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THE DARK NIGHT (cont) |
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by St John of the Cross |
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Book Two |
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Ch 25. [A brief explanation of the third
stanza.] |
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Third Stanza
On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
Explanation
1. Still using the metaphor and simile of temporal night to describe this
spiritual night, the soul enumerates and extols the good properties of the
night. She found and made use of these properties by means of this night and
thereby obtained her desired goal securely and quickly. We will list three of
these properties here.
2. The first is that in this glad contemplative night, God conducts her by so
solitary and secret a contemplation, one so remote and alien to all the senses,
that nothing pertinent to the senses, nor any touch of creature, can reach or
detain her on the route leading to the union of love.
3. The second property of this night, mentioned in this stanza, has as its cause
the spiritual darkness of this night, in which all the faculties of the higher
part of the soul are in obscurity. In neither looking nor being able to look at
anything, the soul is not detained in her journey to God by anything outside of
him, for in her advance she is free of hindrance from the forms and figures of
the natural apprehensions, which are those that usually prevent her from being
always united with the being of God.
4. The third property is that, although the soul in her progress does not have
the support of any particular interior light of the intellect, or of any
exterior guide that may give her satisfaction on this lofty path - since these
dense darknesses have deprived her of all satisfaction - love alone, which at
this period burns by soliciting the heart for the Beloved, is what guides and
moves her, and makes her soar to God in an unknown way along the road of
solitude. The next verse is:
On that glad night,
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The End
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