One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
– ah the sheer grace! –
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
St John of the Cross’ poem “One dark night” narrates the soul’s journey through spiritual purification to divine union. Written in the XVI century, the poem uses the metaphor of a lover escaping under cover of night to meet her beloved, symbolizing the soul’s quest for God. Today, we reflect on the first stanza in the light of the upcoming liturgical season of Advent.
One dark night…
There is something that one tends to forget about Advent; that before the angels sang in blinding light, there was darkness. The Light of the World gestated in the hidden darkness of a womb, unseen, unknown, in secret. St John of the Cross understood this: that the soul’s deepest encounter with God happens not in clarity but in obscurity, not in understanding but in the naked trust of one who walks blind into the night.
Fired with love’s urgent longings
This is the kind of love that makes Mary say yes to scandal, that makes Joseph take a pregnant woman as his wife, that makes wise men abandon their kingdoms to follow a star into foreign lands. Advent asks us: What are we desperately longing for in Advent? True longing drives us not toward more light, but into the night itself – because that is where God waits.
Ah, the sheer grace!
St. John interrupts his own poem with this exclamation. Why? Because he has discovered the secret: that leaving behind our false securities is not loss but grace; that darkness is not punishment but invitation; that the stripping away of everything familiar is the very condition for encounter with the Holy. Advent is a time of waiting but not a waiting for God to come to us, to arrive at our address, to fit into our categories and meet our expectations. It demands the opposite: we must go out. We must leave behind the house of our certainties, our spiritual accomplishments, our carefully constructed identities.
I went out unseen
The greatest event in human history unfolded in obscurity – the Emmanuel was born in the inconspicuousness of a lowly manger. God entered the world unnoticed by the powerful, invisible to those who thought they knew when he would come. This is how God works. This is how transformation happens. In the hidden night where we have no audience, no witnesses, no one to impress. To go out unseen is to trust that something is happening precisely when we cannot see what is happening.
my house being now all stilled.
What is this “house” that must be stilled? It is the chattering ego, the anxious self, the part of us that must always be doing, achieving, understanding, controlling. It is every voice that says “I know,” every attitude that says “I’m fine,” every defence that says “I don’t need.” Advent invites us to let this house fall silent, because God cannot enter a house already full of ourselves.
As we enter the season of Advent, St John of the Cross invites us to enter the darkness, to bow before the mystery. Let Christmas prepare us – strip us, empty us, lead us out into the night where God waits, invisible and absolute, to be born again in the darkness of our surrendered hearts. “One dark night…” That is all. That is everything. That is Advent.
Susan Moto helps us understand our own spiritual journey in the light of John of the Cross’ doctrine of the Dark Night, in her work “John of the Cross for Today: The Dark Night”.