When Will the Darkest Night Air Again

The feeling of spiritual emptiness, or being abandoned past God, is natural in the process of growing closer to Christ.

When the world looked at the confront of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata, it saw pure, simple joy.  So, in 2007, 10 years after Blessed Teresa'due south death, a collection of her private messages was published.  Suddenly, the joy that the tiny sister from Albania one time radiated seemed anything simply simple.

As the letters revealed, for the entirety of her public ministry, the founder of the Missionaries of Clemency endured unceasing feelings of desolation and abandonment by God.

"I am told God lives in me," she wrote in 1957, "and notwithstanding the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that goose egg touches my soul."

For some, the letters became a source of scandal.  Simply for those familiar with the stages of spiritual growth, they served as a profound testimony to Blest Teresa'south sanctity.  In those decades of desolation, she lived what St. John of the Cross termed, the "dark night of the soul," which was the title of a poem he wrote.

The timing and duration of Mother Teresa's dark night was unusual — and markedly so.  But the fact that she encountered a night night wasn't.  Every Christian, on their way to God, must pass through his or her own dark night.  So, what is (and isn't) the dark night of the soul?

It is necessary

Every fallen human beingness has disordered desires and attachments.  We love what nosotros shouldn't love, or nosotros love what we should but in the wrong way.  We seek our ain comfort, our own pleasure, our own will.  Nosotros value what nosotros want more than than we value what God wants.  Nosotros do wrong, even if only in our hearts.

Just nosotros tin can't practice wrong and stand before God.  Nosotros can't even want to exercise wrong and stand up before God.  A prerequisite for seeing God face to face up is that every zipper to sin, both in our lives and in our hearts, must be cleaved.  If we want to become saints, we have to desire only God'due south will.  And we have to want God'south will not out of fear of hell, just rather out of honey for heaven, out of beloved for God.  Some of that breaking we do, every bit nosotros acquire to avoid vice and pursue virtue.  But some of that breaking merely God tin do.  The night night of the soul is, in part, how he does that.  By seemingly withdrawing all spiritual consolations — all the little comforts and supports that typically come up from pursuing a relationship with him — and allowing an almost crushing sense of abandonment to descend upon us, he purifies our desires and prepares usa for heaven.

It is unique

The dark night of the soul looks dissimilar in different lives.  Laypersons don't necessarily experience the dark night the manner religious do.  Nor do active religious necessarily experience the night night the mode contemplatives do.  Some people feel it primarily through external circumstances.  They find themselves persecuted or afflicted.  In the midst of those afflictions, all calls for help go unanswered.  To the person passing through this blazon of dark night, it feels like God has left them to deal with their cantankerous on their ain.

Others experience the dark night through temptations: Temptations to pride, vanity, anger, sexual sin, and even unbelief assail them.  Then, there are those who experience the nighttime night of the soul mainly through inner desolation: The gates of heaven seem barred against them, and no matter how much they pray, no consolation seemingly comes.  Lastly, at that place are those who experience the night nighttime as a combination of all iii: trials, temptations and abandonment.

Likewise, for some, the nighttime night comes but one time.  For others, it comes many times.  Usually, it lasts for just a short while.  Occasionally, it lasts much longer.  But when it finally ends, it ends for skilful.  A definitive work has been achieved in the soul.

It is unpredictable

The night night of the soul doesn't come up at the outset of i'south journey to God.  Traditionally, spiritual directors place iii chief stages (or ways) of growth in holiness.  The first is the purgative way, where we break habits of vice, larn habits of virtue and learn to live a Catholic life.  The 2d is the illuminative manner, where nosotros grow in virtue, clemency and the life of prayer.  And the third is the unitive way, where our wills and hearts move in perfect harmony with God's.

Well-nigh the stop of the purgative stage, we feel a type of dark night — a time of trial and illness where it feels as if God no longer loves us.  This night night, yet, is not the nighttime night of the soul.  Rather, it'southward the nighttime dark of the senses.

In the dark night of the senses, God purifies us of our attachments to the things of the globe — physical comfort, physical pleasance, material success, popular acclaim — as well every bit of our consolations in prayer.  Sorrows agonize us, and things that used to condolement united states — nutrient, sex, shopping, compliments, even the liturgy — no longer do.  Through this dark nighttime, God prepares us for the illuminative way and a deeper, more contemplative life of prayer.

The night nighttime of the soul occurs at the end of the illuminative way, as we ready to enter the unitive way.  During this nighttime night, God roots out our deepest attachments to sin and self, and the pathos that accompanies that rooting out is overwhelming and crushing.  More than than just a lack of consolation, this dark night plunges a soul into an abyss of darkness and nothingness, substantially revealing to us what we are without God and preparing usa to non only carry our crosses, but to love our crosses and carry them joyfully in marriage with Christ.

It isn't depression

From the outside, depression and the nighttime night of the soul bear a striking resemblance to 1 another.  And they're not entirely divide things.  As St. John of the Cross noted long ago, depression (or as they chosen it in the 17th century, melancholia) can go hand in mitt with a dark night, whether by exacerbating information technology or resulting from it.

But while clinical low is triggered by an objectively distressing effect (losing a loved i, fatal illness, etc.) or past a biochemical problem, the dark night of the soul is purely an act of God; it is God working in our souls to depict us closer to him.

Likewise, while depression weighs downwards both body and soul, somewhen rendering those who suffer from information technology unable to get nigh the normal business of their life, throughout the dark nighttime, the spirit stays stiff, and those suffering through it can perform great works of charity and service.  They remain active and don't experience the same temptations to total self-loathing or suicide that those struggling with depression endure, nor practice they lose their faith in the midst of the dark night.  Conventionalities remains.

It isn't evil

The dark night of the soul is not an evil to be endured; information technology's a good for which nosotros should exist grateful.  Of class, it doesn't always seem that way.  The idea of plunging into a spiritual abyss and losing all the sweetness in our relationship with God strikes few as appealing.  But neither does surgery.  Having cancer removed from our bodies isn't a fun process.  Nevertheless, we submit to the surgeon'due south knife readily and quickly, knowing that the sooner we have the surgery, the sooner we tin can live a healthy, full life.

What's truthful on the natural level is true on the supernatural level.  If we want to become the people God made us to be and alive the lives he made us to alive, we must let him excise sin and unhealthy attachments from our souls.  There's no getting around it.  Before nosotros can enter heaven, it has to happen.  It can happen in this life or it can happen in the next — in purgatory.  But here is better.  For the sooner we allow God root out unhealthy attachments, the sooner we can become on with the business organisation of being saints.

And there's no better concern than that.

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Source: https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/spiritual-life/understanding-the-dark-night-of-the-soul.html

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