The Dark Night of the Soul
As Jesus hangs there on the Cross the text tells us that darkness covered the land for three hours–that would be the hours of noon to 3:00 pm–the sixth to the ninth hour.
The significance of the darkness could be none other than that of judgment. The Day of the Lord had come. In Amos 8:9 we read:
“On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on all loins and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.”
The darkness that had covered the land had come. The judgment of God against that age would all be leveled upon the Son of God, utterly forsaken. As Jesus bore the pain of the cross, we hear the cry of distress in His fleshly nature with “I thirst.” But when he cries,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
we hear the cry of abandonment in His spiritual nature. Christian Mystics have long recognized the reality of both physical and spiritual deprivation in human journey toward full union with God.
The 16th Century Spanish, Roman Catholic poet and mystic St. John of the Cross wrote a poem entitled, “The Dark Night of the Soul”. From his prologue, he describes the content of the poem as“describing the method followed by the soul in its journey upon the spiritual road to the attainment of the perfect union of love with God, to the extent that is possible in this life.” The poem is divided into two books: the first book addresses the distress of the senses; the second speaks to abandonment of the spirit.
The Dark Night of physical distress has the sanctifying effect of helping the soul detach from its dependency to the world by purifying the senses from the controlling effects of pride, avarice, luxury, gluttony, anger, envy and laziness. The physical and spiritual manifestations of these are hindrances and blocks to union with the Lord. As the Scripture teaches, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God transfers the longing of the flesh and the senses to the Spirit. The thirst for earthly water is transfigured into a thirst for Living Water.
The Dark Night of spiritual abandonment has another sanctifying purpose in our lives: to liberate from the troublesome states that beguile the soul, such as depression, anxiety, grief and other forms of despondency. One way to think about it is the necessary step in early childhood of working through separation anxiety. Though a parent physically leaves a child’s presence, the child must learn to trust and be secure in the parent’s love despite the absence.
The same is true of the maturing relationship with God. The soul of fallen man must learn to trust and obey the Lord even during times of the spiritual absence of God’s presence. Times of physical distress can actually be rich times of spiritual feeling and experience. Mature faith is steadfast in times of spiritual distress—when there are no feelings of God’s presence or experience of His love.
St. John of the Cross describes the Spiritual Dark Night:
But what the sorrowful soul feels most in this condition is its clear perception, as it thinks, that God has abandoned it, and, in His abhorrence of it, has flung it into darkness; it is a grave and piteous grief for it to believe that God has forsaken it.
Jesus underwent both the physical and the spiritual Dark Night of the Soul. The experience of the sorrowful soul can drive the faithful to deeper longing and surrender in preparation for full union with the pure flame of Divine love. All dross of attachment to the “old man,” both physical and spiritual, must be burned off and refined in order that the New Creation might emerge.
It is meet, then, that the soul be first of all brought into emptiness and poverty of spirit and purged from all help, consolation and natural apprehension with respect to all things, both above and below. In this way, being empty, it is able indeed to be poor in spirit and freed from the old man, in order to live that new and blessed life which is attained by means of this night, and which is the state of union with God.
The prophet Isaiah promised the Messiah that through the spiritual suffering new light of true life would break forth from the darkness—that “out of the anguish of his soul he shall see the light of life and be satisfied.” (Isaiah 53:11) Those who would be followers of Jesus and walk in the Way of the Cross daily will find themselves in the sensual and spiritual Dark Night of the Soul. The experience of the Night is painful, excruciatingly so at times, but it produces in us its desired effect—glorious resurrection life powered by the pure love of God. St. John called it the Happy Night.
Perhaps you have been through a Dark Night of the Soul, perhaps you are in one now. The Lord works his greatest acts of redemption and renewal in the valley of the Shadow of Death. St. John described the process of Spiritual Growth through the formation of the Dark Night as a mystic ladder of Divine Love. He gives ten steps on the ladder. One might consider them as a growth process that reorients the soul of the faithful Christian as it is formed by periods of Distress and Abandonment.
Ten Steps of the Mystic Ladder of Divine Love
The first step of love causes the soul to languish, and this to its advantage.
The second step causes the soul to seek God without ceasing.
The third step of the ladder of love is that which causes the soul to work and gives it fervor so that it fails not.
The fourth step of this ladder of love is that whereby there is caused in the soul an habitual suffering because of the Beloved, yet without weariness.
The fifth step of this ladder of love makes the soul to desire and long for God impatiently.
On the sixth step the soul runs swiftly to God and touches Him again and again; and it runs without fainting by reason of its hope.
The seventh step of this ladder makes the soul to become vehement in its boldness.
The eighth step of love causes the soul to seize Him and hold Him fast without letting Him go, even as the Bride says, after this manner: ‘I found Him Whom my heart and soul love; I held Him and I will not let Him go.’
The ninth step of love makes the soul to burn with sweetness.
The tenth and last step of this secret ladder of love causes the soul to become wholly assimilated to God, by reason of the clear and immediate1vision of God which it then possesses; when, having ascended in this life to the ninth step, it goes forth from the flesh.