(Part one)
Once the soul is purged of those worldly senses, and you feel emptied and hollow, that’s where God’s work truly begins.
As promised, part two of Dark Night of the Soul isn’t a romp through the flowers. It’s not just a sweet night of prayer and worship. It’s pain and torment (states chapter 5). It’s confronting your own sinfulness and the weakness of humanity in the light of God. It’s the inability to even connect with Him, despite understanding just how much it’s needed. But it’s only when the soul is completely emptied of self that God has room to enter in.
The most frustrating part is how the suffering soul is powerless to any of it. There is nothing that we can do, no amount of fervent prayer that will bring us closer to Him. At this point, God is in control. And we don’t even know He’s doing it. God works in secret, shining His light into this emptied soul in such a way that the person doesn’t even notice. But isn’t that how it always works? He is always weaving things without our notice, not until we look back and see where He’s made His mark. But it’s easier to see these things in the physical life. It’s much, much harder to peer into our own souls.
It’s God Himself Who is now working in the soul, and the soul is therefore powerless. Hence it comes that it cannot pray or give much attention to divine things. Neither can it attend to temporal matters, for it falls into frequent distractions, and the memory is so profoundly weakened, that many hours pass by without its knowing what it has done or thought. (Chapter 8)
Don’t I know it.
But what’s the point? Why go through the dark night at all? Why go through the suffering and feelings of abandonment? There’s a reason this is called a purgation. Like Purgatory itself, it’s a cleansing. We must experience the fire of purgation, the emptying of self, to become truly holy. This is when the soul becomes spiritual, disconnected from the things of this world. The soul is stronger in this state of darkness. It means God is its guide, giving it strength and courage. Only when the soul is broken down can it slowly, painfully, experience a regrowth, guided by and yearning for God. We absorb His strength and courage. We certainly have none of that on our own.
It seems impossible, honestly. It’s a cleansing of the spirit akin to the fires of Purgatory. How can anyone be purified while still in this life? St. John of the Cross admits that most people don’t. Most of us can only go so far. But he concludes:
love and faith, now burning within [the soul], drawing the heart towards the Beloved, influence and guide it, and make it fly upwards to God along the road of solitude, while it knows neither how nor by what means that is done. (chapter 25)
Allowing God to lead? Living the life we’re truly meant to live? Even if we don’t get there in this life, it’s a promise of what’s to come after.
