The mystics have long spoken of a dark night of the soul, a season deeper than ordinary doubt, where even the sense of God’s existence seems to withdraw. This sonnet opens a harder stretch of the road, and does not pretend the darkness is light. It only insists that even here, something is not lost.
The Sonnet
The night has come that does not lift by dawn, Not merely dusk, but darkness settled deep, Where every candle I had counted on Has guttered out, and left me none to keep. I cannot feel the presence I once knew, Cannot recall the comfort of belief, The night extends beyond the hours I knew, Beyond the shape of any common grief. The mystics named this darkness long ago, A night the soul must sometimes wander through, Not proof that God has left me here below, But proof that older love is breaking through. So I will walk this longest, darkest night, And trust what I cannot yet call to light.
Reflection
Saint John of the Cross wrote of the dark night of the soul, a season in the spiritual life deeper and stranger than ordinary doubt or dryness. In this night, even the felt sense of God can seem to disappear entirely. It is disorienting and can feel like the collapse of faith itself.
And yet the tradition that named this darkness also insists it is not the end of the story. The dark night, rightly understood, is not abandonment but a deeper purification, a stripping away of the props the soul has leaned on so that something truer can grow beneath the surface. This is cold comfort in the middle of the actual night, and I will not pretend otherwise. But it is real comfort, given time, and it has been true for the saints who walked this road before us.
If you are in a long, dark season that does not lift the way other troubles do, you are not alone in it, and it is not the end of your story. Others have walked this exact night and found, on the far side of it, a faith they could not have had any other way.
