When the Garden Goes Dark: The Agony and the Arid Soul

This meditation is the first in a series running through Good Friday, in which we will walk through each of the Sorrowful Mysteries of Christ's Passion and read them alongside the spiritual classic "The Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross. My hope is that by holding these two realities together, the story of Christ's suffering and the interior landscape of the soul as one seeks a deeper relationship/union with God, we might discover that the hardest seasons of our spiritual lives are not signs of failure but of deeper love.

 

The First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

You remember the feeling, don't you?

There was a time when prayer came easily. Maybe it was early in your faith, or maybe it was during a retreat, a season of grief that drove you to your knees, or a quiet morning when the words of Scripture seemed to glow on the page. God felt close. Worship felt alive. You could almost sense a hand on your shoulder, a warmth in your chest, a whisper just beneath the threshold of hearing. You thought, This is what it means to believe. This is what it's supposed to feel like.

And then it stopped.

Not all at once, perhaps. But slowly, like a tide pulling back, the warmth receded. The prayers that once flowed like water began to feel like speaking into an empty room. The Scriptures that once burned with meaning now lay flat on the page. You showed up. You tried harder. You changed your routine, read a new book, attended another service. Nothing worked. The silence only deepened.

If you have ever stood in that silence, confused and a little frightened, wondering what you did wrong, then you already know something about the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

A Sorrow Unto Death

The Gospels are remarkably restrained in their telling of the Passion. They do not embellish. They do not sentimentalize. And yet, when they describe what happened to Jesus on the Mount of Olives the night before he died, even their spare prose strikes the heart.

Matthew tells us that Jesus "began to be grieved and agitated," and that he said to his disciples, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me" (Matthew 26:37–38, NRSV). Luke, the physician, adds a detail so visceral that some ancient scribes tried to remove it from the manuscripts: "In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground" (Luke 22:44).

This is not a composed Savior calmly accepting his fate. This is a man in agony.

That doesn't diminish His divinity. On the contrary, it is the agony of God Himself fully entering the moment, the gravity of it all, the very human experience He chose to endure for our sake.

The Greek word used by Matthew, perilypos, means to be surrounded by grief on every side, hemmed in by sorrow with no exit. And the word Luke uses for anguish, agōnia, is the root of our word "agony." It carries the sense of an intense inner contest, a struggle so fierce it threatens to tear the person apart.

Here is what strikes me: this is the Son of God. This is the one who calmed the sea, who raised the dead, who stood on the Mount of Transfiguration wrapped in uncreated light while Moses and Elijah appeared at his side. Where is that glory now? Where is the voice from heaven saying, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17)?

In Gethsemane, there is no voice. There is no light. There are only the olive trees, the darkness, and the silence of heaven.

 

The Night of the Senses

St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite monk, mystic and poet, wrote extensively about what he called the "Dark Night of the Soul." To many today, the phrase sounds like a fancy name for depression or a "bad mood," but for John, it describes something much more precise and purposeful.

It is a process of "purgation." A deep cleaning of the soul. 

He explains that as we grow in faith, God must eventually move us beyond our reliance on feelings, logic, and sensory "highs." If a mother wants to teach her child to walk, she must eventually let go of their hand; if she wants to move them to solid food, she must stop the milk. The Dark Night is God "weaning" the soul.

In the first stage of this process, which John calls the "Passive Night of the Senses," God removes the felt sweetness that once accompanied prayer and devotion.

The soul, which had grown accustomed to experiencing God through pleasant emotions and sensory delight, suddenly finds itself in a desert.

It is vital to understand that this is not a loss of faith, but a maturing of it. It is a season given to strengthen faith, which I recognize, is counter-intuitive when you first approach this concept.

But think about the mother teaching the child to walk again. When she removes her hand from his shoulder, she's not withdrawing completely. She's still there. The child just doesn't feel her touch. He's learning to walk, or in the context of prayer, to pray without the "crutch" of gentle touch, a "feeling" that we used to depend on.

In the "light" of our early faith, we often love the feeling of God more than God himself. We are like children who love their parents primarily for the candy they provide. The darkness arrives to strip away the candy so we can finally learn to love the Parent for who they are, independent of the treats.

John describes this transition in ways that might feel very familiar to you if you've ever tried to develop a consistent prayer life.

In this "Dark Night" the soul cannot find satisfaction in the things of God, but neither can it find satisfaction in anything else.

It is stuck between two worlds: unable to go back to the easy pleasures of early faith and unable to move forward into the deeper union with God.

It is, in a word, arid. Dry. Empty.

One of the metaphors St. John of the Cross uses is that of a bright light, a light so bright that it actually feels more like darkness. It is like an owl trying to look at the sun—the light is so bright that the creature experiences it as blinding darkness.

And here is the crucial point John makes: this is not punishment. It is love.

God withdraws the felt consolation not because he is angry or absent, but because the soul has been feeding on the experience of God rather than on God himself.

The sweetness of prayer, the emotional highs of worship, the warm feelings of devotion: these are real gifts, but they are not God.

They are the wrapping paper, not the gift. And as long as the soul clings to the wrapping paper, it will never open the gift.

The Dark Night strips away the packaging so the soul can finally receive what it has always been seeking. This state of "infused contemplation" is God working directly on the spirit, bypassing the emotions and the intellect entirely.

This is much like what we see Jesus experiencing in Gethsemane.

 

The Cup That Does Not Pass

Consider the prayer Jesus prays: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want" (Matthew 26:39). This prayer is sometimes treated as a moment of weakness, a brief faltering before Jesus recovers his composure and marches bravely to the cross. But that reading misses the depth of what is happening.

Jesus is not merely asking to avoid physical pain. He is standing at the threshold of total desolation, the full weight of human sin, suffering, and death pressing down on him, and he is experiencing what every soul in the Dark Night experiences: the apparent absence of the Father's comforting presence.

The cup is not just crucifixion. The cup is the felt distance of God.

And what does Jesus do? He does not run. He does not demand that the feeling return. He does not treat the absence of consolation as evidence that God has abandoned him (though that cry will come later, on the cross). Instead, he prays. He prays honestly, telling the Father exactly what he feels and exactly what he wants. And then he surrenders: "Not what I want but what you want."

This is the heart of the Dark Night. It is the moment when the soul stops measuring its relationship with God by what it feels and begins to ground it in what it wills. It is the transition from a faith built on consolation, built on "spiritual highs" and mountain-top experiences, to a faith built on naked trust.

And it is agonizing. But the gift St. John of the Cross offers us is the insight that it's actually a gift. It's an important stage in our maturation as believers, seeking closer union with God. It's a night we must all endure in faith, knowing that the light will dawn at the proper time.

 

Why the Darkness Matters

We live in a culture that is deeply suspicious of suffering and almost religiously devoted to comfort. If something feels bad, we assume it is bad. If a relationship stops producing positive emotions, we assume it is dying. If prayer feels dry, we assume God has left, or worse, that he was never there to begin with.

Some people choose churches based on how the service, or the music, makes them feel. They look for a preacher whose charisma inspires them. And these things, in their proper place, are not necessarily wrong in themselves provided they are in alignment with God's truth. It's okay to be moved by a powerful song, a deeply meaningful liturgy, and even a powerful sermon. But if that's the height of what we're seeking, if we think that's the "best" the Christian life has to offer, we'll find ourselves stagnant. We'll never grow.

At worst, we might find ourselves "hopping" between parishes, or even denominations, trying to find something that "speaks to me." You'll often hear it put more like this: I just don't get anything out of the service there like I used to, so I'm going somewhere else.

There may be times when leaving a church is necessary. We should seek the fullness of the truth. I realize my readers come from a variety of different traditions, some Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. I'm not going to go into all of that today. Still, we should go where the fullness of truth resides.

But I've seen it happen, even within a single denomination, when people without any real theological conviction moving them, hop between parishes, seeking an experience, trying to "get more out of" Sunday Morning. And by "get more out of" it, they usually mean some kind of feeling.

Most people, when choosing a church these days, make their choices much like they might "shop" for a commodity. They look for what "feels" right, that makes them more comfortable, or gives them the most moving experience.

But here's the hard truth. If you're going to Church, or praying, looking for a particular experience of God, chances are that there will come a time when what used to move you, what used to inspire you, doesn't hit the same way it used to. For many, well, they just go down the street, they start shopping again. They chase the experience, something that makes them feel "well fed," even if the nutritional content of what they're seeking isn't substantial, or even good for them at all. Many things "taste good," but aren't healthy. But many people sample the "flavor" of what they're consuming without bothering to consider the array of ingredients on the label. Because, frankly, most people don't care. They aren't seeking the way, the truth, and the life. They're seeking spiritual consolation, a feel-good religion.

The Garden of Gethsemane challenges all of this.

Think for a moment about the Transfiguration. On Mount Tabor, Peter, James, and John witnessed the glory of Christ in dazzling light. Peter, overwhelmed, wanted to build shelters and stay forever: "Lord, it is good for us to be here" (Matthew 17:4). It was a peak experience, a spiritual high of the highest order. And notice: it is the same three disciples, Peter, James, and John, whom Jesus takes with him into Gethsemane. The ones who saw the light are now asked to sit with him in the dark.

This is not an accident. It is a pattern. The spiritual life is not a straight line of ever-increasing joy. It is a rhythm of mountain and valley, of Tabor and Gethsemane. And the hard truth is that love is proven not on the mountain but in the garden.

Anyone can worship when the glory is visible. The question is whether you will stay when the glory withdraws.

Peter, James, and John fell asleep. Three times Jesus returned to find them unable to keep watch. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak," he said (Matthew 26:41). Even in his own anguish, he understood. The flesh recoils from the darkness. It always will.

But Jesus stayed awake. He kept praying. Not because it felt good, not because he received a comforting answer, but because prayer in the Dark Night is not about receiving. It is about remaining.

 

Love Without Proof

There is an insight here that goes to the very core of what it means to love God.

When you serve God because it feels wonderful, you may indeed love God, but you cannot be sure. You might simply love the feeling. When you pray because prayer fills you with peace and warmth, you may be seeking God, but you might be seeking the peace and warmth.

The Dark Night removes these ambiguities.

When you pray into silence and keep praying, when you show up to worship feeling nothing and show up again the next day/week, when you choose faithfulness in the absence of every reward, then you know. And God knows. This is love.

We know this intuitively. If you only really talked to your spouse, or spent time together, when you "felt" the draw of love, when you experienced the "high" of being together, it wouldn't take long before the marriage fell apart. So many people today, seeking the thrill of "romance" depicted in movies or books, sadly betray their own spouses looking for those "butterflies" again, the infatuation one experiences when a relationship is young, new, and frankly, immature.

Real love, the kind that we can trust on, doesn't only engage when it feels right. It clings to the beloved even, and especially when, the feelings are absent. Love trusts, in faith, because it has chosen to walk through live with one's beloved. Not because one's beloved makes them "feel" a certain way.

Jesus in Gethsemane loved the Father with a love that required no confirmation, no consolation, no sign from heaven. He loved with a love that was, in the deepest sense, free. Free from attachment to results. Free from dependence on feelings. Free to say "not what I want but what you want" and mean it entirely. This is the love the Dark Night is designed to produce in us.

 

Staying in the Garden

So what do we do when the garden goes dark?

First, name what is happening. If you are in a season of spiritual dryness, recognize that this may not be a sign of failure. It may be an invitation to deeper faith. Not every dry spell is a Dark Night in the technical sense, but every dry spell is an opportunity to practice loving God without the reward of feeling.

Second, keep praying, even badly. The worst temptation in the arid season is to stop showing up. Jesus prayed the same prayer three times. It was not eloquent. It was not resolved. It was raw and repetitive and honest. That is enough. God does not need your best words. He needs your presence.

Third, resist the urge to manufacture feeling. Do not chase the next spiritual high, the next conference, the next book, the next technique that promises to restore the warmth. These things have their place, but if you use them to avoid the darkness, you will miss what the darkness has to teach you.

Fourth, stay with others, even when they fall asleep. Jesus asked his friends to watch with him. They failed, but he asked. Community in the Dark Night is essential, not because others can fix what you are going through, but because the presence of another person, even an imperfect, drowsy one, is a reminder that you are not alone.

Finally, trust the morning will come. Gethsemane is not the end of the story. The agony in the garden leads, through suffering, to resurrection. The Dark Night of the Senses, John of the Cross tells us, opens into a dawn the soul could never have imagined. But you cannot skip to the dawn. You have to endure the night.

The garden is dark tonight. Stay awake. Keep watch. The love you offer here, in the silence, in the absence, in the aching emptiness, is the truest love you have ever given. And it's where you'll find the truest love that embraces you not merely when things are going well, or when they feel right, but even when you're in a season of sorrow, or loss, or agony.

It's a love that bears all things. A love that endures all things. A love that never fails. 

 

God Bless,
Judah