7 — THE NIGHT OF THE SENSES

Presence of God. — O Lord, strengthen my desire to come to You, that I may have the courage to face for love of You the total purification of my sensibility.

Meditation

1 — “To arrive at divine union, it is necessary for the soul to pass through the dark night of mortification of appetites and deprivation of tastes in all things” (cf. A. I, 3, 1). St. John of the Cross calls total mortification of the senses “dark night,” because when the soul renounces every disordered attachment to things and every pleasure it can find in them, it remains, with regard to the senses, “deprived of all... with nothing and in darkness” (ibid., 3, 1).

Precisely to help you enter this night, through which one reaches union with God, the Saint has taught you to oppose your disordered tendency toward sensible satisfactions.

But it is clear that, even while wanting seriously to mortify your senses, you will not always be able to abstain from seeing delightful things, hearing interesting news, taking tasty foods, etc.: at times such things will be imposed by the necessities of life, by the duties of your state, or even by your superiors. And yet it is absolutely necessary that, even in these cases, your soul remain entirely free from every attachment to things and to sensible satisfactions. For this purpose you must “endeavor - and this will be enough - not to savor the delight of those sensible perceptions, but as soon as possible to mortify it and empty the senses of it, leaving them, so to speak, in darkness as to everything” (cf. ibid., 13, 4).

In other words, you must not stop to enjoy selfishly what pleases your senses, but must seek to raise your heart at once to God, offering Him the pleasure you may feel and that He permits to restore your strength, so that you may resume with greater vigor the exercise of mortification. In this way, even natural reliefs and joys serve to go to God and to grow in His love; St. Therese of the Child Jesus called this “rejoicing through love.”

This is also St. Paul’s teaching, who says: “rejoice always in the Lord,” and, “whether you eat or drink, ...do all for the glory of God” (Phil. 4, 4; 1 Cor. 10, 31). But if instead you stop at the pleasure of sensible things, you will never be able to enter the night of the senses.

2 — “Ordinarily one enters the night of sense in two ways: one active, the other passive. The active consists in what the soul can do and actually does on its own part... The passive way is that in which the soul does nothing by its own industry, but God acts in it, while it remains as patient” (J.C. A. I, 13, 1). The active way includes everything you can do on your own initiative to free yourself from every affection or attachment to creatures. For example, it is in your power to apply yourself to the exercise of poverty, bodily mortification, penance, chastity, virtues that strip the soul of earthly goods and of sensual satisfactions. If you want to do all that is in your power to enter the night, practice these virtues generously, always keeping your gaze on Jesus, the divine Model, who willed to go before us in all things.

But however much you do, your own efforts will not be sufficient to destroy entirely in you the last roots of attachments. If you examine yourself carefully, you will see that even in the exercise of voluntary mortification there can enter some complacency for things chosen according to your own taste, your own will. For your purification to be complete, God’s work must intervene, introducing us passively into the night of the senses. He does this by means of external and internal trials and adversities. Here you must not so much act as undergo; you must be like the patient before the surgeon; you must accept with humility and docility all that God permits, without trying to escape trial, and not even to reduce or lessen it.

St. John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, presents the soul that, “with longing of love all aflame, sings the happy lot that befell it in passing through the dark night.” In fact, to be introduced into the passive night is one of the greatest graces the soul can receive, because in this way God Himself prepares and disposes it for union with Him. If you want to obtain this grace, do on your part all that you can to enter the active night, that is, to exercise yourself in renunciation and total detachment.

Colloquy

O Lord, deign to come to meet me with Your grace, to inflame me with Your love, so that I may press forward eagerly into that dark night which must prepare me for union with You. Night is not pleasing to my nature, which loves light, sun, full and radiant day. But if You help me, why should I not for love of You accept depriving my senses of every satisfaction, placing them in darkness, when in the end it is only a matter of renouncing the charm of things that are nothing and worth nothing, so that in exchange I may enjoy You, in whom is every light, every joy, every delight? Therefore, O Lord, shall I not know how, for love of You, to bear a little darkness, cold, deprivation, nakedness, poverty? Oh, how many times, alas, I am still so blind as to prefer that little crumb of immediate satisfaction that creatures give me and that at once vanishes like shadow before the sun, to the less sensible satisfaction, but far deeper, truer, and more lasting, that he finds in You who has firmly resolved to place in You alone all his delight.

“O Lord, most merciful Father, receive, I beg You, this prodigal son of Yours! I have suffered enough now; enough have I been slave of Your enemies, whom You keep under Your feet; enough have I been mockery of false allurements. I understand that I must return to You; grant that, knocking, I may find Your door open; teach me the road to reach You. My only resource is my will; all I know is that I must despise unstable and passing goods, and seek instead stable and eternal goods.

“Far be it, O Lord, far from the heart of Your servant, who confesses before You, the thought that any joy could make him happy. For there is in fact a joy not granted to the wicked, but to those who disinterestedly honor You, and You are their joy. And blessed life is precisely this: to rejoice in You, of You, for You; this and no other. Whoever thinks there is another joy pursues a different joy, and not the true one” (St. Augustine).