The Dark Night of the Soul
When God seems absent, the soul may be drawing nearest of all
The Dark Night of the Soul names a purifying season of spiritual dryness in which the believer feels the absence of God and loses earlier consolations. Associated especially with John of the Cross, it is understood not as abandonment but as a stage on the path to deeper union, in which the soul is stripped of attachments and prepared to love God more purely. The darkness is, paradoxically, a work of grace.
Key passages(2)
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Seventeen Occasional Sermons · Jonathan Edwards
1. It is often the case that Christians are under darkness, and their hope is greatly clouded. God is wont to give his saints hope and comfort at their first conversion, which sometimes remains withou
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The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great · Pope Gregory the Great
In describing loftily the sweetness of contemplation, you have renewed the groans of my fallen state, since I hear what I have lost inwardly while mounting outwardly, though undeserving, to the topmos
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