Imagine the gnawing feeling of being left alone in huge cavern underneath the earth where only bats and snakes dare to keep you company in the midst of mixed rocks and mud that trapped you inside the earth burying you alive. You shout for help and the only voice you can hear is of your own, echoing to and fro from the stalactites and stalagmites that hang over the ceiling or sprouting underneath your feet. You tried to climb the nearest source of light but it is too way high up around the bend that everytime you cimb the rocks, you keep on sliding back to the ground aggravated of course by the moss and continuous flow of water which dampens even the soil underneath your feet. You feel helpless, restless and the anxiety level is going nuts that you are on the verge of insanity and your morale hangs by a thread. You keep on hoping that you would find a way to get out of the pitch black scenario but every cavern you turn too is adead end.You try to crawl your way out on the nearest crack you see on the side of the wall. You followed your instinct, crawled your way out on the tunnel-like opening that leads the way to an endless canopy of detours and each way you turn to, the more you get far from where you start the darker it gets. The space becomes smaller and smaller until only the girth of your entire body is the only thing that fits the lumen of the your continuous coffin…

Imagine yourself being lost in one of Romania’s evergreen forest. Tall trees, damp grasses, moss laden soil, foggy, pitch black horizon and the lit of the moon is hardly going through the leaves of the hundred year old trees. Imagine yourself walking alone and simultaneously skipping and making large steps just to hop your way through the gargantuan roots of sequoia trees that stands on your every way. You restlessly search for human comfort and company to alleviate not only your loneliness but also your fear of being alone. You can see the shadows of every night creatures crawling on tress with their eight legs and what-nots, threatening to jump over you anytime you stop walking. As you hasten your pace hoping that you will see the end road of that seemingly endless path to nowhere, you see sparks of illumination in between bushes as you pass by, thinking they are fireflies but only to realize that they are the eyes of the beasts of the jungle waiting for an ambush to a prey that they have been stalking for the rest of the dark night. You now run for your life as fast as you can because  you can clearly hear the footsteps on dried leaves of the other shadowy figure that is now following you and quickening its pace as you quicken yours. You tried to jump in a bush, covered yourself with palm tree leaves just to pretend that you are one with nature. The beast ran pass by you until you you lost it forever. Then silence enveloped the entire forest with only the crickets, bull frogs and occasional howls of the wolves from distant valleys rings throughout the black flora and fauna of the night. You are on your way to continue your search for the nearest civilization but when you stood up from your area of camouflage, you realized you are slowly sinking. The earth which you stand on is now slowly swallowing your feet, then your knees, then your waist, your chest and now finally for the last stretch… your chin. You reach for the nearest branch to cling to but there was none. You wiggle and waddle you way out but the mud became thicker and thicker. You shout for help but the mud is already on your lips, then on your cheeks and then on your nose and then covering your eyes where you finally for the last time saw the moonlit earth where you once stood…

Imagine yourself being on a ship wreck with only a few survivors floating in an icy cold sea where the Titanic previously sank. You can clearly see the icebergs towering you and your fellow survivors as these colossal works of nature play the lights and shades under the moonbeam. You were few and now you are only a handful of survivors. The Clouds above began covering the moon. Darkness pitched it. The rain poured and the waters began to move from ripples to waves. The cold is slowly getting through your pants and into your life vest. You suddenly feel the numbness all over your body. You are too tired to even open your mouth or even move your tongue. You are literally frozen from the dropping temperatures of the water. Until in total darkness, in the middle of the ocean, floating like a buoy in the middle of the sea, you suddenly felt something touch your feet underneath the waters. Fear began to envelope you. You are now beginning to wonder what that might be. You were torn between the thought of a shark and a giant sea squid waiting to devour you any minute any second. You can’t see anything but you can tell something is nearby because of the movements of the waves around you. You tried asking your fellow survivors if they felt something but everyone is silent. No one is moving. You alone are the lone survivor who is making noise on the vast perimeter of the ocean surface. The rain continued to pour as you struggle your way to move from one place to another. You swam endless as you felt that the waves are getting bigger and bigger. The Pitch black night are now beginning to light up by flickers of lightning. Until mid halfway of your swim, you felt cramps on your feet. it slowly paralized yor limbs as the cold and the heat inside your body fight for control. You found yourself slowly sinking as the life vest that is strapped on your body began loosening up. You took a grip on your life vest but you body is slowly freezing until you finally lost a grip on the precious survival kit. And in the middle of the pitched black dark stormy niight at sea, you finally bid farewell as you sank eyes wide open to the bottom of the ocean floor. And even before meeting the end of your earthly life, you had the previlege of seeing your unfriendly visitor face to face and up froint before he made a chomp of your meaty and juicy body.

Morbid? Tragic? Ironic?

That is how life is sometimes. No matter how we crawl our way to see the light, no matter how we waddle to stay afloat or no matter how we grip into a life vest, darkness will still be there to haunt us.

But unknowing to all of us, the morbidity of the stories’ conclusion doesn’t end there of course.

The claustrophobic tunnel actually leads to a sewer at the last bend of the route just beneath a urban mall.

The quick sand actually drains itself to a hole just beneath it which in turn leads to a cavern just outside the nearest park.

And the unknown guest beneath the ocean surface is actually a craneof the Russian Submarine who happens to pass by the area and was trying to make an underwater rescue.

The Dark Night scenarios are the exact feelings of the Disciples when Jesus died. They have no one to turn to. They felt death came upon them. They never saw any light. The depression was so intense that one of them even took his own life for feeling of unworthiness and uselessness, despair and utter guilt for the treason he caused Jesus.

The Dark Night always comes, not to stay with us but actually to test us and prepare us for the coming days to come.

Like the Catholic Church which is actually experiencing its dark night at this moment with numerous scandals side by side, doubts on the sainthood of John Paul II, doubts on the leadership of Benedict XVI, Priest going in top politics, Catholics converting into other religions, Reproductive Health Bill, Same Sex Marriage, Women Priest yada yada yada are just one of the many Dark Nights that the Catholic Church through out its 2000 years of existence have experienced first hand. But like many pitch black moments, there came the blinding light that sets everything straight, clears the way and unfolds every detail called truth.

Our life and that of the Catholic Church is not that much of a difference. It is actually interrelated. As the human person experience its of Dark Night of the soul, so as the Catholic Church experience its dark Night of its History.

But all is not lost. Some of the black areas will soon lit up and reveal itself as a spotless part of history… Some pitched black areas of our life will soon find its way towards illumination.

There is not a soulthat is lost that can’t find its way. There is not a night that’s long that can’t find the day… (well as the song goes)…

We just have to wait… it’s almost over… one more dark night and we are already there at the breakof dawn, at the start of a new day, at the beginning of the Easter Tide…

One more Dark Night and after this behold…. the LIGHT!