Dark Night of the Soul · 39 of 39

Book II, Chapter 25: In which the third stanza is briefly explained

In which the third stanza is briefly explained.

In that happy night,

In secret, seen of none.

Seeing nought myself.

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning.

The soul still continues the metaphor of natural night in celebrating and magnifying the blessings of the night of the spirit, by means of which it has been able quickly and securely to compass the desired end. Three of these blessings are set before us in this stanza.

2.The first is that in this blessed night of contemplation God is guiding the soul by a road so solitary and so secret, so remote and alien from sense, that nothing belonging thereto, nor any created thing, can approach it so as to disturb it or detain it on the road of the union of love.

3.The second blessing is that because of the spiritual darkness of this night, in which all the faculties of the higher part of the soul are in darkness, the soul, seeing nothing, and unable to see, is not detained by anything which is not God from drawing near unto Him, and, therefore, advances unhindered by forms and figures and natural apprehensions: for these are the things which usually hinder the soul, from being always in union with God.

4.The third blessing is, that though the soul is supported by no particular interior light of the understanding, nor by any exterior guide comforting it on this high road — the thick darkness has deprived it of all this — yet love and faith, now burning within it, drawing the heart towards the Beloved, influence and guide it, and make it fly upwards to God along the road of solitude, while it knows neither how nor by what means that is done.

END OF THE DARK NIGHT.