The Heart of the Matter

The Dark Night of the Senses

Someone came into the sacristy after the morning Mass to ask me about the dark night of the soul.  He has been reading from the writings of St. John of the Cross, namely "the Dark Night," and he wanted some clarity.  This conversation leads me to suggest to anyone who might be returning to the sacraments this Christmas that knowing something of "the dark night" might help explain what wanderers go though.

There are 2 dark nights, "the dark night of the senses" and "the dark night of the spirit."  I'll give a thumbnail sketch of "the dark night of the senses" now, and tomorrow I'll describe "the dark night of the spirit."  If you want to read "The Dark Night" yourself, just click and read.

As one makes a decision to return to God's grace, learning how to pray is essential to grow spiritually.  During this time, if one stays faithful to daily prayer, there will be a deepening of the ability to meditate and a movement into contemplation.  The most important thing to do here is to remain faithful to a daily regimen of a consistent amount of prayer.  For instance, praying the rosary can move from saying words, into meditation upon the mysteries of the rosary, and then into a state of peace and even a union with God, which is what contemplation is. 

At some point most people who really want to grow in God's grace will experience "the dark night of the senses."  This dark night is when the giddy thrill of knowing the Lord's presence fades and one enters a time of decreased consolation, a dark night instead of the light of day. 

The dynamic going on here is the Lord's grace moving the person away from sin, i.e. major sin.  Usually some sin (or set of sins) has been so habitual that pulling away from sin is dreadfully painful.  The Lord allows the person to experience the darkness as a test to see if there will be fidelity to prayer and fidelity to the process of becoming purified.

St. John of the Cross uses the image of a log on fire in a fire place.  Just as the log burns and turns black, so the soul's purification seems to experience the blackness.  Just as the log becomes on fire and then becomes fire itself, so the soul comes to know the fire of God's love and becomes love as well.

Tomorrow we'll look at the "dark night of the spirit," which very few go through.

“My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.”

For many days I have been praying that this Christmas would be a time for many to make a return to the Lord if they have been away from the sacraments for some time.  Many families experience the gathering of relatives for Christmas.  What happened to one individual upon his return to his family is worthy of our study, Blessed Charles de Foucauld.  He was born in Strasbourg, France and lived between 1858 and 1916.  He, like many of us, lost his faith as an adolescent and had "a taste for the good life."  While on an exploration project in Morocco he was inspired by the way the Muslims there expressed their faith.  He began his religious turn around by saying to God: "My God, if you exist, let me come to know you." 

When he was about 28 years old, he returned to his deeply religious family and was treated so well, and with such respect, that he began to reconnect with his own Catholic faith.  When he made his return, he said, “As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone.”  Read his biography by clicking the link (his underlined name, above).  I hope and pray his example might inspire some who are searching for God.

Here's a prayer he wrote:  Dear God, I do not know whether some people are capable of beholding You poor while they at the same time willingly remain rich...  I cannot conceive of love without an imperative need of confirming, resembling, and especially of sharing all the pains and hardships of life...  To be rich, in comfort, to live pleasantly on things that are mine, when You have been poor, molested, living arduously in difficult labor - as for me, I cannot love that way."

Charles de Foucauld was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on November 13, 2005.