The Dark Night of the Soul The Complete Text

The Dark Night of the Soul is Saint John of the Cross's account of the way God leads a soul to union with Himself. He wrote it to explain a poem he had composed in a prison cell, and it maps the two great purifications every contemplative must pass through: the night of sense, in which the beginner is weaned from the sweetness of prayer, and the deeper night of the spirit, in which the soul is stripped of its last hold upon itself. What feels like abandonment, Saint John shows, is the nearness of a God too bright to be seen, and the darkness itself is the work of love. This Sanctified Souls Press edition presents the complete treatise, both books, in the English translation David Lewis prepared in 1864. Newly set in Crimson Pro and Cinzel, on cream paper, for reading and keeping.