37 — ANGUISH AND DARKNESS

Presence of God. — Hasten, O Lord, to my aid that I may not be overwhelmed by the tempest.

Meditation

1 — Seeing clearly its misery, the soul intuits the infinite distance that passes between it and God: precisely now that it longs more than ever to unite itself to Him, it sees itself more than ever distant from Him, absolutely incapable of overcoming the immense distance that separates it from Him. Of this too it suffers, because whoever loves ardently desires to unite itself to the beloved. At times, then, this suffering becomes so intense that it seems to the soul that for it there no longer exists any hope either of holiness, or of union with God, or even of eternal salvation.

In these anguish there is nothing exaggerated and still less false: the Holy Spirit, under whose action the soul finds itself, cannot inspire it with anything that is not perfectly conformable to truth. It is too true that between us, poor creatures, and God, supreme and infinite perfection, there passes an incalculable distance and difference; it is too true that, basing ourselves on our own strength, we are radically impotent to raise ourselves up to God; it is too true that, looking at our actions, even the best, there is nothing in us that can merit either union with God, or eternal life. If many are not convinced of this, but consider themselves capable of something in order to God and to holiness, it is because they have not yet been illumined on the depth of their nothingness.

If however it is true that we are absolutely unworthy of God, of His love, of His union, of His eternal glory, it is also true that God Himself, with His merciful love, has willed to fill the infinite distance that divides us from Him, has willed to stoop down to us to the point of clothing us with His divine life and of calling us to His intimacy. That which to our misery is absolutely impossible, is very possible to the omnipotence of God and to His infinite mercy; and He, in fact, wishes to do it, but also wishes to render us aware that this is uniquely His work.

In its fears of not being able to arrive at God and to eternal salvation, the soul must maintain itself firm in an unshakeable hope. If it is just that it fear for itself and be convinced of being able to hope nothing from its works, it is however more than ever just that it expect all from God, whose love and whose goodness infinitely surpass both its misery and its expectations. Conducting itself thus, the anguish of the night of the spirit will do nothing but root the soul not only in a more profound humility, but also in a more pure, more perfect hope, because uniquely supported by the merciful love of God.

2 — “In this time of purgation — says St. John of the Cross — the soul is wrapped in thick darkness in its intellect... Almost always (it is) arid and cold, rarely fervent, in nothing does it find relief, not even a thought that comforts it, without being able even to lift its heart to God” (F. 1, 20).

Behold another motive of spiritual pain: the dry aridity in which the soul finds itself, the incapacity of thinking of God. It seems almost that between it and God there has risen up as a very high wall which hinders its sighs from reaching up to Him. It is profound night in which the soul cannot proceed supported by pure and naked faith. Indeed, it must go forward thus, believing with all its strength that God is infinitely good, that God loves it and listens to its weeping, that God knows its torment and its trial uniquely to purify it. It is not difficult that in this state the soul be subject to strong temptations against faith; they can be, for example, temptations similar to those that afflicted St. Teresa of the Child Jesus in the last period of her life: “The Lord — wrote the Saint — permitted that my soul be immersed in the thickest darkness and that the thought of heaven, so dear to me from my most tender infancy, became for me cause of struggle and of torment” (Sr. 9). Yet she added: “However much the comfort of faith may be lacking to me, I strive however to execute its works; I have renewed more acts of faith in this past year than in all the course of my existence”; and, alluding to her poems on the happiness of heaven, she confessed: “When I sing the eternal possession of God, I experience no joy whatever, because I sing simply that which I wish to believe” (ibid.). This is precisely the conduct that the soul must keep in such a state: to believe because it wishes to believe, without basing itself on what it feels or experiences, but basing itself uniquely on the word of God. These acts of pure faith, stripped of all comfort, independent of any sentiment, are acts of heroic faith which so much the more honor God as they lean uniquely on divine revelation and so much the more unite the soul to Him as they are deprived of every human support. The darkness of the night of the spirit have precisely this scope: to accustom the soul to walk in pure faith, in heroic faith.

Colloquy

“O Jesus, pacific King, whose presence is desired by heaven and by earth, how have You departed from me? How has all my wealth and my strength failed? O privation more painful than mortal wounds, O separation truly most bitter, so as to be worse than the anguish of death!

“Why did You hide Yourself, O my sweetest Spouse, and cause this night full of palpable darkness and of most sad desolation to fall upon me? Who will help me in this extreme abandonment, in this solitude? Oh, how great are the sufferings of love, how great the solicitude of the heart that knows not, nor can do anything but love and cannot have whom it loves!

“O my most clement King, I have no other remedy than to sigh to You; from the depths of my heart I cry to You and invoke the tenderness of Your love. Remember me, O my hope, and consider the bitterness of the repulse and the hardness of the abandonment that consume me.

“Do not abandon me, O sweetest Offspring of the Virgin, since mercy was born together with You from the womb of Your most pure Mother. Behold, O Lord, how all my strength has failed and without You I am oppressed by the horror and the shadow of death.

“Have pity on me, O my Friend, since, all strength being consumed, only my lips and tongue remain to me to cry to You. O immortal life and fountain of living water, do not deprive me with so much rigor of Your presence which is dearer to me than life. I shall never rest, O sweetest Son of God, nor shall I ever cease to groan and to supplicate until You turn Your countenance toward me” (Ven. John of Jesus Mary, o.c.d.).