Catholic Thought discussion
Dark Night of the Soul
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Part 2, Bks 15 thru 25
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The soul still continues the metaphor and similitude of temporal night in describing this its spiritual night, and continues to sing and extol the good properties which belong to it, and which in passing through this night it found and used, to the end that it might attain its desired goal with speed and security.
Ha! So the dark night and the journey through it was a metaphor. You guys were right! I was wrong. Now he tells us in the last chapter.
I particularly liked the ten steps of the mystical ladder as presented in chapters nineteen and twenty. I wound up putting them into bullet summary.
1. The soul languishes.
2. The soul seeks God without ceasing.
3. The soul works in fervor so as to fail not.
4. The soul goes into a habitual suffering because of the beloved.
5. The soul desires and longs for God impatiently.
6. The soul runs swiftly to God and repeatedly touches Him.
7. The soul becomes vehement in its boldness of love.
8. The soul seizes God and holds Him without letting go.
9. The soul burns perfectly, sweetly in God.
10. The soul becomes holy, assimilated to God.
So a question for those who are understanding better than me. In the first step where the soul languishes, is that both the dark night of the senses and the spirit, or just one of the two?
I'll have to go back and read nineteen and twenty. In the meantime, I found this video interesting in the context of our read. The speaker, though not intentionally, is dabbling in the language of Dark Night. This book gave me a lens to see and hear these ideas. I'll be interested if you feel the same.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTcJm...
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That was touching Casey. I can't stand anything that smacks of the prosperity gospel. It's a sham. Christ told us we have crosses to bear, not bank accounts.
Manny, go back and listen to Bishop Robert Barron’s You Tube video again. He explains everything in such a natural way. “This is a poem for lovers ... ‘On a dark night, kindled in love with yearning... ‘ ““I went out without being noticed (in darkness and concealment)” because nothing matters to the young lovers except each other.
“My house being now at rest.” The house is a metaphor for the body: the body, its needs and demands are now well-ordered, quieted.
I like Bishop Barron’s explanation that the nights of the senses (touch, sight, etc.) and spirit (ideas, thoughts, sophisticated learning, etc.) are the processes by which the body and soul are quieted so that they may be open to transcendence. Life is all about the things of this world. God is beyond; therefore, union with God is a transcendent experience. Thus, we must leave behind all the things of this world. We may sacrifice the things of this world (passive night) or, if necessary, God may take away what we can’t let go of—the dream deferred, the goal not attained, the award denied—the active night.
This is both a love poem harkening back to the Song of Songs and a metaphorical treatise on the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. I am oversimplifying here, but I know how bright you and the other members of our group are, and that you will understand.
I urge everyone to listen to Barron’s You Tube video. He reads the poem in Spanish!
I am still behind in my erading, so I hope you do not mind my reflections on the earlier chapters.Before you can truly deepen your interior life of prayer and communion with God you must first purify your soul by strengthening your inner virtues, which are revealed by how you think of your neighbor, what you say about your neighbor, how you act towards your neighbor, and how eagerly you seek to forgive and overlook the shortcomings of your neighbor.
St John of the Cross does this in Dark Night of the Soul by examining the seven capital sins behind the habits we must first overcome. First we must overcome the bad habits which arise from the capital sin of pride, a pride that comes to us “through our imperfections, a certain kind of secret pride, where we are satisfied with our works and with ourselves,” where we seek to “speak of spiritual things” in the earshot of others, seeking to be teachers rather than learners, acting like the Pharisee, “praising God for our own good works and despising the Publican.” Of course, we always see that our brother is the Publican, as we can never be the Pharisee.
The devil seeks to increase the fervor of those whose spirituality is for show to impress their brother, for the devil knows that without pure motives that “these works and virtues which they perform are not only worthless, they can even become vices.” St John of the Cross that people who are so deceived sometimes seek to deceive their spiritual director, not confessing their real sins, but rather confessing sins that do not seem so bad, or sometimes even confessing their real sins to another confessor so they can make themselves look good to their spiritual director. These unfortunate souls “dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. They are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others.”
Those who seek God with a pure heart and genuine humility are not as susceptible to the deceptions of the Deceiver and more quickly progress to perfection with humility, “having little satisfaction with their own progress, considering all others as far better, usually having a holy envy of them, with an eagerness to serve God as they do.” “They rejoice when others are praised; they grieve only because they do not serve God with the same fervor.” “These souls will give their heart’s blood to anyone who serves God.”
Although the novice has vowed to follow a life of poverty, giving up all his possessions, he is still subject to the capital sin of avarice. Many seek to accumulate religious trinkets, crosses, images and rosaries that they become attached to. “Many can never have enough of listening to counsels and learning spiritual precepts, reading many spiritual books, and they spend time on all these things rather than on works of mortification and the perfecting of the inward poverty of spirit which should be theirs.”
How can I defend myself against this accusation from St John of the Cross? Certainly it is better to read spiritual books than watch television and videos. This is yet another reminder simply that we should pray more and pray that our spiritual readings will truly improve our soul.
Many laymen will find the advice St John the Cross offers on best friends to be especially memorable. This is found in his teachings on how the spiritual life can be hindered by the capital sin of luxury. These spiritual luxuries are those sensual delights and remembrances that hinder our prayer life and our spiritual life. These include the sensual thoughts that creep into our minds to distract us when we attempt to pray deeply to our God in earnestness.
What does St John of the Cross mean when says that sometimes the “pleasure which human nature takes in spiritual things” can be a spiritual luxury hindering our spiritual growth?
By analogy, when we fall in love, when we seek to marry, do we seek someone who will make us happy? But if our marriage is both happy and successful, each spouse must first seek to be kind to the other, each putting the other’s needs first, each seeing the marriage as a monastic calling.
Does St John of the Cross teach us that the same is true in our spiritual lives, that our spiritual life will be like seed sown among the thorns if we only pray to God to solve our problems and ensure our success? Or that our spiritual life will be shallow if we pray to God that we be happy and content and not be tested, so we can enjoy the “pleasure which human nature takes in spiritual things?”
We need to choose our close friends with care, lest they be a spiritual luxury that clouds our soul and hinders our spiritual life. “When our friendship is purely spiritual, the Love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the Love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God.” But a sensual friendship decreases in us our Love of God and obstructs our spiritual progress. “If that sensual love grows, the soul’s love of God will grow colder, and will forget God as it remembers the sensual love.”
When we draw an analogy to our lives as laymen, and specifically to our lives of love and marriage, we should only welcome the love that is both sensual and spiritual, we should only welcome this only if our love for our spouse increases in our heart our Love for God. We need to ask ourselves: Do we bring out the best in each other? Or, do we bring out the worst in each other? Our marriage is a monastic calling, our marriage should be for our children. The prospective bride should ask herself the key question, Will he be a good father? Will he be good with our children?
There are not many truly happy marriages in the Old Testament, but we do have one example of a marriage that is truly happy according to earthly standards, but was a marriage that ended in tragedy and death, a marriage that was cursed by God because their love for each other did not increase in them their Love of God. This was the marriage between King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, we can infer they were truly in love as theirs was one of he few monogamous marriages in the Old Testament, and we read she showed genuine concern for his troubles.
One day Ahab “lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat.” His wife Jezebel came to him and said, “Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?” He said to her, “Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it’; but he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” His wife Jezebel said to him, “Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”
The evil Jezebel then framed Naboth on a false charge of blasphemy and had him stoned to death so her Ahab would be happy once more. For that sin Elijah proclaimed a curse that the wild dogs would devour her, and Ahab also met an early death.
St John of the Cross teaches us that the capital sin of wrath “happens when we become irritated at the sins of others, and keep watch on them with uneasy zeal,” this tempts us to see the faults of others but ignore our own faults. We see this in an early story of two brothers who lived a monastic existence with few possessions, who lived their lives solely for the favor the Lord showed them for their offerings. Cain was angry when the Lord showed no favor for his offering, and in response to his anger and impatience the Lord asked Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”St John of the Cross teaches the novice to be wary of the capital sin of spiritual gluttony. In a monastery each monk is assigned a spiritual director who directs him in his penitential and spiritual exercises, his prayer life, so it is sufficient but not excessive. But many monks, “lured by the sweetness and pleasure which they find in such spiritual exercises, strive more after spiritual sweetness than after spiritual purity and discretion.” The spiritual gluttony of some “continually go to extremes,” ignoring moderation, “killing themselves with penances, weakening themselves with fasts, performing more than their frailty can bear, without the order or advice” of their spiritual director.
St John of the Cross warns us that we should not strive with great effort for “prayer that consists of only experiencing sensible pleasures and devotion,” that we should not “think that we have accomplished nothing, lest we lose true devotion and spirituality, which can be gained only with perseverance, patience, and humility,” seeking only to please God. Likewise, many laymen pray to God with a list of requests, that they spare their life from trials and tribulations, and to spare them and their family from suffering and death, and then they often become angry when they think God is ignoring their prayers and requests, wondering if there really is a God. May we realize that prayer is its own reward, that the best prayer is when we pray for the strength to endure our trials and temptations, that we may live a godly life, and that today we may live a life without sin.
Most laymen, out of practicality, do not have a spiritual director to closely monitor the extent of their daily devotions, and indeed it may not be healthy to have a spiritual director giving advice blindly to laymen without being aware of the daily spiritual rhythms of their inner life. But in the spirit of this teaching, laymen should seek to develop a relationship with a confessor who can more effectively guide them in their spiritual life. We should also choose our priest and confessor with care, so we would be sufficiently trusting in their spiritual direct that we would follow the advice they offer when we consult with them any the major life decisions we may be facing, even when their advice we may find hard to follow.
St John of the Cross warns us against the bad habit of the last in the list of capital sins, spiritual envy and sloth. Envy is the gateway sin of impure thoughts that leads to all other mortal sins like anger, murder, theft, and adultery. When we fall to the sin of spiritual envy, “we prefer not to hear others praised, we become displeased at other’s virtues” and sometimes beat down their praises, “contrary to the spirit charity, which, as St Paul states, rejoices in goodness. And, if charity has any envy, it is a holy envy, grieving us when we do not have the virtue of others, but also see joy in the virtue of others, and we delight when others surpass us in the service of God.”
We are guilty of spiritual sloth when we “fail to find in prayer the satisfaction which our taste requires,” we abandon prayer and the “way of perfection, seeking instead the pleasure and sweetness of our own will. We pray rather that we persist in prayer without making any demands of God, not demanding that any sweet feelings flow during prayer. St John of the Cross warns us that we should not “find it irksome when we are commanded to do that which gives us no pleasure,” rather, “we should have the fortitude to bear the trials of perfection.” We should not be like those “who are softly nurtured and who run fretfully away from everything that is hard, and take offense at the Cross, in which they can find the delights of the spirit.”
I do not know if anyone is monitoring the discussion, but anyway, here this post is:What is the Dark Night of the Soul? The meaning of this phrase evolves as our spiritual struggles progress and we are purged of our imperfections, our progress in our Love of God spiritual life can never be separated from our progress in increasing our love for our neighbor. We can never be ready for a life of prayer until we habitually live “by the practice of earnest striving in the virtues,” as this does not have in a weekend Jesuit retreat or two, but, as St John of the Cross warns, takes many years, and never really ends.
St John of the Cross constantly refers to struggles of Job in the Dark Night of the Soul. Job is the devout layman, Job is like us, Job is earning his living in the world with a wife and many children. Jobs spiritual struggles begin with his earthly struggles when, in one day, marauders steal all he owns, and then a fierce storm demolishes his home, killing all his children. Job refuses to follow the advice of his wife, who tells him he should curse God and die, but rather praises God, praying that from dust I came and to dust will I return, I will praise the Lord. But when the Lord permits the Accuser to touch his skin so painful boils would fester, Job sits on an ash-heap to scrape his boils and cry out, Why me, Lord? Why these afflictions?
We increase our love for our neighbor by combating the capital sins in our spiritual lives, the sins of spiritual pride, avarice, spiritual luxury, wrath spiritual gluttony, and spiritual envy and sloth. For all of these sins “God leads into the dark night those whom He desires to purify from all these imperfections so that He may bring them father onward.”
Why does St John of the Cross mean when he says that God only leads into the Dark Night those “whom he desires to purify?” Perhaps God can only purify those who truly desire purification in their heart, perhaps St John of the Cross is suggesting that God purifies our heart not on our timetable, but on His timetable.
When St John of the Cross suggests that though the soul should labor to purge and perfect itself from the sin of spiritual avarice, the soul should make this effort so it can “merit being taken by God into the Divine car wherein it becomes healed of all things that it was unable to cure on its own.”
Regarding spiritual luxury, the dark night purifies the love we have for our close friends, those friendships who increase in our hearts our Love of God are increase, but those friendships that starve our Love of God are diminished.
Those who are prone to the spiritual sin of wrath often show an impatience with their imperfections that is not humility, but those who are spiritually meekness show patience. Those are prone to the spiritual sins of gluttony sometimes think that the “multitude and pleasantness” of their devotions make them more pleasing to God. He concludes his discussion of the sins of envy and spiritual sloth that in the dark night “weans us from the breasts of sweetnesses and pleasures, giving us pure aridities and inward darkness,” compelling us to “win the virtues.”
Does St John of the Cross compare the aridities of the spiritual journey to the aridities of the Spanish plains with hot, dry summers relieved by mild, raining winters? We know many marriages fail because we want our spouses to somehow make us happy, and we expect our marriage to be an eternal courtship. Perhaps St John of the Cross is warning us that this is an analogy in our spiritual life, that we should not expect Jesus to make us happy either, that our spiritual life will not be all sweetness and pleasure, that we should expect aridities and spiritual darkness.
Or maybe this aridity and darkness comes because we so ardently “thirst for the Living God,” as the Psalms proclaim, when “the yearnings for God become so great in the soul that the very bones seem to dry up from this thirst,” “and their warmth and strength perish through the intensity of the thirst for the Love of God, for the soul feels that this thirst of love is a living thirst.
Once we have, after many trials, loosened the grip of the capital sins on our soul, then St John of the Cross says in Book 2, Chapter V that we experience the “dark night as an inflowing of God into the soul, which purges it from its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural and spiritual,” “a mystical theology. Herein god secretly teaches the soul and instructs it I perfection of love, without its doing anything.” “By purging and illuminating the soul, the Almighty prepares it for the union of Love with God.”
St John of the Cross asks, “Why is the Divine Light here called by the soul a dark night?” “There are two reasons why Divine wisdom is not only night and darkness for the soul, but is likewise affliction and torment. The first is because of the height of the Divine Wisdom, which transcends the talent of the soul, and in this way is darkness to it; the second, because of its vileness and impurity,” which causes pain “and is also dark.
“When the Divine light of contemplation assails the soul which is not yet wholly enlightened,” it overwhelms it with spiritual darkness, but not darkness as we experience darkness. St John of the Cross here say St Dionysus calls this “infused contemplation a ray of darkness.”
St Dionysus, referred to scholars as Pseudo-Dionysus, asks this questions in the beginning of his work on Mystical Theology, What is the Divine Darkness? His response begins opens with a beautiful poem on the Trinity, a poem that speculates on the spiritual beauty of our God whose by his very nature reaches down to us, enabling us to reach up to Him:
“Trinity! Higher than any being, any divinity, and goodnesss!
Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven!
Lead us up beyond unknowing and light,
up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic Scripture,
where the mysteries of God’s Word
lie simple, absolute and unchangeable
in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.
Amid the deepest shadow
they pour overwhelming light
on what is most manifest.
Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen
they completely fil our sightless minds
with treasures beyond all beauty.”
Is St Dionysus describing this darkness as a Divine Light that shines so bright that it blinds our sensual love, brightening our spiritual love? St Dionysus tells us, “the more we take light upward towards God, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.” St John of the Cross discusses how “the brighter and purer is the supernatural and Divine light, the more it darkens the soul,” (Book 2, Chapter 8) a darkness that increases the awe in our souls for the beauty and Love of our Almighty God.
The “brilliant darkness of a hidden silence” described by St Dionysus reminds us how Moses sought to see the face of God, but God responded that no one sees the face of God and lives, so God shields Moses with His hand while He passes by, allowing Moses to only see His back. Also, when God appears to Elijah, God does not appear in the whirlwind, or the earthquake, or the great fire, but God appears to Elijah in the still small voice.
Thanks so much, Bruce. I really admire your dedication. In his You Tube video Bishop Robert Barron mentions that Pope John Paul II as a doctoral student wrote a dissertation on John of the Cross (now, sadly, out of print). We can, however, read some of his thoughts in a letter he wrote. If you want to look for it, this is where I found it: Insight Scoop, The Ignatius Press Blog, Pope John Paul II, “The dark night of faith and the silence of God.”
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I'm tracking! Very good comments Bruce. Normally I'm more active in discussions but I have to admit I found Dark Night a difficult read. I think I get the overall gist of the work but I can't say that any given paragraph I get what St. John is after. It always feels like I'm not fully connected, and so I'm reluctant to say much on this book.
Yes, it is interesting that purgation for St. John is a darkness. Normally we think of purgation as a fire, and fire implies light. But not so here. The only light is the light of Christ which lights up the dark.
The ten steps of a ladder that St. John speaks of seems analogous to St. Teresa of Avila's rooms of the interior castle. I think she had eight rooms if I remember correctly, but it's been some time since I read it. I wonder if they exchanged thoughts at some point. I understood St. Teresa's work much better than this one. Personally I think she's a better writer.
One of original monastic works which I would suggest for future reading is the Ladder of Divine Ascent by St John Climacus, forerunner to St John Cassian, who passed on the monastic tradition to Gaul, France today, and eventually to St Benedict.
Awesome commentary, Bruce, and I too found this work difficult. Both Bishop Barron's video and your commentary have gone to considerable lengths in helping me appreciate this deceptively simple poem! I don't think I could add much except that I see now a structural kinship with Dante's Divine Comedy in describing the soul's progress in a journey towards perfection. And another one of those works a reader can return to again and again and always find new insight.
Bishop Barron, in his You Tube video, asks, "How many people write a poem and then add a 200 page treatise explaining it -- as if T.S.Eliot wrote The Wasteland" and then a 500 page commentary to accompany it. Who does that?"
"It fell to John of the Cross to live in historical circumstances that offered him rich possibilities which spurred the full development of his faith. During his lifetime (1542-1591), an intense and creative religious age begins in Spain, Europe, and America. It is the age of the evangelical expansion of the Catholic Reform. . . The Church holds a great Council to teach and reform, the Council of Trent. She evangelizes a new continent, America. She invigorates the Christian roots of an old world, Europe."These situations and events mark out the context in which the life of John of the Cross unfolds. He spends his childhood and youth in extreme poverty and has to make his way by working with his hands. . . He follows a Carmelite calling and receives a higher education in the halls of the University of Salamanca. Immediately after a providential meeting with Teresa of Jesus, he embraces the Reform of Carmel and begins a new life. . . The first male Discalced Carmelite, he shares the ups and downs of his religious family as it comes to birth. Imprisonment in Toledo, his apostolate in the monasteries of nuns, and his work as Superior weather him. His mature personality emerges in a lyric out pouring of poetry, in his written commentaries, in his simple conventual life, and in his itinerant apostolate.
"This rich experience enables him to face the state of the Church of his time with an open attitude. He is aware of what is taking place. In his writings he alludes to heresies and errors. At the end of his life he offers to go to Mexico to preach the Gospel. He is preparing to do this when sickness and death cut him short.
"John shows us that the Christian can find complete fulfillment in the contemplative life. The contemplative does not limit himself to spending long stretches in prayer. As a youth, John learned to nurse the sick and lay bricks and stones and to work in the orchard and adorn the church. As an adult, he discharges responsibilities in government and formation. He goes on long journeys by foot in order to assist the Discalced Carmelite nuns. His attitude may be summed up by a basic conviction: It is God and God alone that gives meaning to every activity, 'For where God is unknown, nothing is known.'
"John of the Cross has educated generations of faithful in contemplative prayer which he calls 'knowledge or loving awareness' of God. . . He would have us always pray with a gaze of faith and contemplative love: in our liturgical celebrations, in our loving attentiveness to God's word, in our prayerful communion mediated by sacred images and our rapt silence as we regard 'the woods and thickets planted by the hand of my Beloved.' In all of these, he educates the soul for a simplified kind of interior union with Christ.
"John of the Cross appeals today to many believers and non-believers because he describes the dark night as an experience which is typically human and Christian. Our age has known times of anguish which has made us understand this expression better and which have given it a kind of collective character. Our age speaks of the silence or absence of God. It has known so many calamities, so much suffering inflicted by wars and by the destruction of so many innocent beings. The term dark night is now used of all of life and not just one phase of the spiritual journey. The Saint's doctrine is now invoked in response to the unfathomable mystery of human suffering. . . He does not try to give to the problem of suffering an answer in the speculative order, but in the light of the Scripture and of experience he discovers and sifts out something of the marvelous transformation which God effects in the darkness. . . The feeling that God is silent or absent is an almost spontaneous reaction to the problem of human suffering. The Doctor of the dark night finds in this experience the loving hand of the Divine Teacher. He is silent and hides himself because he has already spoken and manifested himself with sufficient clarity. Even the experience of his absence can communicate love to one who humbly opens himself to God. . ."
(Address given in Rome on the feast of St. John of the Cross December 14, 1990 by Pope John Paul II.)
Frances said "Who does that?" My thoughts exactly.My profs, especially in lit crit classes, and all creative writing coaches, warned us against taking the poet's word for what he or she meant by all that figurative language. Often the poet or fiction writer (or almost any writer of anything) is most often unaware of the meaning a close reader may derive from his or her work.
I just want to say a big thank you to everyone for their comments, thoughts, and explanations about St. John and 'Dark Night' and for suggestions of additional tools for deeper understanding. It's all been a tremendous help to me. This was a tough read for me - and a lesson in humility because I'm usually able to grasp things quickly. Not so this time. Glad I persevered, though.
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No one but St. John of the Cross...lol. I'm actually more confused from the two works than if I had read each without being aware of the other.
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Me too! When I told my friend that I quoted in one of these discussions on the book that I had a hard time understanding she was taken aback. I don't know why but this book does not seem like it communicates well to me. The concepts are not all that hard. It's the way St. John expounds on them.
In John Paul II’s letter (above) one sentence stood out as a possible source of contemporary confusion: “The term dark night is now used of all of life and not just one phase of the spiritual journey.” St. John of the Cross, however, wasn’t attempting to address the problem of human suffering.
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That disconnect between the common notion that has developed of "dark night of the soul" and what St. John really means hindered me from a greater understanding of the book. I need to be dispelled of that notion before I could understand.
John 15:1-2:“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit."
That's really what this was all about, right? The dark nights are just prune jobs. It seems harsh, it seems drastic. Cut down to nothing. But when it comes back it's better and stronger than it was before.
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Chapter 15: Expounds on the poem’s second stanza.
Chapter 16: Describes how the soul, though in darkness, makes progress.
Chapter 17: Explains how the how the dark contemplation leads to secret wisdom.
Chapter 18: Explains how this secret wisdom is actually a ladder of mystical steps.
Chapter 19: Describes the first five steps of the mystical ladder.
Chapter 20: Describes the second five steps of the mystical ladder.
Chapter 21: Explains why the soul is disguised during its mystical journey.
Chapter 22: Explains the third line of the second stanza.
Chapter 23: Explains the fourth line of the second stanza and the soul’s concealment.
Chapter 24: Explains how the soul reaches a state of rest.
Chapter 25 Expounds on the poem’s third stanza.