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1. These souls, then, are now proficients. Their senses have been fed with sweet
communications so that, allured by the gratification flowing from the spirit,
they could be accommodated and united to the spirit. Each part of the soul can
now in its own way receive nourishment from the same spiritual food and from the
same dish of only one suppositum and subject. These two parts thus united and
conformed are jointly prepared to suffer the rough and arduous purgation of the
spirit that awaits them. In this purgation, these two portions of the soul will
undergo complete purification, for one part is never adequately purged without
the other. The real purgation of the senses begins with the spirit. Hence the
night of the senses we explained should be called a certain reformation and
bridling of the appetite rather than a purgation. The reason is that all the
imperfections and disorders of the sensory part are rooted in the spirit and
from it receive their strength. All good and evil habits reside in the spirit
and until these habits are purged, the senses cannot be completely purified of
their rebellions and vices.
2. In this night that follows both parts are jointly purified. This was the
purpose of the reformation of the first night and the calm that resulted from
it: that the sensory part, united in a certain way with the spirit, might
undergo purgation and suffering with greater fortitude. Such is the fortitude
necessary for so strong and arduous a purgation that if the lower part in its
weakness is not reformed first, and afterward strengthened in God through the
experience of sweet and delightful communion with him, it has neither the
fortitude nor the preparedness to endure it.
3. These proficients are still very lowly and natural in their communion with
God and in their activity directed toward him because the gold of the spirit is
not purified and illumined. They still think of God and speak of him as little
children, and their knowledge and experience of him is like that of little
children, as St. Paul asserts [1 Cor. 13:11]. The reason is that they have not
reached perfection, which is union of the soul with God. Through this union, as
fully grown, they do mighty works in their spirit since their faculties and
works are more divine than human, as we will point out. Wishing to strip them in
fact of this old self and clothe them with the new, which is created according
to God in the newness of sense, as the Apostle says [Col. 3:9-10; Eph. 4:22-24;
Rom. 12:2], God divests the faculties, affections, and senses, both spiritual
and sensory, interior and exterior. He leaves the intellect in darkness, the
will in aridity, the memory in emptiness, and the affections in supreme
affliction, bitterness, and anguish by depriving the soul of the feeling and
satisfaction it previously obtained from spiritual blessings. For this privation
is one of the conditions required that the spiritual form, which is the union of
love, may be introduced into the spirit and united with it. The Lord works all
of this in the soul by means of a pure and dark contemplation, as is indicated
in the first stanza. Although we explained this stanza in reference to the first
night of the senses, the soul understands it mainly in relation to this second
night of the spirit, since this night is the principal purification of the soul.
With this in mind, we will quote it and explain it again.1
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