In the Night

I have been reading Daniel Munoz's Transformed by the Beloved" which reflects on St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. It is important to recognise the transformative potential of the place that we might want to avoid. Munoz points out that "The night, for John, has a transformational power and a redemptive power." The 'night' has all sorts of challenges and difficulties. The question is not how we avoid these - though that is sometimes what we attempt - but what we do with them. Even more important is what God, in his grace, does with us in such times.

Questions and doubts can emerge in the 'night' and that can be difficult, but it can also take us where we need to be. As Munoz puts it: "The night is the place where growth happens, where God stretches our spiritual muscles, where we experience maturity and increasingly reach our full potential as human beings."