How strong is our love? When we turn back our gaze upon it, what do we find? Surely, if we have begun to enter into the darkness of contemplation, but have not yet reached the end, there will be some of that audacity to reach the end. But at the same time, there will be the concern that, what is there is not enough, and we will desire to guard ourselves from doing evil and from missing the opportunity to do the good.

Saint John of the Cross, the Mystical Doctor of the Church, puts it this way:

The soul immediately perceives in itself a genuine determination and an effective desire to do nothing which it understands to be an offence against or to God, and to omit to do nothing which seems to be for his service. For that dark love cleaves to the soul, causing it a most watchful care and inward solicitude concerning that which it must do, or must not do, for God’s sake, in order to please him. It will consider and ask itself a thousand times if it has given him cause to be offended. (Dark Night, II, c. 16, n. 14)

In dark love, we dare. In dark love, we are solicitous for missing the mark and, moreover, the opportunities freely given.