The dominant figure in St. John of the Cross’s allegory of salvation is the soul that acts on its own initiative to head toward the redeeming energy of God. In an era where the word “soul” has expanded to mean everything from a genre of rhythm and blues music to a kind of vague Jiminy Cricket-like conscience, John’s poem offers a very precise and doctrinally approved conception of the purpose of the soul. The soul searches out the radiant energy of God.

The soul’s purpose is that unerring need to fuse with the power of God’s love. The soul ultimately rejects the distractions of the flesh—love, power, happiness, material satisfactions—and pursues the moment of reclaiming God. The poet within this allegory sees the soul as a light that guides a person through the darkest moments of life and that directs the pilgrim Christian to the energy of God’s love. The soul then is not part of the Christian person, like some loosely understood vestigial organ. Rather, it is its own energy, its own reality, ready at the very moment when the person feels most separated from God to assert the reality of union with that same God that can seem so distant and indifferent.