What is the purpose of the dark night of the soul?

John of the Cross, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

John of the Cross answers

The dark night serves union with God, and it does so by emptying the soul of everything that cannot hold what God means to give. The affections and apprehensions of the perfect spirit are divine and of another kind than the natural ones, and like two contraries they cannot stand together in one subject; so the natural must be brought to nothing before the divine can be enjoyed.1

The light to be given is of the highest nature, beyond all natural light and not cognisable by the understanding. The understanding must therefore first be purified of its own light, and brought into darkness by this dim contemplation.2 The darkness lasts as long as it takes to destroy the old habit of understanding things in a natural way, until the divine enlightening has taken its place.

That is why it is so afflictive, reaching to the innermost depths of the spirit.3 The will is dealt with in the same order. The love communicated in union is divine, subtle and interior, surpassing every natural affection, and the will, being by nature incapable of it, must first be left in darkness and distress proportioned to the strength of its habits.4

It is like the liver of the fish that Tobias laid on the coals: wasted and deprived of all selfishness in the fire of dim contemplation, it comes to a pure and simple disposition and a sound taste, able to feel the touches of divine love when it is transformed.5 There is a further reason. For what no eye has seen nor ear heard, the soul must be brought to emptiness and spiritual poverty, detached from all help and consolation of heaven and earth.

Only so is it poor in spirit and divested of the old man, and able to live the new life which is union with God.6 So the soul is made a stranger to the ordinary sense of things, that being brought to nothing there, it may be informed in the divine.7 The soul cannot do this by its own strength, for no one can empty his heart of all desires and draw near to God of himself.

It is God who leads it into this night, and the soul's good fortune lies in being led.8 Nor does He lead by sweetness and imaginings, which cannot be as pure and strong as union demands, but by faith, dark and pure, the proper means of union: "I will espouse thee to Me in faith." The night has no other end than the wedding.9

Sources

  1. the affections, feelings, and apprehensions of the perfect spirit, being of so high an order and specially divine, are of another kind and different from those which are natural; and in order to be actually and habitually enjoyed, require the annihilation of the latter, as happens with two contraries which cannot coexist in the same subject.
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  2. the light that is to be given it is a certain divine light of the highest nature, surpassing all natural light, and not naturally cognisable by the understanding. If the understanding is to be united with that light... it must first of all be purified and annihilated as to its natural light
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  3. This darkness must continue so long as it is necessary to destroy the habit, long ago contracted, of understanding things in a natural way, and until the divine enlightening shall have taken its place.
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  4. it is necessary for the perception and fruition, in the union of love, of this divine affection and most exquisite delight, that the will, by nature incapable of it, should be first purified and annihilated, as to all its affections and feelings
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  5. the will, in the fire of dim contemplation, wasted, withered, and deprived of all selfishness — like the liver of the fish which Tobias laid on the burning coals — may acquire a pure and simple disposition, a purified and sound taste
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  6. it is necessary for it that it should be first brought into a state of emptiness and spiritual poverty, detached from all help and consolation in all the things of heaven and earth, that being thus empty it may be really poor in spirit and divested of the old man
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  7. the soul has become a stranger to the ordinary sense of things, in order that being brought to nothing therein, it might be informed in the divine.
    The Dark Night of the Soul
  8. no one is able in his own strength to empty his heart of all desires, so as to draw near unto God.
    The Ascent of Mount Carmel
  9. the soul must enter the second night of the spirit where — perfectly detaching sense and spirit from all sweetness and from all imaginations — it will travel on the road of faith dark and pure, the proper and adequate means of union, as it is written: 'I will espouse thee to Me in faith.'
    The Dark Night of the Soul