Where are you on the path: Purgative Way → Passive Purification → Spiritual Age 13
What happens in the soul?
The process now reaches a decisive point.
the Good Lord deprives the soul of sensible consolations and spiritual pleasure in order to deeply detach it from its attachments and lead it towards purer prayer.
A total dryness may appear in the prayer. What previously allowed us to meditate seems to stop working. One may experience inner darkness, spiritual emptiness, a feeling of abandonment and loss of taste for pious practices.
And yet something fundamental remains: God’s desire remains alive, even without consolation.
The action of the Good Lord
During the Dark Night of the Senses, the Good Lord allows the soul to go through a period of profound darkness and deprivation of the sensitive supports that previously sustained it.
The soul may feel harassed by trials, without fully understanding what is happening, while it learns to remain faithful without relying on the consolations that previously accompanied its spiritual life.
When the test has fulfilled its purpose, the Good Lord returns to make himself present in an unmistakable way: through a miracle, a grace, a providential sign or an inner conviction so deep that it becomes a spiritual guarantee of the soul’s presence, the soul’s love and the soul’s fidelity, a certainty that can no longer be defeated by the tests.
Thus concludes the Dark Night of the Senses: the soul leaves it strengthened, with a firmer and purified faith, and prepared to enter the Illuminative Way, where it will begin to receive new graces and lights.
How does the soul respond?
The fundamental answer is to stay.
Do not try to fabricate feelings that have disappeared, do not abandon prayer because it has lost its taste, and do not automatically interpret darkness as the absence of God.
The soul learns to love and trust without demanding comfort in return.
The prayer
Meditative prayer reaches its limit. The soul may even experience the impossibility of meditating as before.
It is not necessarily a setback. the Good Lord begins to lead the soul towards a simpler, silent and interior form of prayer.
As we go through this night, we enter into contemplative prayer.
Here authentic contemplation is born.
Signs that may accompany this age
• Deep dryness in prayer.
• Impossibility to meditate as before.
• Feeling of abandonment.
• Darkness and spiritual emptiness.
• Loss of taste for pious practices.
• Desire for God that remains even without consolation.
• Greater inner silence.
• Purer faith and less dependent on sensations.
A phrase to remember
“You harass me from behind, you attack me from in front, but at the same time you have your hand on me.”
Where does it lead
This age is a turning point on the spiritual path. Thus the Purgative Way concludes and the soul is prepared to enter the Illuminative Way, where it will begin to receive new graces and lights.