The Hidden Gifts of Struggle — Dark Night of the Soul

This happy night and purgation of sense first gives the soul knowledge of itself and of its misery. God's other favors usually arrive with that same gift: you see yourself clearly and become small in your own eyes. In this night the soul is so caged and constrained that it can perceive nothing but its miseries. The first riches look like poverty, because the door into them is self-knowledge, not a better feeling.

That dark, purgative contemplation is the door and entry into the riches of divine wisdom. The night narrows and straitens, and that narrowing is how the riches enter: true knowledge, and with it a real purge. Constriction is not the opposite of gain. It is the entry. What feels like being shut in is the way the wisdom actually arrives.

Another excellent benefit is that the soul exercises all the virtues together in the works it does and the trials it suffers. Patience and fortitude in this dryness train temperance, justice, and the rest of the cardinal and theological virtues at once. Saint John will not let you treat the night as empty suffering. It is a school where character is practiced in compound, not in comfort.