impasse and dark night

Night in John of the Cross is the progressive purification and transformation of the human person through what we cherish or desire and through what gives us security and support. We are affected by darkness, therefore, where we are most deeply involved and committed, and in what we love and care for most. Love makes us vulnerable, and it is love itself and its development that precipitate darkness in oneself and in the 'other.'

from "Impasse and Dark Night" 

by Constance Fitzgerald, O.C.D., 

in Living With Apocalypse, Harper and Row, 1984.