Dark Night of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul is a treatise by Saint John of the Cross containing a commentary explaining his poem of the same name.

Poem and treatise by Saint John of the Cross

John of the Cross

Dark Night of the Soul (Spanish: La noche oscura del alma) is the title of a poem written by 16th-century Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross, as well as of a treatise he wrote later, commenting on the poem. Saint John of the Cross was a Carmelite priest. His poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. The journey occurs during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas. The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. The poem is divided into two books that reflect the two phases of the dark night. The first is a purification of the senses. The second and more intense of the two stages is that of the purification of the spirit, which is the less common of the two. Dark Night of the Soul further describes the ten steps on the ladder of mystical love, previously described by Saint Thomas Aquinas and in part by Aristotle. The text was written while John of the Cross was imprisoned by his Carmelite brothers, who opposed his reformations to the Order.

The treatise, written later, is a theological commentary on the poem, explaining its meaning by stanza.

Spiritual term in the Christian tradition

Main article: Spiritual dryness

The term "dark night (of the soul)" is used in Christianity for a spiritual crisis in a journey towards union with God, like that described by Saint John of the Cross.

Typically for a believer in the dark night of the soul, spiritual disciplines (such as prayer and consistent devotion to God) suddenly seem to lose all their experiential value; traditional prayer is extremely difficult and unrewarding for an extended period of time during this "dark night." The individual may feel as though God has suddenly abandoned them or that his or her prayer life has collapsed. It is important to note however that the presence of doubt is not tantamount to abandonment—as there is a strong Biblical tradition of authentic confusion before God. Psalms 13, 22, and 44 display King David, the 'man after God's own heart' undergoing serious confusion before and anguish with God, yet this is not condemned or mentioned as being unfaithful, but rather as the only measure of faith that David could have in the face of such withering apparent abandonment.

Rather than resulting in permanent devastation, the dark night is regarded by mystics and others as a blessing in disguise, whereby the individual is stripped (in the dark night of the senses) of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue. Although individuals may for a time seem to outwardly decline in their practices of virtue, in reality they become more virtuous, as they are being virtuous less for the spiritual rewards (ecstasies in the cases of the first night) obtained and more out of a true love for God. It is this purgatory, a purgation of the soul, that brings purity and union with God.

Jesus Christ may also have experienced such a crisis, when uttering My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? on the cross, before dying. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, which contains many parallels to Jesus' suffering and death, most likely in an attempt to point out the similarities of his situation to the Psalm to the onlookers as he died: "O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins".

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite, underwent similar experience. Centering on doubts about the afterlife, she reportedly told her fellow nuns, "If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into."^[1]

While this crisis is usually temporary in nature, it may last for extended periods. The "dark night" of Saint Paul of the Cross in the 18th century lasted 45 years, from which he ultimately recovered. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, according to letters released in 2007, "may be the most extensive such case on record", lasting from 1948 almost up until her death in 1997, with only brief interludes of relief between.^[2] Franciscan Friar Father Benedict Groeschel, a friend of Mother Teresa for a large part of her life, claims that "the darkness left" towards the end of her life.^[3]

In popular culture

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the famous line "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning" in The Crack-Up. Fitzgerald may have been thinking of Earnest Christopher Dowson who used the phrase 'obscure night of the soul' in his Absinthe poem Absinthe Taetra. Dowson would have appealed to FSF's melancholic side. Author and humorist Douglas Adams satirized the phrase in the title of his 1988 science fiction novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Alternative rock band Sparklehorse along with producer Danger Mouse and Director and visual artist David Lynch collaborated with a plethora of other artists including Vic Chesnutt, Jason Lytle and Wayne Coyne on an audio visual project entitled "Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul"

It has also been used as a song title by several other bands and music artists, including Steve Bell, Loreena McKennitt, The Get Up Kids, Mayhem, and by CHH artist shai linne in the Solus Christus project.

American Metal Band Fear Factory used the term in the last track from their Obsolete album, called "Timelessness".

Composer Ola Gjeilo has written a 14-minute choral setting with piano and string quartet.

In the final episode of Father Ted ("Going to America"), depressed priest Father Kevin explains to Ted that he is experiencing the "dark night of the soul".

In episode 5371 of US soap series The Bold and the Beautiful, Bridget Forrester (Ashley Jones) and Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) discuss spirituality and the purpose of human existence through reference and direct quotation of "Dark Night of the Soul".

See also

• Ascent of Mount Carmel
• Ego death
• Existential crisis
• Loevinger
  • Stages of ego development
• Dabrowski
  • Theory of Positive disintegration
• Kenosis
• Kohlberg
  • Stages of moral development
• Nigredo
• Psychology of religion
• Theosis

Ernest Dowson alludes to the 'obscure night of the soul' in his abisinthe poem absinthia taetra

References

1. ^ Martin, James (29 August 2007). "A Saint's Dark Night". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/opinion/29martin.html?em&ex=1188532800&en=9e59f11fbd412882&ei=5087. 
2. ^ David van Biema (23 August 2007). "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html. 
3. ^ Groeschel, Father Benedict (9 September 2007). "The Mother Teresa I Knew" (RM). EWTN Sunday Night Live. http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/resolve.asp?rafile=snl_09092007.rm. 

• The chapter entitled "The Dark Night of the Soul" from Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism at Gnostic.org.
• Underhill, Evelyn. (re-issue 1999). Mysticism Oneworld Publications. ISBN 1-85168-196-5.

Further reading

• May, Gerald G. (2004). The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-055423-1. 
• McKee, Kaye P. (2006). When God Walks Away: A Companion to the Dark Night of the Soul. Crossroad Publishing Company. ISBN 9780824523800. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/When-God-Walks-Away/Kaye-McKee/e/9780824523800/?itm=2. 

External links

• Dark Night of the Soul verse translation of the poem.
• Text of Dark Night of the Soul from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• Poem and text of Dark Night of the Soul From The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991), ICS Publications.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 
• Online version of Dark Night of the Soul