The Dark Night of the Soul

What does one experience in the second night?  Because the whole process of Christic prayer is a gradual transformation into a Godlikeness, it follows that, in this intense period of purification, the person is further divested of merely human ways in memory, imagination, intellect, and will.  Cozy feelings at prayer are gone, and one feels left high and dry, suspended between heaven and earth.  There is, now, a deeper passage from the “modo humano” to the “modo divino,” from the human manner to the divine manner and, consequently, the change brings a feeling of dislocation from what one is used to and comfortable with.  All the while, God is imparting Himself, but the person’s residual impurity blocks a fuller reception of the divine self-gift.  St. John of the Cross* uses strong words to describe what the divine infusion of light and love does as it penetrates into the soul: “Assails…strikes…disentangles…dissolves…divests…chastizes…afflicts…purifies.”  He calls the whole process an “oppresive undoing.”  The person, therefore, feels spiritually unclean and wretched.  There is an impression of being rejected and abandoned by God.  It appears that the person will never be worthy again and that the lofty blessings already received will never return.  One needs little imagination to grasp how extremely painful this is, for the soul vehemently wants God and nothing else.  This feeling of the divine rejection is the deepest suffering of the second night.  “Sometimes,” says the saint, “this experience is so vivid that it seems, to the soul, that it sees hell and perdition open before it.  These are the ones who go down into hell alive, since their purgation on earth is similar to that of purgatory.”  John adds that the person who has gone through the second night is, after death, detained in purgatory only a short while, or not at all.

*St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) (real name: Juan de Yepes y Alvarez) was a Spanish Roman Catholic mystic and author.  He is usually associated with Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), who was also a Spanish Roman Catholic mystic and author.

From: Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel – on Prayer by Thomas Dubay(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), p. 169.

Thomas Dubay (1921-2010) was an American Roman Catholic priest.  He was also an educator, lecturer, and a voluminous author on the subject of how ordinary Christians can deepen their spiritual lives, especially their prayer lives.

 

Mysticism and Hildegard

As a rule, medieval mystics tend to be either descriptive, reporting their experience in vivid sensory imagery, or analytical, subdividing their experience into distinct stages so as to guide others along the same path.  Hildegard combines both approaches.  Some medieval mystics also see their experience as producing a supra-rational knowledge not available elsewhere, while others describe their experience as producing unearthly joy, an emotional reward, and a moral rebirth; still others see mystic union as combining cognitive and affective experience. 

Hildegard is in the first category.  She tells us that her visions yielded a grasp of the mysteries of the Christian faith she would not have gained otherwise.  She is quite specific about her psychic state during her visionary experiences.  Her view on that subject is atypical.  Her visions, which she reports with a full range of the sensory analogies on which mystics call, occurred when her soul was in its normal psychic condition, without the suspension of her ordinary sensory functions.  She distinguishes this state from one of rapture or hallucination.  On the basis of her personal experience, Hildegard maintains that it is not necessary to have a special mystic aptitude or to undergo special ascetic practices in order to be a visionary.  Any serious believer can be one: all that is needed is an observance of the monastic rule, attentive reading of Scripture, and devout participation in the liturgy.  Of particular importance – and, here, Hildegard manifests a devotion increasingly popular in the twelfth century – is the reception of the Eucharist at mass.  It is Eucharistic communion that, typically, triggers her visionary experiences.

From: Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 by Marcia L. Colish; The Yale Intellectual History of the West (John W. Burrow, William J. Bouwsma, and Frank M. Turner, general editors) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 226.  Colish is Frederick B. Artz Professor of History at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.