure in anything. It binds the imagination and impedes it from doing any good discursive work [i.e. meditation]. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become dark and unable to understand anything, and hence it causes the will also to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty and useless. And over all this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud that afflicts the soul and keeps it withdrawn from God. As a result the soul asserts that in darkness it walks securely.
2. The reason for this security has been clearly explained. Usually a soul never strays except through the appetites, its gratifications, or its discursive meditation, or through its knowledge or affections. By these, people usually fail through excess or defect, or they change because of them or go astray, or experience inordinate inclinations. Once all these operations and movements are impeded, individuals are obviously freed from error in them, because they are not only liberated from themselves but also from their other enemies, the world and the devil. The world and the devil have no other means of warring against the soul when its affections and operations are deadened.
3. In the measure that the soul walks in darkness and emptiness in its natural operations, it walks securely. As the prophet says, the soul's perdition comes only from itself (from its senses and interior and sensory appetites); and its good, says God, comes only from me [Hos. 13:9]. Since the soul's evils are thus impeded, only the goods of union with God are imparted to the appetites and faculties; these appetites and faculties become divine and heavenly in this union. If they observe closely at the time of these darknesses, individuals will see clearly how little the appetites and faculties are distracted with useless and harmful things and how secure they are from vainglory, from pride and presumption, from an empty and false joy, and from many other evils. By walking in darkness the soul not only avoids going astray but advances rapidly, because it thus gains the virtues.
4. A question immediately arises here: Since the things of God in themselves produce good in the soul, are beneficial, and give assurance, why does God in this night darken the appetites and faculties so that these derive no satisfaction in such good things and find it difficult to be occupied in them - in some ways even more difficult than to be occupied with other things? The answer is that at this time there should be no activity or satisfaction relative to spiritual objects, because the soul's faculties and appetites are impure, lowly, and very natural. And even were God to give these faculties the activity and delight of supernatural, divine things, they would be unable to receive them except in their own way, basely and naturally. As the Philosopher says, Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.
Since these natural faculties do not have the purity, strength, or capacity to receive and taste supernatural things in a supernatural or divine mode, but only according to their own mode, which is human and lowly, as we said, these faculties must also be darkened regarding the divine, so that weaned, purged, and annihilated in their natural way they might lose the human mode of receiving and working. Thus all these faculties and appetites of the soul are tempered and prepared for the sublime reception, experience, and savor of the divine and supernatural, which cannot be received until the old self dies.
The Dark Night, 2.16.1-4