John wrote this from a prison cell in Toledo—nine months in darkness, beaten weekly, barely fed:
Where have you hidden,Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 1
Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag
after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.
As a deer pants for flowing streams,Psalm 42:1-2
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
God nurtures and caresses the soul, after it has been resolutely converted to His service, like a loving mother who warms her child with the heat of her bosom, nurses it with good milk and tender food, and carries and caresses it in her arms.Dark Night, Book I, Chapter 1
But then the consolations withdraw. Prayer becomes dry. This is the night of sense—God weaning the soul from spiritual milk:
One dark night,Dark Night, Stanza 1
fired with love's urgent longings
—ah, the sheer grace!—
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
I have stilled and quieted my soul;Psalm 131:2
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
To reach satisfaction in all,Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Chapter 13
desire satisfaction in nothing.
To come to possess all,
desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all,
desire to be nothing.
To come to the knowledge of all,
desire the knowledge of nothing.
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Chapter 11
Whoever wants to save their life will lose it,Matthew 16:25
but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
The night of spirit goes deeper. Here, God seems not merely distant but gone. Faith becomes naked. And John calls it beautiful:
O guiding night!Dark Night, Stanza 5
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Even the darkness is not dark to you;Psalm 139:12
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
At the end of the night, there is fire:
O living flame of loveLiving Flame of Love, Stanza 1
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!
O lamps of fire!Living Flame of Love, Stanza 3
in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved.
Set me as a seal upon your heart,Song of Solomon 8:6
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the Lord.
In the evening of life,Sayings of Light and Love, #57
we will be judged on love alone.
The night is not God's absence.
It is God coming closer than the soul can yet perceive.
A Prayer with John
Lord, I have sought You in daylight
and found only my own reflection.
Teach me to trust the night—
not to flee it, not to manufacture it,
but to receive it as Your hidden work.
Strip away what is not You:
my attachments, my consolations,
even my ideas about what prayer should feel like.
When You seem absent,
let me remember John's word:
You are not far.
You are closer than I can perceive.
Through the intercession of your servant John,
grant me the grace to desire nothing
so that I might possess everything—
You alone.
Amen.