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In the night of blindness that the Lord had made fall on his eyes, Saul waited in solitary prayer for the Lord's answer to his question: "What would you have me do?" And Peter learned of his mission to the pagans while praying in solitude.

Jesus prefers leaving me in darkness to giving me a false light which would not be Himself.

The soul states that it was able to make this escape because of the strength and warmth gained from loving its Bridegroom in this obscure contemplation. It emphasizes its good fortune in having journeyed to God through this dark night.

This is the first and principal benefit caused by this arid and dark night of contemplation: the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery.

It is good to serve God in darkness and trial! We have only this life to live by faith.

Faith is obscure knowledge; it thus leads us to knowledge of something, but this something we do not get to see. This is the reason why it must also be said that the end we attain by way of faith is also itself a night: God, even in ecstatic union, remains hidden to us on earth. The eye of our soul is absolutely unable to sustain His dazzling light for which it gropes as in a dark night.

Oh, how powerful over souls is the apostle who remains always at the Spring of living waters; then he can overflow without his soul becoming empty, since he lives in communion with the Infinite!

Sometimes when I am in such a state of spiritual dryness that not a single good thought occurs to me, I say very slowly the "Our Father," or the "Hail Mary," and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself.

I must immerse myself in the sacred darkness by putting all my powers in darkness and emptiness...for He wants me to be luminous with His light alone.

Aware of their own dryness and wretchedness, the thought of them being more advanced than others does not even occur in its first movements.

The divine light is here very appropriately called the approaches of Dawn, that is, twilight.  For as the twilight of the morn disperses the light of day, so the mind, tranquil and reposing in God, is raised up from the darkness of natural knowledge to the morning light of the supernatural knowledge of God.

The work of salvation takes place in obscurity and stillness. In the heart’s quiet dialogue with God the living building blocks out of which the kingdom of God grows are prepared, the chosen instruments for the construction forged.