An explanation of the stanzas describing a soul's conduct along the
spiritual road that leads to the perfect union with God through love,
insofar as it is attainable in this life. A description also of the
characteristics of one who has reached this perfection.
PROLOGUE FOR THE READER
P. In this book we will first cite the entire poem, then each stanza will
be repeated separately and explained, and finally we will do the same thing
with the individual verses.
P.(2). The first two stanzas describe the effects of the two kinds of
spiritual purgation that take place in a person: one, a purification of the
sensory part; the other, a purification of the spiritual part. The
remaining six stanzas speak of some of the marvelous results obtained from
spiritual illumination and union with God through love.
STANZAS OF THE SOUL
1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
-- him I knew so well --
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
P.(3). Beginning of the explanation of the stanzas that deal with the way a
soul must conduct itself along the road leading to union with God through
love, by Padre Fray John of the Cross.
P.(4). Before embarking on an explanation of these stanzas, we should
remember that the soul recites them when it has already reached the state
of perfection -- that is, union with God through love -- and has now passed
through severe trials and conflicts by means of the spiritual exercise that
leads one along the constricted way to eternal life, of which our Savior
speaks in the Gospel [Mt. 7:14]. The soul must ordinarily walk this path to
reach that sublime and joyous union with God. Recognizing the narrowness of
the path and the fact that so very few tread it -- as the Lord himself says
[Mt. 7:14] -- the soul's song in this first stanza is one of happiness in
having advanced along it to this perfection of love. Appropriately, this
constricted road is called a dark night, as we shall explain in later
verses of this stanza. The soul, therefore, happy at having trod this
narrow road from which it derived so much good, speaks in this manner:
BOOK ONE [A treatise on the night of the senses]
One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
[Explanation]
E.1. In this first stanza, the soul speaks of the way it followed in its
departure from love of both self and all things. Through a method of true
mortification, it died to all these things and to itself. It did this so as
to reach the sweet and delightful life of love with God. And it declares
that this departure was a dark night. As we will explain later,1 this dark
night signifies here purgative contemplation, which passively causes in the
soul this negation of self and of all things.
E.2. The soul states that it was able to make this escape because of the
strength and warmth gained from loving its Bridegroom in this obscure
contemplation. It emphasizes its good fortune in having journeyed to God
through this dark night. So great was the soul's success that none of the
three enemies (the world, the devil, and the flesh, which are always in
opposition to the journey along this road) could impede it, for that night
of purifying contemplation lulled to sleep and deadened all the inordinate
movements of the passions and appetites in the house of sense. The verse
then states:
One dark night,
CHAPTER 1
1. Quotes the first verse and begins to discuss the imperfections of
beginners.
1.1. Souls begin to enter this dark night when God, gradually drawing them
out of the state of beginners (those who practice meditation on the
spiritual road), begins to place them in the state of proficients (those
who are already contemplatives), so that by passing through this state they
might reach that of the perfect, which is the divine union of the soul with
God.
1.1.(2). We should first mention here some characteristics of beginners,
for the sake of a better explanation and understanding of the nature of
this night and of God's motive for placing the soul in it. Although our
treatment of these things will be as brief as possible, it will help
beginners understand the feebleness of their state and take courage and
desire that God place them in this night where the soul is strengthened in
virtue and fortified for the inestimable delights of the love of God. And,
although we will be delayed for a moment, it will be for no longer than our
discussion of this dark night requires.
1.2. It should be known, then, that God nurtures and caresses the soul,
after it has been resolutely converted to his service, like a loving mother
who warms her child with the heat of her bosom, nurses it with good milk
and tender food, and carries and caresses it in her arms. But as the child
grows older, the mother withholds her caresses and hides her tender love;
she rubs bitter aloes on her sweet breast and sets the child down from her
arms, letting it walk on its own feet so that it may put aside the habits
of childhood and grow accustomed to greater and more important things. The
grace of God acts just as a loving mother by re-engendering in the soul new
enthusiasm and fervor in the service of God. With no effort on the soul's
part, this grace causes it to taste sweet and delectable milk and to
experience intense satisfaction in the performance of spiritual exercises,
because God is handing the breast of his tender love to the soul, just as
if it were a delicate child [1 Pt. 2:2-3].1
1.3. The soul finds its joy, therefore, in spending lengthy periods at
prayer, perhaps even entire nights; its penances are pleasures; its fasts,
happiness; and the sacraments and spiritual conversations are its
consolations. Although spiritual persons do practice these exercises with
great profit and persistence, and are very careful about them, spiritually
speaking, they conduct themselves in a very weak and imperfect manner.
Since their motivation in their spiritual works and exercises is the
consolation and satisfaction they experience in them, and since they have
not been conditioned by the arduous struggle of practicing virtue, they
possess many faults and imperfections in the discharge of their spiritual
activities. Assuredly, since everyone's actions are in direct conformity
with the habit of perfection that has been acquired, and since these
persons have not had time to acquire those firm habits, their work must of
necessity be feeble, like that of weak children.
1.3.(2). For a clearer understanding of this and of how truly imperfect
beginners are, insofar as they practice virtue readily because of the
satisfaction attached to it, we will describe, using the seven capital
vices as our basis, some of the numerous imperfections beginners commit.
Thus we will clearly see how very similar their deeds are to those of
children. The benefits of the dark night will become evident, since it
cleanses and purifies the soul of all these imperfections.
CHAPTER 2
2. Some of the imperfections of pride possessed by beginners.
2.1. These beginners feel so fervent and diligent in their spiritual
exercises and undertakings that a certain kind of secret pride is generated
in them that begets a complacency with themselves and their
accomplishments, even though holy works do of their very nature cause
humility. Then they develop a somewhat vain -- at times very vain -- desire
to speak of spiritual things in others' presence, and sometimes even to
instruct rather than be instructed; in their hearts they condemn others who
do not seem to have the kind of devotion they would like them to have, and
sometimes they give expression to this criticism like the pharisee who
despised the publican while he boasted and praised God for the good deeds
he himself accomplished [Lk. 18:11-12].1
2.2. The devil, desiring the growth of pride and presumption in these
beginners, often increases their fervor and readiness to perform such
works, and other ones, too. For he is quite aware that all these works and
virtues are not only worthless for them, but even become vices. Some of
these persons become so evil-minded that they do not want anyone except
themselves to appear holy; and so by both word and deed they condemn and
detract others whenever the occasion arises, seeing the little splinter in
their brother's eye and failing to consider the wooden beam in their own
eye [Mt. 7:3]; they strain at the other's gnat and swallow their own camel
[Mt. 23:24].
2.3. And when at times their spiritual directors, their confessors, or
their superiors disapprove their spirit and method of procedure, they feel
that these directors do not understand, or perhaps that this failure to
approve derives from a lack of holiness, since they want these directors to
regard their conduct with esteem and praise. So they quickly search for
some other spiritual advisor more to their liking, someone who will
congratulate them and be impressed by their deeds; and they flee, as they
would death, those who attempt to place them on the safe road by forbidding
these things -- and sometimes they even become hostile toward such
spiritual directors. Frequently, in their presumption, they make many
resolutions but accomplish very little. Sometimes they want others to
recognize their spirit and devotion, and as a result occasionally contrive
to make some manifestations of it, such as movements, sighs, and other
ceremonies; sometimes, with the assistance of the devil, they experience
raptures, more often in public than in private, and they are quite pleased,
and often eager, for others to take notice of these.
2.4. Many want to be the favorites of their confessors, and thus they are
consumed by a thousand envies and disquietudes. Embarrassment forbids them
from relating their sins clearly, lest their reputation diminish in their
confessor's eyes. They confess their sins in the most favorable light so as
to appear better than they actually are, and thus they approach the
confessional to excuse themselves rather than accuse themselves. Sometimes
they confess the evil things they do to a different confessor so that their
own confessor might think they commit no sins at all. Therefore, in their
desire to appear holy, they enjoy relating their good behavior to their
confessor, and in such careful terms that these good deeds appear greater
than they actually are. It would be more humble of them, as we will point
out later,2 to make light of the good they do and to wish that no one,
neither their confessor nor anybody else, should consider it of any
importance at all.
2.5. Sometimes they minimize their faults, and at other times they become
discouraged by them, since they felt they were already saints, and they
become impatient and angry with themselves, which is yet another fault.
2.5.(2). They are often extremely anxious that God remove their faults and
imperfections, but their motive is personal peace rather than God. They
fail to realize that were God to remove their faults they might very well
become more proud and presumptuous.
2.5.(3). They dislike praising anyone else, but they love to receive
praise, and sometimes they even seek it. In this they resemble the foolish
virgins who had to seek oil from others when their own lamps were
extinguished [Mt. 25:8].
2.6. The number of these imperfections is serious in some people and causes
them a good deal of harm. Some have fewer, some have more, and yet others
have little more than the first movements toward them. But there are
scarcely any beginners who at the time of their initial fervor do not fall
victim to some of these imperfections.
2.6.(2). But souls who are advancing in perfection at this time act in an
entirely different manner and with a different quality of spirit. They
receive great benefit from their humility, by which they not only place
little importance on their deeds, but also take very little self-
satisfaction from them. They think everyone else is far better than they
are, and usually possess a holy envy of them and would like to emulate
their service of God. Since they are truly humble, their growing fervor and
the increased number of their good deeds and the gratification they receive
from them only cause them to become more aware of their debt to God and the
inadequacy of their service to him, and thus the more they do, the less
satisfaction they derive from it. Their charity and love makes them want to
do so much for God that what they actually do accomplish seems as nothing.
This loving solicitude goads them, preoccupies them, and absorbs them to
such an extent that they never notice what others do or do not accomplish,
but if they should, they then think, as I say, that everyone is better than
they. They think they themselves are insignificant, and want others to
think this also and to belittle and slight their deeds. Moreover, even
though others do praise and value their works, these souls are unable to
believe them; such praises seem strange to them.
2.7. These souls humbly and tranquilly long to be taught by anyone who
might be a help to them. This desire is the exact opposite of that other
desire we mentioned above, of those who want to be themselves the teachers
in everything. When these others notice that someone is trying to give them
some instruction, they themselves take the words from their very mouths as
though they already know everything.
2.7.(2). Yet these humble souls, far from desiring to be anyone's teacher,
are ready to take a road different from the one they are following, if told
to do so. For they do not believe they could ever be right themselves. They
rejoice when others receive praise, and their only sorrow is that they do
not serve God as these others do. Because they consider their deeds
insignificant, they do not want to make them known. They are even ashamed
to speak of them to their spiritual directors because they think these
deeds are not worth mentioning. They are more eager to speak of their
faults and sins, and reveal these to others, than of their virtues. They
have an inclination to seek direction from one who will have less esteem
for their spirit and deeds. Such is the characteristic of a pure and simple
and true spirit, one very pleasing to God. Since the wise Spirit of God
dwells within these humble souls, he moves them to keep these treasures
hidden, and to manifest only their faults. God gives this grace to the
humble, together with the other virtues, just as he denies it to the proud.
2.8. These souls would give their life's blood to anyone who serves God,
and they will do whatever they can to help others serve him. When they see
themselves fall into imperfections, they suffer this with humility, with
docility of spirit, and with loving fear of God and hope in him.
2.8.(2). Yet I believe very few souls are so perfect in the beginning. We
would be happy enough if they managed not to fall into these imperfections
of pride. As we will point out later, then, God places these souls in the
dark night so as to purify them of these imperfections and make them
advance.
CHAPTER 3
3. Some imperfections of spiritual avarice commonly found in beginners.
3.1. Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They
hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become
unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in
spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning
spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend
more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection
of the interior poverty to which they are obliged.
3.1.(2). Furthermore, they weigh themselves down with overdecorated images
and rosaries. They now put these down, now take up others; at one moment
they are exchanging, and at the next re-exchanging. Now they want this
kind, now they want another. And they prefer one cross to another because
of its elaborateness. Others you see who are decked out in agnusdeis and
relics and lists of saints' names, like children in trinkets.1
3.1.(3). What I condemn in this is possessiveness of heart and attachment
to the number, workmanship, and overdecoration of these objects. For this
attachment is contrary to poverty of spirit, which is intent only on the
substance of the devotion, benefits by no more than what procures this
sufficiently, and tires of all other multiplicity and elaborate
ornamentation. Since true devotion comes from the heart and looks only to
the truth and substance represented by spiritual objects, and since
everything else is imperfect attachment and possessiveness, any appetite
for these things must be uprooted if some degree of perfection is to be
reached.
3.2. I knew a person who for more than ten years profited by a cross
roughly made out of a blessed palm and held together by a pin twisted
around it. That person carried it about and never would part with it until
I took it -- and the person was not someone of poor judgment or little
intelligence. I saw someone else who prayed with beads made out of bones
from the spine of a fish. Certainly, the devotion was not for this reason
less precious in the sight of God.2 In neither of these two instances,
obviously, did these persons base their devotion on the workmanship and
value of a spiritual object.
3.2.(2). They, therefore, who are well guided from the outset do not become
attached to visible instruments or burden themselves with them. They do not
care to know any more than is necessary to accomplish good works, because
their eyes are fixed only on God, on being his friend and pleasing him;
this is what they long for. They very generously give all they have. Their
pleasure is to know how to live for love of God or neighbor without these
spiritual or temporal things. As I say, they set their eyes on the
substance of interior perfection, on pleasing God and not themselves.
3.3. Yet until a soul is placed by God in the passive purgation of that
dark night, which we will soon explain, it cannot purify itself completely
of these imperfections or others. But people should insofar as possible
strive to do their part in purifying and perfecting themselves and thereby
merit God's divine cure. In this cure God will heal them of what through
their own efforts they were unable to remedy. No matter how much
individuals do through their own efforts, they cannot actively purify
themselves enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine union
of the perfection of love. God must take over and purge them in that fire
that is dark for them, as we will explain.
CHAPTER 4
4. The imperfections of lust, the third capital vice, usually found in
beginners.
4.1. A number of these beginners have many more imperfections in each vice
than those I am mentioning. But to avoid prolixity, I am omitting them and
touching on some principal ones that are as it were the origin of the
others.
4.1.(2). As for the vice of lust -- aside from what it means for spiritual
persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the
imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night --
spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called
spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds
from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual
exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure
movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even
sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the
sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from
any of three causes outside one's control.1
4.2. First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in
spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the
soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences
delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the
superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and
the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because
it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is
nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while
a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively
experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not
without its own great displeasure.
4.2.(2). This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul
receives joy and gladness in this act of love -- for the Lord grants the
grace and gives himself for this reason -- the sensory part also takes its
share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts
form one suppositum, each one usually shares according to its mode in what
the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is
received according to the mode of the receiver.2 Because in the initial
stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part
of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this
sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed
through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these
infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory
part, receives God's spirit, and the soul thus receives everything
according to the mode of the spirit.
4.3. The second origin of these rebellions is the devil. To bring
disquietude and disturbance on a soul when it is praying, or trying to
pray, he endeavors to excite impure feelings in the sensory part. And if
people pay any attention to these, the devil does them great harm. Through
fear, some souls grow slack in their prayer -- which is what the devil
wants -- in order to struggle against these movements, and others give it
up entirely, for they think these feelings come while they are engaged in
prayer rather than at other times. And this is true because the devil
excites these feelings while souls are at prayer, instead of when they are
engaged in other works, so that they might abandon prayer. And that is not
all; to make them cowardly and afraid, he brings vividly to their minds
foul and impure thoughts. And sometimes the thoughts will concern
spiritually helpful things and persons. Those who attribute any importance
to such thoughts, therefore, do not even dare look at anything or think
about anything lest they thereupon stumble into them.
4.3.(2). These impure thoughts so affect people who are afflicted with
melancholia that one should have great pity for them; indeed, these people
suffer a sad life. In some who are troubled with this bad humor the trial
reaches such a point that they clearly feel that the devil has access to
them without their having the freedom to prevent it. Yet some of these
melancholiacs are able through intense effort and struggle to forestall
this power of the devil. If these impure thoughts and feelings arise from
melancholia, individuals are not ordinarily freed from them until they are
cured of that humor -- unless they enter the dark night, which in time
deprives them of everything.3
4.4. The third origin from which these impure feelings usually proceed and
wage war on the soul is the latter's fear of them. The fear that springs up
at the sudden remembrance of these thoughts, caused by what one sees, is
dealing with, or thinking of, produces impure feelings without the person
being at fault.
4.5. Some people are so delicate that when gratification is received
spiritually, or in prayer, they immediately experience a lust that so
inebriates them and caresses their senses that they become as it were
engulfed in the delight and satisfaction of that vice; and this experience
continues passively with the other. Sometimes these individuals become
aware that certain impure and rebellious acts have taken place. The reason
for such occurrences is that since these natures are, as I say, delicate
and tender, their humors and blood are stirred up by any change. These
persons also experience such feelings when they are inflamed with anger or
are agitated by some other disturbance or affliction.
4.6. Sometimes, too, in their spiritual conversations or works, they
manifest a certain sprightliness and gallantry on considering who is
present, and they carry on with a kind of vain satisfaction. Such behavior
is also a by-product of spiritual lust (in the way we here understand it),
which generally accompanies complacency of the will.
4.7. Some spiritually acquire a liking for other individuals that often
arises from lust rather than from the spirit. This lustful origin will be
recognized if, on recalling that affection, there is remorse of conscience,
not an increase in the remembrance and love of God. The affection is purely
spiritual if the love of God grows when it grows, or if the love of God is
remembered as often as the affection is remembered, or if the affection
gives the soul a desire for God -- if by growing in one the soul grows also
in the other. For this is a trait of God's spirit: The good increases with
the good since there is likeness and conformity between them. But when the
love is born of this sensual vice it has the contrary effects. As the one
love grows greater, the other lessens, and the remembrance of it lessens
too. If the inordinate love increases, then, as will be seen, the soul
grows cold in the love of God and, because of the recollection of that
other love, forgets him -- not without feeling some remorse of conscience.
On the other hand, as the love of God increases, the soul grows cold in the
inordinate affection and comes to forget it. For not only do these loves
fail to benefit each other, but, since they are contrary loves, the
predominating one, while becoming stronger itself, stifles and extinguishes
the other, as the philosophers say.4 Hence our Savior proclaimed in the
Gospel: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of
the spirit is spirit [Jn. 3:6], that is: Love derived from sensuality
terminates in sensuality, and the love that is of the spirit terminates in
the spirit of God, and brings it increase. And this, then, is the
difference between these two loves, which enables us to discern one from
the other.
4.8. When the soul enters the dark night, all these loves are placed in
reasonable order. This night strengthens and purifies the love that is of
God, and takes away and destroys the other. But in the beginning it causes
the soul to lose sight of both of them, as will be explained.
CHAPTER 5
5. The imperfections of the capital vice of anger into which beginners
fall.
5.1. Because of the strong desire of many beginners for spiritual
gratification, they usually have many imperfections of anger. When the
delight and satisfaction procured in their spiritual exercises passes,
these beginners are naturally left without any spiritual savor. And because
of this distastefulness, they become peevish in the works they do and
easily angered by the least thing, and occasionally they are so unbearable
that nobody can put up with them. This frequently occurs after they have
experienced in prayer some recollection pleasant to the senses.
5.1.(2). After the delight and satisfaction are gone, the sensory part of
the soul is naturally left vapid and zestless, just as a child is when
withdrawn from the sweet breast. These souls are not at fault if they do
not allow this dejection to influence them, for it is an imperfection that
must be purged through the dryness and distress of the dark night.
5.2. Among these spiritual persons there are also those who fall into
another kind of spiritual anger. Through a certain indiscreet zeal they
become angry over the sins of others, reprove these others, and sometimes
even feel the impulse to do so angrily, which in fact they occasionally do,
setting themselves up as lords of virtue. All such conduct is contrary to
spiritual meekness.
5.3. Others, in becoming aware of their own imperfections, grow angry with
themselves in an unhumble impatience. So impatient are they about these
imperfections that they want to become saints in a day. Many of these
beginners make numerous plans and great resolutions, but since they are not
humble and have no distrust of themselves, the more resolves they make the
more they break, and the greater becomes their anger. They do not have the
patience to wait until God gives them what they need, when he so desires.
Their attitude is contrary to spiritual meekness and can only be remedied
by the purgation of the dark night. Some, however, are so patient about
their desire for advancement that God would prefer to see them a little
less so.
CHAPTER 6
6. The imperfections of spiritual gluttony.
6.1. A great deal can be said on spiritual gluttony, the fourth vice. There
are hardly any persons among these beginners, no matter how excellent their
conduct, who do not fall into some of the many imperfections of this vice.
These imperfections arise because of the delight beginners find in their
spiritual exercises.
6.1.(2). Many, lured by the delight and satisfaction procured in their
religious practices, strive more for spiritual savor than for spiritual
purity and discretion; yet it is this purity and discretion that God looks
for and finds acceptable throughout a soul's entire spiritual journey.
Besides the imperfection of seeking after these delights, the sweetness
these persons experience makes them go to extremes and pass beyond the mean
in which virtue resides and is acquired. Some, attracted by the delight
they feel in their spiritual exercises, kill themselves with penances, and
others weaken themselves by fasts and, without the counsel or command of
another, overtax their weakness; indeed, they try to hide these penances
from the one to whom they owe obedience in such matters. Some even dare
perform these penances contrary to obedience.
6.2. Such individuals are unreasonable and most imperfect. They subordinate
submissiveness and obedience (which is a penance of reason and discretion,
and consequently a sacrifice more pleasing and acceptable to God) to
corporeal penance. But corporeal penance without obedience is no more than
a penance of beasts. And like beasts, they are motivated in these penances
by an appetite for the pleasure they find in them. Since all extremes are
vicious and since by such behavior these persons are doing their own will,
they grow in vice rather than in virtue. For through this conduct they at
least become spiritually gluttonous and proud, since they do not tread the
path of obedience.
6.2.(2). The devil, increasing the delights and appetites of these
beginners and thereby stirring up this gluttony in them, so impels many of
them that when they are unable to avoid obedience they either add to,
change, or modify what was commanded. Any obedience in this matter is
distasteful to them. Some reach such a point that the mere obligation of
obedience to perform their spiritual exercises makes them lose all desire
and devotion. Their only yearning and satisfaction is to do what they feel
inclined to do, whereas it would be better in all likelihood for them not
to do this at all.
6.3. Some are very insistent that their spiritual director allow them to do
what they themselves want to do, and finally almost force the permission
from him. And if they do not get what they want, they become sad and go
about like testy children. They are under the impression that they do not
serve God when they are not allowed to do what they want. Since they take
gratification and their own will as their support and their god, they
become sad, weak, and discouraged when their director takes these from them
and desires that they do God's will. They think that gratifying and
satisfying themselves is serving and satisfying God.
6.4. Others, too, because of this sweetness, have so little knowledge of
their own lowliness and misery and such lack of the loving fear and respect
they owe to God's grandeur that they do not hesitate to insist boldly that
their confessors allow them the frequent reception of Communion. And worse
than this, they often dare to receive Communion without the permission and
advice of the minister and dispenser of Christ. They are guided here solely
by their own opinion, and they endeavor to hide the truth from him. As a
result, with their hearts set on frequent Communion, they make their
confessions carelessly, more eager just to receive Communion than to
receive it with a pure and perfect heart. It would be sounder and holier of
them to have the contrary inclination and to ask their confessor not to let
them receive Communion so frequently. Humble resignation, though, is better
than either of these two attitudes. But the boldnesses referred to first
will bring great evil and chastisement on one.
6.5. In receiving Communion they spend all their time trying to get some
feeling and satisfaction rather than humbly praising and reverencing God
dwelling within them. And they go about this in such a way that, if they do
not procure any sensible feeling and satisfaction, they think they have
accomplished nothing. As a result they judge very poorly of God and fail to
understand that the sensory benefits are the least among those that this
most blessed Sacrament bestows, for the invisible grace it gives is a
greater blessing. God often withdraws sensory delight and pleasure so that
souls might set the eyes of faith on this invisible grace. Not only in
receiving Communion, but in other spiritual exercises as well, beginners
desire to feel God and taste him as if he were comprehensible and
accessible. This desire is a serious imperfection and, because it involves
impurity of faith, is opposed to God's way.
6.6. They have the same defect in their prayer, for they think the whole
matter of prayer consists in looking for sensory satisfaction and devotion.
They strive to procure this by their own efforts, and tire and weary their
heads and their faculties. When they do not get this sensible comfort, they
become very disconsolate and think they have done nothing. Because of their
aim they lose true devotion and spirit, which lie in distrust of self and
in humble and patient perseverance so as to please God. Once they do not
find delight in prayer, or in any other spiritual exercise, they feel
extreme reluctance and repugnance in returning to it and sometimes even
give it up. For after all, as was mentioned,1 they are like children who
are prompted to act not by reason but by pleasure.
6.6.(2). All their time is spent looking for satisfaction and spiritual
consolation; they can never read enough spiritual books, and one minute
they are meditating on one subject and the next on another, always hunting
for some gratification in the things of God. God very rightly and
discreetly and lovingly denies this satisfaction to these beginners. If he
did not, they would fall into innumerable evils because of their spiritual
gluttony and craving for sweetness. This is why it is important for these
beginners to enter the dark night and be purged of this childishness.2
6.7. Those who are inclined toward these delights have also another serious
imperfection, which is that they are weak and remiss in treading the rough
way of the cross. A soul given up to pleasure naturally feels aversion
toward the bitterness of self-denial.
6.8. These people incur many other imperfections because of this spiritual
gluttony, of which the Lord in time will cure them through temptations,
aridities, and other trials, which are all a part of the dark night. So as
not to be too lengthy, I do not want to discuss these imperfections any
more, but only point out that spiritual sobriety and temperance beget
another very different quality, one of mortification, fear, and
submissiveness in all things. Individuals thereby become aware that the
perfection and value of their works do not depend on quantity or the
satisfaction found in them but on knowing how to practice self-denial in
them. These beginners ought to do their part in striving after this self-
denial until God in fact brings them into the dark night and purifies them.
In order to get to our discussion of this dark night, I am passing over
these imperfections hurriedly.
CHAPTER 7
7. The imperfections of spiritual envy and sloth.
7.1. As for the other two vices, spiritual envy and sloth, these beginners
also have many imperfections. In regard to envy, many of them feel sad
about the spiritual good of others and experience sensible grief in noting
that their neighbor is ahead of them on the road to perfection, and they do
not want to hear others praised. Learning of the virtues of others makes
them sad. They cannot bear to hear others being praised without
contradicting and undoing these compliments as much as possible. Their
annoyance grows because they themselves do not receive these plaudits and
because they long for preference in everything. All of this is contrary to
charity, which, as St. Paul says, rejoices in the truth [1 Cor. 13:6]. If
any envy accompanies charity, it is a holy envy by which they become sad at
not having the virtues of others, rejoice that others have them, and are
happy that all others are ahead of them in the service of God, since they
themselves are so wanting in his service.
7.2. Also, regarding spiritual sloth, these beginners usually become weary
in exercises that are more spiritual and flee from them since these
exercises are contrary to sensory satisfaction. Since they are so used to
finding delight in spiritual practices, they become bored when they do not
find it. If they do not receive in prayer the satisfaction they crave --
for after all it is fit that God withdraw this so as to try them -- they do
not want to return to it, or at times they either give up prayer or go to
it begrudgingly. Because of their sloth, they subordinate the way of
perfection (which requires denying one's own will and satisfaction for God)
to the pleasure and delight of their own will. As a result they strive to
satisfy their own will rather than God's.
7.3. Many of these beginners want God to desire what they want, and they
become sad if they have to desire God's will. They feel an aversion toward
adapting their will to God's. Hence they frequently believe that what is
not their will, or brings them no satisfaction, is not God's will, and, on
the other hand, that if they are satisfied, God is too. They measure God by
themselves and not themselves by God, which is in opposition to his
teaching in the Gospel that those who lose their life for his sake will
gain it and those who desire to gain it will lose it [Mt. 16:25].
7.4. Beginners also become bored when told to do something unpleasant.
Because they look for spiritual gratifications and delights, they are
extremely lax in the fortitude and labor perfection demands. Like those who
are reared in luxury, they run sadly from everything rough, and they are
scandalized by the cross, in which spiritual delights are found. And in the
more spiritual exercises their boredom is greater. Since they expect to go
about in spiritual matters according to the whims and satisfactions of
their own will, entering by the narrow way of life, about which Christ
speaks, is saddening and repugnant to them [Mt. 7:14].1
7.5. It is enough to have referred to the many imperfections of those who
live in this beginner's state to see their need for God to put them into
the state of proficients. He does this by introducing them into the dark
night, of which we will now speak. There, through pure dryness and interior
darkness, he weans them from the breasts of these gratifications and
delights, takes away all these trivialities and childish ways, and makes
them acquire the virtues by very different means. No matter how earnestly
beginners in all their actions and passions practice the mortification of
self, they will never be able to do so entirely -- far from it -- until God
accomplishes it in them passively by means of the purgation of this night.
May God be pleased to give me his divine light that I may say something
worthwhile about this subject, for in a night so dark and a matter so
difficult to treat and expound, his enlightenment is very necessary. The
verse, then, is:
One dark night.
CHAPTER 8
8. The beginning of the exposition of this dark night. An explanation of
verse 1 of the first stanza.
8.1. This night, which as we say is contemplation, causes two kinds of
darkness or purgation in spiritual persons according to the two parts of
the soul, the sensory and the spiritual. Hence one night of purgation is
sensory, by which the senses are purged and accommodated to the spirit; and
the other night or purgation is spiritual, by which the spirit is purged
and denuded as well as accommodated and prepared for union with God through
love. The sensory night is common and happens to many. These are the
beginners of whom we will treat first. The spiritual night is the lot of
very few, those who have been tried and are proficient, and of whom we will
speak afterward.
8.2. The first purgation or night is bitter and terrible to the senses. But
nothing can be compared to the second, for it is horrible and frightful to
the spirit. Because the sensory night is first in order, we will speak of
it now briefly. It is a more common occurrence, so one finds more written
on it. Then we will pass on to discuss more at length the spiritual night,
for hardly anything has been said of it in sermons or in writing; and even
the experience of it is rare.
8.3. Since the conduct of these beginners in the way of God is lowly and
not too distant from love of pleasure and of self, as we explained, God
desires to withdraw them from this base manner of loving and lead them on
to a higher degree of divine love. And he desires to liberate them from the
lowly exercise of the senses and of discursive meditation, by which they go
in search of him so inadequately and with so many difficulties, and lead
them into the exercise of spirit, in which they become capable of a
communion with God that is more abundant and more free of imperfections.
God does this after beginners have exercised themselves for a time in the
way of virtue and have persevered in meditation and prayer. For it is
through the delight and satisfaction they experience in prayer that they
have become detached from worldly things and have gained some spiritual
strength in God. This strength has helped them somewhat to restrain their
appetites for creatures, and through it they will be able to suffer a
little oppression and dryness without turning back. Consequently, it is at
the time they are going about their spiritual exercises with delight and
satisfaction, when in their opinion the sun of divine favor is shining most
brightly on them, that God darkens all this light and closes the door and
the spring of sweet spiritual water they were tasting as often and as long
as they desired. For since they were weak and tender, no door was closed to
them, as St. John says in the Book of Revelation [Rv. 3:8]. God now leaves
them in such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their
discursive imaginings. They cannot advance a step in meditation, as they
used to, now that the interior sense faculties are engulfed in this night.
He leaves them in such dryness that they not only fail to receive
satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works, as they
formerly did, but also find these exercises distasteful and bitter. As I
said, when God sees that they have grown a little, he weans them from the
sweet breast so that they might be strengthened, lays aside their swaddling
bands, and puts them down from his arms that they may grow accustomed to
walking by themselves. This change is a surprise to them because everything
seems to be functioning in reverse.
8.4. This usually happens to recollected beginners sooner than to others
since they are freer from occasions of backsliding and more quickly reform
their appetites for worldly things. A reform of the appetites is the
requirement for entering the happy night of the senses. Not much time
ordinarily passes after the initial stages of their spiritual life before
beginners start to enter this night of sense. And the majority of them do
enter it because it is common to see them suffer these aridities.
8.5. We could adduce numerous passages from Sacred Scripture, for since
this sensory purgation is so customary we find a great many references to
it throughout, especially in the Psalms and the Prophets. But I do not want
to spend time citing them, because the prevalence of the experience of this
night should be enough for those who are unable to find the scriptural
references to it.
CHAPTER 9
9. Signs for discerning whether a spiriual person is treading the path of
this sensory night and purgation.]
9.1. Because these aridities may not proceed from the sensory night and
purgation, but from sin and imperfection, or weakness and lukewarmness, or
some bad humor or bodily indisposition, I will give some signs here for
discerning whether the dryness is the result of this purgation or of one of
these other defects. I find there are three principal signs for knowing
this.
9.2. The first is that since these souls do not get satisfaction or
consolation from the things of God, they do not get any from creatures
either. Since God puts a soul in this dark night in order to dry up and
purge its sensory appetite, he does not allow it to find sweetness or
delight in anything. Through this sign it can in all likelihood be inferred
that this dryness and distaste is not the outcome of newly committed sins
and imperfections. If this were so, some inclination or propensity to look
for satisfaction in something other than the things of God would be felt in
the sensory part, for when the appetite is allowed indulgence in some
imperfection, the soul immediately feels an inclination toward it, little
or great in proportion to the degree of its satisfaction and attachment.
9.2.(2). Yet, because the want of satisfaction in earthly or heavenly
things could be the product of some indisposition or melancholic humor,
which frequently prevents one from being satisfied with anything, the
second sign or condition is necessary.
9.3. The second sign for the discernment of this purgation is that the
memory ordinarily turns to God solicitously and with painful care, and the
soul thinks it is not serving God but turning back, because it is aware of
this distaste for the things of God. Hence it is obvious that this aversion
and dryness is not the fruit of laxity and tepidity, for lukewarm people do
not care much for the things of God nor are they inwardly solicitous about
them.
9.3.(2). There is, consequently, a notable difference between dryness and
lukewarmness. The lukewarm are very lax and remiss in their will and
spirit, and have no solicitude about serving God. Those suffering from the
purgative dryness are ordinarily solicitous, concerned, and pained about
not serving God. Even though the dryness may be furthered by melancholia or
some other humor -- as it often is -- it does not thereby fail to produce
its purgative effect in the appetite, for the soul will be deprived of
every satisfaction and concerned only about God. If this humor is the
entire cause, everything ends in displeasure and does harm to one's nature,
and there are none of these desires to serve God that accompany the
purgative dryness. Even though in this purgative dryness the sensory part
of the soul is very cast down, slack, and feeble in its actions because of
the little satisfaction it finds, the spirit is ready and strong.
9.4. The reason for this dryness is that God transfers his goods and
strength from sense to spirit. Since the sensory part of the soul is
incapable of the goods of spirit, it remains deprived, dry, and empty.
Thus, while the spirit is tasting, the flesh tastes nothing at all and
becomes weak in its work.1 But through this nourishment the spirit grows
stronger and more alert, and becomes more solicitous than before about not
failing God.
9.4.(2). If in the beginning the soul does not experience this spiritual
savor and delight, but dryness and distaste, the reason is the novelty
involved in this exchange. Since its palate is accustomed to these other
sensory tastes, the soul still sets its eyes on them. And since, also, its
spiritual palate is neither purged nor accommodated for so subtle a taste,
it is unable to experience the spiritual savor and good until gradually
prepared by means of this dark and obscure night. The soul instead
experiences dryness and distaste because of a lack of the gratification it
formerly enjoyed so readily.
9.5. Those whom God begins to lead into these desert solitudes are like the
children of Israel. When God began giving them the heavenly food, which
contained in itself all savors and changed to whatever taste each one
hungered after [Wis. 16:20-21], as is there mentioned, they nonetheless
felt a craving for the tastes of the fleshmeats and onions they had eaten
in Egypt, for their palate was accustomed and attracted to them more than
to the delicate sweetness of the angelic manna. And in the midst of that
heavenly food, they wept and sighed for fleshmeat [Nm. 11:4-6]. The
baseness of our appetite is such that it makes us long for our own
miserable goods and feel aversion for the incommunicable heavenly good.
9.6. Yet, as I say, when these aridities are the outcome of the purgative
way of the sensory appetite, the spirit feels the strength and energy to
work, which is obtained from the substance of that interior food, even
though in the beginning it may not experience the savor, for the reason
just mentioned. This food is the beginning of a contemplation that is dark
and dry to the senses. Ordinarily this contemplation, which is secret and
hidden from the very one who receives it, imparts to the soul, together
with the dryness and emptiness it produces in the senses, an inclination to
remain alone and in quietude. And the soul will be unable to dwell on any
particular thought, nor will it have the desire to do so.
9.6.(2). If those in whom this occurs know how to remain quiet, without
care or solicitude about any interior or exterior work, they will soon in
that unconcern and idleness delicately experience the interior nourishment.
This refection is so delicate that usually if the soul desires or tries to
experience it, it cannot do so. For, as I say, this contemplation is active
while the soul is in idleness and unconcern. It is like air that escapes
when one tries to grasp it in one's hand.
9.7. In this sense we can interpret what the Spouse said to the bride in
the Song of Songs: Turn your eyes from me, because they make me fly away
[Sg. 6:4]. God conducts the soul along so different a path, and so puts it
in this state, that a desire to work with the faculties would hinder rather
than help his work; whereas in the beginning of the spiritual life
everything was quite the contrary. The reason is that now in this state of
contemplation, when the soul leaves discursive meditation and enters the
state of proficients, it is God who works in it.
9.7.(2). He therefore binds the interior faculties and leaves no support
in the intellect, nor satisfaction in the will, nor remembrance in the
memory. At this time a person's own efforts are of no avail, but are an
obstacle to the interior peace and work God is producing in the spirit
through that dryness of sense. Since this peace is something spiritual and
delicate, its fruit is quiet, delicate, solitary, satisfying, and peaceful,
and far removed from all the other gratifications of beginners, which are
very palpable and sensory. This is the peace that David says God speaks in
the soul in order to make it spiritual [Ps. 85:8]. The third sign follows
from this one.
9.8. The third sign for the discernment of this purgation of the senses is
the powerlessness, in spite of one's efforts, to meditate and make use of
the imagination, the interior sense, as was one's previous custom. At this
time God does not communicate himself through the senses as he did before,
by means of the discursive analysis and synthesis of ideas, but begins to
communicate himself through pure spirit by an act of simple contemplation
in which there is no discursive succession of thought. The exterior and
interior senses of the lower part of the soul cannot attain to this
contemplation. As a result the imaginative power and phantasy can no longer
rest in any consideration or find support in it.
9.9. From the third sign it can be deduced that this dissatisfaction of the
faculties is not the fruit of any bad humor. If it were, people would be
able with a little care to return to their former exercises and find
support for their faculties when that humor passed away, for it is by its
nature changeable. In the purgation of the appetite this return is not
possible, because on entering it the powerlessness to meditate always
continues. It is true, though, that at times in the beginning the purgation
of some souls is not continuous in such a way that they are always deprived
of sensory satisfaction and the ability to meditate. Perhaps, because of
their weakness, they cannot be weaned all at once. Nevertheless, if they
are to advance, they will ever enter further into the purgation and leave
further behind their work of the senses.
9.9.(2). Those who do not walk the road of contemplation act very
differently. This night of the aridity of the senses is not so continuous
in them, for sometimes they experience the aridities and at other times
not, and sometimes they can meditate and at other times they cannot. God
places them in this night solely to exercise and humble them, and reform
their appetite lest in their spiritual life they foster a harmful
attraction toward sweetness. But he does not do so in order to lead them to
the life of the spirit, which is contemplation. For God does not bring to
contemplation all those who purposely exercise themselves in the way of the
spirit, nor even half. Why? He best knows. As a result he never completely
weans their senses from the breasts of considerations and discursive
meditations, except for some short periods and at certain seasons, as we
said.
CHAPTER 10
10. The conduct required of souls in this dark night.
10.1. At the time of the aridities of this sensory night, God makes the
exchange we mentioned1 by withdrawing the soul from the life of the senses
and placing it in that of spirit -- that is, he brings it from meditation
to contemplation -- where the soul no longer has the power to work or
meditate with its faculties on the things of God. Spiritual persons suffer
considerable affliction in this night, owing not so much to the aridities
they undergo as to their fear of having gone astray. Since they do not find
any support or satisfaction in good things, they believe there will be no
more spiritual blessings for them and that God has abandoned them.
10.1.(2). They then grow weary and strive, as was their custom, to
concentrate their faculties with some satisfaction on a subject of
meditation, and they think that if they do not do this and do not feel that
they are at work, they are doing nothing. This effort of theirs is
accompanied by an interior reluctance and repugnance on the part of the
soul, for it would be pleased to dwell in that quietude and idleness
without working with the faculties.
10.1.(3). They consequently impair God's work and do not profit by their
own. In searching for spirit, they lose the spirit that was the source of
their tranquility and peace. They are like someone who turns from what has
already been done in order to do it again, or like one who leaves a city
only to re-enter it, or they are like a hunter who abandons the prey in
order to go hunting again. It is useless, then, for the soul to try to
meditate because it will no longer profit by this exercise.
10.2. If there is no one to understand these persons, they either turn back
and abandon the road or lose courage, or at least they hinder their own
progress because of their excessive diligence in treading the path of
discursive meditation. They fatigue and overwork themselves, thinking that
they are failing because of their negligence or sins. Meditation is now
useless for them because God is conducting them along another road, which
is contemplation and is very different from the first, for the one road
belongs to discursive meditation and the other is beyond the range of the
imagination and discursive reflection.
10.3. Those who are in this situation should feel comforted; they ought to
persevere patiently and not be afflicted. Let them trust in God who does
not fail those who seek him with a simple and righteous heart; nor will he
fail to impart what is needful for the way until getting them to the clear
and pure light of love. God will give them this light by means of that
other night, the night of spirit, if they merit that he place them in it.
10.4. The attitude necessary in the night of sense is to pay no attention
to discursive meditation since this is not the time for it. They should
allow the soul to remain in rest and quietude even though it may seem
obvious to them that they are doing nothing and wasting time, and even
though they think this disinclination to think about anything is due to
their laxity. Through patience and perseverance in prayer, they will be
doing a great deal without activity on their part.
10.4.(2). All that is required of them here is freedom of soul, that they
liberate themselves from the impediment and fatigue of ideas and thoughts,
and care not about thinking and meditating. They must be content simply
with a loving and peaceful attentiveness to God, and live without the
concern, without the effort, and without the desire to taste or feel him.
All these desires disquiet the soul and distract it from the peaceful,
quiet, and sweet idleness of the contemplation that is being communicated
to it.
10.5. And even though more scruples come to the fore concerning the loss of
time and the advantages of doing something else, since it cannot do
anything or think of anything in prayer, the soul should endure them
peacefully, as though going to prayer means remaining in ease and freedom
of spirit. If individuals were to desire to do something themselves with
their interior faculties, they would hinder and lose the goods that God
engraves on their souls through that peace and idleness.
10.5.(2). If a model for the painting or retouching of a portrait should
move because of a desire to do something, the artist would be unable to
finish and the work would be spoiled. Similarly, any operation, affection,
or thought a soul might cling to when it wants to abide in interior peace
and idleness would cause distraction and disquietude, and make it feel
sensory dryness and emptiness. The more a person seeks some support in
knowledge and affection the more the soul will feel the lack of these, for
this support cannot be supplied through these sensory means.
10.6. Accordingly, such persons should not mind if the operations of their
faculties are being lost to them; they should desire rather that this be
done quickly so they may be no obstacle to the operation of the infused
contemplation God is bestowing, so they may receive it with more peaceful
plenitude and make room in the spirit for the enkindling and burning of the
love that this dark and secret contemplation bears and communicates to the
soul. For contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and
loving inflow of God, which, if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit
of love, as is brought out in the following verse:
Fired with love's urgent longings
CHAPTER 11
11. Explains three verses of the stanza.
11.1. The fire of love is not commonly felt at the outset, either because
it does not have a chance to take hold, owing to the impurity of the
sensory part, or because the soul for want of understanding has not made
within itself a peaceful place for it; although at times with or without
these conditions a person will begin to feel a certain longing for God. In
the measure that the fire increases, the soul becomes aware of being
attracted by the love of God and enkindled in it, without knowing how or
where this attraction and love originates. At times this flame and
enkindling increase to such an extent that the soul desires God with urgent
longings of love, as David, while in this night, said of himself: Because
my heart was inflamed (in contemplative love), my reins were likewise
changed [Ps. 73:21]. That is, my appetites of sensible affection were
changed from the sensory life to the spiritual life, which implies dryness
and cessation of all those appetites we are speaking of. And, he says: I
was brought to nothing and annihilated, and I knew not [Ps. 73:22]. For, as
we pointed out,1 the soul, with no knowledge of its destination, sees
itself annihilated in all heavenly and earthly things in which it formerly
found satisfaction; and it only sees that it is enamored, but knows not
how.
11.1.(2). Because the enkindling of love in the spirit sometimes increases
exceedingly, the longings for God become so intense that it will seem to
such persons that their bones are drying up in this thirst, their nature
withering away, and their ardor and strength diminishing through the
liveliness of the thirst of love. They will feel that this is a living
thirst. David also had such experience when he proclaimed: My soul thirsts
for the living God [Ps. 43:3], as though to say, this thirst my soul
experiences is a living thirst. Since this thirst is alive, we can assert
that it is a thirst that kills. Yet it should be noted that its vehemence
is not continual, but only experienced from time to time, although usually
some thirst is felt.
11.2. Yet it must be kept in mind that, as I began to say here, individuals
generally do not perceive this love in the beginning, but they experience
rather the dryness and void we are speaking of. Then, instead of this love
which is enkindled afterward, they harbor, in the midst of the dryness and
emptiness of their faculties, a habitual care and solicitude for God
accompanied by grief or fear about not serving him. It is a sacrifice most
pleasing to God -- that of a spirit in distress and solicitude for his love
[Ps. 51:17].
11.2.(2). Secret contemplation produces this solicitude and concern in the
soul until, after having somewhat purged the sensory part of its natural
propensities by means of this aridity, it begins to enkindle in the spirit
this divine love. Meanwhile, however, as in one who is undergoing a cure,
all is suffering in this dark and dry purgation of the appetite, and the
soul being relieved of numerous imperfections acquires many virtues,
thereby becoming capable of this love, as will be shown in the explanation
of the following verse: -- ah, the sheer grace! --
11.3. God introduces people into this night to purge their senses, and to
accommodate, subject, and unite the lower part of the soul to the spiritual
part by darkening it and causing a cessation of discursive meditation (just
as afterward, in order to purify the spirit and unite it to himself, he
brings it into the spiritual night). As a result they gain so many benefits
-- though at the time this may not be apparent -- that they consider their
departure from the fetters and straits of the senses a sheer grace.
11.3.(2). The verse therefore proclaims: " -- ah, the sheer grace! -- "
11.3.(3). We ought to point out the benefits procured in this night, for it
is because of them that the soul says it was a sheer grace to have passed
through it.2 All these benefits are included in the next verse:
I went out unseen,
11.4. This going out bears reference to the subjection the soul had to its
senses, in seeking God through operations so feeble, limited, and exposed
to error as are those of this lower part, for at every step it stumbled
into numerous imperfections and much ignorance, as was noted above in
relation to the seven capital vices.3 This night frees the soul from all
these vices by quenching all its earthly and heavenly satisfactions,
darkening its discursive meditations, and producing in it other innumerable
goods through its acquiring of the virtues, as we will now explain. For it
will please and comfort one who treads this path to know that a way
seemingly so rough and adverse and contrary to spiritual gratification
engenders so many blessings.
11.4.(2). These blessings are attained when by means of this night the soul
departs from all created things, in its affections and operations, and
walks on toward eternal things. This is a great happiness and grace: first,
because of the signal benefit of quenching one's appetite and affection for
all things; second, because there are very few who will endure the night
and persevere in entering through this narrow gate and treading this
constricted road that leads to life, as our Savior says [Mt. 7:14].
11.4.(3). This narrow gate is the dark night of sense, in which the soul is
despoiled and denuded -- in order to enter it -- and grounded in faith,
which is foreign to all sense, that it may be capable of walking along the
constricted road, which is the night of spirit. The soul enters this second
night so that it may journey to God in pure faith, for pure faith is the
means whereby it is united with God. Few there are who walk along this
road, because it is so narrow, dark, and terrible that, in obscurities and
trials, the night of sense cannot be compared to it, as will be explained.
Yet the benefits of this night are incomparably greater than those of the
night of sense.
11.4.(4). We will say something now about the benefits of the night of
sense as briefly as possible in order to pass on to our exposition of the
other night.
CHAPTER 12
12. The benefits this night causes in the soul.
12.1. This glad night and purgation causes many benefits even though to the
soul it seemingly deprives it of them. So numerous are these benefits that,
just as Abraham made a great feast on the day of his son Isaac's weaning
[Gn. 21:8], there is rejoicing in heaven that God has now taken from this
soul its swaddling clothes; that he has put it down from his arms and is
making it walk alone; that he is weaning it from the delicate and sweet
food of infants and making it eat bread with crust; and that the soul is
beginning to taste the food of the strong (the infused contemplation of
which we have spoken), which in these sensory aridities and darknesses is
given to the spirit that is dry and empty of the satisfactions of sense.
12.2. The first and chief benefit this dry and dark night of contemplation
causes is the knowledge of self and of one's own misery. Besides the fact
that all the favors God imparts to the soul are ordinarily wrapped in this
knowledge, the aridities and voids of the faculties in relation to the
abundance previously experienced and the difficulty encountered in the
practice of virtue make the soul recognize its own lowliness and misery,
which was not apparent in the time of its prosperity.
12.2.(2). There is a good figure of this in Exodus where God, desiring to
humble the children of Israel and make them know themselves, ordered them
to remove their festive garments and the adornments they had been wearing
in the desert: From now on leave aside your festive ornaments and put on
common working garments that you may be aware of the treatment you deserve
[Ex. 33:5]. This was like saying: Since the clothing you wear, being of
festivity and mirth, is an occasion for your not feeling as lowly as you in
fact are, put it aside, so that seeing the vileness of your dress you may
know yourself and your just deserts.
12.2.(3). As a result the soul recognizes the truth about its misery, of
which it was formerly ignorant. When it was walking in festivity,
gratification, consolation, and support in God, it was more content,
believing that it was serving God in some way. Though this idea of serving
God may not be explicitly formed in a person's mind, at least some notion
of it is deeply embedded within, owing to the satisfaction derived from
one's spiritual exercises. Now that the soul is clothed in these other
garments of labor, dryness, and desolation, and its former lights have been
darkened, it possesses more authentic lights in this most excellent and
necessary virtue of self-knowledge. It considers itself to be nothing and
finds no satisfaction in self because it is aware that of itself it neither
does nor can do anything.
12.2.(4). God esteems this lack of self-satisfaction and the dejection
persons have about not serving him more than all their former deeds and
gratifications, however notable they may have been, since they were the
occasion of many imperfections and a great deal of ignorance. Not only the
benefits we mentioned result from this garment of dryness but also those of
which we will now speak, and many more, for they flow from self-knowledge
as from their fount.
12.3. First, individuals commune with God more respectfully and
courteously, the way one should always converse with the Most High. In the
prosperity of their satisfaction and consolation as beginners, they did not
act thus, for that satisfying delight made them somewhat more daring with
God than was proper, and more discourteous and inconsiderate. This is what
happened to Moses: When he heard God speaking to him, he was blinded by
that gratification and desire and without any further thought would have
dared to approach God, if he had not been ordered to stop and take off his
shoes [Ex. 3:4-5]. This instance denotes the respect and discretion, the
nakedness of appetite, with which one ought to commune with God.
Consequently when Moses was obedient to this command, he was so discreet
and cautious that Scripture says he not only dared not approach but did not
even dare look [Ex. 3:6; Acts 7:32]. Having left aside the shoes of his
appetites and gratifications, he was fully aware of his misery in the sight
of God, for this was the manner in which it was fitting for him to hear
God's word.
12.3.(2). Similarly, Job was not prepared for converse with God by means of
those delights and glories that he says he was accustomed to experience in
his God. But the preparation for this converse embodied nakedness on a
dunghill, abandonment and even persecution by his friends, the fullness of
anguish and bitterness, and the sight of the earth round about him covered
with worms [Jb. 2:8; 30:17-18]. Yet the most high God, he who raises the
poor from the dunghill [Ps. 112:7], was then pleased to descend and speak
face to face with him and reveal the deep mysteries of his wisdom, which he
never did before in the time of Job's prosperity [Jb. 38-41].
12.4. Since this is the proper moment, we ought to point out another
benefit resulting from this night and dryness of the sensory appetite. So
that the prophecy -- your light will illumine the darkness [Is. 58:10] --
may be verified, God will give illumination by bestowing on the soul not
only knowledge of its own misery and lowliness but also knowledge of his
grandeur and majesty. When the sensory appetites, gratifications, and
supports are quenched, the intellect is left clean and free to understand
the truth, for even though these appetites and pleasures concern spiritual
things, they blind and impede the spirit. Similarly, the anguish and
dryness of the senses illumine and quicken the intellect, as Isaiah
affirms: Vexation makes one understand [Is. 28:19]. But God also, by means
of this dark and dry night of contemplation, supernaturally instructs in
his divine wisdom the soul that is empty and unhindered (which is the
requirement for his divine inpouring), which he did not do through the
former satisfactions and pleasures.
12.5. Isaiah explains this clearly: To whom will God teach his knowledge?
And to whom will he explain his message? To them that are weaned, he says,
from the milk, and to them who are drawn away from the breasts [Is. 28:9].
This passage indicates that the preparation for this divine inpouring is
not the former milk of spiritual sweetness or aid from the breast of the
discursive meditations of the sensory faculties that the soul enjoyed, but
the privation of one and a withdrawal from the other.
12.5.(2). In order to hear God, people should stand firm and be detached in
their sense life and affections, as the prophet himself declares: I will
stand on my watch (with detached appetite) and will fix my foot (I will not
meditate with the sensory faculties) in order to contemplate (understand)
what God says to me [Hb. 2:1].
12.5.(3). We conclude that self-knowledge flows first from this dry night,
and that from this knowledge as from its source proceeds the other
knowledge of God. Hence St. Augustine said to God: Let me know myself,
Lord, and I will know you.2 For as the philosophers say, one extreme is
clearly known by the other.3
12.6. For a more complete proof of the efficacy of this sensory night in
producing through its dryness and destitution the light here received from
God, we will quote that passage from David in which the great power of this
night in relation to the lofty knowledge of God is clearly shown. He
proclaims: In a desert land, without water, dry, and without a way, I
appeared before you to be able to see your power and your glory. [Ps. 63:1-
2]. David's teaching here is admirable: that the means to the knowledge of
the glory of God were not the many spiritual delights and gratifications he
had received, but the sensory aridities and detachments referred to by the
dry and desert land. And it is also wonderful that, as he says, the way to
the experience and vision of the power of God did not consist in ideas and
meditations about God, of which he had made extensive use. But it consisted
in not being able either to grasp God with ideas or walk by means of
discursive, imaginative meditation, which is here indicated by the land
without a way.
12.6.(2). Hence the dark night with its aridities and voids is the means to
the knowledge of both God and self. However, the knowledge given in this
night is not as plenteous and abundant as that of the other night of
spirit, for the knowledge of this night is as it were the foundation of the
other.4
12.7. In the dryness and emptiness of this night of the appetite, a person
also procures spiritual humility, that virtue opposed to the first capital
vice, spiritual pride. Through this humility acquired by means of self-
knowledge, individuals are purged of all those imperfections of the vice of
pride into which they fell in the time of their prosperity. Aware of their
own dryness and wretchedness, the thought of their being more advanced than
others does not even occur in its first movements, as it did before; on the
contrary, they realize that others are better.
12.8. From this humility stems love of neighbor, for they esteem them and
do not judge them as they did before when they were aware that they enjoyed
an intense fervor while others did not.
12.8.(2). These persons know only their own misery and keep it so much in
sight that they have no opportunity to watch anyone else's conduct. David
while in this night gives an admirable manifestation of such a state of
soul: I became dumb, and was humbled, and I kept silent in good things, and
my sorrow was renewed [Ps. 39:2]. He says this because it seemed to him
that his blessings had so come to an end that not only was he unable to
find words for them, but he also became silent concerning his neighbor, in
the sorrow he experienced from the knowledge of his own misery.
12.8.(3). These individuals also become submissive and obedient in their
spiritual journey. Since they are so aware of their own wretchedness, they
not only listen to the teaching of others but even desire to be directed
and told what to do by anyone at all. The affective presumption they
sometimes had in their prosperity leaves them. And, finally, as they
proceed on their journey, all the other imperfections of this first vice,
spiritual pride, are swept away.
CHAPTER 13
13. Other benefits of this night of the senses.
13.1. In this arid and obscure night the soul undergoes a thorough reform
in its imperfections of avarice, in which it craved various spiritual
objects and was never content with many of its spiritual exercises because
of the covetousness of its appetite and the gratification it found in
spiritual things. Since it does not obtain the delight it formerly did in
its spiritual practices, but rather finds them distasteful and laborious,
it uses them so moderately that now perhaps it might fail through defect
rather than excess. Nevertheless, God usually imparts to those whom he
brings into this night the humility and the readiness, even though they
feel displeasure, to do what is commanded of them for his sake alone, and
they become detached from many things because of this lack of
gratification.
13.2. It is also evident regarding spiritual lust that through the sensory
dryness and distaste experienced in its spiritual exercises, the soul is
freed of those impurities we noted.1 For we said that they ordinarily
proceed from the delight of the spirit redounding in the senses.
13.3. The imperfections of the fourth vice, spiritual gluttony, from which
a person is freed in this dark night, are listed above,2 although not all
of them since they are innumerable. Thus I will not refer to them here,
since I am eager to conclude this dark night in order to pass on to the
important doctrine we have concerning the other night.
13.3.(2). To understand the countless benefits gained in this night in
regard to the vice of spiritual gluttony, let it suffice to say that the
soul is liberated from all the imperfections we mentioned and from many
other greater evils and foul abominations not listed, into which many have
fallen, as we know from experience, because they did not reform their
desire for this spiritual sweetness.
13.3.(3). God so curbs concupiscence and bridles the appetite through this
arid and dark night that the soul cannot feast on any sensory delight from
earthly or heavenly things, and he continues this purgation in such a way
that the concupiscence and the appetites are brought into subjection,
reformed, and mortified. The passions, as a result, lose their strength and
become sterile from not receiving any satisfaction, just as the courses of
the udder dry up when milk is not drawn through them daily.
13.3.(4). Once the soul's appetites have withered, and it lives in
spiritual sobriety, admirable benefits besides those mentioned result. For
when the appetites and concupiscences are quenched, the soul dwells in
spiritual peace and tranquility. Where neither the appetites nor
concupiscence reign, there is no disturbance but only God's peace and
consolation.
13.4. A second benefit following on this one is that the soul bears a
habitual remembrance of God, accompanied by a fear and dread of turning
back on the spiritual road. This is a notable benefit and by no means one
of the least in this dryness and purgation of the appetite, because the
soul is purified of the imperfections that of themselves make it dull and
dark, and cling to it by means of appetites and affections.
13.5. Another very great benefit for the soul in this night is that it
exercises all the virtues together. In the patience and forbearance
practiced in these voids and aridities, and through perseverance in its
spiritual exercises without consolation or satisfaction, the soul practices
the love of God, since it is no longer motivated by the attractive and
savory gratification it finds in its work, but only by God. It also
practices the virtue of fortitude, because it draws strength from weakness
in the difficulties and aversions experienced in its work, and thus becomes
strong. Finally, in these aridities the soul practices corporeally and
spiritually all the virtues, theological as well as cardinal and moral.
13.6. David affirms that a person obtains in this night these four
benefits: the delight of peace; a habitual remembrance of God and
solicitude concerning him; cleanness and purity of soul; and the practice
of virtue. For David himself had such experience by being in this night: My
soul refused consolations, I remembered God and found consolation, and
exercised myself, and my soul swooned away; and then he adds: I meditated
at night in my heart, and I exercised myself, and swept and purified my
spirit (of all its imperfections) [Ps. 77:2-6].
13.7. In relation to the imperfections of the other three vices (anger,
envy, and sloth), the soul is also purged in this dryness of appetite, and
it acquires the virtues to which these vices are opposed. Softened and
humbled by aridities and hardships and by other temptations and trials in
which God exercises the soul in the course of this night, individuals
become meek toward God and themselves and also toward their neighbor. As a
result they no longer become impatiently angry with themselves and their
faults or with their neighbor's; neither are they displeased or
disrespectfully querulous with God for not making them perfect quickly.
13.8. As for envy, these individuals also become charitable toward others.
For if they do have envy, it will not be vicious as before, when they were
distressed that others were preferred to them and more advanced. Now, aware
of how miserable they are, they are willing to concede this about others.
The envy they have -- if they do have any -- is a holy envy that desires to
imitate others, which indicates solid virtue.
13.9. The sloth and tedium they feel in spiritual things is not vicious as
before. Previously this sloth was the outcome of the spiritual
gratification they either enjoyed or tried to obtain when not experienced.
Yet this wearisomeness does not flow from any weakness relative to sensory
gratification, for in this purgation of the appetite God takes from the
soul all its satisfaction.
13.10. Besides these benefits, innumerable others flow from this dry
contemplation. In the midst of these aridities and straits, God frequently
communicates to the soul, when it least expects, spiritual sweetness, a
very pure love, and a spiritual knowledge that is sometimes most delicate.
Each of these communications is more valuable than all the soul previously
sought. Yet in the beginning one will not think so because the spiritual
inflow is very delicate and the senses do not perceive it.
13.11. Finally, insofar as these persons are purged of their sensory
affections and appetites, they obtain freedom of spirit in which they
acquire the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit.
13.11.(2). They are also wondrously liberated from the hands of their
enemies, the devil, the world, and the flesh. For when the sensory delight
and gratification regarding things is quenched, neither the devil, nor the
world, nor sensuality has arms or power against the spirit.
13.12. These aridities, then, make people walk with purity in the love of
God. No longer are they moved to act by the delight and satisfaction they
find in a work, as perhaps they were when they derived this from their
deeds, but by the desire of pleasing God. They are neither presumptuous nor
self-satisfied, as was their custom in the time of their prosperity, but
fearful and disquieted about themselves and lacking in any self-
satisfaction. This is the holy fear that preserves and gives increase to
the virtues.
13.12.(2). This dryness also quenches the natural concupiscences and vigor,
as we also said. Were it not for the satisfaction God himself sometimes
infuses, it would be a wonder if the soul through its own diligence could
get any sensible gratification or consolation out of its spiritual works
and exercises.
13.13. In this arid night solicitude for God and longings about serving him
increase. Since the sensory breasts (through which the appetites pursued by
these souls were sustained and nurtured) gradually dry up, only the anxiety
about serving God remains, in dryness and nakedness. These yearnings are
very pleasing to God, since as David proclaims: The afflicted spirit is a
sacrifice to God [Ps. 51:17].
13.14. Since the soul knows that, from this dry purgation through which it
passed, it procured so many and such precious benefits, as are referred to
here, the verse of this stanza is no exaggeration: " -- Ah, the sheer
grace! -- I went out unseen." That is, I went forth from subjection to my
sensory appetites and affections unseen, so that the three enemies were
unable to stop me. These three enemies entrap the soul -- as with snares --
in its appetites and gratifications and keep it from going forth to the
freedom of the love of God. But without these satisfactions and appetites
the enemies cannot fight against the soul.
13.15. Having calmed the four passions (joy, sorrow, hope, and fear)
through constant mortification, and lulled to sleep the natural sensory
appetites, and having achieved harmony in the interior senses by
discontinuing discursive operations (all of which pertains to the household
or dwelling of the lower part of the soul, here referred to as its house),
the soul says:
My house being now all stilled.
CHAPTER 14
14. An explanation of the last verse of the first stanza.
14.1. When this house of the senses was stilled (that is, mortified), its
passions quenched, and its appetites calmed and put to sleep through this
happy night of the purgation of the senses, the soul went out in order to
begin its journey along the road of the spirit, which is that of
proficients and which by another terminology is referred to as the
illuminative way or the way of infused contemplation. On this road God
himself pastures and refreshes the soul without any of its own discursive
meditation or active help.
14.1.(2). Such is the sensory night and purgation of the soul. For those
who must afterward enter into the other more oppressive night of the spirit
in order to reach the divine union of love -- because not everyone but only
a few usually reach this union -- this night is ordinarily accompanied by
burdensome trials and sensory temptations that last a long time, and with
some longer than with others.1
14.1.(3). An angel of Satan [2 Cor. 12:7], which is the spirit of
fornication, is given to some to buffet their senses with strong and
abominable temptations, and afflict their spirit with foul thoughts and
very vivid images, which sometimes is a pain worse than death for them.
14.2. At other times a blasphemous spirit is added; it commingles
intolerable blasphemies with all one's thoughts and ideas. Sometimes these
blasphemies are so strongly suggested to the imagination that the soul is
almost made to pronounce them, which is a grave torment to it.
14.3. Sometimes another loathsome spirit, which Isaiah calls spiritus
vertiginis [Is. 19:14], is sent to these souls, not for their downfall but
to try them.2 This spirit so darkens the senses that such souls are filled
with a thousand scruples and perplexities, so intricate that such persons
can never be content with anything, nor can their judgment receive the
support of any counsel or idea. This is one of the most burdensome goads
and horrors of this night -- very similar to what occurs in the spiritual
night.
14.4. God generally sends these storms and trials in this sensory night and
purgation to those whom he will afterward put in the other night --
although not all pass on to it -- so that thus chastised and buffeted, the
senses and faculties may gradually be exercised, prepared, and inured for
the union with wisdom that will be granted there. For if a soul is not
tempted, tried, and proved through temptations and trials, its senses will
not be strengthened in preparation for wisdom. It is said therefore in
Ecclesiasticus: He who is not tempted, what does he know? And he who is not
tried, what are the things he knows? [Ecclus. 34:9-10]. Jeremiah gives good
testimony of this truth: You have chastised me, Lord, and I was instructed
[Jer. 31:18].
14.4.(2). And the most fitting kind of chastisement for entering into
wisdom consists of the interior trials we mentioned, since they most
efficaciously purge the senses of all the satisfaction and consolation the
soul was attached to through natural weakness. By these trials it is truly
humbled in preparation for its coming exaltation.
14.5. Yet we cannot say certainly how long the soul will be kept in this
fast and penance of the senses. Not everyone undergoes this in the same
way, neither are the temptations identical. All is meted out according to
God's will and the greater or lesser amount of imperfection that must be
purged from each one. In the measure of the degree of love to which God
wishes to raise a soul, he humbles it with greater or less intensity, or
for a longer or shorter period of time.
14.5.(2). Those who have more considerable capacity and strength for
suffering, God purges more intensely and quickly. But those who are very
weak he keeps in this night for a long time. Their purgation is less
intense and their temptations abated, and he frequently refreshes their
senses to keep them from backsliding. They arrive at the purity of
perfection late in life. And some of them never reach it entirely, for they
are never wholly in the night or wholly out of it. Although they do not
advance, God exercises them for short periods and on certain days in those
temptations and aridities to preserve them in humility and self-knowledge;
and at other times and seasons he comes to their aid with consolation, lest
through loss of courage they return to their search for worldly
consolation. God acts with other weaker souls as though he were showing
himself and then hiding; he does this to exercise them in his love, for
without these withdrawals they would not learn to reach him.
14.6. Yet, as is evident through experience, souls who will pass on to so
happy and lofty a state as is the union of love must usually remain in
these aridities and temptations for a long while no matter how quickly God
leads them. It is time to begin our treatise on the second night.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 1
The beginning of the treatise on the dark night of the spirit. Explains
when this night commences.
1.1. If His Majesty intends to lead the soul on, he does not put it in this
dark night of spirit immediately after its going out from the aridities and
trials of the first purgation and night of sense. Instead, after having
emerged from the state of beginners, the soul usually spends many years
exercising itself in the state of proficients. In this new state, as one
liberated from a cramped prison cell, it goes about the things of God with
much more freedom and satisfaction of spirit and with more abundant
interior delight than it did in the beginning before entering the night of
sense. Its imagination and faculties are no longer bound to discursive
meditation and spiritual solicitude, as was their custom. The soul readily
finds in its spirit, without the work of meditation, a very serene, loving
contemplation and spiritual delight. Nonetheless, the purgation of the soul
is not complete. The purgation of the principal part, that of the spirit,
is lacking, and without it the sensory purgation, however strong it may
have been, is incomplete because of a communication existing between the
two parts of the soul that form only one suppositum. As a result, certain
needs, aridities, darknesses, and conflicts are felt. These are sometimes
far more intense than those of the past and are like omens or messengers of
the coming night of the spirit.
1.1.(2). But they are not lasting, as they will be in the night that is to
come. For after enduring the short period or periods of time, or even days,
in this night and tempest, the soul immediately returns to its customary
serenity. Thus God purges some individuals who are not destined to ascend
to so lofty a degree of love as are others. He brings them into this night
of contemplation and spiritual purgation at intervals, frequently causing
the night to come and then the dawn so that David's affirmation might be
fulfilled: He sends his crystal (contemplation) like morsels [Ps. 147:17].
These morsels of dark contemplation, though, are never as intense as is
that frightful night of contemplation we are about to describe, in which
God places the soul purposely in order to bring it to divine union.
1.2. The delight and interior gratification that these proficients enjoy
abundantly and readily is communicated more copiously to them than
previously and consequently overflows into the senses more than was usual
before the sensory purgation. Since the sensory part of the soul is now
purer, it can, after its own mode, experience the delights of the spirit
more easily.
1.2.(2). But since, after all, the sensory part of the soul is weak and
incapable of vigorous spiritual communications, these proficients, because
of such communications experienced in the sensitive part, suffer many
infirmities, injuries, and weaknesses of stomach, and as a result fatigue
of spirit. The Wise Man says: The corruptible body is a load upon the soul
[Wis. 9:15]. Consequently the communications imparted to proficients cannot
be very strong or very intense or very spiritual, as is required for divine
union, because of the weakness and corruption of the senses that have their
share in them.
1.2.(3). Thus we have raptures and transports and the dislocation of bones,
which always occur when the communications are not purely spiritual
(communicated to the spirit alone) as are those of the perfect, who are
already purified by the night of spirit. The perfect enjoy freedom of
spirit without their senses being clouded or transported, for in them these
raptures and bodily torments cease.2
1.3. To point out why these proficients must enter this night of spirit, we
will note some of their imperfections and some of the dangers they
confront.3
CHAPTER 2
2. Other imperfections of these proficients.
2.1. The imperfections in these proficients are of two kinds: habitual and
actual. The habitual are the imperfect affections and habits still
remaining like roots in the spirit, for the sensory purgation could not
reach the spirit. The difference between the two purgations is like the
difference between pulling up roots or cutting off a branch, rubbing out a
fresh stain or an old, deeply embedded one. As we said, the purgation of
the senses is only the gate to and beginning of the contemplation that
leads to the purgation of spirit. This sensitive purgation, as we also
explained, serves more for the accommodation of the senses to the spirit
than for the union of the spirit with God. The stains of the old self still
linger in the spirit, although they may not be apparent or perceptible. If
these are not wiped away by the use of the soap and strong lye of this
purgative night, the spirit will be unable to reach the purity of divine
union.
2.2. These proficients also have the hebetudo mentis, the natural dullness
everyone contracts through sin, and a distracted and inattentive spirit.
The spirit must be illumined, clarified, and recollected by means of the
hardships and conflicts of this night. All those who have not passed beyond
the state of proficients possess these habitual imperfections that cannot,
as we said, coexist with the perfect state of the union of love.
2.3. Not all these proficients fall into actual imperfections in the same
way. Some encounter greater difficulties and dangers than those we
mentioned, for their experience of these goods in the senses is so exterior
and easily come by. They receive an abundance of spiritual communications
and apprehensions in the sensory and spiritual parts of their souls and
frequently behold imaginative and spiritual visions. All of this as well as
other delightful feelings are the lot of those who are in this state, and a
soul is often tricked through them by its own phantasy as well as by the
devil. The devil finds it pleasing to suggest to souls and impress on them
apprehensions and feelings. As a result of all this, these proficients are
easily charmed and beguiled if they are not careful to renounce such
apprehensions and feelings and energetically defend themselves through
faith.
2.3.(2). This is the stage in which the devil induces many into believing
vain visions and false prophecies. He strives to make them presume that God
and the saints speak with them, and frequently they believe their phantasy.
It is here that the devil customarily fills them with presumption and
pride. Drawn by vanity and arrogance, they allow themselves to be seen in
exterior acts of apparent holiness, such as raptures and other exhibitions.
They become audacious with God and lose holy fear, which is the key to and
guardian of all the virtues. Illusions and deceptions so multiply in some,
and they become so inveterate in them, that it is very doubtful whether
they will return to the pure road of virtue and authentic spirituality.
They fall into these miseries by being too secure in their surrender to
these apprehensions and spiritual feelings, and do this just when they were
beginning to make progress along the way.
2.4. So much could be said about the imperfections of these proficients and
of how irremediable they are -- since proficients think their blessings are
more spiritual than formerly -- that I desire to pass over the matter. I
only assert, in order to establish the necessity of the spiritual night
(the purgation) for anyone who is to advance, that no proficients, however
strenuous their efforts, will avoid many of these natural affections and
imperfect habits. These must be purified before one may pass on to divine
union.
2.5. Furthermore, to repeat what was said above, these spiritual
communications cannot be so intense, so pure, and so vigorous as is
requisite for this union, because the lower part of the soul still shares
in them. Thus, to reach union, the soul must enter the second night of the
spirit. In this night both the sensory and spiritual parts are despoiled of
all these apprehensions and delights, and the soul is made to walk in dark
and pure faith, which is the proper and adequate means to divine union, as
God says through Hosea: I will espouse you (unite you) to me through faith
[Hos. 2:20].
CHAPTER 3
3. An explanation for what is to follow.
3.1. These souls, then, are now proficients. Their senses have been fed
with sweet communications so that, allured by the gratification flowing
from the spirit, they could be accommodated and united to the spirit. Each
part of the soul can now in its own way receive nourishment from the same
spiritual food and from the same dish of only one suppositum and subject.
These two parts thus united and conformed are jointly prepared to suffer
the rough and arduous purgation of the spirit that awaits them. In this
purgation, these two portions of the soul will undergo complete
purification, for one part is never adequately purged without the other.
The real purgation of the senses begins with the spirit. Hence the night of
the senses we explained should be called a certain reformation and bridling
of the appetite rather than a purgation. The reason is that all the
imperfections and disorders of the sensory part are rooted in the spirit
and from it receive their strength. All good and evil habits reside in the
spirit and until these habits are purged, the senses cannot be completely
purified of their rebellions and vices.
3.2. In this night that follows both parts are jointly purified. This was
the purpose of the reformation of the first night and the calm that
resulted from it: that the sensory part, united in a certain way with the
spirit, might undergo purgation and suffering with greater fortitude. Such
is the fortitude necessary for so strong and arduous a purgation that if
the lower part in its weakness is not reformed first, and afterward
strengthened in God through the experience of sweet and delightful
communion with him, it has neither the fortitude nor the preparedness to
endure it.
3.3. These proficients are still very lowly and natural in their communion
with God and in their activity directed toward him because the gold of the
spirit is not purified and illumined. They still think of God and speak of
him as little children, and their knowledge and experience of him is like
that of little children, as St. Paul asserts [1 Cor. 13:11]. The reason is
that they have not reached perfection, which is union of the soul with God.
Through this union, as fully grown, they do mighty works in their spirit
since their faculties and works are more divine than human, as we will
point out. Wishing to strip them in fact of this old self and clothe them
with the new, which is created according to God in the newness of sense, as
the Apostle says [Col. 3:9-10; Eph. 4:22-24; Rom. 12:2], God divests the
faculties, affections, and senses, both spiritual and sensory, interior and
exterior. He leaves the intellect in darkness, the will in aridity, the
memory in emptiness, and the affections in supreme affliction, bitterness,
and anguish by depriving the soul of the feeling and satisfaction it
previously obtained from spiritual blessings. For this privation is one of
the conditions required that the spiritual form, which is the union of
love, may be introduced into the spirit and united with it.
3.3.(2). The Lord works all of this in the soul by means of a pure and dark
contemplation, as is indicated in the first stanza. Although we explained
this stanza in reference to the first night of the senses, the soul
understands it mainly in relation to this second night of the spirit, since
this night is the principal purification of the soul. With this in mind, we
will quote it and explain it again.1
CHAPTER 4
4. The first stanza and its explanation.
First Stanza
One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
[Explanation]
4.1. Understanding this stanza now to refer to contemplative purgation or
nakedness and poverty of spirit (which are all about the same),1 we can
thus explain it, as though the soul says:
4.1.(2). Poor, abandoned, and unsupported by any of the apprehensions of my
soul (in the darkness of my intellect, the distress of my will, and the
affliction and anguish of my memory), left to darkness in pure faith, which
is a dark night for these natural faculties, and with my will touched only
by sorrows, afflictions, and longings of love of God, I went out from
myself. That is, I departed from my low manner of understanding, and my
feeble way of loving, and my poor and limited method of finding
satisfaction in God. I did this unhindered by either the flesh or the
devil.
4.2. This was great happiness and a sheer grace for me, because through the
annihilation and calming of my faculties, passions, appetites, and
affections, by which my experience and satisfaction in God were base, I
went out from my human operation and way of acting to God's operation and
way of acting. That is:
4.2.(2). My intellect departed from itself, changing from human and natural
to divine. For united with God through this purgation, it no longer
understands by means of its natural vigor and light, but by means of the
divine wisdom to which it was united. And my will departed from itself and
became divine. United with the divine love, it no longer loves in a lowly
manner, with its natural strength, but with the strength and purity of the
Holy Spirit; and thus the will does not operate humanly in relation to God.
4.2.(3). The memory, too, was changed into presentiments of eternal glory.
4.2.(4). And finally, all the strength and affections of the soul, by means
of this night and purgation of the old self, are renewed with divine
qualities and delights.2
4.2.(5). An explanation of the first verse follows:
One dark night,
CHAPTER 5
5. Begins to explain how this dark contemplation is not only night for the
soul but also affliction and torment.
5.1. This dark night is an inflow of God into the soul, which purges it of
its habitual ignorances and imperfections, natural and spiritual, and which
the contemplatives call infused contemplation or mystical theology.1
Through this contemplation, God teaches the soul secretly and instructs it
in the perfection of love without its doing anything or understanding how
this happens.
5.1.(2). Insofar as infused contemplation is loving wisdom of God, it
produces two principal effects in the soul: by both purging and illumining,
this contemplation prepares the soul for union with God through love. Hence
the same loving wisdom that purges and illumines the blessed spirits purges
and illumines the soul here on earth.
5.2. Yet a doubt arises: Why, if it is a divine light (for it illumines
souls and purges them of their ignorance), does the soul call it a dark
night? In answer to this, there are two reasons this divine wisdom is not
only night and darkness for the soul but also affliction and torment.
First, because of the height of the divine wisdom that exceeds the
abilities of the soul; and on this account the wisdom is dark for the soul.
Second, because of the soul's baseness and impurity; and on this account
the wisdom is painful, afflictive, and also dark for the soul.2
5.3. To prove the first reason, we must presuppose a certain principle of
the Philosopher: that the clearer and more obvious divine things are in
themselves, the darker and more hidden they are to the soul naturally.3 The
brighter the light, the more the owl is blinded; and the more one looks at
the brilliant sun, the more the sun darkens the faculty of sight, deprives
and overwhelms it in its weakness.
5.3.(2). Hence when the divine light of contemplation strikes a soul not
yet entirely illumined, it causes spiritual darkness, for it not only
surpasses the act of natural understanding but it also deprives the soul of
this act and darkens it. This is why St. Dionysius and other mystical
theologians call this infused contemplation a "ray of darkness" -- that is,
for the soul not yet illumined and purged.4 For this great supernatural
light overwhelms the intellect and deprives it of its natural vigor.
5.3.(3). David also said that clouds and darkness are near God and surround
him [Ps. 18:11], not because this is true in itself, but because it appears
thus to our weak intellects, which in being unable to attain so bright a
light are blinded and darkened. Hence he next declared that clouds passed
before the great splendor of his presence [Ps. 18:12], that is, between God
and our intellect. As a result, when God communicates this bright ray of
his secret wisdom to the soul not yet transformed, he causes thick darkness
in its intellect.
5.4. It is also evident that this dark contemplation is painful to the soul
in these beginnings. Since this divine infused contemplation has many
extremely good properties, and the still unpurged soul that receives it has
many extreme miseries, and because two contraries cannot coexist in one
subject, the soul must necessarily undergo affliction and suffering.
Because of the purgation of its imperfections caused by this contemplation,
the soul becomes a battlefield in which these two contraries combat one
another. We will prove this by induction in the following way.
5.5. In regard to the first cause of one's affliction: Because the light
and wisdom of this contemplation is very bright and pure, and the soul in
which it shines is dark and impure, a person will be deeply afflicted on
receiving it. When eyes are sickly, impure, and weak, they suffer pain if a
bright light shines on them.
5.5.(2). The soul, because of its impurity, suffers immensely at the time
this divine light truly assails it. When this pure light strikes in order
to expel all impurity, persons feel so unclean and wretched that it seems
God is against them and they are against God.
5.5.(3). Because it seems that God has rejected it, the soul suffers such
pain and grief that when God tried Job in this way it proved one of the
worst of Job's trials, as he says: Why have You set me against You, and I
am heavy and burdensome to myself? [Jb. 7:20]. Clearly beholding its
impurity by means of this pure light, although in darkness, the soul
understands distinctly that it is worthy neither of God nor of any
creature. And what most grieves it is that it thinks it will never be
worthy, and there are no more blessings for it. This divine and dark light
causes deep immersion of the mind in the knowledge and feeling of one's own
miseries and evils; it brings all these miseries into relief so the soul
sees clearly that of itself it will never possess anything else. We can
interpret that passage from David in this sense: You have corrected humans
because of their iniquity and have undone and consumed their souls, as a
spider is eviscerated in its work [Ps. 39:11].
5.6. Persons suffer affliction in the second manner because of their
natural, moral, and spiritual weakness. Since this divine contemplation
assails them somewhat forcibly in order to subdue and strengthen their
soul, they suffer so much in their weakness that they almost die,
particularly at times when the light is more powerful. Both the sense and
the spirit, as though under an immense and dark load, undergo such agony
and pain that the soul would consider death a relief. The prophet Job,
having experienced this, declared: I do not desire that he commune with me
with much strength lest he overwhelm me with the weight of his greatness
[Jb. 23:6].
5.7. Under the stress of this oppression and weight, individuals feel so
far from all favor that they think, and so it is, that even that which
previously upheld them has ended, along with everything else, and there is
no one who will take pity on them. It is in this sense that Job also cried
out: Have pity on me, at least you, my friends, for the hand of the Lord
has touched me [Jb. 19:21].
5.7.(2). How amazing and pitiful it is that the soul be so utterly weak and
impure that the hand of God, though light and gentle, should feel so heavy
and contrary. For the hand of God does not press down or weigh on the soul,
but only touches it; and this mercifully, for God's aim is to grant it
favors and not to chastise it.
CHAPTER 6
6. Other kinds of affliction suffered in this night.
6.1. The two extremes, divine and human, which are joined here, produce the
third kind of pain and affliction the soul suffers at this time. The divine
extreme is the purgative contemplation, and the human extreme is the soul,
the receiver of this contemplation. Since the divine extreme strikes in
order to renew the soul and divinize it (by stripping it of the habitual
affections and properties of the old self to which the soul is strongly
united, attached, and conformed), it so disentangles and dissolves the
spiritual substance -- absorbing it in a profound darkness -- that the soul
at the sight of its miseries feels that it is melting away and being undone
by a cruel spiritual death. It feels as if it were swallowed by a beast and
being digested in the dark belly, and it suffers an anguish comparable to
Jonah's in the belly of the whale [Jon. 2:1-3]. It is fitting that the soul
be in this sepulcher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual
resurrection for which it hopes.
6.2. David describes this suffering and affliction -- although it is truly
beyond all description -- when he says: The sighs of death encircled me,
the sorrows of hell surrounded me, in my tribulation I cried out [Ps. 18:5-
6].
6.2.(2). But what the sorrowing soul feels most is the conviction that God
has rejected it, and with abhorrence cast it into darkness. The thought
that God has abandoned it is a piteous and heavy affliction for the soul.
When David also felt this affliction he cried: In the manner of the
wounded, dead in the sepulchers, abandoned now by your hand so that you
remember them no longer, so have you placed me in the deepest and lowest
lake, in the darkness and shadow of death, and your wrath weighs on me, and
all your waves you have let loose on me [Ps. 88:4-7].
6.2.(3). When this purgative contemplation oppresses a soul, it feels very
vividly indeed the shadow of death, the sighs of death, and the sorrows of
hell, all of which reflect the feeling of God's absence, of being chastised
and rejected by him, and of being unworthy of him, as well as the object of
his anger. The soul experiences all this and even more, for now it seems
that this affliction will last forever.
6.3. Such persons also feel forsaken and despised by creatures,
particularly by their friends. David immediately adds: You have withdrawn
my friends and acquaintances far from me; they have considered me an
abomination [Ps. 88:8]. Jonah, as one who also underwent this experience,
both physically and spiritually in the belly of the whale, testifies: You
have cast me out into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the current
surrounded me; all its whirlpools and waves passed over me and I said: I am
cast from the sight of your eyes; yet I shall see your holy temple again
(he says this because God purifies the soul that it might see his temple);
the waters encircled me even to the soul, the abyss went round about me,
the open sea covered my head, I descended to the lowest parts of the
mountains, the locks of the earth closed me up forever [Jon. 2:4-7]. The
"locks" refer to the soul's imperfections that hinder it from enjoying the
delights of this contemplation.
6.4. Another excellence of dark contemplation, its majesty and grandeur,
causes a fourth kind of affliction to the soul. This property makes the
soul feel within itself the other extreme -- its own intimate poverty and
misery. Such awareness is one of the chief afflictions it suffers in the
purgation.
6.4.(2). The soul experiences an emptiness and poverty in regard to three
classes of goods (temporal, natural, and spiritual) which are directed
toward pleasing it, and is conscious of being placed in the midst of the
contrary evils (the miseries of imperfections, aridities and voids in the
apprehensions of the faculties, and an abandonment of the spirit in
darkness).
6.4.(3). Since God here purges both the sensory and spiritual substance of
the soul, and its interior and exterior faculties, it is appropriately
brought into emptiness, poverty, and abandonment in these parts, and left
in dryness and darkness. For the sensory part is purified by aridity, the
faculties by the void of their apprehensions, and the spirit by thick
darkness.
6.5. God does all this by means of dark contemplation. And the soul not
only suffers the void and suspension of these natural supports and
apprehensions, which is a terrible anguish (like hanging in midair, unable
to breathe), but it is also purged by this contemplation. As fire consumes
the tarnish and rust of metal, this contemplation annihilates, empties, and
consumes all the affections and imperfect habits the soul contracted
throughout its life. Since these imperfections are deeply rooted in the
substance of the soul, in addition to this poverty, this natural and
spiritual emptiness, it usually suffers an oppressive undoing and an inner
torment. Thus the passage of Ezekiel may be verified: Heap together the
bones, and I shall burn them in the fire, the flesh shall be consumed, and
the whole composition burned, and the bones destroyed [Ez. 24:10). He
refers here to the affliction suffered in the emptiness and poverty of both
the sensory and the spiritual substance of the soul. And he then adds:
Place it also thus empty on the embers that its metal may become hot and
melt and its uncleanness be taken away from it and its rust consumed [Ez.
24:11]. This passage points out the heavy affliction the soul suffers from
the purgation caused by the fire of this contemplation. For the prophet
asserts that in order to burn away the rust of the affections the soul
must, as it were, be annihilated and undone in the measure that these
passions and imperfections are connatural to it.
6.6. Because the soul is purified in this forge like gold in the crucible,
as the Wise Man says [Wis. 3:6], it feels both this terrible undoing in its
very substance and extreme poverty as though it were approaching its end.
This experience is expressed in David's cry: Save me, Lord, for the waters
have come in even unto my soul; I am stuck in the mire of the deep, and
there is nowhere to stand; I have come unto the depth of the sea, and the
tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in crying out, my throat has
become hoarse, my eyes have failed while I hope in my God [Ps. 69:1-3].
6.6.(2). God humbles the soul greatly in order to exalt it greatly
afterward. And if he did not ordain that these feelings, when quickened in
the soul, be soon put to sleep again, a person would die in a few days.
Only at intervals is one aware of these feelings in all their intensity.
Sometimes this experience is so vivid that it seems to the soul that it
sees hell and perdition open before it. These are the ones who go down into
hell alive [Ps. 55:15], since their purgation on earth is similar to what
takes place there. For this purgation is what would have to be undergone
there. The soul that endures it here on earth either does not enter that
place, or is detained there for only a short while. It gains more in one
hour here on earth by this purgation than it would in many there.
CHAPTER 7
7.A continuation of the same subject; other afflictions and straits of the
will.
7.1. The afflictions and straits of the will are also immense. Sometimes
these afflictions pierce the soul when it suddenly remembers the evils in
which it sees itself immersed, and it becomes uncertain of any remedy. To
this pain is added the remembrance of past prosperity, because usually
persons who enter this night have previously had many consolations in God
and rendered him many services. They are now sorrowful in knowing that they
are far from such good and can no longer enjoy it. Job tells also of his
affliction: I who was wont to be wealthy and rich am suddenly undone and
broken; he has taken me by the neck, he has broken me and set me up as his
mark so as to wound me. He has surrounded me with his lances, he wounded
all my loins, he has not pardoned, he has scattered my bowels on the
ground, he has torn me with wound upon wound, he has attacked me like a
strong giant. I sewed sackcloth upon my skin and covered my flesh with
ashes. My face is swollen with weeping, and my eyes blinded [Jb. 16:12-16].
7.2. So numerous and burdensome are the pains of this night, and so many
are the scriptural passages we could cite that we would have neither the
time nor the energy to put it all in writing; and, doubtless, all that we
can possibly say would fall short of expressing what this night really is.
Through the texts already quoted we have some idea of it.
7.2.(2). To conclude my commentary on this verse and further explain what
this night causes in the soul, I will refer to what Jeremiah felt in it.
Because his tribulations were so terrible, he speaks of them and weeps over
them profusely: I am the man who sees my poverty in the rod of his
indignation. He has led me and brought me into darkness and not into light.
He has turned and turned again his hand against me all the day. He has made
my skin and my flesh old; he has broken my bones. He has built a fence
round about me; and he has surrounded me with gall and labor. He has set me
in darkness, as those who are dead forever. He has made a fence around me
and against me that I might not go out; he has made my fetters heavy. And
also when I might have cried out and entreated, he has shut out my prayer.
He has closed up my exits and ways with square stones; he has destroyed my
paths. He is become to me like a bear lying in wait, as a lion in hiding.
He has turned aside my paths, and broken me in pieces; he has made me
desolate. He has bent his bow and set me as a mark for his arrow. He has
shot into my reins the daughters of his quiver. I have become a derision to
all the people, and laughter and scorn for them all the day. He has filled
me with bitterness, he has inebriated me with absinthe. One by one he has
broken my teeth; he has fed me with ashes. My soul is far removed from
peace. I have forgotten good things. And I said: My end, my aim and my hope
from the Lord is frustrated and finished. Remember my poverty and my
distress, the absinthe and the gall. I shall be mindful and remember, and
my soul will languish within me in afflictions [Lam. 3:1-20].
7.3. Jeremiah gives vent to all these lamentations about his afflictions
and trials and depicts very vividly the sufferings of a soul in this
purgation and spiritual night.
7.3.(2). One ought to have deep compassion for the soul God puts in this
tempestuous and frightful night. It may be true that the soul is fortunate
because of what is being accomplished within it, for great blessings will
proceed from this night; and Job affirms that out of darkness God will
raise up in the soul profound blessings and change the shadow of death into
light [Jb. 12:22]; and God will do this in such a way that, as David says,
the light will become what the darkness was [Ps. 139:12]. Nevertheless, the
soul is deserving of great pity because of the immense tribulation and the
suffering of extreme uncertainty about a remedy. It believes, as Jeremiah
says [Lam. 3:18], that its evil will never end. And it feels as David that
God has placed it in darkness like the dead of old, and that its spirit as
a result is in anguish within it and its heart troubled [Ps. 143:3-4].
7.3.(3). Added to this, because of the solitude and desolation this night
causes, is the fact that individuals in this state find neither consolation
nor support in any doctrine or spiritual master. Although their spiritual
director may point out many reasons for comfort on account of the blessings
contained in these afflictions, they cannot believe this. Because they are
engulfed and immersed in that feeling of evil by which they so clearly see
their own miseries, they believe their directors say these things because
they do not understand them and do not see what they themselves see and
feel. Instead of consolation they experience greater sorrow, thinking that
the director's doctrine is no remedy for their evil. Indeed, it is not a
remedy, for until the Lord finishes purging them in the way he desires, no
remedy is a help to them in their sorrow. Their helplessness is even
greater because of the little they can do in this situation. They resemble
one who is imprisoned in a dark dungeon, bound hands and feet, and able
neither to move nor see nor feel any favor from heaven or earth. They
remain in this condition until their spirit is humbled, softened, and
purified, until it becomes so delicate, simple, and refined that it can be
one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love that
God, in his mercy, desires to grant. In conformity with this degree, the
purgation is of greater or lesser force and endures for a longer or shorter
time.
7.4. But if it is to be truly efficacious, it will last for some years, no
matter how intense it may be; although there are intervals in which,
through God's dispensation, this dark contemplation ceases to assail the
soul in a purgative mode and shines upon it illuminatively and lovingly.
Then the soul, like one who has been unshackled and released from a dungeon
and who can enjoy the benefit of spaciousness and freedom, experiences
great sweetness of peace and loving friendship with God in a ready
abundance of spiritual communication.
7.4.(2). This illumination is for the soul a sign of the health the
purgation is producing within it and a foretaste of the abundance for which
it hopes. Sometimes the experience is so intense that it seems to the soul
that its trials are over. For when the graces imparted are more purely
spiritual they have this trait: When they are trials, it seems to a soul
that it will never be liberated from them and that no more blessings await
it, as was mentioned in the passages previously cited; when they are
spiritual goods, the soul believes its evils have passed and it will no
longer lack blessings, as David confessed on being aware of these goods: I
said in my abundance: I shall never move [Ps. 30:6].
7.5. The soul experiences this because in the spirit the possession of one
contrary removes of itself the actual possession and feeling of the other
contrary. This does not occur in the sensory part because of the weakness
of its apprehensive power. But since the spirit is not yet completely
purged and cleansed of affections contracted from the lower part, it can,
insofar as it is affected by them, be changed and suffer affliction,
although insofar as it is a spirit it does not change. We note that David
changed and experienced many afflictions and evils, although in the time of
his abundance he had thought and said he would never be moved. Since the
soul beholds itself actuated with that abundance of spiritual goods, and is
unable to see the imperfection and impurity still rooted within, it thinks
its trials have ended.
7.6. But this thought is rare, for until the spiritual purification is
completed, the tranquil communication is seldom so abundant as to conceal
the roots that still remain. The soul does not cease to feel that something
is lacking or remains to be done, and this feeling keeps it from fully
enjoying the alleviation. It feels as though an enemy is within it who,
although pacified and put to sleep, will awaken and cause trouble.
7.6.(2). And this is true, for when a person feels safest and least expects
it, the purgation returns to engulf the soul in another degree more severe,
dark, and piteous than the former, lasting for another period of time,
perhaps longer than the first. Such persons believe thereby that their
blessings are gone forever. The enjoyment of blessing that was theirs after
the first trial, in which they thought they no longer had anything more to
suffer, was not sufficient to prevent them from thinking in this second
degree of anguish that now all is over and the blessings formerly
experienced will never return. As I say, this strong conviction is caused
by the actual apprehension of the spirit, which annihilates within itself
everything contrary to this conviction.
7.7. This is the reason that souls in purgatory suffer great doubts about
whether they will ever leave and whether their afflictions will end.
Although they habitually possess the three theological virtues (faith,
hope, and charity), the actual feeling of both the privation of God and the
afflictions does not permit them to enjoy the actual blessing and comfort
of these virtues. Although they are aware that they love God, this gives
them no consolation, because they think that God does not love them and
they are unworthy of his love. Because they see themselves deprived of him
and established in their own miseries, they feel that they truly bear
within themselves every reason for being rejected and abhorred by God.
7.7.(2). Thus, although persons suffering this purgation know that they
love God and that they would give a thousand lives for him (they would
indeed, for souls undergoing these trials love God very earnestly), they
find no relief. This knowledge instead causes them deeper affliction. For
in loving God so intensely that nothing else gives them concern, and aware
of their own misery, they are unable to believe that God loves them. They
believe that they neither have nor ever will have within themselves
anything deserving of God's love, but rather every reason for being
abhorred not only by God but by every creature forever. They grieve to see
within themselves reasons for meriting rejection by him whom they so love
and long for.
CHAPTER 8
8. Other afflictions that trouble the soul in this state.
8.1. Yet something else grieves and troubles individuals in this state, and
it is that, since this dark night impedes their faculties and affections,
they cannot beseech God or raise their mind and affection to him. It seems
as it did to Jeremiah that God has placed a cloud in front of the soul so
that its prayer might not pass through [Lam. 3:44]. The passage we already
cited refers to this difficulty also: He closed and locked my ways with
square stones [Lam. 3:9]. And if sometimes the soul does beseech God, it
does this with so little strength and fervor that it thinks God does not
hear or pay any attention to it, as the prophet Jeremiah also lamented:
When I cried out and entreated, he excluded my prayer [Lam. 3:8].
8.1.(2). Indeed, this is not the time to speak with God, but the time to
put one's mouth in the dust, as Jeremiah says, that perhaps there might
come some actual hope [Lam. 3:29], and the time to suffer this purgation
patiently. God it is who is working now in the soul, and for this reason
the soul can do nothing. Consequently, these persons can neither pray
vocally nor be attentive to spiritual matters, nor still less attend to
temporal affairs and business. Furthermore, they frequently experience such
absorption and profound forgetfulness in the memory that long periods pass
without their knowing what they did or thought about, and they know not
what they are doing or about to do, nor can they concentrate on the task at
hand, even though they desire to.
8.2. Since this night purges not only the intellect of its light and the
will of its affections but also the memory of its discursive knowledge, it
is fitting that the memory be annihilated in all things to fulfill what
David said of this purgation: I was annihilated and knew not [Ps. 73:22].
David's unknowing refers to forgetfulness and a lack of knowledge in the
memory. This abstraction and oblivion is caused by the interior
recollection in which this contemplation absorbs the soul.
8.2.(2). That the soul with its faculties be divinely tempered and prepared
for the divine union of love, it must first be engulfed in this divine and
dark spiritual light of contemplation, and thereby be withdrawn from all
creature affections and apprehensions. The duration of this absorption is
proportionate to the intensity of the contemplation. The more simply and
purely the divine light strikes the soul, the more it darkens and empties
and annihilates it in its particular apprehensions and affections
concerning both earthly and heavenly things; and, also, the less simply and
purely it shines, the less it deprives and darkens the soul.
8.2.(3). It seems incredible that the brighter and purer the supernatural,
divine light is, the darker it is for the soul; and that the less bright it
is, the less dark it is to the soul. We can understand this truth clearly
if we consider what we proved above from the teaching of the Philosopher:
that the clearer and more evident supernatural things are in themselves,
the darker they are to our intellects.
8.3. A comparison with natural light will illustrate this. We observe that
the more a ray of sunlight shining through a window is void of dust
particles, the less clearly it is seen, and that it is perceived more
clearly when there are more dust particles in the air. The reason is that
the light in itself is invisible and is rather the means by which the
objects it strikes are seen. But, then, it is also seen through its
reflection off them. Were the light not to strike these objects, it would
not be seen and neither would they. As a result, if a ray of sunlight
should enter through one window, traverse the room, and go out through
another window without coming in contact with any object or dust particles
off which it could reflect, the room would have no more light than
previously; neither would the ray be visible. Instead, upon close
observation one notes that there is more darkness where the ray is present,
because the ray takes away and darkens some of the other light; and this
ray is invisible, as we said, because there are no objects off which it can
reflect.
8.4. This is precisely what the divine ray of contemplation does. In
striking the soul with its divine light, it surpasses the natural light and
thereby darkens and deprives a soul of all the natural affections and
apprehensions it perceived by means of its natural light. It leaves a
person's spiritual and natural faculties not only in darkness, but in
emptiness too. Leaving the soul thus empty and dark, the ray purges and
illumines it with divine spiritual light, while the soul thinks that it has
no light and is in darkness, as illustrated in the case of the ray of
sunlight that is invisible even in the middle of a room if the room is pure
and void of any object off which the light may reflect. Yet when this
spiritual light finds an object on which to shine, that is, when something
is to be understood spiritually concerning perfection or imperfection, no
matter how slight, or about a judgment on the truth or falsity of some
matter, persons will understand more clearly than they did before they were
in this darkness. And easily recognizing the imperfection that presents
itself, they grow conscious of the spiritual light they possess; for the
ray of light is dark and invisible until a hand or some other thing passes
through it, and then both the object and the ray are recognized.
8.5. Since this light is so simple, so pure, and so general, and is
unaffected and unrestricted by any particular intelligible object, natural
or divine, and since the faculties are empty and annihilated of all these
apprehensions, the soul with universality and great facility perceives and
penetrates anything, earthly or heavenly, that is presented to it. Hence
the Apostle says that the spiritual person penetrates all things, even the
deep things of God [1 Cor. 2:10]. What the Holy Spirit says through the
Wise Man applies to this general and simple wisdom, that is, that it
touches everywhere because of its purity [Wis. 7:24], because it is not
particularized by any distinct object of affection.
8.5.(2). And this is characteristic of the spirit purged and annihilated of
all particular knowledge and affection: Not finding satisfaction in
anything or understanding anything in particular, and remaining in its
emptiness and darkness, it embraces all things with great preparedness. And
St. Paul's words are verified: Nihil habentes, et omnia possidentes (Having
nothing, yet possessing all things) [2 Cor. 6:10]. Such poverty of spirit
deserves this blessedness.
CHAPTER 9
9. Although this night darkens the spirit, it does so to give light.
9.1. It remains to be said, then, that even though this happy night darkens
the spirit, it does so only to impart light concerning all things; and even
though it humbles individuals and reveals their miseries, it does so only
to exalt them; and even though it impoverishes and empties them of all
possessions and natural affection, it does so only that they may reach out
divinely to the enjoyment of all earthly and heavenly things, with a
general freedom of spirit in them all.
9.1.(2). That elements be commingled with all natural compounds, they must
be unaffected by any particular color, odor, or taste, and thus they can
concur with all tastes, odors, and colors. Similarly, the spirit must be
simple, pure, and naked as to all natural affections, actual and habitual,
in order to be able to communicate freely in fullness of spirit with the
divine wisdom in which, on account of the soul's purity, the delights of
all things are tasted to a certain eminent degree. Without this purgation
the soul would be wholly unable to experience the satisfaction of all this
abundance of spiritual delight. Only one attachment or one particular
object to which the spirit is actually or habitually bound is enough to
hinder the experience or reception of the delicate and intimate delight of
the spirit of love that contains eminently in itself all delights.
9.2. Because of their one attachment to the food and fleshmeat they had
tasted in Egypt [Ex. 16:3], the children of Israel were unable to get any
taste from the delicate bread of angels -- the manna of the desert, which,
as Scripture says, contained all savors and was changed to the taste each
one desired [Wis. 16:20-21]. Similarly the spirit, still affected by some
actual or habitual attachment or some particular knowledge or any other
apprehension, is unable to taste the delights of the spirit of freedom.
9.2.(2). The reason is that the affections, feelings, and apprehensions of
the perfect spirit, because they are divine, are of another sort and are so
eminent and so different from the natural that their actual and habitual
possession demands the annihilation and expulsion of the natural affections
and apprehensions; for two contraries cannot coexist in one subject.
9.2.(3). Hence, so the soul may pass on to these grandeurs, this dark night
of contemplation must necessarily annihilate it first and undo it in its
lowly ways by putting it into darkness, dryness, conflict, and emptiness.
For the light imparted to the soul is a most lofty divine light that
transcends all natural light and does not belong naturally to the
intellect.
9.3. That the intellect reach union with the divine light and become divine
in the state of perfection, this dark contemplation must first purge and
annihilate it of its natural light and bring it actually into obscurity. It
is fitting that this darkness last as long as is necessary for the
expulsion and annihilation of the intellect's habitual way of
understanding, which was a long time in use, and that divine light and
illumination take its place. Since that strength of understanding was
natural to the intellect, the darkness it here suffers is profound,
frightful, and extremely painful. This darkness seems to be substantial
darkness, since it is felt in the deep substance of the spirit.
9.3.(2). The affection of love that is bestowed in the divine union of love
is also divine, and consequently very spiritual, subtle, delicate, and
interior, exceeding every affection and feeling of the will and every
appetite. The will, as a result, must first be purged and annihilated of
all its affections and feelings in order to experience and taste, through
union of love, this divine affection and delight, which is so sublime and
does not naturally belong to the will. The soul is left in a dryness and
distress proportional to its habitual natural affections (whether for
divine or human things), so that every kind of demon may be debilitated,
dried up, and tried in the fire of this divine contemplation, as when
Tobias placed the fish heart in the fire [Tb. 6:16-17], and the soul may
become pure and simple, with a palate purged and healthy and ready to
experience the sublime and marvelous touches of divine love. After the
expulsion of all actual and habitual obstacles, it will behold itself
transformed in these divine touches.
9.4. Furthermore, in this union for which the dark night is a preparation,
the soul in its communion with God must be endowed and filled with a
certain glorious splendor embodying innumerable delights. These delights
surpass all the abundance the soul can possess naturally, for nature, so
weak and impure, cannot receive these delights, as Isaiah says: Eye has not
seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered any human heart what he has
prepared, etc. [Is. 64:4]. As a result the soul must first be set in
emptiness and poverty of spirit and purged of every natural support,
consolation, and apprehension, earthly and heavenly. Thus empty, it is
truly poor in spirit and stripped of the old self, and thereby able to live
that new and blessed life which is the state of union with God, attained by
means of this night.1
9.5. Extraneous to its common experience and natural knowledge, the soul
will have a very abundant and delightful divine sense and knowledge of all
divine and human things. It must then be refined and inured, as far as its
common and natural experience goes (for the eyes by which it now views
these things will be as different from those of the past as is spirit from
sense and divine from human), and placed in terrible anguish and distress
by means of this purgative contemplation. And the memory must be abstracted
from all agreeable and peaceful knowledge and feel interiorly alien to all
things, in which it will seem that all things are different than before.
9.5.(2). This night withdraws the spirit from its customary manner of
experience to bring it to the divine experience that is foreign to every
human way. It seems to the soul in this night that it is being carried out
of itself by afflictions. At other times the soul wonders if it is not
being charmed, and it goes about with wonderment over what it sees and
hears. Everything seems very strange even though a person is the same as
always. The reason is that the soul is being made a stranger to its usual
knowledge and experience of things so that, annihilated in this respect, it
may be informed with the divine, which belongs more to the next life than
to this.
9.6. Individuals suffer all these afflictive purgations of spirit that they
may be reborn into the life of the spirit by means of this divine inflow,
and through these sufferings the spirit of salvation is brought forth in
fulfillment of the words of Isaiah: In your presence, O Lord, we have
conceived and been in the pains of labor and have brought forth the spirit
of salvation [Is. 26:17-18].
9.6.(2). Moreover, the soul should leave aside all its former peace,
because it is prepared by means of this contemplative night to attain inner
peace, which is of such a quality and so delightful that, as the Church
says, it surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4:7].2 That peace was not truly
peace, because it was clothed with many imperfections, although to the soul
walking in delight it seemed to be peace. It seemed to be a twofold peace,
sensory and spiritual, since the soul beheld within itself a spiritual
abundance. This sensory and spiritual peace, since it is still imperfect,
must first be purged; the soul's peace must be disturbed and taken away. In
the passage we quoted to demonstrate the distress of this night, Jeremiah
felt disturbed and wept over his loss of peace: My soul is withdrawn and
removed from peace [Lam. 3:17].
9.7. This night is a painful disturbance involving many fears, imaginings,
and struggles within these persons. On account of the apprehension and
feeling of their miseries, they suspect that they are lost and their
blessings are gone forever. The sorrow and moaning of their spirit is so
deep that it turns into vehement spiritual roars and clamoring, and
sometimes they pronounce them vocally and dissolve in tears (if they have
the strength and power to do so), although such relief is less frequent.
9.7.(2). David, one who also had experience of this trial, refers to it
very clearly in one of the psalms: I was very afflicted and humbled; I
roared with the groaning of my heart [Ps. 38:8]. This roaring embodies
great suffering. Sometimes on account of the sudden and piercing
remembrance of their wretchedness, the roaring becomes so loud and the
affections so surrounded by suffering and pain that I know not how to
describe it save by the simile holy Job used while undergoing this very
trial: As the overflowing waters, so is my roaring [Jb. 3:24]. As the
waters sometimes overflow in such a way that they inundate everything, this
roaring and feeling so increase that in seeping through and flooding
everything, they fill all one's deep affections and energies with
indescribable spiritual anguish and suffering.
9.8. These are the effects produced in the soul by this night, which
enshrouds the hopes one has for the light of day. The prophet Job also
proclaims: In the night my mouth is pierced with sufferings, and they that
feed upon me do not sleep [Jb. 30:17]. The mouth refers to the will pierced
through by these sufferings that neither sleep nor cease to tear the soul
to shreds. For these doubts and fears that penetrate the soul are never at
rest.
9.9. This war or combat is profound because the peace awaiting the soul
must be exceedingly profound; and the spiritual suffering is intimate and
penetrating because the love to be possessed by the soul will also be
intimate and refined. The more intimate and highly finished the work must
be, so the more intimate, careful, and pure must the labor be; and
commensurate with the solidity of the edifice is the energy involved in the
work. As Job says, the soul is withering within itself and its inmost parts
boiling without any hope [Jb. 30:16, 27].
9.9.(2). Because in the state of perfection toward which it journeys by
means of this purgative night the soul must reach the possession and
enjoyment of innumerable blessings of gifts and virtues in both its
substance and its faculties, it must first in a general way feel a
withdrawal, deprivation, emptiness, and poverty regarding these blessings.
And such persons must be brought to think that they are far removed from
them, and become so convinced that no one can persuade them otherwise or
make them believe anything but that their blessings have come to an end.
Jeremiah points this out when he says in the passage already cited: I have
forgotten good things [Lam. 3:17].
9.10. Let us examine now why this light of contemplation, which is so
gentle and agreeable that there is nothing more to desire and which is the
same light the soul must be united to and in which it will find all its
blessings in the desired state of perfection, produces such painful and
disagreeable effects when in these initial stages it shines upon the soul.
9.11. We can answer this question easily by repeating what we already
explained in part:3 There is nothing in contemplation or the divine inflow
that of itself can give pain; contemplation rather bestows sweetness and
delight, as we shall say afterward.4 The cause for not experiencing these
agreeable effects is the soul's weakness and imperfection at the time, its
inadequate preparation, and the qualities it possesses that are contrary to
this light. Because of these the soul has to suffer when the divine light
shines upon it.
CHAPTER 10
10. Explains this purgation thoroughly by means of a comparison.
10.1. For the sake of further clarity in this matter, we ought to note that
this purgative and loving knowledge, or divine light we are speaking of,
has the same effect on a soul that fire has on a log of wood. The soul is
purged and prepared for union with the divine light just as the wood is
prepared for transformation into the fire. Fire, when applied to wood,
first dehumidifies it, dispelling all moisture and making it give off any
water it contains. Then it gradually turns the wood black, makes it dark
and ugly, and even causes it to emit a bad odor. By drying out the wood,
the fire brings to light and expels all those ugly and dark accidents that
are contrary to fire. Finally, by heating and enkindling it from without,
the fire transforms the wood into itself and makes it as beautiful as it is
itself. Once transformed, the wood no longer has any activity or passivity
of its own, except for its weight and its quantity that is denser than the
fire. It possesses the properties and performs the actions of fire: It is
dry and it dries; it is hot and it gives off heat; it is brilliant and it
illumines; it is also much lighter in weight than before. It is the fire
that produces all these properties in the wood.1
10.2. Similarly, we should philosophize about this divine, loving fire of
contemplation. Before transforming the soul, it purges it of all contrary
qualities. It produces blackness and darkness and brings to the fore the
soul's ugliness; thus one seems worse than before and unsightly and
abominable. This divine purge stirs up all the foul and vicious humors of
which the soul was never before aware; never did it realize there was so
much evil in itself, since these humors were so deeply rooted. And now that
they may be expelled and annihilated they are brought to light and seen
clearly through the illumination of this dark light of divine
contemplation. Although the soul is no worse than before, either in itself
or in its relationship with God, it feels clearly that it is so bad as to
be not only unworthy that God see it but deserving of his abhorrence. In
fact, it feels that God now does abhor it. This comparison illustrates many
of the things we have been saying and will say.
10.3. First, we can understand that the very loving light and wisdom into
which the soul will be transformed is what in the beginning purges and
prepares it, just as the fire that transforms the wood by incorporating it
into itself is what first prepares it for this transformation.
10.4. Second, we discern that the experience of these sufferings does not
derive from this wisdom -- for as the Wise Man says: All good things come
to the soul together with her [Wis. 7:11] -- but from the soul's own
weakness and imperfection. Without this purgation it cannot receive the
divine light, sweetness, and delight of wisdom, just as the log of wood
until prepared cannot be transformed by the fire that is applied to it. And
this is why the soul suffers so intensely. Ecclesiasticus confirms our
assertion by telling what he suffered in order to be united with wisdom and
enjoy it: My soul wrestled for her, and my entrails were disturbed in
acquiring her; therefore shall I possess a good possession [Ecclus. 51:25,
29].
10.5. Third, we can infer the manner in which souls suffer in purgatory.
The fire, when applied, would be powerless over them if they did not have
imperfections from which to suffer. These imperfections are the fuel that
catches on fire, and once they are gone there is nothing left to burn. So
it is here on earth; when the imperfections are gone, the soul's suffering
terminates, and joy remains.
10.6. Fourth, we deduce that as the soul is purged and purified by this
fire of love, it is further enkindled in love, just as the wood becomes
hotter as the fire prepares it. Individuals, however, do not always feel
this enkindling of love. But sometimes the contemplation shines less
forcibly so they may have the opportunity to observe and even rejoice over
the work being achieved, for then these good effects are revealed. It is as
though one were to stop work and take the iron out of the forge to observe
what is being accomplished. Thus the soul is able to perceive the good it
was unaware of while the work was proceeding. So too, when the flame stops
acting upon the wood, there is a chance to see how much the wood has been
enkindled by it.
10.7. Fifth, we can also gather from this comparison why, as we mentioned
earlier,2 after this alleviation the soul suffers again, more intensely and
inwardly than before. After that manifestation and after a more exterior
purification of imperfections, the fire of love returns to act more
interiorly on the consumable matter of which the soul must be purified. The
suffering of the soul becomes more intimate, subtle, and spiritual in
proportion to the inwardness, subtlety, spirituality, and deep-rootedness
of the imperfections that are removed. This more interior purgation
resembles the action of fire on wood: As the fire penetrates more deeply
into the wood its action becomes stronger and more vehement, preparing the
innermost part in order to gain possession of it.
10.8. Sixth, we discover the reason it seems to the soul that all blessings
are past and it is full of evil. At this time it is conscious of nothing
but its own bitterness, just as in the example of the wood, for neither the
air nor anything else gives it more than a consuming fire. Yet, when other
manifestations like the previous ones are made, the soul's joy will be more
interior because of the more intimate purification.
10.9. Seventh, we deduce that when the purification is soon to return, even
though the soul's joy is ample during these intervals (so much so that it
sometimes seems, as we pointed out, that the bitterness will never recur),
there is a feeling, if one adverts (and sometimes one cannot help
adverting), that some root remains. And this advertence does not allow
complete joy, for it seems that the purification is threatening to assail
the soul again. And when the soul does have this feeling, the purification
soon returns. Finally, that more inward part still to be purged and
illumined cannot be completely concealed by the portion already purified,
just as there is a very perceptible difference between the inmost part of
the wood still to be illumined and that which is already purged. When this
purification returns to attack more interiorly, it is no wonder that once
again the soul thinks all its good has come to an end and its blessings are
over. Placed in these more interior sufferings, it is blinded as to all
exterior good.
10.10. With this example in mind as well as the explanation of verse 1 of
the first stanza concerning this dark night and its terrible properties, it
will be a good thing to leave these sad experiences and begin now to
discuss the fruit of the soul's tears and the happy traits about which it
begins to sing in this second verse:
fired with love's urgent longings
CHAPTER 11
11. The beginning of an explanation of verse 2 of the first stanza. Tells
how the fruit of these dark straits is a vehement passion of divine love.]
11.1. This second verse refers to the fire of love that, like material fire
acting on wood, penetrates the soul in this night of painful contemplation.
Although this enkindling of love we are now discussing is in some way
similar to what occurs in the sensory part of the soul, it is as different
from it, in another way, as is the soul from the body or the spiritual part
from the sensory part.1 For this enkindling of love occurs in the spirit.
Through it the soul in the midst of these dark conflicts feels vividly and
keenly that it is being wounded by a strong divine love, and it has a
certain feeling and foretaste of God. Yet it understands nothing in
particular, for as we said the intellect is in darkness.
11.2. The spirit herein experiences an impassioned and intense love because
this spiritual inflaming engenders the passion of love. Since this love is
infused, it is more passive than active and thus generates in the soul a
strong passion of love. This love is now beginning to possess something of
union with God and thereby shares to a certain extent in the properties of
this union. These properties are actions of God more than of the soul and
they reside in it passively, although the soul does give its consent. But
only the love of God that is being united to the soul imparts the heat,
strength, temper, and passion of love, or fire, as it is termed here. This
love finds that the soul is equipped to receive the wound and union in the
measure that all its appetites are brought into subjection, alienated,
incapacitated, and unable to be satisfied by any heavenly or earthly thing.
11.3. This happens very particularly in this dark purgation, as was said,
since God so weans and recollects the appetites that they cannot find
satisfaction in any of their objects. God proceeds thus so that by both
withdrawing the appetites from other objects and recollecting them in
himself, he strengthens the soul and gives it the capacity for this strong
union of love, which he begins to accord by means of this purgation. In
this union the soul loves God intensely with all its strength and all its
sensory and spiritual appetites. Such love is impossible if these appetites
are scattered by their satisfaction in other things. In order to receive
the strength of this union of love, David exclaimed to God: I will keep my
strength for you [Ps. 59:9], that is, all the ability, appetites, and
strength of my faculties, by not desiring to make use of them or find
satisfaction in anything outside of you.2
11.4. One might, then, in a certain way ponder how remarkable and how
strong this enkindling of love in the spirit can be. God gathers together
all the strength, faculties, and appetites of the soul, spiritual and
sensory alike, so the energy and power of this whole harmonious composite
may be employed in this love. The soul consequently arrives at the true
fulfillment of the first commandment which, neither disdaining anything
human nor excluding it from this love, states: You shall love your God with
your whole heart, and with your whole mind, and with your whole soul, and
with all your strength [Dt. 6:5].
11.5. When the soul is wounded, touched, and impassioned, all its strength
and its appetites are recollected in this burning of love. How will we be
able to understand the movements and impulses of all this strength and
these appetites? They are aroused when the soul becomes aware of the fire
and wound of this forceful love and still neither possesses it nor gets
satisfaction from it, but remains in darkness and doubt. Certainly,
suffering hunger like dogs, as David says, these souls wander about the
city and howl and sigh because they are not filled with this love [Ps.
59:6, 14-15].
11.5.(2). The touch of this divine love and fire so dries up the spirit and
so enkindles the soul's longings to slake its thirst for this love that
such persons go over these longings in their mind a thousand times and pine
for God in a thousand ways. David expresses this state very well in a
psalm: My soul thirsts for you; in how many ways does my flesh long for you
[Ps. 63:1], that is, in its desires. And another translation puts it this
way: My soul thirsts for you, my soul loses itself or dies for you.3
11.6. As a result the soul proclaims in this verse: "with love's urgent
longings," and not, "with an urgent longing of love." In all its thoughts
and in all its business and in all events, it loves in many ways, and
desires, and also suffers in its desire in many ways, and at all times and
in many places. It finds rest in nothing, for it feels this anxiety in the
burning wound, as the prophet Job explains: As the servant desires the
shade and as the hireling desires the end of his work, so have I had empty
months and numbered to myself long and wearisome nights. If I lie down to
sleep I shall say: When will I arise? And then I will await the evening and
will be filled with sorrows until the darkness of the night [Jb. 7:2-4].
11.6.(2). Everything becomes narrow for this soul: There is no room for it
within itself, neither is there any room for it in heaven or on earth; and
it is filled with sorrows unto darkness, as Job says speaking spiritually
and from our point of view. This affliction the soul undergoes here is a
suffering unaccompanied by the comfort of certain hope for some spiritual
light and good.
11.6.(3). One's anxiety and affliction in this burning of love are more
intense because they are doubly increased: first, through the spiritual
darknesses in which the soul is engulfed and which afflict it with doubts
and fears; second, through the love of God that inflames and stimulates and
wondrously stirs it with a loving wound.
11.7. Isaiah clearly explains these two ways of suffering in this state
when he says: My soul desired you in the night [Is. 26:9], that is, in the
midst of misery. This is one way of suffering in this dark night. Yet
within my spirit, he says, until the morning I will watch for you [Is.
26:9]. And this is a second way of suffering: with desire and anxiety of
love in the innermost parts of the spirit, which are the spiritual
feelings.
11.7.(2). Nonetheless, in the midst of these dark and loving afflictions,
the soul feels a certain companionship and an interior strength; these so
fortify and accompany it that when this weight of anxious darkness passes,
the soul often feels alone, empty, and weak. The reason is that since the
strength and efficacy of the dark fire of love that assails it is
communicated and impressed on it passively, the darkness, strength, and
warmth of love cease when the assault terminates.
CHAPTER 12
12. The resemblance of this frightful night to purgatory. How the divine
wisdom illumines those who suffer this night on earth by the same
illumination with which it illumines and purges the angels in heaven.
12.1. We can therefore understand that just as this dark night of loving
fire purges in darkness, it also in darkness does its work of enkindling.
We can also note that as the spirits in the other life are purged with a
dark material fire, so in this life souls are purged and cleansed with a
dark, loving spiritual fire. For such is the difference: Souls are cleansed
in the other life by fire, but here on earth they are cleansed and
illumined only by love. David asked for this love when he said: Cor mundum
crea in me Deus, etc. (A clean heart create for me, O God) [Ps. 51:12].
Cleanness of heart is nothing less than the love and grace of God. The pure
of heart are called blessed by our Savior [Mt. 5:8], and to call them
blessed is equivalent to saying they are taken with love, for blessedness
is derived from nothing else but love.
12.2. Jeremiah shows clearly that the soul is purged by the illumination of
this fire of loving wisdom (for God never bestows mystical wisdom without
love, since love itself infuses it) where he says: He sent fire into my
bones and instructed me [Lam. 1:13]. And David says that God's wisdom is
silver tried in the fire [Ps. 11:6], that is, in the purgative fire of
love. This contemplation infuses both love and wisdom in each soul
according to its capacity and necessity. It illumines the soul and purges
it of its ignorance, as the Wise Man declares it did to him [Ecclus. 51:25-
27].
12.3. Another deduction is that this very wisdom of God, which purges and
illumines these souls, purges the angels of their ignorances and gives them
understanding by illumining them on matters they are ignorant of. This
wisdom descends from God through the first hierarchies unto the last, and
from these last to humans. It is rightly and truly said in Scripture that
all the works of the angels and the inspirations they impart are also
accomplished or granted by God. For ordinarily these works and inspirations
are derived from God by means of the angels, and the angels also in turn
give them one to another without delay. This communication is like that of
a ray of sunlight shining through many windows placed one after the other.
Although it is true that of itself the ray of light passes through them
all, nevertheless each window communicates this light to the other with a
certain modification according to its own quality. The communication is
more or less intense insofar as the window is closer to or farther from the
sun.
12.4. Consequently, the nearer the higher spirits (and those that follow)
are to God, the more purged and clarified they are by a more general
purification; the last spirits receive a fainter and more remote
illumination. Humans, the last to whom this loving contemplation of God is
communicated, when God so desires, must receive it according to their own
mode, in a very limited and painful way.
12.4.(2). God's light, which illumines the angels by clarifying and giving
them the sweetness of love -- for they are pure spirits prepared for this
inflow -- illumines humans, as we said, by darkening them and giving them
pain and anguish, since naturally they are impure and feeble. The
communication affects them as sunlight affects a sick and bleared eye. This
very fire of love enamors these individuals both impassionedly and
afflictively until it spiritualizes and refines them through purification,
and thus they become capable of the tranquil reception of this loving
inflow, as are the angels and those already purified. With the Lord's help
we will explain this state later.1 In the meantime, however, the soul
receives this contemplation and loving knowledge in distress and longing of
love.
12.5. The soul does not always feel this inflaming and anxious longing of
love. In the beginning of the spiritual purgation, the divine fire spends
itself in drying out and preparing the wood -- that is, the soul -- rather
than in heating it. Yet as time passes and the fire begins to give off
heat, the soul usually experiences the burning and warmth of love.
12.5.(2). As the intellect becomes more purged by means of this darkness,
it happens sometimes that this mystical and loving theology, besides
inflaming the will, also wounds the intellect by illumining it with some
knowledge and light so delightfully and delicately that the will is thereby
marvelously enkindled in fervor. This divine fire burns in the will --
while the will remains passive -- like a living flame and in such a way
that this love now seems to be a live fire because of the living knowledge
communicated. David says in the psalm: My heart grew hot within me and a
certain fire was enkindled while I was knowing [Ps. 39:3].
12.6. This enkindling of love and the union of these two faculties, the
intellect and the will, is something immensely rich and delightful for the
soul, because it is a certain touch of the divinity and already the
beginning of the perfection of the union of love for which the soul hopes.2
Thus one does not receive this touch of so sublime an experience and love
of God without having suffered many trials and a great part of the
purgation. But so extensive a purgation is not required for other inferior
and more common touches.
12.7. You may deduce from our explanation that when God infuses these
spiritual goods the will can very easily love without the intellect
understanding, just as the intellect can know without the will loving.
Since this dark night of contemplation consists of divine light and love --
just as fire gives off both light and heat -- it is not incongruous that
this loving light, when communicated, sometimes acts more upon the will
through the fire of love. Then the intellect is left in darkness, not being
wounded by the light. At other times, this loving light illumines the
intellect with understanding and leaves the will in dryness. All of this is
similar to feeling the warmth of fire without seeing its light or seeing
the light without feeling the fire's heat. The Lord works in this way
because he infuses contemplation as he wills.
CHAPTER 13
13. Other delightful effects of this dark night of contemplation in the
soul.
13.1. Through this inflaming of love we can understand some of the
delightful effects this dark night of contemplation now gradually produces
in the soul. Sometimes, as we said, it illumines in the midst of these
darknesses, and the light shines in the darkness [Jn. 1:5], serenely
communicating this mystical knowledge to the intellect and leaving the will
in dryness, that is, without the actual union of love. The serenity is so
delicate and delightful to the feeling of the soul that it is ineffable.
This experience of God is felt now in one way and now in another.
13.2. Sometimes, as we said, this contemplation acts on both the intellect
and will together, and sublimely, tenderly, and forcibly enkindles love. We
already pointed out that once the intellect is purged more these two
faculties are sometimes united; and in the measure that they are both
purged, this union becomes so much more perfect and deeper in quality. Yet
before reaching this degree, it is more common to experience the touch of
burning in the will than the touch of understanding in the intellect.
13.3. A question arises here: Why does one in the beginning more commonly
experience in purgative contemplation an inflaming of love in the will
rather than understanding in the intellect, since these two faculties are
being purged equally?
13.3.(2). We may answer that this passive love does not act upon the will
directly because the will is free, and this burning love is more the
passion of love than a free act of the will. The warmth of love wounds the
substance of the soul and thus moves the affections passively. As a result
the enkindling of love is called the passion of love rather than a free act
of the will. An act of the will is such only insofar as it is free. Yet,
since these passions and affections bear a relation to the will, it is said
that if the soul is impassioned with some affection, the will is. This is
true, because the will thus becomes captive and loses its freedom, carried
away by the impetus and force of the passion. As a result we say that this
enkindling of love takes place in the will, that is, the appetites of the
will are enkindled. This enkindling is called the passion of love rather
than the free exercise of the will. Since the receptive capacity of the
intellect can only take in the naked and passive knowledge, and since the
intellect, unless purged, cannot receive this knowledge, the soul, prior to
the purgation of the intellect, experiences the touch of knowledge less
frequently than the passion of love. For to feel the passion of love it is
unnecessary that the will be so purged in relation to the passions; the
passions even help it experience impassioned love.
13.4. Since this fire and thirst of love is spiritual, it is far different
from the other enkindling of love we discussed in the night of the senses.
Although the sensory part shares in this love, because it does not fail to
participate in the work of the spirit, the root and keenness of the thirst
is felt in the higher part of the soul. The spirit so feels and understands
what it experiences and the lack that this desire causes in it that all the
suffering of sense -- even though incomparably greater than that of the
night of the senses -- is nothing in comparison to this spiritual
suffering. For the soul is conscious deeply within itself of the lack of an
immense and incomparable good.
13.5. We ought to point out that the burning of love is not felt at the
beginning of this spiritual night because the fire of love has not begun to
catch. Nevertheless, God gives from the outset an esteeming love by which
he is held in such high favor that, as we said, the soul's greatest
suffering in the trials of this night is the anguish of thinking it has
lost God and been abandoned by him. We can always assert, then, that from
the commencement of this night the soul is touched with urgent longings of
love: of esteeming love, sometimes; at other times, also of burning love.
13.5.(2). The soul is aware that the greatest suffering it experiences in
these trials is this fear. If such persons could be assured that all is not
over and lost but that what they suffer is for the better -- as indeed it
is -- and that God is not angry with them, they would be unconcerned about
all these sufferings; rather, they would rejoice in the knowledge that God
is pleased with them. Their love of esteem for God is so intense, even
though obscure and imperceptible, that they would be happy not only to
suffer these things but even to die many times in order to please him. When
the fire now inflames the soul together with the esteem of God already
possessed, individuals usually acquire such strength, courage, and longings
relative to God, through the warmth of the love that is being communicated,
that with singular boldness they do strange things, in whatever way
necessary, in order to encounter him whom they love. Because of the
strength and inebriation of their love and desire, they perform these
actions without any consideration or concern.
13.6. Mary Magdalene, in spite of her past, paid no heed to the crowds of
people, prominent as well as unknown, at the banquet. She did not consider
the propriety of weeping and shedding tears in the presence of our Lord's
guests. Her only concern was to reach him for whom her soul was already
wounded and on fire, without any delay and without waiting for another more
appropriate time [Lk. 7:37-38].1 And such is the inebriation and courage of
love: Knowing that her Beloved was shut up in the tomb by a huge sealed
rock and surrounded by guards so the disciples could not steal his body,
she did not permit this to keep her from going out with ointments before
daybreak to anoint him [Mt. 27:64-66; Mk. 16:1-2; Jn. 20:1].
13.7. Finally, this inebriation and urgent longing of love prompted her to
ask the man she thought was the gardener if he had stolen him and, if he
had, to tell her where he had put him so she could take him away [Jn.
20:15]. She did not stop to realize that her question in the light of sound
judgment was foolish, for obviously if he had stolen the Lord he would not
have told her, and still less would he have allowed her to take him away.
13.7.(2). The strength and vehemence of love has this trait: Everything
seems possible to it, and it believes everyone is occupied as it is; it
does not believe anyone could be employed in any other way or seek anyone
other than him whom it seeks and loves; it believes there is nothing else
to desire or to occupy it and that everyone is engaged in seeking and
loving him. When the bride went searching for her Beloved in the plazas and
suburbs, she thought that others were doing the same and told them that if
they found him they should tell him she was suffering for love of him [Sg.
3:2; 5:8]. Mary's love was so ardent that she thought she would go and take
Jesus away, however great the impediments, if the gardener would tell where
he was hidden.
13.8. Such are the traits of these longings of love that the soul
experiences when it is advanced in this spiritual purgation. The wounded
soul rises up at night, in this purgative darkness, according to the
affections of the will; as the lioness or she-bear that goes in search of
her cubs when they are taken away and cannot be found [2 Sm. 17:8; Hos.
13:8], it anxiously and forcibly goes out in search of its God. Since it is
immersed in darkness, it feels his absence and feels that it is dying with
love of him. Such is impatient love, which one cannot long endure without
either receiving its object or dying. Rachel bore this love for children
when she said: Give me children, otherwise I shall die [Gn. 30:1].2
13.9. It should be explained here why, even though the soul feels as
miserable and unworthy of God as it does in these purgative darknesses, it
possesses an energy bold enough to go out to be joined with God.
13.9.(2). The reason is that since love now imparts a force by which the
soul loves authentically, and since it is the nature of love to seek to be
united, joined, equaled, and assimilated to the loved object in order to be
perfected in the good of love, the soul hungers and thirsts for this union
or perfection of love still unattained. And the strength now bestowed by
love, and by which the will has become impassioned, makes this inflamed
will daring. Yet since the intellect is not illumined but in darkness, the
soul feels unworthy and knows that it is miserable.
13.10. I do not want to fail to explain why this divine light, even though
it is always light for the soul, does not illumine immediately on striking
as it will afterward, but instead causes trials and darkness. We already
said something on this matter.3 Yet we may reply particularly that the
darknesses and evils the soul experiences when this light strikes are not
darknesses and evils of the light but of the soul itself. And it is this
light that illumines the soul so that it may see these evils. From the
beginning the divine light illumines the soul; yet at the outset it can
only see through this light what is nearest -- or rather within -- itself,
namely, its own darknesses and miseries. It sees these by the mercy of God,
and it did not see them before because this supernatural light did not
shine in it. Accordingly, it only feels darknesses and evils at the outset.
After being purged through the knowledge and feeling of these darknesses
and evils, it will have eyes capable of seeing the goods of the divine
light. Once all these darknesses and imperfections are expelled, it seems
that the immense benefits and goods the soul is acquiring in this happy
night of contemplation begin to appear.
13.11. It is clear, consequently, how God grants the soul a favor by
cleansing and curing it. He cleanses it with a strong lye and a bitter
purge in its sensory and spiritual parts of all imperfect affections and
habits relative to temporal, natural, sensory, and spiritual things. He
does this by darkening the interior faculties and emptying them of all
these objects, and by restraining and drying up the sensory and spiritual
affections, and by weakening and refining the natural forces of the soul
with respect to these things. A person would never have been able to
accomplish this work alone, as we shall soon explain.4 Accordingly, God
makes the soul die to all that he is not, so that when it is stripped and
flayed of its old skin, he may clothe it anew. Its youth is renewed like
the eagle's [Ps. 103:5], clothed in the new self, which is created, as the
Apostle says, according to God [Eph. 4:24]. This renovation illumines the
human intellect with supernatural light so it becomes divine, united with
the divine; informs the will with love of God so it is no longer less than
divine and loves in no other way than divinely, united and made one with
the divine will and love; and is also a divine conversion and changing of
the memory, the affections, and the appetites according to God. And thus
this soul will be a soul of heaven, heavenly and more divine than human.
13.11.(2). As we have gradually seen, God accomplishes all this work in the
soul by illumining it and firing it divinely with urgent longings for God
alone. Rightly and reasonably does the soul add the third verse of the
stanza:
-- Ah, the sheer grace! --
CHAPTER 14
14. An explanation of the three last verses of the first stanza.
14.1. This sheer grace resulted from what is expressed in the following
verses: I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
14.1.(2). We have the metaphor of one who, in order to execute a plan
better and without hindrance, goes out at night, in darkness, when
everybody in the house is sleeping.1
14.1.(3). The soul had to go out to accomplish so heroic and rare a feat --
to be united with its divine Beloved outside -- because the Beloved is not
found except alone, outside, and in solitude. The bride accordingly desired
to find him alone, saying: Who will give you to me, my brother, that I may
find you alone outside and communicate to you my love? [Sg. 8:1]. The
enamored soul must leave its house, then, in order to reach its desired
goal. It must go out at night when all the members of its house are asleep,
that is, when the lower operations, passions, and appetites of its soul are
put to sleep or quelled by means of this night. These are the people of its
household who when awake are a continual hindrance to the reception of any
good, and hostile to the soul's departure in freedom from them. Our Savior
declares that one's enemies are those of one's own household [Mt. 10:36].
The operations and movements of these members had to be put to sleep in
order not to keep the soul from receiving the supernatural goods of the
union of love of God, for this union cannot be wrought while they are awake
and active. All the soul's natural activity hinders rather than helps it to
receive the spiritual goods of the union of love. All natural ability is
insufficient to produce the supernatural goods that God alone infuses in
the soul passively, secretly, and in silence. All the faculties must
receive this infusion, and in order to do so they must be passive and not
interfere through their own lowly activity and vile inclinations.
14.2. It was a sheer grace for this soul that God in this night puts to
sleep all the members of its household, that is, all the faculties,
passions, affections, and appetites that live in its sensory and spiritual
parts. God puts them to sleep to enable the soul to go out to the spiritual
union of the perfect love of God without being seen, that is, without the
hindrance of these affections, and so on. For these members of the
household are put to sleep and mortified in this night, which leaves them
in darkness, so they may not be able to observe or experience anything in
their lowly, natural way that would impede the soul's departure from itself
and the house of the senses.
14.3. Oh, what a sheer grace it is for the soul to be freed from the house
of its senses! This good fortune, in my opinion, can only be understood by
the ones who have tasted it. For then such persons will become clearly
aware of the wretched servitude and the many miseries they suffered when
they were subject to the activity of their faculties and appetites. They
will understand how the life of the spirit is true freedom and wealth and
embodies inestimable goods. In the following stanzas we will specify some
of these goods and see more clearly how right the soul is in singing about
the journey through this horrendous night as being a great grace.
CHAPTER 15
Second Stanza
In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
Explanation
15.1. The soul in its song continues to recount some of the properties of
the darkness of this night and mentions again the happiness resulting from
them. It speaks of these traits in response to a certain tacit objection.
It says that we should not think a person runs a more serious risk of being
lost because of the torments of anguish, the doubts, the fears, and the
horrors of this night and darkness; rather a person is saved in the
darkness of this night. In this night the soul subtly escapes from its
enemies, who were always opposed to its departure. In its journey in the
darkness of this night, its garb is changed and thus it is disguised by
three different colored garments, which we will discuss later; and it
departs by a very secret ladder of which no one in the house knows. This
ladder, as we will also explain, is the living faith by which it departs in
so concealed a way in order to carry out its plan successfully, and by
which it cannot but escape very securely. The soul is particularly secure
in this purgative night because its appetites, affections, passions, and so
on, were put to sleep, mortified, and deadened. These are the members of
the household that when awake and alive would not consent to this
departure. The following verse then states:
In darkness, and secure,
CHAPTER 16
16. An explanation of how the soul is secure when it walks in darkness.
16.1. 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. 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.
16.2. The reason for this security has been clearly explained. Usually a
soul never strays except through its 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.
16.3. 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.
16.4. 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 with 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, very basely and naturally. As the Philosopher says, Whatever is
received is received according to the mode of the receiver.1
16.4.(2). 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 that lowly and 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.
16.5. Consequently, if all spiritual communication does not come from on
high, from the Father of lights, from above the free will and human
appetite [Jas. 1:17], humans will not taste it divinely and spiritually but
rather humanly and naturally, no matter how much their faculties are
employed in God and no matter how much satisfaction they derive from this.
For goods do not go from humans to God, but they come from God to humans.
16.5.(2). Here we could explain, if this were the place, how many persons
have numerous inclinations toward God and spiritual things, employ their
faculties in them, derive great satisfaction by so doing, and think their
actions and appetites are supernatural and spiritual when perhaps they are
no more than natural and human. Because of a certain natural facility they
have for moving the appetites and faculties toward any object at all, their
activity with spiritual things and the satisfaction they derive are the
same as with other things.
16.6. If by chance the opportunity arises we will give some signs for
recognizing when the movements and interior actions of the soul in its
communion with God are only natural and when only spiritual, and when they
are both natural and spiritual.2 Here it is sufficient to know that if the
soul in its interior acts is to be moved by God divinely, it must be
obscured, put to sleep, and pacified in regard to its natural ability and
operations until these lose their strength.
16.7. Oh, then, spiritual soul, when you see your appetites darkened, your
inclinations dry and constrained, your faculties incapacitated for any
interior exercise, do not be afflicted; think of this as a grace, since God
is freeing you from yourself and taking from you your own activity. However
well your actions may have succeeded, you did not work so completely,
perfectly, and securely -- because of their impurity and awkwardness -- as
you do now that God takes you by the hand and guides you in darkness, as
though you were blind, along a way and to a place you know not. You would
never have succeeded in reaching this place no matter how good your eyes
and your feet.
16.8. Another reason the soul not only advances securely when it walks in
darkness but even gains and profits is that when in a new way it receives
some betterment, it usually does so in a manner it least understands, and
thus ordinarily thinks it is getting lost. Since it has never possessed
this new experience, which makes it go out, blinds it, and leads it astray
with respect to its first method of procedure, it thinks it is getting lost
rather than advancing successfully and profitably. Indeed, it is getting
lost to what it knew and tasted, and going by a way in which it neither
tastes nor knows.
16.8.(2). To reach a new and unknown land and journey along unknown roads,
travelers cannot be guided by their own knowledge; instead, they have
doubts about their own knowledge and seek the guidance of others. Obviously
they cannot reach new territory or attain this added knowledge if they do
not take these new and unknown roads and abandon those familiar ones.
Similarly, people learning new details about their art or trade must work
in darkness and not with what they already know. If they refuse to lay
aside their former knowledge, they will never make any further progress.
The soul, too, when it advances, walks in darkness and unknowing.
16.8.(3). Since God, as we said, is the master and guide of the soul,3 this
blind one can truly rejoice now that it has come to understand as it has
here, and say: in darkness, and secure.
16.9. There is another reason the soul walks securely in these darknesses:
It advances by suffering. Suffering is a surer and even more advantageous
road than that of joy and action. First, in suffering, strength is given to
the soul by God. In its doing and enjoying, the soul exercises its own
weakness and imperfections. Second, in suffering, virtues are practiced and
acquired, and the soul is purified and made wiser and more cautious.
16.10. Another more basic reason the soul walks securely in darkness is
that this light, or obscure wisdom, so absorbs and engulfs the soul in the
dark night of contemplation and brings it so near God that it is protected
and freed from all that is not God. Since the soul, as it were, is
undergoing a cure to regain its health, which is God himself, His Majesty
restricts it to a diet, to abstinence from all things, and causes it to
lose its appetite for them all. This effect resembles the cure of sick
people when esteemed by members of their household: They are kept inside so
that neither air nor light may harm them; others try not to disturb them by
the noise of their footsteps or even whisperings, and give them a very
delicate and limited amount of food, substantial rather than tasty.
16.11. Because dark contemplation brings the soul closer to God, it has all
these characteristics; it safeguards and cares for the soul. Because of
their weakness, individuals feel thick darkness and more profound obscurity
the closer they come to God, just as they would feel greater darkness and
pain, because of the weakness and impurity of their eyes, the closer they
approached the immense brilliance of the sun. The spiritual light is so
bright and so transcendent that it blinds and darkens the natural intellect
as this latter approaches it.
16.11.(2). Accordingly, David says in Psalm 17 [Ps. 18:11] that God made
darkness his hiding place and covert, and dark waters in the clouds of the
air his tabernacle round about him. The dark water in the clouds of the air
signifies dark contemplation and divine wisdom in these souls. When God is
joining them closer to himself they feel that this darkness is near him as
though it were a tabernacle in which he dwells. That which is light in God
and of the loftiest clarity is dense darkness for the soul, as St. Paul
affirms [1 Cor. 2:14], and as David points out immediately in the same
psalm: Because of the splendor encircling his presence, the clouds and
cataracts came out [Ps. 18:12], that is, they came out over the natural
intellect, whose light, as Isaiah says in chapter 5, obtenebrata est in
caligine ejus [Is. 5:30].4
16.12. Oh, what a miserable lot this life is! We live in the midst of so
much danger and find it so hard to arrive at truth. The clearest and truest
things are the darkest and most dubious to us, and consequently we flee
from what most suits us. We embrace what fills our eyes with the most light
and satisfaction and run after what is the very worst thing for us, and we
fall at every step. In how much danger and fear do humans live, since the
very light of their natural eyes, which ought to be their guide, is the
first to deceive them in their journey to God, and since they must keep
their eyes shut and tread the path in darkness if they want to be sure of
where they are going and be safeguarded against the enemies of their house,
their senses and faculties.
16.13. The soul, then, is well hidden and protected in this dark water, for
it is close to God. Since the dark water serves God himself as a tabernacle
and dwelling place, it will serve the soul in this way and also as a
perfect safeguard and security, even though it causes darkness. In this
darkness the soul is hidden and protected from itself and the harm of
creatures.
16.13.(2). David's assertion in another psalm is also applicable to these
souls: You will hide them in the secret of your face from the disturbance
of people. You will protect them in your tabernacle from the contradiction
of tongues [Ps. 31:20]. This passage applies to every kind of protection.
To be hidden in the face of God from the disturbance of people refers to
the fortification this dark contemplation provides against all the
occasions that may arise because of others. To receive protection in his
tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues indicates the absorption of
the soul in this dark water. This dark water is the tabernacle we said
David mentions, in which the soul, with weaned appetites and affections and
darkened faculties, is freed of all imperfections contradictory to the
spirit, whether they originate with its own flesh or with other creatures.
The soul can therefore truly say that its journey is in darkness, and
secure.
16.14. There is another no less efficacious reason to help us understand
clearly that this soul's journey is in darkness, and secure, that is, the
fortitude this obscure, painful, and dark water of God bestows on the soul
from the beginning. After all, even though it is dark, it is water, and
thereby refreshes and fortifies the soul in what most suits it -- although
in darkness, and painfully.
16.14.(2). From the outset individuals are conscious of a true
determination and power to do nothing they recognize as an offense against
God and to omit nothing that seems to be for his service. That dark love
enkindles in the soul a remarkably vigilant care and interior solicitude
about what to do or omit in order to please God. They will ponder whether
they may have angered God and go over this in their minds a thousand times.
They do this with much greater care and solicitude than before, as we
mentioned in discussing the longings of love.5 In this dark contemplation
the soul's appetites, strength, and faculties are withdrawn from all other
things, and its efforts and strength are expended only in paying homage to
God. This is the way it goes out from itself and from all created things to
the sweet and delightful union with God through love:
In darkness, and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
CHAPTER 17
17. An explanation of the secrecy of this dark contemplation.
17.1. We ought to explain three properties of this night indicated in the
three terms of this verse. Two of them, "secret" and "ladder," pertain to
the dark night of contemplation now under discussion; the third,
"disguised," refers to the soul and the way it conducts itself in this
night.
17.1.(2). Relative to the first two, it should be known that in this verse
the soul calls dark contemplation a "secret ladder." By dark contemplation
it goes out to the union of love because of two properties found in this
contem-plation: It is secret, and it is a ladder. We will discuss them
separately.
17.2. First, it calls this dark contemplation "secret" since, as we
mentioned,1 contemplation is mystical theology, which theologians call
secret wisdom and which St. Thomas says is communicated and infused into
the soul through love.2 This communication is secret and dark to the work
of the intellect and the other faculties. Insofar as these faculties do not
acquire it but the Holy Spirit infuses it and puts it in order in the soul,
as the bride says in the Song of Songs [Sg. 2:4], the soul neither knows
nor understands how this comes to pass and thus calls it secret. Indeed,
not only does the soul fail to understand, but no one understands, not even
the devil, since the Master who teaches the soul dwells within it
substantially where neither the devil nor the natural senses nor the
intellect can reach.
17.3. Contemplation is called "secret" not only because of one's inability
to understand but also because of the effects it produces in the soul. The
wisdom of love is not secret merely in the darknesses and straits of the
soul's purgation (for the soul does not know how to describe it) but also
afterward in the illumination, when it is communicated more clearly. Even
then it is so secret that it is ineffable. Not only does a person feel
unwilling to give expression to this wisdom, but one finds no adequate
means or simile to signify so sublime an understanding and delicate a
spiritual feeling. Even if the soul should desire to convey this experience
in words and think up many similes the wisdom would always remain secret
and still to be expressed.
17.3.(2). Since this interior wisdom is so simple, general, and spiritual
that in entering the intellect it is not clothed in any sensory species or
image, the imaginative faculty cannot form an idea or picture of it in
order to speak of it. This wisdom did not enter through these faculties,
nor did they behold any of its apparel or color. Yet the soul is clearly
aware that it understands and tastes that delightful and wondrous wisdom.
On beholding an object never before seen in itself or in its likeness, one
would be unable to describe it or give it a name no matter how much one
tried, even though understanding and satisfaction were found in it. And if
people find it so difficult to describe what they perceive through the
senses, how much more difficult is it to express what does not enter
through the senses. The language of God has this trait: Since it is very
spiritual and intimate to the soul, transcending everything sensory, it
immediately silences the entire ability and harmonious composite of the
exterior and interior senses.
17.4. We have examples of this ineffability of divine language in Sacred
Scripture. Jeremiah manifested his incapacity to describe it when, after
God had spoken to him, he knew of nothing more to say than ah, ah, ah!
[Jer. 1:6]. Moses also declared before God, present in the burning bush,
his interior inability (the inability of both his imagination and his
exterior senses) [Ex. 4:10]. He asserted that not only was he unable to
speak of this conversation but that he did not even dare consider it in his
imagination, as is said in the Acts of the Apostles [Acts 7:32]. He
believed that his imagination was not only unable to speak, as it were, in
the matter of forming some image of what he understood in God, but also
incapable of receiving this knowledge.
17.4.(2). Since the wisdom of this contemplation is the language of God to
the soul, of Pure Spirit to pure spirit, all that is less than spirit, such
as the sensory, fails to perceive it. Consequently this wisdom is secret to
the senses; they have neither the knowledge nor the ability to speak of it,
nor do they even desire to do so because it is beyond words.
17.5. We understand, then, why some persons who tread this road and desire
to give an account of this experience to their director -- for they are
good and God-fearing -- are unable to describe it. They feel great
repugnance in speaking about it, especially when the contemplation is so
simple that they are hardly aware of it. All they can manage to say is they
are satisfied, quiet and content, and aware of God, and in their opinion
all goes well. But the experience is ineffable, and one will hear from the
soul no more than these general terms. It is a different matter when the
communications the soul receives are particular, such as visions, feelings,
and so on. These communications are ordinarily received through some
species in which the sense participates and are describable through that
species or a similar one. Yet pure contemplation is indescribable, as we
said, and on this account called "secret."
17.6. Not for this reason alone do we call mystical wisdom "secret" -- and
it is actually so -- but also because it has the characteristic of hiding
the soul within itself. Besides its usual effect, this mystical wisdom
occasionally so engulfs souls in its secret abyss that they have the keen
awareness of being brought into a place far removed from every creature.
They accordingly feel that they have been led into a remarkably deep and
vast wilderness unattainable by any human creature, into an immense,
unbounded desert, the more delightful, savorous, and loving, the deeper,
vaster, and more solitary it is. They are conscious of being so much more
hidden, the more they are elevated above every temporal creature.
17.6.(2). Souls are so elevated and exalted by this abyss of wisdom, which
leads them into the heart of the science of love, that they realize that
all the conditions of creatures in relation to this supreme knowing and
divine experience are very base, and they perceive the lowliness,
deficiency, and inadequacy of all the terms and words used in this life to
deal with divine things. They also note the impossibility, without the
illumination of this mystical theology, of a knowledge or experience of
these divine things as they are in themselves, through any natural means,
no matter how wisely or loftily one speaks of them. Beholding this truth --
that it can neither grasp nor explain this wisdom -- the soul rightly calls
it secret.
17.7. This divine contemplation has the property of being secret and above
one's natural capacity, not merely because it is supernatural but also
because it is the way that guides the soul to the perfections of union with
God, toward which one must advance humanly by not knowing and divinely by
ignorance, since these perfections are not humanly knowable.
17.8. Speaking mystically, as we are here, the divine things and
perfections are not known as they are in themselves while they are being
sought and acquired, but when they are already found and acquired.
Accordingly, the prophet Baruch speaks of this divine wisdom: There is no
one able to know her ways or think of her paths [Bar. 3:31]. The Royal
Prophet of this road also speaks of this kind of wisdom in his converse
with God: And your illuminations enlightened and illumined the entire
world; the earth shook and trembled. Your way is in the sea and your paths
are in many waters, and your footsteps shall not be known [Ps. 77:18-19].
Spiritually speaking, this passage refers to our subject. The lightning of
God illumining the whole earth signifies the illumination this divine
contemplation produces in the faculties of the soul; the shaking and
trembling of the earth applies to the painful purgation it causes in the
soul; and to assert that the way and road of God, by which the soul travels
toward him, is in the sea, and his footsteps in many waters, and thereby
unknowable, is similar to stating that the way to God is as hidden and
secret to the senses of the soul as are the footsteps of one walking on
water imperceptible to the senses of the body. The traces and footsteps God
leaves in those whom he desires to bring to himself, by making them great
in the union with his wisdom, are unrecognizable. In the Book of Job this
fact is stressed in these words: Do you perchance know the paths of the
great clouds or the perfect sciences? [Jb. 37:16]. This passage refers to
the ways and roads by which God exalts souls (here referred to by the
clouds) and perfects them in his wisdom. Consequently, this contemplation
that is guiding the soul to God is secret wisdom.
CHAPTER 18
18. An explanation of how this secret wisdom is also a ladder.
18.1. The second characteristic has yet to be discussed, that is, how this
secret wisdom is also a ladder. It should be known that there are many
reasons for calling this secret contemplation a ladder.
18.(2). First, as one ascends a ladder to pillage the fortresses containing
goods and treasures, so too, by this secret contemplation, the soul ascends
in order to plunder, know, and possess the goods and treasures of heaven.
The Royal Prophet points this out clearly in saying: Blessed are those who
receive your favor and help. In their heart they have prepared their
ascent, in the vale of tears, in the place which they set. For in this way
the Lord of the Law will give a blessing, and they will go from virtue to
virtue (as from step to step) and the God of gods will be seen on Zion [Ps.
84:6-8]. He is the treasure of the fortress of Zion, and this treasure is
beatitude.
18.2. We can also call this secret wisdom a "ladder" because as the same
steps of a ladder are used for both ascent and descent, so also the same
communications produced by this secret contemplation extol the soul in God
and humiliate it within itself. Communications that are truly from God have
this trait: They simultaneously exalt and humble the soul. For on this
road, to descend is to ascend and to ascend is to descend, since those who
humble themselves are exalted and those who exalt themselves are humbled
[Lk. 14:11]. Besides this (that the virtue of humility exalts), God, in
order to exercise the soul in humility, usually makes it ascend by this
ladder so that it might descend, and he makes it descend that it might
ascend. Accordingly, the Wise Man's words are fulfilled: Before the soul is
exalted, it is humbled, and before it is humbled, it is exalted [Prv.
18:12].
18.3. Naturally speaking, and disregarding the spiritual, which it does not
feel, the soul, if it desires to pay close attention, will clearly
recognize how on this road it suffers many ups and downs, and how
immediately after prosperity some tempest and trial follows, so much so
that seemingly the calm was given to forewarn and strengthen it against the
future penury. It sees, too, how abundance and tranquility succeed misery
and torment, and in such a way that it thinks it was made to fast before
celebrating that feast. This is the ordinary procedure in the state of
contemplation until one arrives at the quiet state: The soul never remains
in one state, but everything is ascent and descent.
18.4. The reason is that since the state of perfection, which consists in
perfect love of God and contempt of self, cannot exist without knowledge of
God and of self, the soul necessarily must first be exercised in both. It
is now given the one, in which it finds satisfaction and exaltation, and
now made to experience the other, humbled until the ascent and descent
cease through the acquiring of the perfect habits. For the soul will then
have reached God and united itself with him. He is at the end of the ladder
and it is in him that the ladder rests.
18.4.(2). This ladder of contemplation, derived as we have said from God,
is prefigured in that ladder Jacob saw in his sleep and by which the angels
were ascending and descending from God to human beings and from human
beings to God, while God leaned on the top [Gn. 28:12-13]. The divine
Scriptures say that all this happened at night, while Jacob was sleeping,
to disclose how secret is the way and ascent to God and how it differs from
human knowledge. The secrecy of this ascent is evident, since ordinarily
the losing and annihilation of self, which bring the most profit to
individuals, are considered the worst for them, whereas consolation and
satisfaction (which are of less value and in which one ordinarily loses
rather than gains if attachment is present) are considered the best.
18.5. Speaking now somewhat more particularly of this ladder of secret
contemplation, we declare that the principal property involved in calling
contemplation a "ladder" is its being a science of love, which as we said
is an infused loving knowledge that both illumines and enamors the soul,
elevating it step by step to God, its Creator. For it is only love that
unites and joins the soul to God.
18.5.(2). For greater clarity we will note the steps of this divine ladder
and briefly point out the signs and effects of each so that one may surmise
which of these steps one is on. We will distinguish them by their effects,
as do St. Bernard and St. Thomas.1 Knowing these steps in themselves is
impossible naturally, because this ladder of love is, as we said, so secret
that God alone measures and weighs it.
CHAPTER 19
19. An explanation of the first five of the ten steps on the mystical
ladder of divine love.
19.1. We mentioned that there are ten successive steps on this ladder of
love by which the soul ascends to God.
19.1.(2). The first step of love makes the soul sick in an advantageous
way. The bride speaks of this step of love when she says: I conjure you,
daughters of Jerusalem, if you encounter my Beloved, to tell him that I am
lovesick [Sg. 5:8]. Yet this sickness is not unto death but for the glory
of God [Jn. 11:4], because in this sickness the soul's languor pertains to
sin and to all the things that are not God. It languishes for the sake of
God himself, as David testifies: My soul has languished (in regard to all
things) for Your salvation [Ps. 119:81]. As a sick person changes color and
loses appetite for all foods, so on this step of love the soul changes the
color of its past life and loses its appetite for all things. The soul does
not get this sickness unless an excess of heat is sent to it from above, as
is brought out in this verse of David: Pluviam voluntariam segregabis,
Deus, haereditati tuae, et infirmata est, and so on [Ps. 68:9].1
19.1.(3). We clearly explained this sickness and languor in respect to all
things when we mentioned the annihilation of which the soul becomes aware
when it begins to climb this ladder of contemplation.2 It becomes unable
then to find satisfaction, support, consolation, or a resting place in
anything. The soul therefore begins immediately to ascend from this step to
the next.
19.2. The second step causes a person to search for God unceasingly. When
the bride said that seeking him by night in her bed (when in accord with
the first step of love she was languishing), she did not find him, she
added: I will rise up and seek him whom my soul loves [Sg. 3:1-2], which as
we said the soul does unceasingly, as David counsels: Seek the face of God
always [Ps. 105:4]. Searching for him in all things, it pays heed to
nothing until it finds him. It resembles the bride who, after asking the
guards for him, immediately passed by and left them behind [Sg. 3:3-4].
Mary Magdalene did not even pay attention to the angels at the sepulcher
[Jn. 20:14].
19.2.(2). The soul goes about so solicitously on this step that it looks
for its Beloved in all things. In all its thoughts it turns immediately to
the Beloved; in all converse and business it at once speaks about the
Beloved; when eating, sleeping, keeping vigil, or doing anything else, it
centers all its care on the Beloved, as we pointed out in speaking of the
anxious longings of love.3
19.2.(3). Since the soul is here convalescing and gaining strength in the
love found in this second step, it immediately begins to ascend to the
third through a certain degree of new purgation in the night, as we will
point out, which produces the following effects.
19.3. The third step of this loving ladder prompts the soul to the
performance of works and gives it fervor that it might not fail. The Royal
Prophet exclaims: Blessed are they who fear the Lord, because in his
commandments they long to work [Ps. 112:1]. If fear, a child of love,
produces this eagerness in the soul, what will love itself do? On this step
the soul thinks the great works it does for the Beloved are small; its many
works, few; the long time spent in his service, short. It believes all of
this because of the fire of love in which it is now burning. Thus because
of the intensity of his love, Jacob, obliged to serve seven more years in
addition to the seven years he had already served, did not think these were
many [Gn. 29:20, 30]. If Jacob's love for a creature could do so much, what
will love of the Creator do when it takes hold of the soul on this third
step?
19.3.(2). Because of such intense love for God, individuals at this stage
feel deep sorrow and pain about the little they do for him, and if it were
licit they would destroy themselves a thousand times for God and be greatly
consoled. They consequently consider themselves useless in all their works
and think their lives worthless.
19.3.(3). Another admirable effect produced here is that such persons think
inwardly that they are really worse than all others. One reason for this
effect is that love is teaching them what God deserves; another is that
because the works they perform for God are many and they know them to be
wanting and imperfect, they are confused and pained by them all, conscious
that their work is so lowly for so high a Lord. On this third step the soul
is far removed from vainglory, presumption, and the practice of condemning
others. This third step causes these effects of solicitude and many other
similar ones in the soul. And thus one acquires the courage and strength to
ascend to the fourth step.
19.4. On the fourth step of this ladder of love a habitual yet unwearisome
suffering is engendered on account of the Beloved. As St. Augustine says:
Love makes all burdensome and heavy things nearly nothing.4 The bride spoke
of this step when, desiring to reach the last step, she said to her Spouse:
Put me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love (the
act and work of love) is as strong as death, and emulation and importunity
endure as long as hell [Sg. 8:6].
19.4.(2). The spirit possesses so much energy on this step that it brings
the flesh under control and takes as little account of it as would a tree
of one of its leaves. The soul in no way seeks consolation or satisfaction
either in God or in anything else; neither does it desire or ask favors of
God, for it is clearly aware that it has already received many from him.
All its care is directed toward how it might give some pleasure to God and
render him some service because of what he deserves and the favors he has
bestowed, even though the cost might be high. These persons proclaim in
their heart and spirit: "Ah, my Lord and my God! How many go to you looking
for their own consolation and gratification and desiring that you grant
them favors and gifts, but those wanting to give you pleasure and something
at a cost to themselves, setting aside their own interests, are few. What
is lacking is not that you, O my God, desire to grant us favors again, but
that we make use of them for your service alone and thus oblige you to
grant them to us continually."
19.4.(3). This degree of love is a very elevated step. For as the soul at
this stage through so genuine a love pursues God in the spirit of suffering
for his sake, His Majesty frequently gives it joy by paying it visits of
spiritual delight. For this immense love that Christ, the Word, has cannot
long endure the sufferings of his beloved without responding. God affirms
this through Jeremiah: I have remembered you, pitying your youth and
tenderness when you followed me in the desert [Jer. 2:2]. Spiritually
speaking, the desert is an interior detachment from every creature in which
the soul neither pauses nor rests in anything. This fourth step so inflames
and enkindles individuals with desire for God that it enables them to
ascend to the fifth step.
19.5. The fifth step of this ladder of love imparts an impatient desire and
longing for God. On this step the desire of the lover to apprehend and be
united with the Beloved is so ardent that any delay, no matter how slight,
is long, annoying, and tiresome. The soul is ever believing that it is
finding its Beloved; and when it sees its desire frustrated, which is at
almost every step, it faints in its longing, as the Psalmist declares: My
soul longs and faints for the dwelling places of the Lord [Ps. 84:2]. On
this step the lover must either see its love or die. With such love Rachel
in her immense longing for children declared to Jacob, her spouse: Give me
children or I will die [Gn. 30:1]. On this step, they suffer hunger like
dogs and encircle the city of God [Ps. 58:6]. On this step of hunger, the
soul so feeds on love -- for in accord with its hunger is its satisfaction
-- that it can ascend to the sixth step, which produces the following
effects.
CHAPTER 20
20. The remaining five steps of love.
20.1. The sixth step makes the soul run swiftly toward God and experience
many touches in him. And it runs without fainting by reason of its hope.
The love that has invigorated it makes it fly swiftly. The prophet Isaiah
also speaks of this step: The saints who hope in God shall renew their
strength. They shall take wings like the eagle and shall fly and not faint
[Is. 40:31], as is characteristic of the fifth step. The following verse of
the psalm also pertains to this step: As the hart desires the waters, so
does my soul desire you, my God [Ps. 42:1], for the hart when thirsty races
toward the waters.
20.1.(2). The reason for the swiftness of love on this step is that the
soul's charity is now highly increased and almost completely purified, as
is also stated in the psalm: Sine iniquitate cucurri (Without iniquity have
I run) [Ps. 59:4]; and in another psalm: I have run the way of your
commandments, when you enlarged my heart [Ps. 119:32]. The soul is soon
brought from the sixth to the seventh step.
20.2. The seventh step of the ladder gives it an ardent boldness. At this
stage love neither profits by the judgment to wait nor makes use of the
counsel to retreat, neither can it be curbed through shame. For the favor
God now gives it imparts an ardent daring. Hence the Apostle says: Charity
believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things [1 Cor.
13:7]. Moses spoke from this step when he besought God to forgive the
people or else strike his name out of the book of life [Ex. 32:32]. These
souls obtain from God what, with pleasure, they ask of him. David
accordingly declares: Delight in God, and he will grant you the petitions
of your heart [Ps. 37:4]. On this step the bride became bold and exclaimed:
Osculetur me osculo oris sui [Sg. 1:1].1 It is illicit for the soul to
become daring on this step if it does not perceive the divine favor of the
king's scepter held out toward it (Est. 5:2; 8:4], for it might then fall
down the step it has already climbed. On these steps it must always
conserve humility.
20.2.(2). From the free hand and boldness God gives on this seventh step,
that one may be daring in his presence with an ardent love, follows the
eighth step. Here the soul captures the Beloved and is united with him as
follows.
20.3. The eighth step of love impels the soul to lay hold of the Beloved
without letting him go, as the bride proclaims: I found him whom my heart
and soul loves, I held him and did not let him go [Sg. 3:4]. Although the
soul satisfies its desire on this step of union, it does not do so
continually. Some manage to get to it, but soon turn back and leave it. If
one were to remain on this step, a certain glory would be possessed in this
life, and so the soul rests on it for only short periods of time. Because
the prophet Daniel was a man of desires, God ordered him to stay on this
step: Daniel, remain on your step, because you are a man of desires [Dn.
10:11]. After this step comes the ninth, which is that of the perfect.
20.4. The ninth step of love causes the soul to burn gently. It is the step
of the perfect who burn gently in God. The Holy Spirit produces this gentle
and delightful ardor by reason of the perfect soul's union with God. St.
Gregory accordingly says of the Apostles that when the Holy Spirit came
upon them visibly, they burned interiorly and gently with love.2
20.4.(2). We cannot speak of the goods and riches of God a person enjoys on
this step because even were we to write many books about them the greater
part would remain unsaid. For this reason and also because we will say
something about them later, I will mention no more here than that this step
of the ladder of love is succeeded by the tenth and final step, which is no
longer of this life.
20.5. The tenth and last step of this secret ladder of love assimilates the
soul to God completely because of the clear vision of God that a person
possesses at once on reaching it. After arriving at the ninth step in this
life, the soul departs from the body. Since these souls -- few that there
be -- are already extremely purged through love, they do not enter
purgatory. St. Matthew says: Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt,
etc. [Mt. 5:8]. As we mentioned, this vision is the cause of the soul's
complete likeness to God. St. John says: We know that we shall be like him
[1 Jn. 3:2], not because the soul will have as much capacity as God -- this
is impossible -- but because all it is will become like God. Thus it will
be called, and shall be, God through participation.
20.6. Such is the secret ladder of which the soul here speaks, although on
these higher steps it is not very secret to the soul, for love reveals a
great deal through the remarkable effects it produces. But on this last
step of clear vision at the top of the ladder, where God rests, as we said,
nothing is any longer hid from the soul, and this because of its total
assimilation. Accordingly our Savior exclaimed: On that day you will not
ask me anything, etc. [Jn. 16:23]. Nevertheless, until that day, however
high the soul may ascend, something will still be hidden in proportion to
one's lack of total assimilation to the divine essence.
20.6.(2). Thus, by means of this mystical theology and secret love, the
soul departs from itself and all things and ascends to God. For love is
like a fire that always rises upward as though longing to be engulfed in
its center.
CHAPTER 21
21. An explanation of the term "disguised" and a description of the colors
of the disguise the soul wears in this night.]
21.1. Now then, after having explained why the soul calls this
contemplation a secret ladder, we have still to comment on the third word
of this verse, "disguised," and tell why it also says that it departed by
this "secret ladder, disguised."
21.2. It should be known for the sake of understanding this verse that
people disguise themselves by simply dissembling their identity under a
garb and appearance different from their own. And they do this either to
show exteriorly by means of that garment their will and aspiration toward
gaining the favor and good pleasure of their beloved, or also to hide from
rivals and better execute their plan. They then choose the garments and
livery that most represent and signify their heart's affections and with
which they can better dissemble themselves from their enemies.
21.3. The soul, then, touched with love for Christ, her Spouse, and
aspiring to win his favor and friendship, departs in the disguise that more
vividly represents the affections of her spirit.1 Her advance in this
disguise makes her more secure against her adversaries: the devil, the
world, and the flesh. The livery she thus wears is of three principal
colors: white, green, and red. These three colors stand for the three
theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity, by which she not only gains
the favor and good will of her Beloved but also advances very safely,
fortified against her three enemies.
21.4. Faith is an inner tunic of such pure whiteness that it blinds the
sight of every intellect. When the soul is clothed in faith the devil is
ignorant of how to hinder her, neither is he successful in his efforts, for
faith gives her strong protection -- more than do all the other virtues --
against the devil, who is the mightiest and most astute enemy.
21.4.(2). As a result, St. Peter found no greater safeguard than faith in
freeing himself from the devil, when he advised: Cui resistite fortes in
fide [1 Pt. 5:9].2 To obtain the favor of the Beloved and union with him,
the soul can have no better inner tunic than this white garment of faith,
the foundation and beginning of the other garments or virtues. Without
faith, as the Apostle says, it is impossible to please God [Heb. 11:6]; and
with faith it is impossible not to please him, since he himself declares
through the prophet Hosea, Desponsabo te mihi in fide [Hos. 2:20], which is
similar to saying: If you desire, soul, union and espousal with me, you
must come interiorly clothed in faith.
21.5. The soul wore her white tunic of faith when she departed on this dark
night and walked, as we said, in the midst of interior darknesses and
straits, without the comfort of any intellectual light -- neither from
above, because heaven seemed closed and God hidden, nor from below, because
she derived no satisfaction from her spiritual teachers, and suffered with
constancy and perseverance, passing through these trials without growing
discouraged or failing the Beloved. The Beloved so proves the faith of his
bride in tribulations that she can afterward truthfully declare what David
says: Because of the words of your lips I have kept hard ways [Ps. 17:4].
21.6. Over this white tunic of faith the soul puts on a second colored
garment, a green coat of mail. Green, as we said, signifies the virtue of
hope, by which one in the first place is defended and freed from the second
enemy, the world. This greenness of living hope in God imparts such courage
and valor and so elevates the soul to the things of eternal life that in
comparison with these heavenly hopes all earthly things seem, as they truly
are, dry, withered, dead, and worthless. The soul is thus divested of all
worldly garments and does not set her heart on anything there is, or will
be, in the world; she lives clothed only in the hope of eternal life.
Having her heart so lifted up above the things of the world, she is not
only unable to touch or take hold of worldly things, but she cannot even
see them.
21.7. By this green livery and disguise, the soul is therefore protected
against its second enemy, the world. St. Paul calls hope the helmet of
salvation [1 Thes. 5:8]. A helmet is a piece of armor that protects the
entire head and covers it so there is no opening except for a visor through
which to see.
21.7.(2). Hope has this characteristic: It covers all the senses of a
person's head so they do not become absorbed in any worldly thing, nor is
there any way some arrow from the world might wound them. Hope allows the
soul only a visor that it may look toward heavenly things, and no more.
This is the ordinary task of hope in the soul; it raises the eyes to look
only at God, as David asserts it did with him: Oculi mei semper ad Dominum3
[Ps. 25:15]. David hoped for nothing from anyone else, as he says in
another psalm: Just as the eyes of the handmaid are fixed on the hands of
her mistress, so are our eyes on the Lord our God until he has mercy on us
who hope in him [Ps. 123:2].
21.8. As a result, this green livery, by which one always gazes on God,
looks at nothing else, and is not content save with him alone, so pleases
the Beloved that it is true to say the soul obtains from God all that she
hopes for from him. The Bridegroom of the Canticle consequently says of his
bride that she wounded his heart by merely the look of her eyes [Sg. 4:9].
Without this green livery of hope in God alone, it would not behoove anyone
to go out toward this goal of love; a person would obtain nothing, since
what moves and conquers is unrelenting hope.
21.9. The soul advances through this dark and secret night in the disguise
of the green livery of hope, for she walks along so empty of all
possessions and support that neither her eyes nor her care are taken up
with anything but God. She places her mouth in the dust that there might be
hope [Lam. 3:29], as we previously quoted from Jeremiah.4
21.10. Over the white and green, as the finishing touch and perfection of
this disguise, the soul puts on a third color, a precious red toga. This
color denotes charity, the third virtue, which not only adds elegance to
the other two colors but so elevates the soul as to place her near God.
Charity makes her so beautiful and pleasing to God that she dares to say:
Although I am black, O daughters of Jerusalem, I am beautiful, and for this
reason the king has loved me and brought me into his chamber [Sg. 1:5].5
21.10.(2). With this livery of charity, a livery that by manifesting love
increases love in the Beloved, the soul receives protection and concealment
from the flesh, her third enemy. For where there is true love of God, love
of self and of one's own things finds no entry. Not only does charity
protect her, but it even makes the other virtues genuine, strengthens and
invigorates them in order to fortify the soul, and bestows on them
loveliness and charm so as to please the Beloved thereby. For without
charity no virtue is pleasing to God. This is the seat draped in purple on
which God rests, as is said in the Song of Songs [Sg. 3:10].
21.10.(3). The soul is clothed in this red livery when, as explained in the
first stanza, she departs in the dark night from herself and from all
creatures, fired with love's urgent longings, and advances by the secret
ladder of contemplation to perfect union with God, who is her Beloved
salvation.
21.11. This, then, is the disguise the soul says she wore on this secret
ladder in the night of faith, and these are its colors. These colors are a
most suitable preparation for union of the three faculties (intellect,
memory, and will) with God.
21.11.(2)Faith darkens and empties the intellect of all its natural
understanding and thereby prepares it for union with the divine wisdom.
21.11.(3). Hope empties and withdraws the memory from all creature
possessions, for as St. Paul says, hope is for that which is not possessed
[Rom. 8:24]. It withdraws the memory from what can be possessed and fixes
it on what it hopes for. Hence only hope in God prepares the memory
perfectly for union with him.
21.11.(4). Charity also empties and annihilates the affections and
appetites of the will of whatever is not God and centers them on him alone.
Thus charity prepares the will and unites it with God through love.
21.11.(5). Because these virtues have the function of withdrawing the soul
from all that is less than God, they consequently have the mission of
joining it with God.
21.12. Without walking sincerely in the garb of these three virtues, it is
impossible to reach perfect union with God through love. This garb and
disguise worn by the soul was very necessary for her to reach her goal,
which was this loving and delightful union with her Beloved. It was a great
grace for the soul to have put on this vesture, and to have persevered in
it until attaining her end or goal, the union of love, which she so
desired. Consequently she proclaims in the next verse:
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
CHAPTER 22
22. An explanation of verse 3 of the second stanza.
22.1. It was manifestly a great grace for the soul to have successfully
undertaken this departure, in which she liberated herself from the devil,
the world, and her own sensuality. In having reached the happy freedom of
spirit desired by all, the soul went from the lowly to the sublime; being
earthly, she became heavenly; and being human, she became divine, and
arrived at having her conversation in heaven [Phil. 3:20], as is proper to
this state of perfection, which we will now discuss, although somewhat more
briefly.
22.2. What was more important and the reason I undertook this task was to
explain this night to many souls who in passing through it do not
understand it, as is pointed out in the prologue.1 The nature of this night
has now been explained to some extent. We have also discussed the many
blessings this night brings to the soul -- though in a way that makes them
seem less than what they in fact are -- and how great a grace it is for one
who passes through it. We have written of these blessings so that when
souls become frightened by the horror of so many trials they might take
courage in the sure hope of the many advantageous blessings obtained from
God through these trials.
This night was, besides, a sheer grace for the soul on account of what she
says in the next verse:
in darkness and concealment,
CHAPTER 23
23. An explanation of the fourth verse. Tells of the soul's wondrous hiding
place during this night and how, though the devil enters other very high
places, he is unable to gain entry to this one.
23.1. "In concealment" amounts to saying in hiding or under cover. As a
result, departing in darkness and concealment more truly indicates the
security the soul speaks of in the first verse of this stanza. She received
this security along the way toward union with God through love by means of
this dark contemplation. "In darkness and concealment" is like saying that
since the soul walked in darkness in the way we mentioned, she was
concealed and hidden from the devil, and from his deceits and wiles.
23.2. The reason the darkness of this contemplation frees and hides the
soul from the wiles of the devil is that the contemplation experienced here
is infused passively and secretly without the use of the exterior and
interior faculties of the sensory part of the soul. The soul's journey,
consequently, is not only hidden and freed from the obstacle these
faculties in their natural weakness can occasion, but also from the devil,
who without these faculties of the sensory part cannot reach the soul or
know what is happening within it. Accordingly, the more spiritual and
interior the communication and the more removed it is from the senses, the
less the devil understands it.
23.3. It is very important to the soul's security that in its inner
communion with God its senses remain in darkness, without this
communication, and that they do not attain to it. First, so that there may
be room for a more abundant spiritual communication, without any hindrance
to freedom of spirit from the weakness of the sensory part. Second, so
that, as we say, the soul might journey more securely, since the devil
cannot enter so far within it. Hence we can understand spiritually those
words of our Savior: Let not your left hand know what your right hand is
doing [Mt. 6:3]. This is like saying: Do not allow the left side, the lower
portion of your soul, to know or attain to what happens on the right side,
the superior and spiritual part of the soul; let this be a secret between
the spirit and God alone.
23.4. It is quite true that even though the devil is ignorant of the nature
of these very interior and secret spiritual communications, he frequently
perceives that one is receiving them because of the great quietude and
silence some of them cause in the sensory part. And since he is aware that
he cannot impede them in the depths of the soul, he does everything
possible to excite and disturb the sensory part, which he can affect with
sufferings, horrors, and fears. He intends by this agitation to disquiet
the superior and spiritual part of the soul in its reception and enjoyment
of that good.
23.4.(2). Yet when the communication of such contemplation shines in the
spirit alone and produces strength in it, the devil's diligence in
disturbing the soul is often of no avail. It receives instead new benefits
and a deeper, more secure peace. For what a wonderful thing it is! In
experiencing the troublesome presence of the enemy, the soul enters more
deeply into its inner depths without knowing how and without any efforts of
its own, and it is sharply aware of being placed in a certain refuge where
it is more hidden and withdrawn from the enemy. There the peace and joy
that the devil planned to undo increase. All that fear remains outside; and
the soul exults in a very clear consciousness of secure joy, in the quiet
peace and delight of the hidden Spouse that neither the world nor the devil
can either give or take away. The soul experiences the truth of the bride's
exclamation in the Song of Songs: Behold, sixty men surround the bed of
Solomon, etc., because of the fears of the night [Sg. 3:7-8]. She is aware
of this strength and peace even though she frequently feels that her flesh
and bones outside are being tormented.
23.5. At other times, when the spiritual communication is not bestowed
exclusively on the spirit but on the senses too, the devil more easily
disturbs and agitates the spirit with these horrors by means of the senses.
The torment and pain he then causes is immense, and sometimes it is
ineffable. For since it proceeds nakedly from spirit to spirit, the horror
the evil spirit causes within the good spirit (in that of the soul), if he
reaches the spiritual part, is unbearable. The bride of the Song of Songs
also speaks of this disturbance in telling of her desire to descend to
interior recollection and enjoy these goods: I went down into the garden of
nuts to see the apples of the valleys and if the vineyard was in flower; I
knew not; my soul was troubled by the chariots (by the carts and roaring)
of Aminadab (the devil) [Sg. 6:11-12].2
23.6. At other times, when the communications are accorded by means of the
good angels, the devil detects some of the favors God desires to grant the
soul. God ordinarily permits the adversary to recognize favors granted
through the good angels so this adversary may do what he can, in accord
with the measure of justice, to hinder them. Thus the devil cannot protest
his rights, claiming that he is not given the opportunity to conquer the
soul, as was his complaint in the story of Job [Jb. 1:9-11; 2:4-5]. He
could do this if God did not allow a certain parity between the two
warriors (the good angel and the bad) in their struggle for the soul. Hence
the victory of either one will be more estimable, and the soul, victorious
and faithful in temptation, will receive a more abundant reward.
23.7. We must note that this is why God permits the devil to deal with the
soul in the same measure and mode in which he himself conducts and deals
with it. True visions ordinarily come from the good angel, even if Christ
is represented, for he hardly ever appears in his own Person. If a person
receives true visions from the good angel, God permits the bad angel to
represent false ones of the same kind. Thus an incautious person can be
deceived, as many have been. There is a figure of this in Exodus where it
says that all the true signs Moses worked were seemingly worked by
Pharaoh's magicians: If he produced frogs, they also did; if he turned
water into blood, they also did so [Ex. 7:11-12, 19-22; 8:6-7].
23.8. Not only does the devil imitate this kind of corporeal vision, but he
also simulates and interferes with spiritual communications coming from a
good angel, since he can discern them, as we said; and as Job said, omne
sublime videt3 [Jb. 41:25], imitates and interferes with them. Yet he
cannot imitate and form these spiritual communications as he can those
granted under some appearance or figure, for these are without form and
figure, and it is of the nature of the spirit to be formless and
figureless.
23.8.(2). He represents his frightful spirit to the soul in order to attack
it in the same way in which it receives the spiritual communication, and to
assail and destroy the spiritual with the spiritual.
23.8.(3). In this case, when the good angel communicates spiritual
contemplation, the soul cannot enter the hiding place of this contemplation
quickly enough to go unnoticed by the devil. He then presents himself to it
with some spiritual horror and disturbance, at times very painful.
Sometimes the soul can withdraw speedily without giving this horror of the
evil spirit an opportunity to make an impression on it, and it recollects
itself by the efficacious favor the good angel then gives it.
23.9. At other times the devil prevails, and disturbance and horror seize
upon it. This terror is a greater suffering than any other torment in life.
Since this horrendous communication proceeds from spirit to spirit
manifestly and somewhat incorporeally, it surpasses all sensory pain. This
spiritual suffering does not last long, for if it did the soul would depart
from the body on account of this violent communication. Afterward the soul
can recall this diabolic communication; doing so is enough to cause great
suffering.
23.10. All we have mentioned here takes place passively without one's doing
or undoing anything. Yet it should be understood that when the good angel
allows the devil the advantage of reaching the soul with this spiritual
horror, he does so that it may be purified and prepared, through this
spiritual vigil, for some great feast and spiritual favor that God, who
never mortifies but to give life or humbles but to exalt [1 Sam. 2:6-7],
desires to give. This favor will be granted a short time afterward, and the
soul, in accord with the dark and horrible purgation it suffered, will
enjoy a wondrous and delightful spiritual communication, at times ineffably
sublime. The preceding horror of the evil spirit greatly refines the soul
so it can receive this good. These spiritual visions belong more to the
next life than to this, and each is a preparation for the one following.
23.11. We have been speaking of God's visits by means of the good angel, in
which the soul does not walk in such complete darkness and concealment that
the enemy cannot somehow reach it. Yet when God visits the soul directly,
this verse is fully verified. In receiving spiritual favors from God, the
soul is in total darkness and concealment as far as the enemy is concerned.
23.11.(2). The reason for this concealment is that since His Majesty dwells
substantially in that part of the soul to which neither the angel nor the
devil can gain access and thereby see what is happening, the enemy cannot
learn of the intimate and secret communications there between the soul and
God. Since the Lord grants these communications directly, they are wholly
divine and sovereign. They are all substantial touches of divine union
between God and the soul. In one of these touches, since this is the
highest degree of prayer, the soul receives greater good than in all else.
23.12. These are the touches the soul began to ask for in the Song of Songs
on saying: Osculetur me osculo oris sui, etc.4 [Sg. 1:1]. Since a
substantial touch is wrought in such close intimacy with God, for which the
soul longs with so many yearnings, a person will esteem and covet a touch
of the divinity more than all God's other favors. After the bride in the
Song had received many favors, which she related there, she was unsatisfied
and asked for these divine touches: Who will give you to me, my brother,
that I might find you alone, outside nursing at the breasts of my mother so
that with the mouth of my soul I might kiss you and no one might despise me
or attack me? [Sg. 8:1]. This passage refers to the communication God gives
to the soul by himself alone, outside and exclusive of all creatures, for
this is the meaning of the terms "alone" and "outside nursing at the
breasts." The breasts of the appetites and affections of the sensory part
are dried up when in freedom of spirit the soul enjoys these blessings with
intimate delight and peace, unhindered by the sensory part or the devil
(who opposes them through the senses). The devil, then, would not assail
the soul, because he would be unable to reach these blessings or come to
understand these divine touches of the loving substance of God in the
substance of the soul.
23.13. No one attains to this blessing except through an intimate
nakedness, purgation, and spiritual hiding from all that is of creatures.
Accordingly, one reaches this good in "darkness" (as we have explained at
length and now repeat in reference to this verse), "and concealment" (in
which the hidden soul, as we said, is confirmed in its union with God
through love). The soul in its song consequently exclaims: "In darkness and
concealment."
23.14. When these favors are bestowed in concealment (only in the spirit,
as we said), a person is usually aware, without knowing how, that the
superior and spiritual part of the soul is withdrawn and alienated from the
lower and sensory part. This withdrawal makes one conscious of two parts so
distinct that one seemingly has no relation to the other and is far removed
from it. And, indeed, this is in a way true, for in the activity that is
then entirely spiritual there is no communication with the sensory part. A
person in this way becomes wholly spiritual, and in these hiding places of
unitive contemplation, and by their means, the passions and spiritual
appetites are to a great degree eliminated. Referring thus to the superior
part, the soul says in this last verse:
my house being now all stilled;
CHAPTER 24
24. The concluding explanation of this second stanza.
24.1. This is like saying: Since the superior portion of my soul is now,
like the lower, at rest in its appetites and faculties, I went out to
divine union with God through love.
24.2. Insofar as the soul is buffeted and purged through the war of the
dark night in a twofold way (in the sensory and spiritual parts with their
senses, faculties, and passions), she also attains a twofold peace and rest
in the faculties and appetites of both the sensory and spiritual parts.
Consequently the soul repeats this verse of the first stanza. The sensory
and spiritual parts of the soul, in order to go out to the divine union of
love, must first be reformed, put in order, and pacified, as was their
condition in Adam's state of innocence. This verse, which in the first
stanza refers to the quiet of the lower and sensory part, refers
particularly in this second stanza to the superior and spiritual part, and
consequently the soul has repeated it.
24.3. By means of the acts of substantial touches of divine union, the soul
obtains habitually and perfectly (insofar as the condition of this life
allows) the rest and quietude of her spiritual house. In concealment and
hiding from the disturbance of both the devil and the senses and passions,
she receives these touches from the divinity. By their means the soul is
purified, quieted, strengthened, and made stable so she may receive
permanently this divine union, which is the divine espousal between the
soul and the Son of God.1
24.3.(2). As soon as these two parts of the soul are wholly at rest and
strengthened, together with all the members of the household, the faculties
and appetites (also put to sleep and in silence regarding earthly and
heavenly things), Divine Wisdom is united with the soul in a new bond of
the possession of love. This union is wrought, as is asserted in the Book
of Wisdom, Dum quietum silentium contineret omnia, et nox in suo cursu
medium iter haberet, omnipotens sermo tuus, Domine, a regalibus sedibus
prosilivit2 [Wis. 18:14-15]. The bride in the Song of Songs explains the
same thing when she states that after she passed by those who took away her
veil and wounded her, she found him whom her soul loved [Sg. 5:7; 3:4].
24.4. One cannot reach this union without remarkable purity, and this
purity is unattainable without vigorous mortification and nakedness
regarding all creatures. "Taking off the bride's veil" and "wounding her at
night," in her search and desire for her Spouse, signify this denudation
and mortification, for she could not put on the new bridal veil without
first removing her other one. Persons who refuse to go out at night in
search for the Beloved and to divest and mortify their will, but rather
seek the Beloved in their own bed and comfort, as did the bride [Sg. 3:1],
will not succeed in finding him. As this soul declares, she found him when
she departed in darkness and with longings of love.
CHAPTER 25
25. A brief explanation of the third stanza.
Third Stanza
On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
Explanation
25.1. Still using the metaphor and simile of temporal night to
describe this spiritual night, the soul enumerates and extols the good
properties of the night. She found and made use of these properties by
means of this night and thereby obtained her desired goal securely and
quickly. We will list three of these properties here.
25.2. The first is that in this glad contemplative night, God conducts her
by so solitary and secret a contemplation, one so remote and alien to all
the senses, that nothing pertinent to the senses, nor any touch of
creature, can reach or detain her on the route leading to the union of
love.
25.3. The second property of this night, mentioned in this stanza, has as
its cause the spiritual darkness of this night, in which all the faculties
of the higher part of the soul are in obscurity. In neither looking nor
being able to look at anything, the soul is not detained in her journey to
God by anything outside of him, for in her advance she is free of hindrance
from the forms and figures of the natural apprehensions, which are those
that usually prevent her from being always united with the being of God.
25.4. The third property is that, although the soul in her progress does
not have the support of any particular interior light of the intellect, or
of any exterior guide that may give her satisfaction on this lofty path --
since these dense darknesses have deprived her of all satisfaction -- love
alone, which at this period burns by soliciting the heart for the Beloved,
is what guides and moves her, and makes her soar to God in an unknown way
along the road of solitude.
The next verse is:
On that glad night,
