Dark Night of the Soul

Book the First: Which treats of the Night of Sense

Prologue

The prologue frames the entire work as an exposition of the poem ‘Dark Night of the Soul,’ explaining that its stanzas describe the soul’s passage through purgative contemplation toward transforming union with God, a road so narrow and so few travel it that completing it constitutes a great happiness.

• The eight stanzas of the poem divide into two functional units: the first two stanzas treat the purgations of sense and spirit, while the remaining six treat the illumination and union of love with God.
  • The entire commentary is framed as the speech of a soul already in the state of perfection, looking back on the dangerous road it traveled.
  • The ‘dark night’ is named with full propriety because the strait road to perfection involves darkness, deprivation, and suffering.
• The soul’s going forth from itself and all things is accomplished through purgative contemplation, which passively causes mortification of the senses and desires, overcoming the three enemies of world, devil, and flesh.
  • The purgative contemplation lulls to sleep all the passions and desires of sensuality, enabling the soul to depart unobserved by its enemies.
  • This strength and ardour is given to the soul by love for the Divine Spouse, not by the soul’s own effort.

Chapter I

Souls begin the spiritual life as spiritual infants nurtured on consolations, but their very enjoyment of these consolations breeds imperfections across all seven capital sins, and God must therefore lead them through the dark night to purge these weaknesses and strengthen them for Divine union.

• God initially nurtures newly converted souls like a mother nursing an infant, providing spiritual sweetness and consolation freely, but this same sweetness fosters spiritual immaturity and imperfection.
  • Just as a mother eventually weans a child and sets it on its own feet, God withdraws spiritual consolations so the soul may grow beyond its childish state.
  • Souls at this stage spend long periods in prayer and penances with great fervor, yet their actions proceed from the pleasure they find in them rather than from mature virtue.
• Because beginners’ spiritual actions are motivated by pleasure rather than by perfected virtue, they inevitably fall into imperfections analogous to each of the seven capital sins in their spiritual form.
  • The imperfections of beginners are catalogued by the seven capital sins to show how completely the dark night cleanses what the soul cannot cure by its own efforts.
  • Any person’s actions correspond to the habit of perfection they have attained, and beginners have not yet acquired strong habits.

Chapter II

Beginners frequently develop spiritual pride from their early fervour, leading to vanity, judgmentalism, and seeking human praise, in contrast to the truly humble soul that considers itself worse than others and desires to be unknown.

• Spiritual fervour in beginners breeds secret pride: they become satisfied with their own works, desire to teach others rather than learn, and condemn those less devout, resembling the Pharisee who despised the publican.
  • The devil increases this fervour deliberately, knowing that pride renders all spiritual works vicious and valueless.
  • Some reach such pride that they seek confessors who will praise them, concealing their sins, and harbour ill-will against directors who correct them.
• Truly progressing souls display the opposite pattern: they consider themselves worse than all others, desire to be despised, rejoice in others’ praise, and are more eager to speak of their faults than their virtues.
  • The greater their fervour, the more truly humble souls realize how much God deserves and how little they do, so that the more they do the less satisfied they are.
  • God gives grace to humble souls and denies it to the proud; such souls are a minority among beginners.

Chapter III

Spiritual avarice leads beginners to seek consolations, accumulate devotional objects, and neglect interior poverty, but no amount of personal effort can fully purge this without God’s passive purgation in the dark night.

• Many beginners have spiritual avarice: they are discontented with the spirituality God gives, accumulate books, images, relics, and rosaries, and burden themselves with curiosities rather than practicing mortification and interior poverty.
  • True devotion consists in the substance of what spiritual things represent, not in their multiplicity or material curiosity; attachment to the latter is contrary to poverty of spirit.
  • An example is given of a person who carried a rough, pin-fastened cross for over ten years and another who used fish-bone beads—their simple detachment was more genuinely devout than curious ornamentation.
• The soul cannot actively purify itself sufficiently for Divine union; only the passive purgation of the dark night—God taking the soul’s hand—can accomplish what the soul cannot do alone.
  • The soul should still labor to purge itself as much as it can, so as to merit being taken by God into the divine care that heals all things.

Chapter IV

Spiritual luxury arises not from the will but from the overflow of spiritual pleasure into the sensual nature, from demonic instigation, and from fear itself, and the dark night alone can fully purge these impure motions by quenching all sensual pleasure.

• Impure motions in spiritual persons during prayer, sacraments, or contemplation arise from three causes: the natural sensual part taking pleasure in what the spirit enjoys, demonic instigation aimed at disrupting prayer, or fear of the motions themselves creating a cycle.
  • When spirit and sense are both pleased, each receives pleasure according to its own nature; the sensual part, being lower, takes its share impurely, even during deep prayer or at Communion.
  • The devil stirs these impure motions especially during prayer to cause souls to abandon spiritual exercises; persons prone to melancholy are particularly vulnerable.
• Spiritual friendships built on sensual rather than spiritual love are recognized by the fact that as one love grows the other decreases: sensual love cools love of God, while true spiritual love increases love of God the more it grows.
  • “Christ says ’that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit’—the two loves are contrary and the dominant one quenches the other.” —St. John of the Cross (citing Christ)
  • When the soul enters the dark night, it brings these kinds of love under control, strengthening the spiritual and removing the sensual.

Chapter V

Spiritual wrath emerges when consolations are removed, leaving beginners irritable, impatient with themselves and others, and unable to bear the aridity that only the dark night can fully remedy through purgation.

• When spiritual pleasures and consolations end, many beginners become bitter and irritable, unable to tolerate even small matters, resembling a child taken from the breast—the natural vexation is not sinful but is an imperfection requiring purification.
  • Some become angry at the sins of others and set themselves up as masters of virtue with uneasy zeal, contrary to spiritual meekness.
  • Others become angry with themselves over their own imperfections, make grand resolutions they cannot keep due to lack of humility, and fall into greater impatience.

Chapter VI

Spiritual gluttony leads beginners to seek sensible sweetness in spiritual exercises above all else, producing immoderate penances, disobedience to directors, and an inability to walk the hard road of the cross—all of which the dark night cures by removing all sensible pleasure.

• Beginners attracted by spiritual sweetness pursue penance and fasting to excess without counsel, prioritizing bodily penance over subjection to obedience, which the author calls ’the penance of beasts’ since they are moved by desire rather than reason.
  • Such persons become peevish as children when their directors refuse their desires, treating their own will and pleasure as God’s will.
  • Some dare to receive Communion without their confessor’s leave, making careless confessions because they are more eager to eat than to eat cleanly and perfectly.
• Spiritual gluttons measure God by their own sensible experience, believing they have accomplished nothing in prayer when they feel no pleasure, and thus lose true devotion, which consists in perseverance, patience, humility, and distrust of self.
  • God wisely and lovingly denies sensible pleasure to such souls because spiritual gluttony would otherwise breed innumerable evils.
  • The perfection and worth of things consist not in the multitude and pleasantness of actions but in the ability to deny oneself in them.

Chapter VII

Spiritual envy and sloth keep beginners from rejoicing in others’ progress and from persevering in spiritual exercises without pleasure, measuring God’s will by their own satisfaction and fleeing the narrow way of the Cross—imperfections that only the dark night can fully remedy.

• Spiritual envy causes grief at others’ spiritual progress, reluctance to hear them praised, and a desire to be preferred in everything—the contrary of charity, which rejoices in others’ goodness.
  • Holy envy, by contrast, involves grief at one’s own lack of virtue and joy that others possess it, desiring to imitate them.
• Spiritual sloth causes souls to flee demanding spiritual things because they are incompatible with sensible pleasure, so that they measure God’s will by their own satisfaction—many of them would have God will what they themselves will.
  • Slothful souls find the more spiritual a thing is, the more irksome it is, and take offense at the Cross, wherein consist the delights of the spirit.
  • God leads such souls into the dark night to wean them from sweetness, give them pure aridities, and cause them to win the virtues through very different means.

Chapter VIII

The dark night of contemplation comprises two successive purgations—one of the senses and one of the spirit—and the night of sense begins when God withdraws spiritual sweetness from beginners, leaving them in dryness, unable to meditate, so that He may lead them from meditation to contemplation.

• Contemplation produces two distinct nights: the night of sense, which subdues the sensual part to the spirit and is common to many beginners, and the night of spirit, which is rare and far more severe, purging the spirit for direct union with God.
  • The night of sense is bitter to sense, while the night of spirit is horrible and awful to the spirit, and very little has been written of this latter.
• When God judges that a soul has grown sufficiently from its early sweetness, He turns all its spiritual light into darkness and withdraws the capacity for meditation, leaving the soul in aridity and bitterness precisely where it formerly found delight.
  • God acts like a mother setting a grown child down from her arms and making it walk on its own feet—the soul feels as if everything is going wrong.
  • Recollected persons commonly enter this night sooner than others, since they are freer from worldly occasions and their desires turn more quickly from worldly things.

Chapter IX

Three signs distinguish genuine purgative aridity from aridity caused by sin, lukewarmness, or physical indisposition: the soul finds no pleasure in anything created either, the memory remains anxiously centered on God, and the soul can no longer meditate imaginatively despite its efforts.

• The first sign of purgative aridity is that the soul finds no pleasure or consolation in either divine or created things, distinguishing genuine purgation from imperfection—if it were caused by sin, the soul would still feel drawn toward lesser pleasures.
  • Indisposition or melancholy may also remove pleasure from all things, so this first sign alone is insufficient and must be combined with the others.
• The second sign is that the memory remains centered painfully on God with anxious solicitude, fearing backsliding—this distinguishes purgative aridity from lukewarmness, which has no such care for God.
  • In purgative aridity the spirit is ready and strong even while the sensual part is weak, because God is transferring good things from sense to spirit.
  • The soul’s palate has been accustomed to sensual spiritual pleasures and is not yet prepared to taste the subtler pleasures of the spirit, hence it perceives only aridity.
• The third sign is that the soul can no longer meditate or reflect imaginatively however much it tries, because God is now communicating not through discursive reflection but by simple contemplation to which sense cannot attain.
  • When the cause is genuine purgation rather than indisposition, the inability to reflect grows ever greater over time rather than returning after indisposition passes.
  • Not all souls experiencing aridity are being led to contemplation—for some God uses aridity only to humble and prove them, not as a permanent path of spirit.

Chapter X

Souls in the dark night of sense should not force their faculties back into meditation but should remain in peaceful, loving attentiveness toward God, accepting apparent idleness, since any effortful activity disrupts the secret infused contemplation God is working in them.

• Souls in the night of sense err by trying to resume meditation when they find aridity, fatiguing themselves uselessly and hindering the contemplation God is quietly working in them—they must simply leave the soul free and in peace.
  • Such souls resemble someone who abandons what they have done in order to redo it, or who leaves a city only to re-enter it—they lose the tranquillity they had and gain no new profit.
  • The proper conduct is a peaceful and loving attentiveness toward God without anxiety, without desire to have experience of Him or to perceive Him distinctly.
• Infused contemplation is a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God that enkindles the soul in love when it is permitted to do so unhindered—any effort of the soul’s own faculties obstructs this infusion like a restless sitter preventing a painter from working.
  • Contemplation is naught else than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God, which, if it be permitted, enkindles the soul with the spirit of love.

Chapter XI

From the aridity of the night of sense there gradually arises a living enkindling of love and thirst for God, purifying the soul of sensual affections and transforming its desires into spiritual ones, so that the soul rightly calls the night a ‘happy chance.’

• Though the enkindling of love is not felt at first in purgative aridity, it gradually intensifies until the very bones seem dried by the thirst for God—a living thirst that David described as longing for the living God.
  • David in the dark night said ‘my heart was enkindled’ and his desires for sensual affections were changed to the way of spirit—aridity and cessation from all sensual things.
  • Before this enkindling, what the soul experiences is habitual care and solicitude for God, with grief at not serving Him—a sacrifice pleasing to God.
• The night of sense benefits the soul in four ways: it quenches sensual desires, leads through the strait gate of faith, purges the imperfections catalogued in prior chapters, and initiates the journey by the narrow way of the night of spirit.
  • Very few endure and persevere in entering by this strait gate, and the night of spirit that follows is far darker and more terrible—yet its benefits are incomparably greater.

Chapter XII

The dark night of sense bestows two principal benefits: self-knowledge and its consequent humility, and a purified knowledge of God, both arising from the aridity that strips away the false comfort of spiritual prosperity and leaves the soul seeing its own misery clearly.

• The primary benefit of contemplative aridity is self-knowledge: stripped of spiritual consolations, the soul no longer can mistake its own pleasure for virtue and sees clearly its wretchedness—as God commanded the Israelites to remove festal garments so they would know their true worth.
  • God considers the soul’s smallness of self-satisfaction and grief at not serving Him greater than all the consolations and works it formerly performed, because those were occasions of pride.
• From self-knowledge comes a second benefit: purified knowledge of God, because sensual pleasure and spiritual desire, even for good things, darken the understanding, while aridity cleanses and frees it—as Isaiah says, vexation makes us understand.
  • “Saint Augustine said ‘Let me know myself, Lord, and I shall know Thee,’ and David said that aridities, the dry and pathless desert, were the means by which he appeared before God and saw His virtue and glory.” —St. Augustine
  • God teaches His knowledge to those weaned from milk and drawn from the breasts, as Isaiah writes—first milk of sweetness is no preparation for Divine influence.
• The night of sense also purges spiritual pride by producing humility, removes the tendency to judge and condemn others, and makes souls submissive and obedient on the spiritual road.
  • Souls in this aridity are so aware of their own wretchedness that they never take occasion to fix their eyes on anyone else’s faults.

Chapter XIII

The dark night of sense purges spiritual avarice, luxury, gluttony, wrath, envy, and sloth by quenching all sensible pleasure, and in their place produces spiritual tranquillity, habitual remembrance of God, cleanness of soul, and the practice of all the virtues simultaneously.

• By removing all sensible pleasure, the night of sense reforms spiritual avarice and luxury directly: avarice is moderated because the soul no longer covets spiritual things for the pleasure they give, and luxury because its impure motions proceeded from overflow of sensual pleasure.
  • God has restrained the soul’s concupiscence so that it cannot feed upon any pleasure of sense, whether from above or below, drying up the desires as milk dries when no longer drawn from the breast.
• The night produces positive virtues in place of the capital sins: patience and longsuffering for wrath, virtuous envy that desires to imitate others’ virtues, and a healthy weariness of spiritual things that no longer proceeds from lack of pleasure but from genuine purification.
  • David described these four benefits—delight of peace, habitual remembrance of God, cleanness of soul, and practice of virtues—in Psalms, saying ‘My soul refused consolations, I had remembrance of God… and I swept and purified my spirit.’
  • God sometimes communicates the purest spiritual sweetness and knowledge in the midst of times of aridity, delicate manifestations of greater benefit than former consolations, though the soul cannot perceive them by sense.
• The soul in purgative aridity is delivered from the three enemies—devil, world, and flesh—because when all desires and pleasures of sense are quenched, these enemies have no arms with which to make war upon the spirit.
  • When joy, grief, hope and fear are calmed through mortification, and natural desires lulled by habitual aridity, the four passions of the soul cannot be used by enemies to obstruct spiritual liberty.

Chapter XIV

As the night of sense concludes, the soul enters the way of illumination and proficients, but those destined for the night of spirit first endure formidable temptations of sense—fornication, blasphemy, and scrupulosity—sent as preparation and purification for the greater night ahead.

• After the night of sense the soul enters the way of proficients—infused contemplation without meditation—experiencing much greater freedom and delight in God, though occasional aridities and darknesses serve as tokens of the coming night of spirit.
  • The purgation of sense is not yet complete because the principal part—that of the spirit—is still lacking; without it, sense purgation cannot be complete and perfect.
• God sends souls destined for the night of spirit three kinds of temptation in the night of sense: the spirit of fornication with abominable motions, the spirit of blasphemy setting intolerable thoughts in every path of the soul, and the spirit of giddiness filling the soul with scruples and confusion.
  • These trials are meant not to cause the soul to fall but to chastise, exercise, and prepare it for the wisdom to be bestowed in the night of spirit, for as Ecclesiasticus says, one who has not been tempted knows little.
  • The duration and intensity of these trials varies: those with greater strength are purged more intensely and quickly, while weaker souls are kept long with gentle temptations and frequent consolations to prevent their falling away.

Book the Second: Of the Dark Night of the Spirit

Chapter XV

The second stanza describes the soul travelling ‘in darkness and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised,’ meaning that the very darkness of contemplation protects it from enemies and that it travels in disguise under the three theological virtues toward union with the Beloved.

• The soul journeys in darkness and secure because the night has not brought loss but gain: it escaped subtly from the three enemies, changed its garments into the three liveries of faith, hope, and charity, and went by the secret ladder of living faith in complete hiding and concealment.
  • The desires, affections and passions of the soul being put to sleep and mortified, the enemies could not consent to hinder its departure as they would have when awake.

Chapter XVI

The soul walks securely in darkness because all its natural operations—desires, affections, faculties, understanding, will, memory—are darkened and suspended, removing the very mechanisms by which it ordinarily goes astray and by which the devil, world, and flesh normally attack it.

• Ordinarily the soul strays through its desires, tastes, reflections, understanding, or affections; when all these are in darkness and suspended, the soul is free from all these instruments of error, from itself, and from its three enemies who have no other means of attack.
  • As the prophet says, perdition comes to the soul from itself alone; therefore when natural operations are hindered, goods from God come forth freely.
  • The natural faculties must be darkened even for spiritual things, because they receive supernatural things in a base and natural manner—only when purged and prepared can they receive the supernatural in a divine and lofty manner.
• The soul gains even greater progress precisely when it is in darkness and knows it not, because it is being led by God as though blind to an end it cannot see—just as a traveller takes new roads to reach new countries, or a craftsman proceeds in darkness when learning new skills.
  • The road of suffering is more secure and profitable than that of fruition and action: in suffering God’s strength is added to man’s, while in action and fruition the soul practices its own weaknesses.
  • Dark contemplation absorbs the soul so completely in itself that it protects and delivers it from all that is not God, like a sick man kept in a protected room receiving only the most delicate nourishing food.

Chapter XVII

Dark contemplation is called ‘secret’ because as mystical theology it transcends all sense, imagination, and understanding, communicating inwardly between God and the soul alone so that neither the devil nor the soul itself can adequately describe or even fully perceive what is taking place.

• This contemplation is secret because it is communicated by God directly to the soul through love, hidden from the operation of the understanding, imagination, and exterior senses—even the devil cannot attain to it since the Master Who teaches is within the soul’s substance where the devil cannot reach.
  • Moses could not speak after God spoke to him, and even his interior imagination dared not meditate—demonstrating how the Divine language, being pure spirit to pure spirit, makes all sensory and imaginative faculty dumb.
  • This explains why spiritual persons who wish to describe their contemplative state to their director can only say they are satisfied, tranquil, and conscious of God’s presence—no more particular description is possible.
• Mystical wisdom is also secret because it hides the soul within itself, engulfing it in a profound and vast interior desert so remote from creatures that it perceives how base are all created things by comparison—and how impossible it is, even with learned language, to speak of Divine things as they truly are.
  • Divine things and perfections are known and understood as they are not when sought and practiced but when found and practiced; as Baruch says, ‘There is none that can know her ways nor that can imagine her paths.’

Chapter XVIII

Dark contemplation is also called a ’ladder’ because it both raises the soul to God and humbles it with respect to itself, producing a rhythm of ascending and descending that continues until the soul attains God at the summit—this secret ladder is prefigured by Jacob’s ladder and its fundamental characteristic is that it is the science of love.

• As a ladder, contemplation both raises the soul to God and humbles it with respect to itself, for upon this road to go down is to go up and to go up is to go down—he who humbles himself is exalted and he who exalts himself is humbled—so that God makes the soul mount by humbling it and descend by exalting it.
  • Jacob’s ladder, seen in a dream by night with angels ascending and descending while God leaned on its end, figures how secret and different from human knowledge this ascent is—it is the losing of oneself and becoming as nothing, which seems the worst thing possible, that is in fact the greatest profit.
• The principal characteristic of this ladder is that it is the science of love—an infused and loving knowledge of God that enlightens and enkindles the soul step by step until it reaches God, for love alone unites and joins the soul with God.
  • The steps are distinguished by their effects rather than by what they are in themselves, since this ladder of love is so secret that God alone measures and weighs it.

Chapter XIX

The first five steps of the mystic ladder of Divine love move the soul progressively from languishing sickness for God, to ceaseless seeking, to fervent works, to habitual suffering without weariness, and finally to impatient longing for union—each step preparing the soul for the next through greater intensity of love.

• The first step causes the soul to languish and swoon toward God—losing appetite and color for all other things—while the second causes it to seek God without ceasing in all things and at all times, like Mary Magdalene who did not even notice the angels at the sepulchre in her search for Christ.
  • The Bride speaks from the first step when she says ‘I am sick with love’; from the second step when she says ‘I will arise and will seek Him Whom my soul loveth.’
• The third step produces fervor so that the soul fails not in great works for God, considering large things small; the fourth produces habitual suffering for the Beloved without weariness, having subjected the flesh completely; the fifth produces such impatient vehemence of desire that every delay seems long and the soul almost swoons.
  • On the fourth step the soul considers itself useless and worse than all others, yet the Beloved habitually visits it with sweetness because boundless love cannot suffer the affliction of its lover without succoring him.
  • On the fifth step the soul is like Rachel saying to Jacob ‘Give me children, else shall I die’—at the point of dying for desire, this step is one of hunger where the soul is nourished upon love proportionate to its hunger.

Chapter XX

The final five steps of the ladder describe increasing degrees of union: swift running toward God, vehement boldness that obtains from God what it desires, the seizure and holding of the Beloved in brief moments of union, sweet burning of perfect souls, and finally complete assimilation to God in the beatific vision.

• Steps six through eight progress from swift running toward God (almost purely purged), to vehement boldness that disregards all prudential considerations and obtains its desires from God as Moses obtained pardon for the people, to a brief seizure and holding of the Beloved in moments of union—though these cannot continue for long as that would be glory itself.
  • On the seventh step love employs not its judgment in order to hope, and no shame can restrain it—the Bride’s ‘Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth’ expresses this boldness.
  • Daniel was commanded to remain on the eighth step because he was a man of desires—this step is possible but not continuous in this life.
• The ninth step belongs to the perfect who burn sweetly in God through the Holy Spirit’s union—as when the Spirit came visibly upon the Apostles and they burned inwardly—while the tenth and last step belongs not to this life but to the moment of death, when the soul is wholly assimilated to God by clear and immediate vision.
  • “On the tenth step the soul becomes God by participation, though not by capacity—as Saint John says ‘we know that we shall be like Him’—and souls reaching this step enter not into purgatory since they have been wholly purged by love.” —Saint John

Chapter XXI

The soul’s disguise consists of the three theological virtues worn as livery—faith (white), hope (green), and charity (purple)—which simultaneously gain the Beloved’s favor, protect the soul from its three enemies, and prepare the three faculties (understanding, memory, will) for Divine union.

• Faith, worn as a white inner tunic, blinds the devil by its purity and serves as the foundation of all virtues; it darkens the understanding from its natural light and prepares it for union with Divine Wisdom—as God says through Hosea ‘I will betroth thee with Me through faith.’
  • “Saint Peter said ‘resist the devil, strong in faith’—there is no better protection against the devil than faith.” —Saint Peter
  • The soul wore this white garment through its dark night by persevering in interior constraint and darkness without fainting, even when heaven seemed closed and God hidden.
• Hope, worn as a green vestment, lifts the soul entirely above the world so that the world can neither touch nor even come into sight of it; it covers all the senses of the head so they can be immersed in nothing worldly, voiding the memory from creature possessions and setting it purely on God.
  • Hope is the helmet of salvation that protects the whole head, with only a visor permitting the eyes to look upward—habitually directing all the soul’s eyes to God alone.
• Charity, the purple outer garment, not only protects against the flesh by excluding self-love, but gives worth to all the other virtues before God—without charity no virtue has grace—and by uniting the will wholly with Divine love completes the preparation for union.
  • Faith voids and darkens understanding, hope voids the memory from creature possessions, and charity voids the will of all that is not God—these three together withdraw the soul from all that is less than God and join it to God.

Chapter XXII

The happy chance of the soul’s going-forth delivered it from low to high, from terrestrial to celestial, from human to Divine—and this is the most important part of the author’s task, which was to explain this night to souls who pass through it in ignorance.

• The soul’s liberation is described as a passage from the human to the Divine, so that it comes to have its conversation in the heavens—a state of perfection—and the many precious blessings gained in the night confirm that the happy chance is real, serving as encouragement to souls terrified by its horrors.
  • The most important part of the author’s task was to explain this night to souls who pass through it and know nothing about it, giving them courage to persevere.

Chapter XXIII

The soul journeys ‘in darkness and concealment’ because infused contemplation is received passively in the soul’s substance where the devil cannot attain, and when God Himself visits the soul directly—as opposed to through the instrumentality of an angel—the soul is totally hidden from all demonic interference.

• Infused contemplation, being received passively in the soul’s interior depths without the senses or faculties knowing it, hides the soul from the devil, who can only operate through the sensual faculties and cannot penetrate the soul’s substance where God directly dwells.
  • “Christ’s word ‘Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’ means that communications between God and the spirit should be of such a kind that the lower sensual part cannot attain to them.” —St. John of the Cross (citing Christ)
  • When the devil senses these intimate communications and attempts to disturb the sensual part with tumult, the soul often finds itself drawn deeper into interior refuge, and peace and joy actually increase.
• God sometimes allows the devil to contest souls through evil spiritual contact—especially when favors come through good angel intermediaries—but when God Himself visits the soul’s substance directly in substantial touches of Divine union, no evil spirit can attain or even know what passes there.
  • God gives the devil a certain equality of opportunity against the soul to make the soul’s victory and fidelity more meritorious—as in the case of Job.
  • These most intimate Divine touches are what the Bride entreated in Song of Songs: ‘Who would give Thee to me, my brother, that I might find Thee alone, without’—a communication God makes in total concealment from all creatures.

Chapter XXIV

The last line of the second stanza—‘my house being now at rest’—refers to the higher spiritual part of the soul being tranquilized along with the lower sensual part, and this double repose together constitutes the readiness for the Divine betrothal, which is accomplished when God’s Word comes in the silence of all things.

• Just as the first stanza’s ‘house at rest’ referred to the lower sensual part, this second stanza’s repetition of the line refers to the higher spiritual part, for both portions of the soul must be reformed and tranquilized according to the state of innocence before the soul can attain Divine union.
  • The soul attains this repose by means of the substantial touches of Divine union received in concealment, which purify, rest, strengthen, and confirm it to receive the Divine betrothal once and for all.
  • The Book of Wisdom describes this: ‘While quiet silence contained all things, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy omnipotent Word leapt from heaven from the royal throne.’
• The soul cannot attain this union without great purity achieved through great detachment and sharp mortification—like the Bride who was stripped of her mantle and wounded before finding the Spouse—and whoever seeks the Beloved on his bed at his own convenience, as the Bride did at first, will not find Him.
  • The new mantle of betrothal cannot be put on until the old mantle is stripped off—refusing mortification means refusing the union.

Chapter XXV

The third stanza describes three properties of the contemplative night that ensure security and speed on the road to union: the solitary secrecy that keeps creatures from approaching, the spiritual darkness that prevents the soul from fixing on any form or figure, and love burning in the heart as the sole guide.

• God leads the soul in this night by a manner of contemplation so solitary, secret, and remote from sense that no created thing can approach or detain the soul, protecting it from distraction and enabling unimpeded journey to the union of love.
  • The spiritual darkness of this night means all faculties of the higher part of the soul are in darkness; the soul sees nothing, looks at nothing, and stays in nothing that is not God, unimpeded by forms and figures.
• Although the soul has no particular interior light of understanding and no exterior guide, love alone burning in the heart moves, guides, and makes it soar upward to God along the road of solitude—love is sufficient guide when all other supports are removed.
  • The text breaks off here, as this is where the surviving commentary ends—the author intended to expound the remaining stanzas but did not do so.