To endure all things, with an equable and peaceful mind, not only brings with it many blessings to the soul; but it also enables us, in the midst of … - John of the Cross

In this night the soul obtains these four benefits here mentioned, namely, delight of peace, constant remembrance of God, purity and cleanness of soul, the practice of all the virtues of which I have just spoken. So David speaks from his own experience when he was in this night. “My soul,” he says, “refuses to be comforted; I was mindful of God and was delighted, and was exercised, and my spirit fainted.” He adds forthwith: “I meditated in the night with my own heart, and I was exercised, and I swept my spirit”6 clean of all affections.

Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.

This, then, is that disguise which the soul says it puts on in the night of faith on the secret ladder; and these are the three colors of it, namely, a certain most fitting disposition for its union with God in its three powers, memory, understanding, and will. Faith blinds the understanding, and empties it of all natural intelligence, and thereby disposes it for union with the divine wisdom. Hope empties the memory and withdraws it from all created things which can possess it; for as St. Paul says, “Hope that is seen is not hope.”17 Thus the memory is withdrawn from all things on which it might dwell in this life, and is fixed on what the soul hopes to possess. Hope in God alone, therefore, purely disposes the memory according to the measure of the emptiness it has wrought for union with Him.