“Set on fire by the spirit of love” – dark night of the soul

There are times and seasons when we’re afflicted by the dark night of the soul, and it’s only when we descend to those harrowing depths that we claw desperately for a solution.  This dark night of the soul awakens us to what is termed the “active night,” but coming to the end of ourselves, no closer to a solution that will work, we then face an extraordinarily inconvenient truth.

Scarily we give in to a passive night of the soul . . .

Like a precious canticle, divine to its core, imbibe this that follows, even as I endeavour to commentate on it: 

“It is therefore expedient for the soul which is in this condition not to be troubled because its faculties have become useless, yea, rather it should desire that they become so quickly; for by not hindering the operation of the infused contemplation, to which God is now admitting it, the soul is refreshed in peaceful abundance, and set on fire with the spirit of love, which this contemplation, dim and secret, induces and establishes within it.”
Saint John of the Cross – Passive Night of the Soul

If we’re in that place where active contemplations make not one iota of difference to either our circumstance or felt state, and we do feel these “faculties” of ours are perfectly “useless,” we arrive in a valley of decision where the presence of God is palpable.

What is discussed here is both the simplest thing but extraordinarily difficult to describe.

The purpose of suffering that we cannot amend is that in being drawn deeper we’d enter the unitive state, that is, stillness with God.  This can only occur when we cannot have what we so desperately need.  When we succumb to what feels like a life of death.

At one and the same time, we’re drawn into the centre and the source of our pain whilst also entering it, in stillness, with nothing less than the full measure of God.

How utterly absurd for John of the Cross to intimate that we ought to rush toward that place at the end of ourselves.  And yet, we learn zilch in a spiritual sense until we’ve been made impotent.  What John of the Cross says IS absurd—unless you’ve been to “useless” and seen the folly replete in a human being endeavouring to ‘fix’ their loathsome circumstance and the brooding emotions that emanate.

The purpose of suffering, then, can only be a folly for the world, for those perishing, but for spiritual ones it’s the “what” of the quintessence of the abundant life itself.

Being “set on fire by the spirit of love” 
we catch the fullness of the meaning of life.

That meaning oozes with a purpose that fans the flame within us.  What is “set on fire” in this way by divine agency, meaningfully through suffering, cannot be extinguished like earthly, physical fire can.

Such a fire is sustained “by the spirit of love” in this simple fact: once we’ve ascended the mount of God and SEEN those captivating vistas, those with which nothing on the whole earth can compare, we cannot and do not turn back.  Our hearts are set alight by the truth, and no dark force can contend with a light so white it absolutely apprehends a love affair with the mysteries of God.

It is good, therefore, to arrive at the passive night of the soul, and find ourselves in the unitive state, still, with nothing much left to complain about, simply in awe of being alive, stripped of all sense of coveting anything.  Nothing can be taken away from us that we don’t already possess.

There is such a place, my friend.  I would not have said it if I hadn’t have been there myself.

Find in the nexus of suffering the divine invitation to depths of sorrow, where the absence of consolation actually leads you through hell into a heaven beyond previous command.  Indeed, heaven is a place on earth, and both getting there and being there is NOTHING like what we thought heaven on earth or the journey there might be like.

It’s infinitely better than we could ever imagine, 
and its heights of joy, peace, and hope 
cannot be fully apprehended.

You perhaps entered this dark night because of your circumstances, yet when you find that this dark night is the crux of your salvation, you remain gobsmacked by the immensities of the grace and mercy of God.  Being so in awe of what God’s done in your life is very much like being “set on fire by the spirit of love”.

“When I am weak, then I am strong,” said the Apostle Paul.  Embracing weakness is the secret.

And that’s the truth!