The Dark Night of the Soul

Prayer has its seasons. After a time when it gave joy and light, it sometimes turns dry: God seems absent, the words ring hollow, the heart stays cold, and the one who prayed with delight finds himself before a wall. When this dryness settles in and lasts, it bears a name, the dark night of the soul. The word says at once the darkness the soul passes through and the work God accomplishes in it, for this night purifies.

When prayer runs dry

The truths it once meditated with fervor now leave it cold, the prayers it loved weigh on it, and it stands before God feeling nothing, no impulse, no sweetness, no light. It feels it has gone backward, done wrong, been abandoned. This trial differs from a simple bad moment, which passes with a night’s sleep or a piece of good news. The night, by contrast, resists and stretches over weeks or months, and it is its duration and its depth that make it something other than a passing mood.

Three causes to discern

Dryness can come from three sources, and the first task is to recognize which. It can come from us: sin, dissipation, and sloth cool the heart, and this slackening bears a name, lukewarmness, whose remedy is to take hold of oneself and return to God. It can come from a natural cause: fatigue, illness, worry, temperament sometimes dry up sensibility with no fault of the soul, and the remedy is rest and patience. It can come, finally, from God, who himself withdraws consolations in order to purify. Discerning the right cause avoids two opposite errors: blaming oneself for a night God sends, or growing complacent in a lukewarmness that ought to be corrected.

The signs that God is at work

Three signs allow one to recognize the night that comes from God. The first: the soul finds no relish anywhere, neither in the things of God nor in the pleasures of the world; this sets it apart from lukewarmness, which forsakes God and makes up for it with creatures. The second: the concern for God remains whole, the soul fears it has lost him, desires to serve him, suffers from being deprived of him, whereas the lukewarm stays indifferent to that loss. The third: the soul can no longer pray as before, reflect on the truths of faith and draw fervor from them, and this powerlessness, joined to the desire for God that remains, is the surest sign. Together, these three signs show that God is weaning the soul to lead it further.

What the night purifies

As long as prayer is sweet, the soul runs a quiet danger: to cling to the sweetness more than to God, to seek the pleasure it finds in praying, to rest in its own consolations. It serves God, and it loves itself in serving him. By withdrawing the felt relish, God weans it, as a mother weans her child from milk to give it more solid bread. He compels it to love him for himself, in naked faith, without the wages of pleasure. The night makes it pass from an interested love, attached to consolations, to a free love that holds to God for himself alone. The soul thinks it is going backward, and it is advancing: what it takes for a loss is a deepening.

The prophet Hosea says this movement in an image: “I will draw her to myself, lead her into the desert, and there I will speak to her heart.” Hosea 2:16 The desert is the place where the soul, stripped of every support, turns to God alone, and it is there that he wins back its heart. The dryness is this inner desert, where God deepens the thirst by withdrawing all the rest, until the soul’s desire turns to him alone: “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you, in a dry land, exhausted, without water.” Psalm 63:2

Uniting oneself to Christ in the night

Christ knew the darkness. In Gethsemane he trembled before anguish; on the cross he raised the cry of abandonment: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46, taking up the first line of Psalm 22. The Son, united to the Father beyond any possible rupture, passed all the way through the feeling of dereliction to save us. The night of the soul receives its meaning from this: it makes the soul like Christ and lets it carry a little of his cross, and the dryness becomes a place of union. The bride of the Song speaks of this search in the shadows: “On my bed, in the night, I sought him whom my heart loves; I sought him and did not find him.” Song of Songs 3:1 To keep seeking God when one no longer finds him is the purest exercise of love. The conduct then holds in few words: change nothing, persevere in prayer even when dry, wait for God in faith.

The dawn

The night prepares a dawn. The soul that has passed through the dryness loves God in peace, detached from what it feels, able to serve him for himself alone, and what seemed dead then bears a fruit deeper than that of easy fervor. Isaiah gives to the one who advances without light the only counsel that holds: “Let the one who walks in darkness, without brightness, put his trust in the name of the Lord.” Isaiah 50:10 To hold in faith without seeing is purer than to taste in consolation. The night is a road that leads to union: God withdraws his light for a time in order to give himself in place of his gifts, and the soul learns to desire him alone: “Whom have I in heaven but you? With you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart waste away: the rock of my heart and my portion is God forever.” Psalm 73:25-26