Dark Night of the Soul · 18 of 39

Book II, Chapter 4: Explanation of the first stanza

Explanation of the first stanza.

With anxious love inflamed.

Forth unobserved I went.

My house being now at rest.

Taking these words, then, with reference to purgation contemplation, or detachment, or poverty of spirit — these are, as it were, one and the same thing — they may be thus explained in this way, as if the soul were saying: In poverty, without help in all my powers, the understanding in darkness, the will under constraint, the memory in trouble and distress, in the dark, in pure faith, which is the dark night of the natural faculties, the will alone touched by grief and affliction, and the anxieties of the love of God, I went forth out of myselt, out of my low conceptions and lukewarm love, out of my scanty and poor sense of God, without being hindered by the flesh or the devil.

2.This was to me a great blessing, a happy lot, for by annihilating and subduing my faculties, passions, and affections — the instruments of my low conceptions of God — I went forth out of the scanty works and ways of my own to those of God; that is, my understanding went forth out of itself, and from human became divine; for united to God in that purgation, it understands no more within its former limits and narrow bounds, but in the divine wisdom to which it is united.

3.My will went forth out of itself becoming divine, for now, united with the divine love, it loves no more with its former scanty powers and circumscribed capacity, but with the energy and pureness of the divine spirit. Thus the will acts now in the things of God, not in a human way, and the memory also is transformed in eternal apprehensions of glory. Finally, all the energies and affections of the soul are in this night and purgation of the old man, renewed into a divine temper and delight.