St. John of the Cross

An icebreaker

A 16th-century Spanish friar wrote of a 'dark night' in which God strips away every comfort so the soul can love without expecting reward. The phrase now gets used for depression and hard times — a separate, modern meaning he never described.

Ask one of these · tap to take it

What would it mean to love without any comfort or reward?
Is the phrase you know the same as the original one?
Can darkness be part of growth rather than just harm?
How do you tell a spiritual crisis from a medical one?

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Worth knowing · 1 of 5

What did the phrase originally mean?

A friar described two stages of prayer in which God withdraws felt comfort, stripping away every attachment so the soul can love without expecting reward. He held it as purification, not punishment.

Worth knowing · 2 of 5

What happened to him in prison?

Opponents of the reform he helped lead locked him in a cramped Toledo cell for about nine months from late 1577. He composed poems there from memory, and the Dark Night poem was written in prison or soon after his escape.

Worth knowing · 3 of 5

How is the phrase used differently today?

The phrase now covers any painful stretch of life, from grief to burnout, without requiring prayer or faith. That popular sense and his original one share a name but not the same meaning.

Worth knowing · 4 of 5

Does the dark night mean God has withdrawn?

He described it as the opposite: a deeper closeness felt as absence because ordinary senses can't perceive it. Within his tradition it is not exile from God but a harder, closer kind of presence.

Worth knowing · 5 of 5

Is what he described the same as depression?

He was writing about a stage of prayer inside one monastic tradition, not a diagnosable illness. Long-lasting despair is a medical concern with real treatment available, separate from this spiritual account.

Words to know

Night of the sensesThe first, milder stage in his account, in which ordinary pleasure in prayer and devotion dries up.

Night of the spiritThe second, harsher stage, where deeper faculties of intellect and will are also stripped bare.

Discalced CarmelitesThe reformed, stricter branch of the Carmelite order he helped found alongside Teresa of Ávila.

More words

ContemplationWordless, receptive prayer beyond active thought or image, which he held as the night's true aim.

Doctor of the ChurchA title later given by the Catholic Church honoring the depth of his theological writing.

A voice · 1 of 4

St. John of the Cross · Friar who wrote the poem

Imprisoned by opponents of the Carmelite reform in 1577, he composed poetry in a Toledo cell, and later wrote prose commentaries on the Dark Night poem describing purification as the path to union with God.

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Teresa of Ávila · Nun who co-founded the reform with him

After meeting him in 1567 she drew him into extending the Discalced reform to the friars, wrote her own accounts of prayer and union, and valued him as a spiritual director for her nuns.

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Thomas Merton · Trappist monk who wrote on his teaching

Drawing heavily on his writings in his own books on contemplative prayer, he treated detachment from all lesser attachments as the discipline that opens a person to God.

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Gerald May · Psychiatrist who wrote about the dark night

In a 2004 book drawing on John's and Teresa's writings and his own clinical experience, he argued the dark night is a hidden transition toward freedom, not the same thing as depression.