The Dark Night of the SoulChapter V. Explains how this dim contemplation is not a night only, but pain and torment also for the soul

1. Definition of the night of the spirit. The will passive save to consent and attend. 2. Why is the divine illumination called night. 3. It is dark to imperfect faculties from excess of light. 4. Dionysius the Areopagite.

5. It is painful from the meeting of contraries. 6. First pain: darkness of self revealed in the light of God. 7. Fear of unworthiness. 8. Second pain: weakness of self felt under the strength of God. 9. To the weak soul the gentle hand of God feels heavy.

In a dark night.

Tue dark night is a certain inflowing of God into the soul which cleanses it of its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural, and spiritual. Contemplatives call it infused contemplation, or mystical theology,! whereby God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in the perfection of love, without efforts on its own part [beyond a loving attention to God, listening to His voice and admitting the light He sends, but without understanding how this is infused contemplation.] ° And inasmuch as it is the loving wisdom of God, it produces special effects in the soul, for it prepares it, by purifying and enlightening it, for union with God in love: it is the same loving wisdom, which by enlightening purifies the blessed spirits, that here purifies and enlightens the soul. The divine light, which enlightens the soul and purges it of its ignorances, the dark night? I reply, that the divine wisdom is, for two reasons, not night and darkness only, but pain and torment also to the soul. The first is, the divine wisdom is so high that it transcends the capacity of the soul, and therefore is, in that respect, darkness. The second reason is based on the meanness and impurity of the soul, and in that respect the divine wisdom is painful to it, afflictive and dark also.

3. To prove the truth of the first reason, we take for granted a principle of the philosopher, namely, the more clear and evident divine things are, the more dark and hidden they are to the soul naturally. Thus the more clear the light the more does it blind the eyes of the owl,! and the stronger the sun’s rays the more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them, by reason of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul, not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness, because it not only surpasses its strength, but because it blinds it and deprives it of its natural perceptions,

4. It is for this reason that St. Dionysius and other mystic theologians call infused contemplation a ray of darkness,' that is, for the unenlightened and unpurified soul, because this great supernatural light masters the natural power of the reason and takes away its natural way of understanding. Therefore, David also said: ‘Cloud and darkness are round about Him;’? not that this is so in reality, but in reference to our weak understanding, which, in light so great, becomes dimmed and blind, unable to ascend so high. He repeats it, saying: ‘At the brightness that was before Him the clouds passed,’⁴ that is, between Him and our understanding. This is the reason why the illuminating ray of hidden wisdom, when God sends it from Himself into the soul not yet transformed, produces thick darkness in the understanding.

5. This dim contemplation is in its beginnings painful also to the soul. For as the infused divine contemplation contains many excellences in the highest degree, and the soul, which is the recipient, because not yet pure, is involved in many miseries—in the highest degree, too ‘—the result is—as two contraries cannot co-exist in the same subject—that the soul must suffer and be in pain, being the subject in which the two contraries meet, and resist each other because of the purgation of the soul from its imperfections, which is being wrought by contemplation. I shall show it to be so by the following induction.

6. In the first place, because the light and wisdom of contemplation is most pure and bright, and because the soul, on which it beats, is in darkness and impure, that soul which is the recipient must greatly suffer. As eyes weakened and clouded by humours suffer pain when the clear light beats upon them, so the soul, by reason of its impurity, suffers exceedingly when the divine light really shines upon it. And when the rays of this pure light strike upon the soul, in order to expel its impurities, the soul perceives itself to be so unclean and miserable that it seems as if God had set Himself against it, and itself were set against God. So grievous and painful is this feeling—for it thinks now that God has abandoned it —that it was one of the heaviest afflictions of Job during his trial. ‘Why hast Thou set me contrary to Thee, and I become burdensome to myself?’! The soul seeing distinctly in this bright and pure light, though dimly, its own impurity, acknowledges its own unworthiness before God and all creatures.

7. That which pains it still more is the fear it has that it never will be worthy, and that all its goodness is gone. This is the fruit of that deep impression, made on the mind, in the knowledge and sense of its own wickedness and misery. For now the divine and dim light reveals to it all its wretchedness, and it sees clearly that of itself it can never be other than it is. In this sense we can understand the words of the Psalmist: ‘For iniquities Thou hast chastised man, and Thou hast made his soul pine away and wither! as a spider,’ ?

8. In the second place, the pain of the soul comes from its natural,’ moral, and spiritual weakness; for when this divine contemplation strikes it with a certain vehemence, in order to strengthen it and subdue it, it is then so pained in its weakness as almost to faint away, particularly at times when the divine contemplation strikes it with greater vehemence; for sense and spirit, as if under a heavy and gloomy burden, suffer and groan in agony so great that death itself would be a desired relief. 9. This was the experience of Job, and he said, ‘I will not that He contend with me with much strength, nor that He oppress me with the weight of His greatness.’ ‘The soul under the burden of this oppression feels itself so removed out of God’s favour that it thinks—and so it is—that all things which consoled it formerly have utterly failed it, and that no one is left to pity it. Job also speaks to the same purport, ‘Have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, at the least you my friends, because the hand of our Lord hath touched me.’⁹ Wonderful and piteous sight! So great are the weakness and impurity of the soul that the hand of God, so soft and so gentle, is felt to be so heavy and oppressive,! though neither pressing nor resting on it, but merely touching it, and that, too, most mercifully; for He touches the soul not to chastise it, but to load it with His graces,