Do you remember the allegorical story of the soul who looked back on its life, seeing it like footprints in the sand? Through most of its life, the soul could see God’s footprints beside its own, but at the times of greatest suffering, only one pair of footprints were visible.
Troubled, the soul asked God why He abandoned it during its trials—and God answered that at those times, He carried the soul in His arms, and that is why only one set of footprints marked the sand.
The “dark night of the soul” is a bit like this story: the soul experiences isolation from every source of comfort, whether in the world or at prayer. Even spiritual practices—once so beloved to it—bring no comfort or consolation and no sense of God’s presence. The soul feels as though it is cut off from God and yet, all the while, God is carrying it even closer to His Heart.
The spiritual writers—Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross, for example—distinguish two kinds of “night”: the active and the passive. In the “active night,” the soul is prompted to purge the senses with God’s help. Fixing its focus on God alone, the soul actively works to remove itself from all worldly and physical distractions. This purgation is more complete and intense than the daily battle to overcome various failings and temptations—the “active night” entails a soul’s total abandonment to cleansing every faulty area at once.
Sometimes, however, God steps in and plunges a soul into the “passive night”: the night that takes a soul entirely by surprise and which it has no control over. This trial is usually reserved for those who are most advanced in closeness to God. It is the final breaking-off of all that is not God, both spiritual and physical.
The dark night of the soul is such a great trial that God only permits the experience to souls who are greatly advanced in holiness. Many Catholics experience great crosses or dryness in prayer and feel far from God and think they are experiencing the dark night of the soul, but most of the time, they are simply experiencing a purification that is crucial for the earlier stages of the spiritual life. It’s not the dark night itself.
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