Application of your study to your own personal situation may indeed be impossible without the aid of an orthodox spiritual director. But even when you have found an adequate spiritual director, it is necessary to study St. John’s works and the teaching of the Church before seeking spiritual direction — for how else would you have any starting place?

We can take anything out of context and call it what we want; thus you are free to call your spiritual dryness a “dark night” according to your own understanding. However, you can’t inflict your understanding upon St. John of the Cross and call it the same thing.

A VERY important part of the Dark Night is JOY! Not depression. It’s not based on “feeling”.

The Dark Night, properly understood, means that it is a night in which one is “abandoned into the arms fo the Beloved”. It is a special wounding, a pierced soul which piercing isn’t really pain, but an amazing fire of love for God. It is secure, it is glad, and it is something that ONLY the advanced experience/endure.

Most of us mere mortals will never experience it. And if we did, we likely wouldn’t call it that for we wouldn’t care about definitions or what other people thing about where we are. A spiritual director would recognize it and MAY point it out if the soul needed to know, but otherwise, it’s a state of such pure, joyful, secure abandonment with a joining of suffering and fiery love for the Lover who is God.

Argue with me if you’d like, as I’m learning my info at the feet of incredible Theologians who know what they’re talking about. I can only refer you to them; I’ve not experienced the Dark Night and from what I’ve learned, I probably never will in this lifetime.

I hope that you do and that you will and that you have already! If so…you’re well on your way to Sainthood, and yes, that’s possible and no, I’m not being snide!

The Saints are wonderful, my only caution is to take them in the proper context and with the proper understanding before we start claiming their terms as our own and calling them the same thing.

That’s why we need to take these things with spiritual direction…it’s really easy to deceive ourselves. And there are those who attain the heights by the Grace of God…and never know it, never having read what you and I have.

I almost think holiness is harder the more we read about it. But then again…some of us are called to that study, according to God’s own will. Maybe we can’t live it, but we maybe are supposed to see what’s possible and live something less amazing.

Sorry, rambling now, so I’ll stop.

Jen, please tell me you miss my long rambling posts, this is my first one in a long time! lol

Another question: does it really matter whether or not you can say with absolute certainty that you are experiencing the dark night of the soul? Like, does the dark night of the soul require special care and direction that other kinds of darkness do not require? I have come to think that if one offers up one’s sufferings, asks God to bring good out of the suffering, keeps one’s eyes fixed on Christ, and asks God for help with those sufferings no matter what the darkness, God’s Will will be done and all will turn out better than one could have hoped. Is there any reason why this wouldn’t work with the dark night of the soul?

As Adoro said, this is big topic!

At this point, what have we remaining?

Faith. And God’s will, which vastly differs from our own.

A brilliant thought!

regarding the poem of St. John the Cross …

to me, it expresses ambivalence.

A sense of feeling far from God or feeling depressed or sinful is actually not the Dark Night..it’s something entirely different.

I respectfully disagree. Each time I read the opening of this poem, I am struck by its mystical qualities. It describes a journey or process thru which a soul must travel that’s simultaneously illuminative and purgative. (That’s the ambivalence).

In order to achieve a perfect union with God, A soul must lose itself. It sounds painful. Growing pains hurt, but we want to grow, right?

That’s what i think.

Unfortunately, that book is sold by itself, and because of that, it’s taken out of context. It MUST be read with Ascent to Carmel as it was intended; for the “Dark Night” isn’t a time of dryness or depression. In fact, the Dark Night involves great joy.

A sense of feeling far from God or feeling depressed or sinful is actually not the Dark Night..it’s something entirely different.

Thanks to a professor I had last semester, he lectured on St. John of the Cross and Ascent to Carmel/Dark night and pointed out this very important matter as far too many spritual writers or other people misinterpret the dark night, making it what it isn’t. And that can be very dangerous.

Now, with regard to spiritual dryness…it’s a part of the spiritual life. It tests our love for God; do we pray and practice our faith because it feels good, or because we love God? Dryness is a necessary purification to teach us not to rely on feelings but on our intellect, will, and faith.

Oh…this is a big topic, isn’t it? lol

I think the commenter makes fantastic points about how we should view our dry spells, but I think he/she also makes a mistake in assuming that when we use the terms ‘darkness’, or ‘dry-spell’ colloquially, that we are necessarily diagnosing ourselves with what spiritual writers would call THE ‘dark night of the soul.’

I suspect most of us mean it much more loosely than that.

One of my favorite spiritual writers/speakers, Fr. Groeschel did an audio series called ‘The Mountains and Valleys of the Spiritual Life’. I think that title aptly captures what each of us experiences whether whether we are doing everything right or not.

The spiritual journey is a series of ups in which we are reconverted (or more deeply converted to God), followed by downs in which we inevitably seem to be losing our grip on our faith and relationship with HIM.

All the while, the slope of the entire journey is hopefully one of ascent, even when we might be in a particular dip in the road.

Regardless of the distinction in terminology I mentioned above, as you have already noted, these comments are really good for doing a basic spiritual inventory when we do encounter those dry spells.

In other news, nice little bump in the Weblog Awards vote, which translates into… merely keeping pace with the others! Still, that’s excellent readership, and the competition is good, too (and aimed at wider audiences).