Understanding the Dark Night of the Senses & the Soul
By Odelia Mathews,
And about three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Lonely, deserted by the world, and feeling abandoned by the Father, Jesus cried out to God in anguish as He experienced the end of His journey on earth. Even though He knew that He was doing the will of Father, there was an inevitable moment of darkness where He felt abandoned. There on the Cross, surrounded by His beloved mother, the apostle John, and others who loved Him, Christ experienced a crushing desolation, which He accepted in fulfillment of the scriptures. It was the cup given to Him by the Father which Jesus willingly carried in complete submission, even during the moments of silence from the Father when no help was provided.
For the layperson, such a season of suffering and silence likely occurs at some point in life. We feel as if our spirit is crushed, our cross is too heavy. We aren’t able to hear God, yet our soul yearns for His presence. We remain rooted in the faith, yet unable to feel it. Our emotions can even border on depression and desolation. Experiences of spiritual dryness may bring us into what feels like an endless search for divine consolation within what seems like a long, dark night of months, maybe years, of untold suffering. It is here that we seek answers to our questions of God’s presence and providence, and thus begins a new encounter with Christ.
Dark Night of the Senses vs. Dark Night of the Soul
For those unaware of or unfamiliar with this spiritual encounter and what it entails, there are a few important distinctions to understand. Thankfully, Fr. Mike Schmitz explains and differentiates these experiences in a brief video. Here is a general summary of what they are and how they differ from one another according to the information Fr. Mike provides:
The dark night of the senses usually precedes the dark night of the soul, and during this phase, one feels unmoved by their prayer life. No matter how much a person perseveres in prayer, there is a time of silence and spiritual dryness where one feels they are unable to receive much in return. Divine consolation eventually returns after a period of time and hope is not lost because a person holds on to faith in God. This is also known as spiritual desolation.
The dark night of the soul is a state where consolation is gone everywhere, not just spiritually. There is no sight of God and a person perceives that there is no hope and no heaven. Yet, they choose God even if they begin to feel and think that He isn’t there or doesn’t exist. Here comes the point where one chooses God for Himself, not for what He does for us.
Even though some indicators of these spiritual states may overlap, the dark night of the soul is distinctly different from the dark night of the senses insofar that there is hope and faith in the latter, but not the former.
To grow through the dark night of the senses, patience and perseverance is required, as it is sometimes triggered by life-altering situations such as the death of a loved one, a divorce, or major financial loss––all of which may plunge one into a period of intense suffering, resulting in questions such as: “Why me?” “Why this?” “For how long?” “Is God listening or watching?” Unable to comprehend their painful circumstances and the reason for it, an individual enters a period of desolation—a state of suffering and loneliness, often finding that it is hard to pray or hear God’s voice. In this state, consolation does come but only after a long period of silence.
In the dark night of the soul, one asks questions such as: “Does God exist?” “Why can’t I feel or sense God’s presence anymore?” “What have I done wrong?” “What’s the point of following His will?” and “How can I persevere in such darkness?” In this state, there is a temptation to abandon the will of God because there is an inability to sense His very presence or believe in His existence. In this time, it becomes difficult to hope or seek out the good during this unspecified period of suffering.
When a person encounters either of these two states, there is an opportunity to come through spiritually stronger and nearer to God. The dark night of the senses can occur at any time, while the dark night of the soul is initiated by God, who seemingly withdraws his presence to purify the soul. So that one may not be caught unaware by this experience, it can be helpful to learn from the experiences of the saints.
Dark Encounters: Learning from the Saints
St. John of the Cross is one of the few mystics known to have explained this experience in great depth. In his 16th century spiritual classic, Dark Night of the Soul, he offers three signs to identify the dark night of the soul in particular, all of which must be present:
The first is when men find no comfort [or consolation] in the things of God, and none also in created things (348).
The second sign and condition of this purgation are that the memory dwells ordinarily upon God with a painful anxiety and carefulness, the soul thinks it is not serving God, but going backwards, because it is no longer conscious of any sweetness in the things of God (349).
The third sign is an inability to meditate and make reflections, and to excite the imagination, as before, notwithstanding all the efforts we may make (352).
More recent saints have experienced this dark night as well. St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who lived during the late 19th century, expressed a period of great inner suffering with the words: “If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into..!”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta endured the dark night of the soul from 1948 until her death in 1997. According to her letters, she struggled to live through and embrace this little-known journey of the soul. This dark period came after she had found her “call within a call” and began her mission serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta (Kolkata), India. After she received this call, she found herself unable to feel God’s presence in her life. Even though she was continually following God’s will, she questioned His very existence. “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing,” Mother Teresa wrote in one of her letters. Her experience is considered one of the longest recorded dark nights of the soul. Her book, Come Be My Light recounts her journey to persevere in faith.
Exploring the Overlap Between Depression and Spiritual Darkness
In an interview with Dr. Clarice Mendonca, a Catholic clinical psychologist and neuropsychology specialist, she explains how indicators of depression, suffering, and the dark night can sometimes overlap. “Some experiences of depression might be similar (like hopelessness and inability) but it is qualitatively different because values/spirituality/religiosity, morality, and the meaning-making process that form the background of dark night experiences are not always considered when we look at depression from a purely scientific perspective,” she explains. While symptoms of the dark night consider a person’s spiritual being, depression’s current clinical diagnosis rarely takes into account the spiritual, moral, and religious disposition of a person.
According to Dr. Mendonca, clinical depression can emerge because of the dark night or may begin as an antecedent to the dark night, but that is where their overlap ceases from a technical perspective. This, she says, is mainly because the criterion for depression was constructed from a scientific, variable-based perspective, which is relatively stripped of context. Dr. Mendonca explains that the scientifically-deduced symptom clusters that have been labelled “depression” do not fully explain experiences like the dark night.
While clinical depression and the dark night are two different experiences, it is important to know that we do not need to make either of these journeys alone. While clinical depression requires medical attention or psychotherapeutic intervention, and the dark night (of the senses or soul) requires perseverance, blind faith, and charity, it’s important to be attentive to both body and spirit in either of these experiences. Individuals experiencing clinical depression or the dark night—either simultaneously or separately—can turn to both therapists and spiritual directors (ideally both) to guide them through these painful experiences.
Growing Through the Dark Nights
Regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey, suffering is never easy for anyone. During times of distress and despair, it is common to have immense difficulty turning to prayer. It is then that we may want to rage at the heavens and refuse to spend time with God because we feel angered that He does not acknowledge or fix our suffering. Yet, God often uses these experiences to bring us closer to Him. Like clay in a potter’s hands, when we submit ourselves to God, He shapes us into what He wants us to be, removing every darkness from our hearts and purifying us for His Kingdom.
Saint Faustina of the Divine Mercy Devotion wrote often of the importance of suffering: “Oh, if only the suffering soul knew how it is loved by God, it would die of joy and excess of happiness! Someday, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer. The present moment is ours” (963). In response, Our Lord told Saint Faustina, “My daughter, suffering will be a sign to you that I am with you” (669).
That said, if we can take a leaf from the book of any of the great saints, we can learn that it is in their perseverance and patience that their relationship with God grew immensely. Precisely at the moment everything seems worthless and you begin to fight it out with a God who seems invisible and silent, is when you are closest to Him. That is when He is carrying you through. He is working to strip away everything that hinders your spiritual growth. When you choose to trust the process that God sets in motion, even if you have no sense of His presence, you invite Him to shoulder this cross with you. Turning to the wisdom of the saints, here are three lessons we can adopt to help us on our own spiritual journeys:
1) Persevere in little ways: In St. Thérèse’s famous autobiography, The Story of a Soul, she explains how she grew spiritually by finding her way to God’s heart through little acts of love. “I wish both to suffer and to find joy through love,” she writes. Imitating her example, we can approach suffering by offering it to God and accepting everything with joy.
2) Trust the abandonment: Love is a leap of faith into the unknown and, with God, spiritual growth comes from complete abandonment to His will, even in the darkness. In her Diary, St. Faustina speaks of the fruit of this abandonment: “I am an infant, Lord, so I cannot get along by myself. However, beyond all abandonment I trust, and in spite of my own feelings I trust, and I am being completely transformed into trust––often in spite of what I feel.” When we surrender our lives to God, we enter into a deep intimacy with Him. Complete trust is placing daily challenges and struggles into the loving hands of our Divine Savior.
3) Remain in faith: The dark night of the soul and the senses are both a test of faith. Mother Teresa’s “Do It Anyway” prayer ends with: “In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” This test of the soul challenges us to step away from pride, ego, and vanity in a status-driven world. Praying more and doing small things with great love helps us to remain in faith, humility, and obedience to His will above any of our own (or other people’s) desires.
When facing a dark night, you have the opportunity to lean in and learn to trust God more deeply––even when you feel He isn’t present. The grace gained from this kind of spiritual darkness is one where you come to love God for Himself, not because of what He does for you. Then, when the trial is over, you may be able to say, “Here I am Lord; this is how much I’ve loved you back.”
