If there is one thing the Doctors of the Church, those great teachers of the Catholic Church, teach it’s this: Jesus came for us. All of us. The entirety of our person. Body and soul and everything about us. He wants nothing less than that we become like him, that little baby in the manger, that little boy in Nazareth, the friend, the teacher, the son of the father – and the man who suffered and died on Calvary, and rose again. That’s the Catholic faith, that’s our hope, and the only possibility to realize it is love.
But how could anyone climb Calvary and, with Jesus, rise again if we were not taken from where we are and cleaned up? And what needs to be cleaned up? Both the sensible, closer-to-matter side of us and the spiritual side of us. Both sides are us. Thus, both sides need to be cleaned up. And if they are to climb Calvary with our Lord, both sides of us have to die to consolations, die to self, die to anything concrete to latch onto other than God. That’s the roadmap.
The dying to sensible consolations in the spiritual life is Saint John of the Cross’ “dark night of the senses”: no delights in prayer, no delights in doing good, no sense inspirations during prayer, no sense inspirations in our daily tasks which we know by faith to be truly demanded of us.
The dying to spiritual consolations in the spiritual life is the “dark night of the spirit”: spiritual consolations also disappear; we’re left to go it in spiritual dryness.
If we weren’t aware that the Cross is the lot of the pilgrim people which is the Church and thus that this “dark night of the spirit” must manifest itself in various modes, according to our individual lives, then passages like the following would be shocking. As it is, however, if we know what God is doing, what God is up to, then this dark night of the spirit makes much more sense:
Having entered into a dark night, I no longer see where the truth is. My soul is plunged in affliction and dryness… All that I can still know is that, right now, I have an ardent desire to live a fervent life. Also, all that I ask of God is the grace of light, so that I could know that I still love him, my God, with a sincere heart.
But… No! It’s a silence of death. I see no sign that makes me know that my soul lives still in God. Throughout each of my days, all my attention rests on God, and it remains easy for my soul to be habitually inclined towards him. But, I don’t know why, I feel cold, as if my spirit inclined towards God only out of habit, without any real sensible emotion or depth…
I have the impression of living as if I didn’t have faith at all.
These words are from Marcel Văn CSsR, the little Vietnamese brother whom I love very much. They come from a letter to his spiritual director. (He echoes the themes many times in many letters over many months. It would be a great project to locate and collect them all!) What does Marcel say? He wants to serve Jesus, and he also wants to know that he still loves him. It sounds a contradiction, perhaps, for how could anyone want to be fervent and yet not love the good God? But the contradiction is a contradiction of words. In fact, Marcel wants to know that he loves. He wants a spiritual sign. But none comes. It’s darkness. It’s dryness. It’s a dark night in the desert.
Jesus, may I have a spiritual sign, a consolation in knowing something about my state? No, says Jesus. Why? Because you must grow up and rely only on Me, not on my signs. Just Me, attained in naked faith, naked hope, naked love. Stripped of all consolations, these three theological virtues – faith, hope, love – attain God directly. Why seek something else when their nakedness, like Jesus’ on the Cross, is enough?
That difficulty – when it gets into the deeper spiritual roots of our spirit – is the dark night of the spirit. It’s the normal way of the Cross; so, it must also be the normal way of sanctity and love for us pilgrim people of the Cross.
Some related posts:
Contemplative in the Mud 