Chapter V. Characteristic Signs of the Passive Purification of the Soul
If all that glitters is not gold, neither is every kind of darkness and suffering of soul a passive purification. Let us take a brief glance at the nature of those painful times of darkness diat are entirely different from the night of the soul, and then afterward take up the discussion of certain purifications that are real but very difficult to judge, pointing out, finally, the true signs of the night of the soul. In this we shall follow four Thomists: Philip of the Blessed Trinity, CD., Valgornera, Alexander Piny, and Louis Chardon. Of the three Dominicans—all of whom have made a special study of the subject —Chardon will be quoted at length so that interior souls will be led to read his book, La Croix de Jesus, referred to earlier and far too little known.1
According to Echard's Scriptores ordinis Praedicatorum, II, 566, Chardon was born in the Ilc-dc-France about 1595. Having completed his studies and desiring to retire from the world, he entered the Dominicans in 1618, became master of novices and an experienced director of souls seeking perfection. He died at the age of 56 in 1651. His principal works arc: La Croix de Jesus, oil les plus belles viritis de la thiologie mystique et de la gr&ce sanctiftantc sont itablies (Paris: Antoine Bcrdiicr, 1647); Meditations sttr la passion de Jesus-Christ pour tons les purs de I'annee, (Paris: Hurc, 1650); La doctrine de Dieu enseignee a sainte Catherine de Sienne en forme de dialogue, donnee au public en noire languc (Paris: Hure, 1648) ; Les divines institutiones des lecons de la perfection du ven. P. Jean Taulere, donnees avec eclaircissements en notre langue (Paris: Hurc, 1650); Raccourci de I'art de
Sufferings of a penal rather than of a purifying nature
The spiritual afflictions described in the exposition of the night of the soul given by St. John of the Cross must not be confused with sufferings in some regards analogous to them but of a very different character. They ought not to be taken for morbid states, such as profound melancholia, neurasthenia, or psychastenia — in other words, with nervous exhaustion and its reverberations on moral life. People so afflicted distress themselves over nothing and sometimes end by developing a persecution mania. This may take any one of its many different forms, including the religious, depending on the person's environment and ordinary preoccupations.
mediter pour les ames qui commencent les pratiques de la devotion (Paris: Hure, 1649). Not having a first edition of La Croix de Jesus, we have quoted from the edition "revised" by Father Bourgeois and published by Lethiclleux in 1895.
Louis Chardon was a master theologian, nourished by the doctrine of St. Thomas and St. Catherine of Siena and the teaching of Taulcr. He has related the high concepts of mystical theology to St. Thomas' principles on Christ's fullness of grace. His mystical body, the invisible missions of the divine persons. Some exaggerations occur in his works where he indulges in an oratorical style of development. But he frequently shows great depth as a speculative theologian and as a psychologist. He may have read St. John of the Cross, whose works had their first Spanish edition in 161 8 and their first translation into French in 1621, another publication following in 1665.
Whether he knew St. John of the Cross or not, Louis Chardon has written much which through its use of doctrinal principles clarifies the teaching found in slighdy different form in the writings of Tauler and of St. John of the Cross. Louis Chardon has been particularly enlightening in regard to the two effects produced in Jesus' soul by His fullness of grace: deep peace and an ardent desire for the cross as the means of our salvation. He has shown also that these two effects arc reproduced in the members of Christ's mystical body. Whereas St. John of the Cross inculcates in souls a love for suffering as a purifying means to divine union, Louis Chardon draws them to love suffering by emphasizing our Lord's love for the cross. Those who have read The Dark Night will surely sec that the pages of La Croix de Jesus deal with the same states and sometimes throw new light upon them relative to the development of sanctifying grace which separates us from all that is not pure in things created that it may unite us more closely to God.
I7 8 THE LOVE OF GOD
Temptations against chastity and patience are certainly not enough to ensure that a soul has entered into the passive night of the senses; nor are temptations against the three theological virtues a guaranty that it is undergoing the night of the soul.
Describing the state of those who make bad use of spiritual consolations,2 Father Louis Chardon aptly remarks:
Because they lack steady resoluteness, they are continually changing, desiring consolations without patience and seeking them without temperance. Such over-eagerness leads to confusion, troubles and clouds the understanding, and robs the mind of peace. Restlessness of this kind weakens the life and vigor of a man's powers, depriving them of light and strength and abandoning them to their own resources. People who have fallen into a state like this fail to recognize it. Even if it is brought to their attention in such a way that they cannot help knowing it, or at least, suspecting it, the weakness which they have already contracted keeps them from making up their minds to practice those hard exercises demanded of all who would take the kingdom of God by storm.
Souls such as these continue to make violent efforts to convince themselves that a liberal God desires to accord them nothing but a great deal of sweetness. Their lack of discretion may sometimes reach the point of weakening the body. Even if health is not lost, it is so affected that the soul cannot use the body for those operations that can be produced in this life only with its cooperation. There is a weight on the breast, the brain is fagged, and breathing shallow, the heart contracts and, whenever there is an attempt to apply themselves attentively to any consideration, they get a headache. Then the imagination plays its part by representing this sorry state of affairs as worse than it actually is.
Finding themselves so sadly off, people are likely to go seeking relief in the senses and some succeed so well in finding it that they fall from their newly and generously undertaken spiritual life into what St. Paul calls an animal way of living. So reads the story of many who have left off the pursuit of perfection to which they were called by an abundance of graces from a generous God. Doctors see the results of melancholy in bodily dispositions consequent on mental torment and conflict. Those so affected ultimately give up trying to resist the impulses that trouble them. Please God, may He give such souls the profound humility to draw nearer those of whom we are now going to speak. 3
Lastly, true passive purification of the soul should also be distinguished from another state, not so much a trial sent by God's mercy to dispose the soul for divine union as a chastisement of His justice. It must be remarked in regard to this subject that there are diree different kinds of crosses, the same three that were raised on Calvary: the cross of Christ, the cross of the good thief, and the cross of the bad thief. Our Lord in no way merited His; He voluntarily accepted its sufferings in our stead. His was the redemptive cross. By contrast, die bad thief fully merited his cross and besides drew no profit from it. His was a lost cross, without any purifying effect, like many others in the world. The good thief certainly merited his. It was a punishment. Yet he was able to make it purifying and reparative by uniting his contrite heart to Christ*
5 In regard to a case of this kind, Huysmans wrote: "It seems that nervous disorders make cleavages in the soul and lay it open for the evil spirit to enter . . . ; in this matter medicine speaks nonsense, and theology holds its tongue." A Rcbours, the preface written twenty years after the book and quoted by Dr. A. Hesnard, Les psychoses ct les jronliercs dc la folic, p. 122.
4 St Thomas says somewhere that the sufferings of a good religious are as different from those of a bad religious as the cross of the good thief from the cross of the bad one.
i8o THE LOVE OF GOD
Crosses such as the good thief's may indeed resemble the night of the soul without having all its characteristics. Sometimes, because of grave sins against the Savior which remained unconfessed and entailed a number of sacrilegious Communions as well, a repentant sinner may have a heavy debt to pay divine justice although he has already been forgiven his sins. The torments diat he suffers lead him to ask whether his sins have really been forgiven or whether he is on the way to damnation. Frequent temptations against hope and charity arise, and God Himself seems cruel. In such cases, there is no question of any passive purification or proximate preparation of the soul for divine union but chiefly of expiation which, although hard, is better endured in this life while meriting than after death in purgatory, when we can no longer merit.
The different instances just examined — marked neurasthenia, anxiety neurosis, and the painful expiation for grave sins already remitted, are plainly quite different from the true night of the soul. There are, however, cases of real passive purification about which it is difficult to decide.
Obscure forms of passive purification
The topic being a delicate one, it behooves us to listen to the best authorities on the subject. Father Louis Chardon describes states of this nature when speaking of three different kinds of interior crosses: first, those that make us cowardly and scrupulous; secondly, those that arouse our lower nature to rebellion; and finally, those caused by a sort of general lassitude.
Of the crosses that stun and stupefy the will, he says:
In the course of the trials sent by God to the soul, it comes about that the will is forsaken at the same time that the intelligence is filled with knowledge, due either to its natural power of reason or to supernatural illumination. When this happens to a man, he then carries a cross far heavier than any he has ever known before. Light may flood the mind, but the will remains empty. Holy people so tried believe that they would have been better off ignorant than possessed of a sublime knowledge which yet gives them no power to love what their very nature forbids them to hate. They suffer much, feeling themselves forbidden to take hold of what they long for with a love beyond any power to express or prove. They see that the object of their love is worthy of all love, yet cannot turn to Him with all their strength. God's mercy inspires no confidence, His justice excites no fear. . . . Meditation on His mysteries leaves the affections cold.
A kind of constraint of heart results, a timid and repressed disposition of mind, a shrinking of the soul's courage. . . . Souls that rose like eagles toward the sun become scared nestlings fluttering along on the ground. They begin to be afraid of everything and see all their actions as tainted with sin. The wisest counsel succeeds in calming their fears only with great difficulty. Their minds remain cowardly, enervated, and depressed. They shun the remedy to be found in the advice of enlightened directors . . . defying them and doubting the uprightness of their intention. They come to Communion as if presenting themselves before the tribunal of some terrible judge. They have attention only for their own misery, are so conscious of it and feel themselves so evil that they think it impossible that they could be of any use to others. ... In other words, they know that they have offended God but are not sure that they have obtained His pardon. 6
Lack of knowledge, together with its imaginings and terrifying thoughts, causes a cross unparalleled, bowing down
the heart and breaking courage. An experienced director will see, however, that the grief experienced for their faults, proves that these souls love God above all things and that, to do His will, they are ready, in spite of everything, to suffer still more.
When talking of the crosses that cause our lower nature to revolt, Louis Chardon relates that, according to Sulpicius Severus, 6 there was once an illustrious prelate of outstanding virtue who had often widi his blessing freed those troubled by the devil. One day he was dismayed to find himself incited to pride and begged God that he himself might rather become the habitation of the devil than be guilty of complacency. And the result of his prayer was soon manifest. 7
Louis Chardon adds:
It seems that something analogous happens to some souls. T.ong experience of God's guidance has given them a wonderful grace of discernment. Yesterday they knew the way that they must follow to go forward without fear on the road of perfection. And today they know nothing. They have to go asking light of others to whom they could have given it in abundance before. Souls accomplished in the practice of high virtue see themselves driven to the necessity of going to learn the first elements of the spiritual life in the school of less perfect people. . . . For a long time they have been penetrated by the vanity of everything that is not God and filled with horror at inordinate desires, having reason to believe that they were forever cut off from new temptations. And now they feel themselves harried and tormented with thoughts, and desires . . . and passions that almost make them lose hope of ever again finding the favors that they once knew. If they desire to find some solace for their misery in God, they see that the avenues leading to Him are closed. And were they open, their understanding would s Dialogue, treatise L 7 Op. cit., chap. 1 5.
be too darkened to be aware of it and their will too slack to get up and more toward Him. ... All the faculties under the will's direction revolt against it. The more it desires to rise toward the source of all good, the more it is held back by the deterrent weight of our lower nature, which represents to it only objects that crucify it. . . . With severity, yet full lovingly, God holds its interior acts as though in a state of suspension. It has no other support but Him. He Himself put it in this crucible where, almost without being able to act, it suffers through God, through creatures, and through itself. . . .
People so tried are often tempted to impatience. Their nature is left to its own weakness. No sensible influence of any kind comes to them from heaven, and everything conspires to cause them desolation. . . . What has become of the pure flaming love that used to purify the imperfections of their heart and the efficacious strength once manifest in their actions ? They know only irksome disgust and aversion and are even tempted to turn from resignation and submission to God's adorable designs. . . . Nature revolts against the spirit with such violence that nothing else can make itself felt. The higher faculties are as if unconscious and incapable of action; and such is the sway of our evil nature that it is impossible even to distinguish for practical purposes between what is necessary and what is free, between consent and feeling. 8
These passages make us think of the violent and prolonged temptations experienced by St. Alphonsus Liguori at the age of eighty. When reading his life, we might take this trial for the night of the senses, but it must have been a purification of a much higher order.
Louis Chardon continues: "In this state, doubts, anxieties, and disturbances arise in the soul. Are not these aversions and revolts that it experiences acts of the will, freely consented i8 4 THE LOVE OF GOD to? The truth is that they are as far from being acts of the will as they are from being sweet communications of holy love." 9
All the effects of violent passions make themselves felt. . . . Thoughts of denying divine Providence haunt the mind. The senses are aroused and disturbed with an intensity reminiscent of delirium. Yet the fact that all this martyrdom results from continued resistance in the contest remains unknown. ... If it were otherwise, if the besieged gave way before these assaults, if the powers of the soul yielded their consent, all this travail, that makes us think of the dread spectacle of souls forever banished from God's sight, would come to a halt.
In resignation and silence these souls arc really cleaving to all that God is pleased to decide for them. They practice patience just when their nature is most impatient; they enjoy peace in spite of anxiety and keep silence in the face of trouble, practicing indifference in the midst of turmoil, and conformity in spite of uprushes of anger. Nevertheless, because their acts of submission are tacit rather than explicit, they remain ignorant of their own state. 10
God permits all this for their advancement. May they then allow this trial to go forward and be accomplished in them, having their purgatory here on earth and coming at last to free themselves of every stain and imperfection. For those who have eyes to see, the full strength of love first appears in this conflict: Fortis est ut mors dilectio.
Crosses caused by general helplessness: The rigorous action of love delivers others over to another form of passive purification difficult to judge. Having received great graces, these souls can no longer bring them back to mind. The under-
standing is clouded ; the will, numbed ; and the devil is permitted to interpose in order to exercise their fidelity. How can they ask God's help? He is hidden. Faith sleeps so heavily that we could believe it dead. When St. Teresa was undergoing this trial it seemed to her that she was like a ball in the hands of her enemy. She wrote of it: "The mind feels as if it never had thought of God nor ever will be able to do so. When men speak of Him, they seem to be talking of some person heard of long ago." 11 Elsewhere she says:
Faith is then as dead, and asleep, like all the other virtues; not lost, however, — for the soul truly believes all that the Church holds; but its profession of the faith is hardly more than an outward profession of the mouth. And, on the other hand, temptations seem to press it down, and make it dull, so that its knowledge of God becomes to it as that of something which it hears of far away. . . . Vocal prayer or solitude is only a greater affliction. . . . To converse with any one is worse, for the devil then sends so offensive a spirit of bad temper, that 1 think I could eat people up; nor can I help myself. I feel that I do something when I keep myself under control; or rather our Lord does so, when He holds back with His hand any one in this state from saying or doing something that may be hurtful to his neighbours and offensive to God.
Then, as to going to our confessor, that is of no use; for there certainly results— and very often has it happened to me— what I shall now describe. Though my confessors, with whom I had to do then, and have to do still, are so holy, they spoke to me and reproved me with such harshness, that they were astonished at it afterwards when I told them of it. They said that they could not help themselves; for, though they had resolved not to use such language, and though they had pitied me also very much, — yea,
"Interior Castle, Sixth Mansion, chap. 1.
l86 THE LOVE OF GOD even had scruples on the subject, because of my grievous trials of soul and body -and were, moreover, determined to console me, they could not refrain. They did not use unbecoming words-I mean, words offensive to God; yet their words were the most offensive that could be borne with in confession. They must have aimed at mortifying me. At other times, I used to delight in this and was prepared to bear it; but it was then a torment altogether.
Louis Chardon has the same thing to say and adds something further in regard to directors:
Sometimes eminent people, men of probity and of mild and indulgent character, become brusque, rough, and forbiddingly severe wit'h these poor afflicted souls. They reproach them with their sufferings, accuse them of impatience, and lay all their difficulties at the door of a lack of resignation. Or they begin to have doubts and misgivings about the state of their souls, becoming persuaded that they arc deceived by the devil and are likely to impose on their acquaintances as well. Often directors have no patience to listen to their tales of woe . . . and sometimes those best versed in spiritual things are the ones to desert them. 13
These pages of Chardon, at times verified to the letter, are all worth reading.
To see such cases with some clarity, a director must either know the person for some time, or have some special grace of state akin to discernment of spirits. If he perseveres in prayer and patience, he will be enlightened and come to recognize in this state of affliction genuine love for God. These souls would indeed fear to lie by saying that they love the Lord, but at bottom they are His familiars. We recognize this chiefly in the fact that although they no longer desire the
cross, they do not wish it to be taken from them. And although their faith and hope seem dead, in the depth of their souls direct but imperceptible acts of these virtues take place and are seen by God, by Christ, and His Blessed Mother, and by all the angels and saints in heaven. And that suffices.
Sometimes people offer to suffer in order to obtain the grace of conversion, or at least of a good death, for some unhappy and fallen soul, and God seems to accept their offering, judging by the crosses that come to them and increase from day to day. After having frequently renewed their act of oblation, they reach a point where they no longer feel ready to do so, being too overcome and spent and tormented with frightful doubts about the mystery of predestination and the thought of the damned. Their faith seems to have gone to sleep. Then their director may sometimes suggest to them: "Perhaps you could say to our Lord: 'My God, if Thou didst not inspire my act of oblation, I do not renew it. It no longer holds.' " /^d not infrequently, after a moment of reflection and of pr^, it, these poor victims will answer: "I really cannot say it. This thing is stronger than 1. 1 feel that if I were to renounce my oblation I would destroy what is best in my life."
In the depths of these souls a little breath of hope still stirs, making them cling to reparation. This little breath is a heroic act of confidence in God in the midst of the sorrowful Passion continued in some way within them and of necessity so continued in some members of Christ's mystical body until the end of time. In a sense, Jesus Christ is in agony until the end of the world. It was at the moment when He suffered most that the disciples, with the exception of John, deserted Him, and so it is that sometimes when the saints are most configured to the suffering Christ they too are forsaken. The cross is a mystery and, in its essential supernaturalness, lies infinitely beyond the grasp of the most gifted minds. "I have not loved you in jest," our Lord said to Blessed Angela of Foligno. There are supernatural depths of love into which only the saints can look.
Therefore we need not be surprised that there are forms of real passive purification most difficult to judge ; such indeed are the greatest and deepest passive purifications, which are sometimes accompanied by sicknesses that exhaust the nervous system. 14 But to finish the subject let us come to the most evident signs.
Three characteristic signs of the passive purification of the soul
The characteristic signs of the passive purification of the soul are rarely as clear in concrete reality as they are in the abstract treatises that enumerate therfliV However, an attentive examination quite often does enable us to recognize them when diey occur.
The distinctive signs of true passive purification of the soul are found in the effects produced by it; as our Lord has said, "By the fruit the tree is known." 15 St. Thomas remarks that some effects reveal their cause wholly, not only its existence but also its nature; these belong to the same species as their causes. Only one plant produces the iris, and the fig tree alone gives figs. Other effects not having a specific likeness to their cause reveal only its existence but not its nature. The effects of the First Cause lack the capacity to
make known His inner nature, aldiough some of them, such as existence, life, and intellect, for instance, can only come from a First Being, from the Author of life and the First Intellect. Other effects again manifest neither the nature nor the existence of the cause which produces them, for they could be produced by several causes. For example, physical depression can come either from a state of health due to atmospheric conditions like the sirocco or from moral causes such as overwhelming sadness.
Among the signs of the night of the soul enumerated in the description given by St. John of the Cross and referred to earlier, some which are characteristic of it could come from no other source. Others, however, reveal it only imperfectly: do not make its nature known, or even fail to give us positive assurance of its existence, for they could spring from other causes. We wish therefore to enumerate the distinctive marks of these trials, to total those which, when taken together, show clearly diat a soul is passing through the passive purification of the soul, sent by God's mercy to prepare it for divine union.
Remembering that purgation of the spirit is accomplished chiefly by the gift of understanding, which reveals to us much more clearly than we ever knew before our own miseries and God's infinite greatness, we should note first of all that this state can be either one of pure and simple purification disposing the soul for divine union, or at one and the same time both a purification and a punishment due to sin. In die latter case, it may take on many shades of difference, from being more a testing than a chastisement, to being more a punishment than a purification immediately ordered to divine union. Sometimes, toward the end of life, people who have not yet reached union properly speaking enter into this state and seem to have their purgatory, in part at least, before death. Finally, as has already been brought out, there are, on a much higher level, sufferings more redemptive than purifying, by which some souls are associated in Christ's sorrowful life for the salvation of sinners. According to Philip of the Blessed Trinity, 10 three characteristic signs of the true night of the soul proclaim it as a pure and simple purification or at least as much more a testing preparatory to divine union than a chastisement.
The first of these signs consists in this: On one hand the soul has no consciousness of having recently committed any materially grave sin, and on the other hand it has passed from a state of consolation or spiritual sweetness into great aridity. There it meets with nothing but darkness and affliction and finds itself buried in a sort of purgatory or even in a kind of hell owing to violent temptations against the highest virtues.
If this sign reveals nothing to the tormented soul itself, it serves to inform an enlightened and experienced director, much needed by souls at such times. He should offer encouragement, telling the soul that this trial is sent by divine mercy to lead it to perfect abandonment and a more intimate union with God. When, in fact, God leads souls as far as to make a resolution to serve Him on all occasions, He does not leave them for long at rest. He shows a sort of jealousy toward them and will not suffer that their affection be attached to anything not Himself. He takes away from them every-
18 His text is conscientiously reproduced word for word by Vallgornera, who has transcribed besides many pages from John of St. Thomas on the gifts of the Holy Ghost.3
thing that could distract them from Him, even divine consolations, and in this sense, we can say, with Chardon, that God withdraws His gifts from us so that we may have the Giver Himself. 17
The second sign is a long-term avoidance of all fully deliberate sin, whether mortal or venial, together with disinterest in exterior things, an almost continual consciousness of the soul's own miseries, and an ardent desire for perfection. This sign must accompany the preceding, because it confirms the fact that a person has not recently committed any serious sin that would rob it of the state of grace and God's friendship. As St. Thomas shows, anyone deprived of divine grace and charity cannot long avoid deliberate sin and is not slow in betraying an attachment for creatures and a propensity for external things. 18 Chardon says: "The faithful soul soon shows what love possesses it and makes it act, how different is its love from that which is grounded in nature. . . . In the greatest tribulations hearts filled with disinterested charity do not lose the constancy and sweetness they acquired in the time of sensible communications. Their intention then becomes upright, pure, and perfect. . . . They order all things to God and do all things for Him. ... In this state, their intention not only grows established in absolute uprightness but becomes divine or deiform, transformed in God." 19 The same doctrine was developed at length in the seventeenth century, thirty-six years after Chardon, by Father Alexander Piny, O.P.' 20
20 Cf. La plus parjaitc des voies intMettres 011 la voic d'abandon (1863), chaps. 7. 9. 15. 19- r 9 a THE LOVE OF GOD
The third sign is an almost continual contemplation of the divine goodness despite the soul's extreme aridity. This contemplation is general and obscure and, although it resists, it does not exclude, temptations against faith. At the same time the soul has an ardent but unfelt love of God and for this reason suffers much at the sight of sin. The measure of its suffering is the measure of its love— for God first of all, whom sin offends, for our Lord, whom sin has crucified, and for souls, whom sin sends to death. This third sign, united to and confirming those preceding it, is proof positive to an enlightened director of the true night of the soul. This state certainly can be present, however, without giving such manifest signs of its existence.
Louis Chardon says:
The soul becomes divine or deiform, no longer having any life but God's, or any knowledge or any love but His. ... A pure supernatural sight is given to it. It beholds the emptiness of all things sensible and everything that can harm the soul. It sees that God is all, and that consequently everything else is nothing. . . . It has come to the summit of contemplation, reached not without cost. . . . The soul is reduced to perfect poverty of spirit, to a state of pure dependence, of simple capacity, in which nothing human is to be found . . . and it lives in the darkness wherein the uncreated light dwells and is there more plainly seen. . . . Man draws nearer the inaccessible perfections of God when he is abased than when he is exalted and full of delights. When in this state he is unacquainted with any revelations whatsoever, undisturbed by transports or ecstasies, visions or apparitions. In a light unknown to itself, the soul sees that any other means can only represent God less perfectly than this state of nakedness and privation. Through it we are drawn to God in perfect purity. 21
These facts have led mystics to believe that at such times the understanding produces no vital act and operates without images — and without ideas — although these two are necessary conditions for the knowledge of wayfarers. Because a suspension of the knowledge acquired by way of affirmation takes place in the understanding and it apprehends by way of negation and in a manner above any sensory mode of knowledge or any positive concept; and because the divine light, without which knowledge of this kind would be impossible, is communicated in excess, . . . the understanding therefore remains submerged in the depths of a wise obscurity and hidden in the secrecy of a knowing ignorance. 22
The attention of all the powers is plunged into the abyss of divine love.
It is sometimes said that St. Thomas nowhere speaks of such a state. Louis Chardon cites to the contrary St. Thomas' commentary on the following words of Dionysius: "There is a perfect knowledge of God, obtained in ignorance and in virtue of an incomprehensible union ; this takes place when the soul, leaving all things and forgetting itself, is united to the splendors of divine glory and enlightened by die unfadiomable divine wisdom." 23 St. Thomas writes in his commentary: "We know God in ignorance, by a certain supernatural union, in which the mind is enlightened by the deep, and to us impenetrable, divine wisdom."4 * In other places the Angelic Doctor makes allusion to negative knowledge and transluminous darkness, about which the Scriptures have so often spoken. 25 To read what he has to say on the following words of St. Paul will prove particularly help-
23 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, chap. 7, lect. 3.
, 94 THE LOVE OF GOD ful: "the Blessed and only Mighty . . . who . . . inhabiteth light inaccessible." 26
Often the three characteristic signs of the night of the soul are not so plainly evident. The time of spiritual testing can be complicated by sickness and even by neurasthenia. Sometimes directors find it difficult to distinguish between sufferings not of a purifying character and others more penal than purifying. They may also find it hard to tell the latter from others of a higher type, more redemptive than purifying, and likely to be found in souls dedicated to a life of reparation. Because of these difficulties, when those who have care of souls search for signs of true love for God, it is important for them not to judge any case by isolated acts or over a short period of time but in relation to the whole of life.
Finally, it should be noted that, between the night of the senses and the night of the soul, various trials and afflictions of a transitory character occur. The author of The Imitation often speaks of them, and St. John of the Cross remarks:
For, having passed through a period, or periods, or days of this night and tempest, the soul soon returns to its wonted serenity; and after this manner God purges certain souls which think not to rise to so high a degree of love as do others, bringing them at times, and for short periods, into this night of contemplation and purgation of the spirit, causing night to come upon them and then dawn, and this frequently, so that the words of David may be fulfilled, that He send His crystal— that is, His contemplation — like the morsels; although these morsels of dark contemplation are never as intense as is that terrible night of contemplation . . . into which, of set purpose, God brings the soul that He may lead it to divine union. 27
Sixty years later, Louis Chardon expounds the same doctrine; and after that we find it again in Alexander Piny's beautiful pages on abandonment to God's will. For all of them, this dark period means in reality an entrance into light, when the Lord harkens to the petition we make so often when reciting the psalms: "Give me understanding, and I will search Thy law." 28 "Give me understanding, and I will learn Thy commandments." 29 "Give me understanding, and I shall live." 80 Longings like St. Paul's for the Colossians are then realized: "Therefore we . . . cease not to pray for you, and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom, and spiritual understanding: That you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing," 81 "being instructed in charity, and unto all riches of fullness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus : in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 32
Footnotes
Chapter 27 of 37