Skip to content
Wellsprings
christian-spirituality-mysticismWe're still mapping where this idea was first discussed. Key passages and related ideas below.

The Dark Night of the Soul

When God seems absent, the soul may be drawing nearest of all

The Dark Night of the Soul names a purifying season of spiritual dryness in which the believer feels the absence of God and loses earlier consolations. Associated especially with John of the Cross, it is understood not as abandonment but as a stage on the path to deeper union, in which the soul is stripped of attachments and prepared to love God more purely. The darkness is, paradoxically, a work of grace.

Key passages(2)

Seventeen Occasional Sermons — SERMON III. Hope and Comfort usually follow genuine Humiliation and Repentance — part 6↗explains

Seventeen Occasional Sermons · Jonathan Edwards

Read in Sefaria →
High
The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great — Register of the Epistles of St. Gregory the Great. — The Month of September, Indiction IX., Being the First Year of His Ordination. — part 4↗explains

The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great · Pope Gregory the Great

Read in Sefaria →
High