The Dark Night of the Soul: The Painful Purification of God’s Infused Presence -- By: Richard J. Vincent

Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 13:3 (Summer 2004)
Article: The Dark Night of the Soul: The Painful Purification of God’s Infused Presence
Author: Richard J. Vincent


The Dark Night of the Soul:
The Painful Purification of God’s Infused Presence

Richard J. Vincent

Not every unpleasant or difficult experience is a sign of God’s displeasure. On the contrary, sometimes our most painful feelings and distressing circumstances are the very means through which God deeply transforms us. The great Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, gave this experience a name: “the dark night of the soul.”

The dark night of the soul has become a popular way to describe any painful experience. But not all painful experiences qualify as a dark night of the soul. The dark night “is much more significant than simple misfortune. It is a deep transformation, a movement toward indescribable freedom and joy.”1 Through the dark night, the “soul is strengthened and confirmed in the virtues, and made ready for the inestimable delights of the love of God.”2 Only by means of the dark night—and the heartache that accompanies it—can one’s deepest desire be satisfied in spiritual union with God.

“[T]he dark night of the soul is a totally loving, healing, and liberating process. Whether it feels that way is another question entirely.”3 The reason the dark night is difficult and disturbing is not because God is absent or inactive in a person’s life. The reason that the dark night is distressing is precisely because God is working—in a powerful, deep, and transformative way.

The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. Sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful, occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called “dark.” The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. For that reason it can be disturbing or even scary, but in the end it always works to our benefit.4

John illustrates this with the metaphor of a mother weaning a child. Through the process of the dark night the soul “lose[s] the habits of a child and betake[s] itself to more important and substantial occupations” (38). This is necessary, for “without such turnings away [one] would not learn to reach God” (90).

In the dark night the believer comes to the end of his or her self and directly...

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