Public service brings with it challenges in all forms. Often passion and zeal can easily give way to emptiness and dryness. 

The great 16th-century Carmelite mystic St John of the Cross, refers to the noche oscura or “dark night of the soul” as a forlorn feeling of being abandoned by God. “Both the sense and the spirit,” he writes, “as though under an immense and dark load, undergo such agony and pain that the soul would consider death a relief.”

The soul suffers most from the conviction that “God has rejected it, and with abhorrence cast it into darkness.”

Mother Teresa wrote in one of her letters, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing.”

Many of us will be familiar with the Bible narrative from Luke 10 on the sisters Martha & Mary of Bethany. We see in the short few verses St Martha, running about the house, and observe St Mary, in contrast, sitting adoringly at the Lord’s feet, listening to His Word.

How many of us feel like Martha on a daily basis in the public square? Always busy. We are Martha. In busying ourselves more and more, doing what we believed is God’s work, we may actually be becoming too busy for Him.

This book reflects on St John of the Cross' monumental work Dark Night of the Soul, and offers lessons from the great mystic on public life.