When God Goes SILENT… The Dark Night That Shattered the Saints | Hidden Mystics S1E1

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:01]The Hidden Mystic Season 1 episode 1 When God Goes Silent the Dark Knight That Terrified the Saints. Featured in this new series is St. John the Cross, St. TZ of Avala, St. Theresa of Avala, St. TZ of Lasso, and St. Gertrude the Great.

[00:00:20]There comes a point in the spiritual life when God appears to disappear.

[00:00:23]Prayer becomes dry. The heavens fill closed. Meditation turns to dust. The soul speaks and hears nothing in return.

[00:00:31]For many, this becomes the end of the interior life. Some abandon prayer entirely. Others continue outwardly while inwardly collapsing into discouragement, confusion, or silent despair. The modern world, obsessed with emotional reassurance and instant psychological relief, rarely understands that the greatest saints in Christian history often endured prolonged periods where God seemed painfully absent.

[00:00:58]Yet the mystics insist that this silence is not necessarily rejection. Sometimes it's purification. The Carmelite tradition calls this terrible mystery the dark night. Not ordinary silence, not ordinary sadness, not clinical depression, not emotional instability, but a supernatural passage through spiritual darkness permitted by God himself. And what makes this mystery so unsettling is that many of the saints who experienced the deepest union with God also endured the deepest interior abandonment. St. John the Cross wrote from prison cells in spiritual desolation. St. TZ of Lisso endured temptations against faith itself during the final moments of her life and St. Theresa of Avlet described terrifying interior trials while reforming Carmel.

[00:01:52]And the contemplative tradition repeatedly teaches that God often hides himself before revealing himself more completely. Tonight we enter that silence not sentimentally, not psychologically, but through the eyes of the saints themselves.

[00:02:10]The modern spiritual imagination has become almost incapable of understanding the language of the mystics.

[00:02:16]Contemporary culture assumes that spiritual progress should produce constant peace, emotional reassurance, psychological stability, and the comforting experiences of God. But the saints repeatedly describe something far more severe. They speak of dryness, darkness, abandonment, confusion, temptation, and interior crucifixion.

[00:02:41]This is because authentic sanctity is not fundamentally about emotional comfort. It is about transformation. And transformation requires purification.

[00:02:53]The modern soul often approaches God while secretly remaining attached to itself, to pleasure, to certainty, to emotional sweetness, and even the spiritual experiences themselves. The mystics insist God gradually strips these attachments away not to destroy the soul but to free it. That is why the contemplative tradition feels so foreign to modern errors. It is not therapeutic spirituality. It is not motivational religion. It is a theology of death and rebirth.

[00:03:27]St. Angel of the Cross writes, "To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. To come to the possession you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not."

[00:03:50]The language is severe because the process itself is severe. The dark knight is one of the most misunderstood doctrines in Christian mysticism. It is not merely suffering. All human beings suffer. The dark night refers specifically to a supernatural purification which God detaches a soul from dependence upon sensible consolations, emotional spirituality, spiritual pride, created attachments, and self-centered devotion. At first, the soul often enjoys sweetness and prayer. Meditation becomes easy. Devotion feels emotionally alive. The beginner experiences what many saints describe as milk given to spiritual children. But eventually, God withdraws these consolations and the soul panics. The person who once prayed joyfully suddenly experiences boredom, silence, distraction, temptation, and exhaustion. Many conclude they are spiritually failing. The mystics often conclude the opposite. St. Terresa of Aavala wrote, "The Lord walks among the pots and the pans." And elsewhere she said, "It is love alone that gives worth to all things." The mature spiritual life is no longer sustained by emotional reward. It becomes sustained by fidelity. Perhaps no modern saint reveals this mystery more painfully than St. TZ of Lasso.

[00:05:16]Popular devotion often presents her as gentle, smiling, childlike, and perpetually serene. But the real TZ understood and endured horrifying interior darkness. Near the end of her life, she experienced violent temptations against heaven, eternity, and faith itself. She wrote, "Jesus permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness, and that the thought of heaven so sweet to me from my earliest childhood should become nothing but a subject of struggle and torment."

[00:05:50]If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into, I believe I have made more acts of faith in one year than during all the rest of my life. This is astonishing. A future doctor of the church tempted against faith itself.

[00:06:05]Yet this is precisely why her sanctity became so profound. She continued believing without filling belief. She continued loving without emotional consolation. She continued trusting while surrounded by interior obscurity.

[00:06:21]This is the terrible heroism of the mystics.

[00:06:26]And why would God permit such darkness?

[00:06:30]Because man naturally seeks himself even in religion.

[00:06:35]The soul secretly desires reassurance, certainty, emotional sweetness, spiritual identity, admiration or mystical experiences. But God desires pure love. And pure love must survive even when reward disappears.

[00:06:50]St. John of the cross explains, "God now wills to strip them of all these apprehensions and sweet perceptions so that they may learn to walk in pure faith, which is the proper and adequate means onto union with him." The dark knight destroys illusions. The soul gradually learns to seek not spiritual pleasure but God himself.

[00:07:14]The mystics repeatedly compare this process to fire. St. Angel on the cross gives one of the most famous mystical images in Christian theology. The transformation of wood by flame. At first the wood crackles, smokes, blackens, and resist, but gradually it becomes fire itself. John writes, "The fire of love begins to dry up the soul and make it fill its natural miseries.

[00:07:39]It grows black and dark and ugly.

[00:07:43]Having been dried, purified, and enlightened, it becomes itself transformed in the fire. The soul fears the purification because it feels like destruction. Yet the mystics insist God destroys only what prevents union. One of the great discoveries of mystical theology is that sanctity often becomes more hidden as it deepens. The holy souls frequently suffer invisibility.

[00:08:09]Modern culture associates holiness with visibility, charisma, influence, or extraordinary experience. The mystics often lived unknown, hidden, misunderstood, and interiorly crucified.

[00:08:24]St. Gertude the Great repeatedly describes hidden acts of love and silent fidelity offered in reparation for the sins of the world. The contemplative tradition insists the deepest transformations occur in secret. The dark night exists because Christ himself entered it first. The passion is filled with silence. Christ stands silent before pilot. Silent before mockery, silent before accusation, silent beneath abandonment.

[00:08:55]And finally, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The saints understood the contemplative soul mysteriously participates in this abandonment. This is why mystical suffering often becomes linked with reparation, hidden sacrifice, and participation in the passion itself. The saints do not merely imitate Christ externally. They become interiorly configured to him.

[00:09:23]The enemy attacks most fiercely during spiritual darkness because this is when discouragement becomes most dangerous.

[00:09:31]The saints describe temptations during the dark night. Atheism, despair, impurity, hopelessness, rage, exhaustion, and numbness. Yet the mystics insist temptation itself is not defeat. St. Theresa Avala famously wrote, "The devil frequently fills our thoughts with great unrest so that we may abandon prayer entirely. He knows that he has already lost a soul that perseveres." This is critical. The dark night is not conquered by emotional certainty. It is endured through fidelity.

[00:10:08]You know, when I was in religious life, uh, we had a couple of friars come and visit us from another house.

[00:10:16]And upon leaving, uh, we all lined up at the door to say our goodbyes. And it was the last time, it was the first time and the last time I'd ever see this frier.

[00:10:25]And his name was Father Oscar. And Father Oscar was a rather large uh, a rather large monk. And uh but he had a heart of gold and he came up and he bumped into me, you know, to give me this fraternal embrace. And I say he was rather large because I had to really lean in to give this frier a hug. And he he pulled me in for a fraternal embrace and he whispered in my right ear something that I have never forgotten.

[00:10:56]And it's been 15 years now since I've been out of religious life. He whispered in my right ear. He said, "Persevere, brother. Persevere." And I have to tell you, Father Oscar passed away a couple of years ago from a from an illness. And I've kept his words of encouragement to me to persevere throughout my life, and they've really helped me get through some very dark times. So, like St. Terresa Vava said here, persevere. And as Father Oscar said, persevere, my friends.

[00:11:32]The saints repeatedly warned that spiritual pride is among the most dangerous illusions in the interior life. The beginner often unconsciously becomes attached to being spiritual, to mystical feelings, to consolations, or to the identity of holiness itself. The dark night humiliates the soul. The person who once felt spiritually strong suddenly experiences weakness, helplessness, distraction, and poverty.

[00:11:59]Yet this poverty becomes fertile because humility begins emerging where pride once lived.

[00:12:07]The contemplative of life is not escapism. It is warfare. Texts such as the divine intimacy describe the contemplative path as continual surrender to God through recollection, silence, detachment, humility, and perseverance.

[00:12:22]The contemplative soul slowly learns to live without emotional reassurance, to remain faithful in silence, to love God beyond feeling. This is why contemplative theology appears terrifying to modern culture. It demands everything.

[00:12:39]Modern civilization suffers from profound spiritual instability. People increasingly experience emptiness, distraction, emotional exhaustion, and interior fragmentation.

[00:12:52]Many abandon prayer the moment consolation disappears. The mystics teach that this is precisely the moment perseverance becomes most valuable.

[00:13:02]St. TZ of Lasso wrote during her darkness, "I cling to him when I no longer feel him."

[00:13:11]Think about that. I cling to him when I no longer feel him. That sentence may summarize the interior mystical entire mystical tradition. The saints remain faithful without reward. And in an age addicted to emotional stimulation, this witness becomes revolutionary.

[00:13:31]The mystics teach that holiness is not measured by spiritual filling. It is measured by fidelity, surrender, perseverance, and love purified through suffering. The dark knight strips away illusion. But beyond the darkness lies union, transformation, and divine intimacy.

[00:13:50]The saints walked through the fire and emerged changed.

[00:13:56]The silence of God is terrifying because it exposes the soul completely. But the saints insist silence is not always absence. Sometimes silence is an invitation to surrender, to purification, to trust, and to deeper union. The modern world cannot understand this because it fears stillness itself. But the mystics entered silence and discovered God waiting there. The mystical life does not begin with ecstasy. It begins with surrender. The saints teach that God sometimes hides himself in order to destroy every false foundation except love. And this destruction can feel unbearable. Yet the hidden mystics insist the silence of God is not necessarily rejection. Sometimes it is the doorway into transformation.

[00:14:50]In the next episode we cover hidden tears of St. TZ, the darkness no talks about.

[00:14:58]We will talk about her temptations against faith, her hidden despair, her silence before God, and the dark night that transformed the little flower into one of the greatest mystical souls in church history.