The Dark Night One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings - ah, the sheer grace! - I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled. In dar… - John of the Cross

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings — oh, happy chance! — I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised — oh, happy chance! — In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

A thousand graces diffusing He passed through the groves in haste, And merely regarding them As He passed Clothed them with His beauty. ~ 5

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all created things which can possess it; for as St. Paul says, “Hope that is seen is not hope.”17 Thus the memory is withdrawn from all things on which it might dwell in this life, and is fixed on what the soul hopes to possess.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.

With respect also to spiritual sloth, beginners are apt to be irked by the things that are most spiritual, from which they flee because these things are incompatible with sensible pleasure. For, as they are so much accustomed to sweetness in spiritual things, they are wearied by things in which they find no sweetness. If once they failed to find in prayer the satisfaction which their taste required (and after all it is well that God should take it from them to prove them), they would prefer not to return to it: sometimes they leave it; at other times they continue it unwillingly. And thus because of this sloth they abandon the way of perfection (which is the way of the negation of their will and pleasure for God's sake) for the pleasure and sweetness of their own will, which they aim at satisfying in this way rather than the will of God.

And many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills, and find it repugnant to accommodate their will to that of God. Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it.