When God Seems Far Away

She went to Mass every day.  She listened to the Word of God proclaimed and heard the priest’s homily — words meant to enlighten and inspire.  She received the Eucharist in Holy Communion.  At home, she prayed.  Her family watched her go to work and watched her come home again.  She cooked and cleaned and cared for her children and her husband.  She was active in her ministry work at church and as a volunteer at the local hospital.  And always, she prayed.  On the outside, nothing had changed.  But on the inside, everything was darkness.  Her spiritual life, once the source of her joy and peace, was now a wasteland.  Prayer brought her no comfort.  Her pleas to God went unanswered.  She felt totally cut-off from Christ, from the sweet Savior Who had always felt so close to her.  She felt alone.  She felt lost.

There are times in life when God seems very close to us. The sun of His love shines brightly. Our hearts exult in the joy of His presence. Every Mass is a foretaste of heaven and Holy Communion is almost unbearable intimacy with Christ. When we read Holy Scripture, He speaks to us directly and reveals His heart fully to us. Our prayer life is rich, satisfying and exciting. We feel as if we are always in the presence of our Lord. And then it seems, for no reason, we wake one day to find ourselves cast away from Him, no longer in His presence at all but in a kind of spiritual desert. Anyone who follows Christ will someday experience this dryness and spiritual loneliness. In the Catholic tradition, many great Saints have written of their own experiences of feeling isolated from Christ. St. John of the Cross’ most famous work is The Dark Night of the Soul. St. Therese of Lisieux wrote: “For me it is always night; dark black night…but since my Beloved wishes to sleep, I shall not prevent Him.” More recently, the private letters of St. Teresa of Calcutta have revealed that this loving and heroic woman lived for many years in the lonely darkness of a spiritual void. And yet she persevered in her work with the poor. To the outside world, her faith seemed as vibrant and alive as ever.

The truth is:  it was.  It’s a mistake for us to think that our “feelings” define our faith lives.  Faith is more than just warm and fuzzy feelings.  The gift of faith requires a conscious decision to follow Jesus Christ.  Feelings fade, but true faith persists in the desert.  It can even thrive there.  Remember in St. Matthew’s Gospel, that it wasn’t the devil that led Christ into the desert:  it was the Spirit of God.  Whether we like it or not, all of us will be led into that desert at one time or another.  In that blistering, lonely wilderness we can, like Christ, be cleansed and purged for God’s great purpose.  What did Christ do in the desert?  He fasted and prayed and waited on God.

This is what we also can do when our interior faith life becomes dry, dusty, and silent.  Pray, even when you don’t feel like it.  Go to Mass as often as you can.  Go to Confession every week.  Do something for someone else.  Fast. Read the Gospels every day.  Be quiet.  This last one may be the most difficult of all.  Spend some time each day quietly and prayerfully opening your heart to God’s presence.  This “desert time” can be a wonderful gift, because it is a time just for you and for God to be together.  In the wilderness, He teaches us to rely on Him more completely, to depend on Him for all our needs.  Alone with Him, we learn that He is using this desert to teach us how to love Him as He already loves us.  Completely.

“I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the desert, through a land not sown.” 

–Jeremiah 2:2

Lent’s Arrival

It started out like any other day. I woke up, stumbling into the shower and closed my eyes to let the hot water finish waking me up. It was only when I opened my eyes again that I noticed something was wrong. In my right eye there was a dark spot in the corner that shouldn’t have been there. Within six hours I was in surgery having a tear in my retina repaired. Thanks be to God and my surgeon, my eye mended quickly. In light of all the suffering in this broken world of ours, mine has been tiny and minor. And yet it’s been enough to open my eyes, pardon the pun.

Lent is like that, too. It interrupts our routine and makes us look at life in a different way. It slows us down and makes us think about what we’re doing more deliberately. Lent is an opportunity to see the world, and ourselves, through different eyes. My torn retina and the surgical repair that followed temporarily changed my vision. My prayer is that Lent will have a more long-lasting change in my heart.  

Throughout the centuries, the Church has taught us that the best way to experience Lent is through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In this tradition, we can look to the Saints for advice and example. I like the ones who keep things simple. “Prayer should be short and simple,” writes St. Benedict. Of course, as the greatest of all the Western monastics, he probably spent many hours of each day in prayer. He also worked and played and read and wrote and slept—proving that sainthood is something not limited to Sunday morning worship. When even the most ordinary activities of our daily lives are offered to God for His praise and use, His grace sanctifies our efforts. Flannery O’Connor reminds us that sometimes the hardest part of prayer is getting out of God’s way. Amen, sister. This Lent, try starting each morning in prayer. Offer God all your work and play of that day. Invite Him to guide you as you make decisions and open your eyes to the opportunities around you to serve others.  

Fasting sounds really tough to most of us, because we don’t usually deny ourselves very much. Certainly we can fast from food, as Catholics will on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. This is a discipline of our bodies which frees us to focus on our spiritual nourishment. There are lots of ways to fast and many things we can fast from other than our favorite foods. Give up gossip for Lent, or a tv show you’re accustomed to watching. Fast from taking selfies or from buying that next pair of shoes. Whenever we deny ourselves we exercise the muscles of our souls and become just a little bit less self-centered.  

Almsgiving is the third way we can renew our spiritual lives during Lent. Yes, it’s important that we give money in support of the church and to help the needy. But maybe its just as important to give our time to other people. Who do you know that is lonely, or confined to a nursing home, or prison? Is there a talent you have that you could share with your parish or a charity that’s meaningful to you? For me, giving forgiveness is important. Can you think of someone, living or dead, that needs your forgiveness? This gift of mercy is precious to our Lord and pleases Him greatly. 

Lent isn’t a time for sad faces and gloomy dispositions. It’s a season of opportunity, when we can take an honest look at ourselves and ask God to help us become more like Him. It’s good for us to slow down and spend more time in prayer. Discipline helps us to grow in charity and showing mercy to someone who’s hurt us can be a source of great joy and healing. For the next six weeks, we can focus more on what we might have been overlooking lately, especially our prayer life. Ask God what He wants from you this Lent. Pray that He’ll open your eyes to see the needs of those around you and how you can help. Lent can be a rich and beautiful time of growth and renewal…sort of like springtime.  

“One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves: ‘How can I please God?’ —Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

The Real Presence

As soon as I opened the church door, I could hear her singing.  The small church echoed with her exuberant joy.  I stopped to listen for a few seconds before walking quietly down the aisle to the side chapel where she stood.  Her song was light and airy and full of love.  Since she sang in Spanish, I only caught a few of her words…love…heart…Jesus.  I watched her clap softly and sway on her feet in front of the altar.  A large painting of Christ was on the wall facing us.  In front of the painting, in a golden stand, was the Object of her praising.  This was a Friday evening in our parish and we were offering Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament.  I had come to pray in the presence of Jesus Christ.  My friend had come to sing and dance before the Lord.  She saw me and smiled, becoming quiet and moving to her seat.  But I stopped her and motioned for her to continue singing, assuring her without words that she didn’t disturb me.  So she sang, swaying and raising her hands for several more minutes, her eyes focused like lasers on the Blessed Sacrament.

And I thought of David.  “Then David, girt with a linen apron, came dancing before the Lord with abandon…” (2 Samuel 6:14).  David’s joyous love for God came out of him in his dancing and “shouts of joy” (2 Samuel 6:15).  David didn’t let other people’s ideas of “how you’re supposed to pray” keep him from dancing.  Sometimes we believe that our way of prayer is the only right way.  We might feel that sitting quietly in His presence is the best way to pray.  But surely the Lord puts in our heart the desire to sing out in joy for His love and mercy.  Like David, our joy pours forth at times in ways we can’t contain.  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our lives and are so deadly serious about God and one another that we’ve forgotten how to dance with the Divine.  Dancing and singing with the Lord can happen we forget ourselves and allow God’s joy to permeate us.  Sometimes, we just need to let go.

There’s a tradition in Celtic Christianity which envisions the Holy Spirit, not as a dove, but as a wild goose.  Most of us grew up in churches where the peaceful dove of Scripture is a well-loved image of the Holy Spirit.  A dove is delicate, docile and reassuring.  It was a dove that assured Noah that the flood was over.  Doves were used as sin sacrifices in the Old Testament.  A dove landed on Jesus’ shoulder at His baptism.  We can’t imagine a honking wild goose being delicate or quiet or peaceful!  Wild geese are free, untamable and unpredictable.  It is noisy, raucous and disruptive.  Imagining the Holy Spirit as a wild goose allows us to be led by Him into the unexpected and even wild places of the heart.  They nip us out of our comfort zones and urge us to take the path less taken…on a wild goose chase of the Spirit.  They call us to follow Christ wherever He calls us to go, to dance and sing in His presence.  As the Spirit moves to fill us, our joy overflows. Don’t be afraid to be led into places you haven’t gone before.  He is always with you.

“Let him praise His name in the dance: let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp.” —Psalm 149:3