Preamble to a Few Reflections on the Dark Night
In the Interior Castle, Teresa draws a rather attractive picture of a person in the Third Dwelling Places. On the surface the person is prayerful and virtuous. There is a feeling of real progress in the spiritual life. Then Teresa goes on to show that in light of our true goal of union with God, this seemingly admired state of virtue is not only superficial but often a true hindrance to genuine progress.
The next four dwelling places beckon. The initial experience of contemplation awaits. This new progress is a free gift of God usually offered after many years of effort at deep personal prayer and service to our neighbor.
John of the Cross describes what happens in the final four Dwelling Places, contemplation as a totally new experience of God’s presence. He then goes on to unveil a thorough description of this contemplative experience. He calls it the Dark Night. At the heart of this deep spiritual process is a prayerful encounter with the shocking depth of our own human brokenness. Teresa addresses the early stages of this new action of God in the Fourth Dwelling Places. The Dark Night is about letting go, surrendering control to God. God is now creating space for a new and more profound purification and transformation.
It is good to remember that the purification and transformation of the Dark Night are non-negotiable elements for all of us. If not in this life, purgatory is the only way forward after death with the same deep cleansing.
Introduction to the Dark Night
The Gospels are filled with statements of contradiction: the first shall be last and the last first; if you want to save your life, you need to lose it; to be the leader you must be the servant. These are just a sampling of the many powerful and challenging contradictions in Jesus’ message. They are all an invitation to appreciate what it means to be a creature in relation to the all-powerful and all-loving Creator. Jesus is the light come into the darkness to open up the true nature of our mortality, a marvelous mortality that opens up to eternal life. We are immersed in the darkness and we are blind to our blindness. We receive the light of Christ gradually, and often, with great reluctance. This is what our conversions along the way are all about. They let the light of Christ seep into our darkened consciousness.A further contradiction on this Christian journey is this. When we are truly making progress, when we are more in tune with God’s will, when we are actually letting go of the many stumbling blocks keeping us from walking with Jesus, a strange thing happens. We feel that we are not making progress. In fact, we feel we are slipping backwards in our spiritual passage.
John of the Cross explains this strange experience this way. We have had a lifetime of living in a room that has been completely dark. This darkness has dominated our reality. We have known no better and have accepted the darkness as normal. As we become more open and freer in God’s grace, the divine light begins to trickle into our room. Gradually, we start to see the debris of our selfishness and sinfulness that has been hidden all along. Now patterns of self-absorption, our prejudices, blindness to the poor in our midst and many other gross distortions and neglect of basic Christian charity slowly emerge in our awareness. At the same time, we begin to become mindful of how much of our world has been driven by a consumer society proclaiming a message of self-indulgence.
All of this is the light of Christ gently revealing the depth our brokenness. Our pilgrimage to God slowly unveils the magnitude of our patterns of self-centeredness and sin. This is true progress. This is a gift of self-knowledge that draws us more intensely to God and away from our sense of independence and control. This is the seed falling into the ground and producing the bread that gives Life. This contradiction intensifies all through the process of deeper spiritual growth. It seems like failure but it is a marvelous gift of new life and new light. It is a process of moving the center of reality away from ourselves and toward God.
A critical component of this journey out of the darkness into the light is John of the Cross’ teaching on the Dark Night. John calls it a “blessed night”. It is blessed because we are drawing closer to God. We are giving God new space to work on our purification and transformation. We are on the way to where we belong, free in our true destiny to be one with God.
As we pursue a deeper undertraining of the Dark Night, a few fundamental observations will be helpful. First, John is not talking about a new presence of God. God is always totally present at the center of our being. This is a new activity of God facilitating our growth in awareness. This divine activity is always a gift, and ultimately, always at the initiative of God. In the Dark Night, we are realizing what has always been: an active and loving presence of God that has continually been indispensable to our being. This is a passage into the loving mercy of God that totally engulfs and penetrates our being. This new awareness is the goal of our spiritual life. It is something we long for and work to achieve.
In the end, the Dark Night is both quite simple and truly complex. Its goal is to draw us away from selfishness and into love for God and neighbor. The following reflections will be and effort to make the Dark Night a bit more understandable and truly an attractive goal calling us more deeply into love that satisfies the deepest hunger in our heart.
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