What light this thought throws on my interior life! The suffering of darkness! It is a suffering which He inflicts upon many of His prisoners of love. "Who is there among you that feareth the Lord, that heareth the voice of His servant, that hath walked in darkness and hath no light? Let him hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God." (Is. l. 10). If only I can make myself believe that the darkness is permitted by Him there will be a ray of light at once in the darkness because God is there, "Surely God is in this place." But how can I be sure that the darkness is permitted by Him? If I am living the interior life, if my intention is to please Him in all that I do, and if, however badly I succeed, I never willingly take back that intention, then I am pleasing God; and if I am pleasing God, I am one of His own dear children, just as really as was His Son Who did always the things that pleased Him. If I am one of His children I know, for He has told me so, that nothing can happen to me without His knowledge and His permission, yea His arranging. So if I have to walk in darkness rather than in light, if desolation is my spiritual lot and consolation is almost unknown to me, if a veil hides God's face and my continual cry is: "Oh, that I might know and find Him" (Job xxiii. 3), if prayer seems impossible, if I have a distaste, almost a repugnance for all spiritual things, if even Our Lady seems to desert me, if at times I am on the brink of despair, tempted even to think that my soul will be lost, if, in short, darkness, thick darkness has settled down on my soul—what then? "Let him hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God." But how can I hope in darkness, how can I lean upon Someone Who is not there? By faith, that is by saying all the time: This darkness is His doing, therefore it is what He wants for me. "I, the Lord create darkness!" That makes all the difference.
Faith, as it always does, lets a streak of light into the darkness; God is there and it is only to make the soul more sure of this that He permits the darkness. If the soul can find and recognize God in the darkness then it knows Him very intimately and this is what God wants—a love so great that it detects the Beloved One at once. Does darkness make any difference to the intercourse of those who love? They rather prefer it, so that all may be shut out except each other. This is what God wants from those whom He is teaching to be interior—He puts them into prison and leaves them in the dark. Are they going to be unhappy, to repine and complain, longing for consolation and all the sweet things with which God fed them when they hardly knew Him? Not if they have faith; and if their faith is strong, they will hardly be able to distinguish desolation from consolation, God's absence from His presence, yea the very darkness itself from the light! For is it not their God who is the cause of all that is happening to them, and is not that enough for those who love? They only want His Will, not their own, and His Will is to keep them in prison and in the dark and so to unite them more closely to Himself Who for their sake faced for nine months the darkness of the womb. In the terrible moments when despair seems so near us, let us hold on to the fact that we want to please God and therefore that we are His children and that He loves us and is arranging everything—this is the little ray of hope in the darkness, the line of light, and in it we read the words: "I give them life everlasting and they shall not perish for ever; and no man shall pluck them out of My Hand." (St. John x. 28).
Colloquy with Jesus, the Light of the world, imprisoned in darkness for me.
Resolution. To lean upon my God in times of darkness.
Spiritual Bouquet. "I form the light and create darkness." (Is. xlv. 7).
THE INTERIOR LIFE. (4)
Hiddenness.
"Verily, Thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel the Saviour."
(Is. xlv. 15).
1st. Prelude. Jesus hidden in Mary.