John of the Cross describes the doubt that disrupts a soul in the dark night, when all sense of knowing God is absent. Mirabai Starr translates from John’s classic work Dark Night of the Soul:
The deep suffering of the soul … comes not so much from the aridity she must endure but from this growing suspicion that she has lost her way. She thinks that all spiritual blessing is over and that God has abandoned her. She finds neither support nor delight in holy things. Growing weary, she struggles in vain to practice the [prayer methods] that used to yield results.
John of the Cross encourages those experiencing this dark night to trust the silence that comes when we surrender our need to speak to God using words:
This is no time for discursive meditation. Instead, the soul must surrender into peace and quietude, even if she is convinced she is doing nothing and wasting time. She might assume that this lack of desire to think about anything is a sure sign of her laziness. But simple patience and perseverance in a state of formless prayerfulness, while doing nothing, accomplishes great things.
All that is required here is to set her soul free, unencumbered, to let her take a break from ideas and knowledge, to quit troubling herself about thinking and meditating. The soul must content herself with a loving attentiveness toward God, without agitation, without effort, without the desire to taste or feel [God]. These urges only disquiet and distract the soul from the peaceful quietude and sweet ease inherent in the gift of contemplation being offered.
The soul might continue to have qualms about wasting time. She may wonder if it would not be better to be doing something else, since she cannot think or activate anything in prayer. Let her bear these doubts calmly. There is no other way to go to prayer now than to surrender to this sweet ease and breadth of spirit. If the soul tries to engage her interior faculties to accomplish something, she will squander the goodness God is instilling in her through the peace in which she is simply resting….
The best thing for the soul to do is to pay no attention to the fact that the actions of her faculties are slipping away…. She needs to get out of the way. In peaceful plentitude, let her now say “yes” to the infused contemplation God is bestowing upon her…. Contemplation is nothing other than a secret, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If given room, it will fire the soul in the spirit of love.
Reference:
John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. Mirabai Starr (Riverhead Books, 2002), 67, 68–69, 70.
Image credit and inspiration: Laura Barbato, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Italy, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Wiping the fog from the window becomes our small gesture of being in the Dark Night—an embodied “I’m here” that reaches for clarity amid unknowing, while the small, steady candle reminds us that the spirit still burns softly even when the season feels bright and our inner world does not.
Story from Our Community:
Peace comes when we let go / There’s no pretense in what we know / The hope and joy for which we long / Comes when we to God belong / Too many things can cloud the view / We should our hearts seek to renew / As we reach out in holiness / The voice of truth to impress / A grace that speaks with tenderness / Calls us to humility /Allows our hearts to be set free / Wells up inside integrity / To demonstrate true humanity / Enabling life to bless
—Colin W.
