This first week of Easter has readings playing on the theme of darkness: Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb while it was dark; the Emmaus disciples remind Jesus that it is getting dark; at the lake the disciples try in vain to fish at night. All of these darknesses occur prior to people recognizing Jesus and they point to a waning faith. By contrast in today’s gospel reading we are presented with a dawning faith, even as Nicodemus seeks Jesus at night, in the dark. This tells us that there is darkness and there is darkness, that there are different types of darkness and it would be helpful to consider them.

There is a darkness desired in order to seek God and this is Nicodemus’ darkness. It is also the darkness we seek, when in prayer we dim all secondary lights to be more receptive to the One who is light. There is also a darkness desired in order to avoid God, as Jesus reproached the religious leaders: if you were blind, you would not be at fault, you are only closing your eyes to the light, perhaps thinking that “what you don’t see won’t hurt you”. Bernard Lonergan calls this attitude scotosis (Greek root), a penchant for darkness. There is also a darkness not desired, but encountered in our desire to seek God, and John of the Cross calls this the dark night of the soul. Yet John begins that poem with the verse: one dark night... fired by love’s urgent longings. It is that inner fire that sustains a person during the dark night of the soul.

In my experience there is also a darkness that is not desired, but encountered in the absence of any desire in days of fatigue, of feeling burnt out, of feeling blah. This I like to call the dark night of blah. So, what sustains us during this dark night of blah? I feel sustained only by my own experience of having been restored to seeking God in past situations, precisely when I least expected it. It challenges us to trust in the Spirit that, as today’s gospel reading reminds us, blows where it wills without our knowing where it comes from or goes to.