(Where the text is in italics in this chapter, I am quoting from an article in the December 1948 edition of Homilitic and Pastoral Review by 

Reginald Garigou-Legrange entitled 'The Three ages of the Interior Life'.)

The Dark Night of the Soul

St Paul is the founder of the Passionist order. He was one of those singular souls who was gifted with a deep attachment to God from infancy. He lived eighty-one years. By the age of thirty-one he had arrived at the state of intimate union with Jesus Christ.

For the next forty-five years he inhabited a dark night of ‘interior desolation of most painful abandonment, during which only from time to time did the Saviour grant him a short respite’.[1]

 ‘The Saint felt himself abandoned by God; he feared that God was angry with him. The temptations to despair and sadness were overwhelming. And yet, in that interminable trial the Saint manifested a great patience, a perfect resignation to the Divine Will and a great kindness towards all those who approached him’.

[2]

This was not the classical state of the ‘dark night of the soul’ in which a person is purified in order to reach deep union with God. That dark night is where all human motivation to do and be good, such as having a positive self-image or strong intellectual conviction, are gradually transformed into the single motive of purely knowing God through love, and willing what he wills above all else.

That seems to be the final stage before being ‘filled with the utter fullness of God’ that the apostle Paul speaks of (Ephesians 3: 19). Then the person powerfully brings the sense of heaven to this world. St Paul of the Cross, like St Francis and St Catherine of Sienna, only had to enter a place and people would find their lives changing to deeper goodness. Their spirits were so united to God that they radiated grace wherever they went.

A very different Dark Night of the Soul

But the long dark night experienced by Paul of the Cross was not purifying his soul, but a ‘dark night suffered for others’ where the already purified soul works for the salvation of its neighbour. ‘It retains the same lofty characteristics (as the classical dark night of the soul), but it takes on another character which reminds us more of the sufferings of Jesus and Mary who had no need themselves of being purified.’

[4]

Just as Jesus and Mary suffered as they felt the pain of this fallen world, ‘when Paul of the Cross walked through the streets, he could not see his world, except when considered from God's viewpoint. For forty-five years, often during the night as well as during the day, this was a sorrowful, heroic, unceasing prayer which sought for God with great eagerness, and this in order that God might be given to the souls for whom this great Saint was suffering (Luke 8:1).

More fruitful than the years of preaching inspired by a lesser zeal, these painful years were a realisation, in an exceptional manner, of the word of the Master: "One ought always to pray and never to faint" (Luke 8: 1).[(Hence, one can understand the import of that reflection of St. John of the Cross: "A single act of pure love can do more good in the Church than many exterior works" (inspired by a lesser charity).'

Is charity graduated?

What does Garigou-Legrange mean when he talks of being inspired by a greater or lesser charity? Charity is love of God, and like all loves it has grades.

I can become attached to you with a kind of love if I am in your power and fear that you will hurt me - this sometimes happens to people who are kidnapped. Or I can love you with honour because you are much greater than me and I have chosen to throw in my lot with you and be loyal to you. It is possible that I can love you conditionally if you love me and do not disappoint me. Or I can love you unconditionally whatever you do and be completely at your disposal. That love is more rare. But all are somehow on the broad spectrum of what we mean by love.

It is like that with charity, the love of God. Even the powerful love inspired by zeal for the conversion of all souls is lesser than charity inspired by total adoration and utter self-involvement in all God’s activity. That is perfect charity.

[6]

St Paul of the Cross's charity was walking the highest path of what the Church calls ‘redemptive suffering’. There are far fewer souls who reach this level than the rest of us, but they are placed before us to confirm us in our humble work of intercession for others – of joining Jesus in redeeming others.

Really, we are the little brothers and sisters who are surrounded by a cloud of great saints in heaven who are interceding explicitly for each one of us here and now as we intercede for others. All of us are bound together in the divine loving, in mutual service and redemption. Every work of ours can be used in this ministry. It is what we have always meant when we say "offer it up", or as St Peter writes that we are ‘the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God’ (1Peter 2:5)[7].

Surrounded by a cloud of saints

I have spoken mostly of the communion of saints as it operates through the holy members of the Church on earth. That is because I have found that our teaching often assumes that the communion of saints is only about our relationship with the saints in heaven. My purpose is to open up the loveliness of the Church’s dynamic here on earth. I do not wish to minimise the wonderful dimension of our powerful connectedness with the saints in heaven and in purgatory.

That communion with the saints in heaven is real, and in powerful operation here and now. The apostle Paul says we have ‘so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us’ (Ephesians 12: 1).[8]

It is through the gift of faith that we sense God weaving his rich tapestry of redemption, and that we choose to be threads in his loving design.

Let us not forget either, the vast army of angels that surrounds us.