When the goal is our souls’ renewal,
do we seek it with fine gold?
Do we eat sweet honey,
expecting God to cleanse us
as we are filled?
Or do we look to the glory of the heavens
to find inspiration in the Creator’s handiwork,
and immerse ourselves in the testimony of the Most High?
(Adapted from Psalm 19)
O Power that we call God:
help us to be still
and to walk free from all fleshly feelings
and mistaken ideas about what You are like
and which peoples you favor.
For, in that place of inner stillness,
like the calm of night just before dawn,
we may begin to perceive
Your constant work and movement all around us.
Help us to understand that
when our sense of delight in spiritual things dries up,
it is not because You have abandoned us.
Rather, in that night that waits for dawn,
You invite us to journey toward the Light of your Spirit,
step-by-step over rough and dry ground,
guided only by Your word and Your strength
instead of our human perceptions.
St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul: Book 1, Chapter 6, adapted from the David Hazard contemporary translation