Dryness in spiritual life - Part 2
DRYNESS
IN SPIRITUAL LIFE – PART 2
Cl.
Mario D’Couto SDB
In
the reflection ‘Dryness in spiritual
life,’ (please check the old posts)
I had spoken about the experiences of no consolation in prayer and how we need
to remain steadfast despite all that. This reflection is a further elaboration
about that particular theme.
There
may be times that when we pray we may not experience ‘good feelings.’ We may feel as if God has withdrawn from us and is
far away. This is the time when we need ‘pure faith’ – the kind of faith that
believes in God’s constant loving presence, even when there is no consolation
or no sensible sign of His nearness.
Spiritual
masters like St. John of the Cross assure us that through such a ‘dark night of the soul’ God is
preparing us to experience deeper, more contemplative forms of prayer. In fact
the dark night seems to be a necessary period of purification for a more mature
relationship with God, just as the endurance of physical separation from his
mother prepares the child for a more mature relationship with her.
Our
loving Father is asking us to trust Him even in darkness and lack of
consolation. He is making us to identify with His Son on the Cross, who in His
dark night of suffering prayed, “My, God,
my God why have You deserted me?” (Matthew 27: 47). If we can pray these
words with faith then God will help us to gently surrender ourselves to Him as
Jesus did while praying, “Father, into
Your hands I commit My spirit.” (Luke 23: 46)
The
fact of not being able to see and to control the situation is at the heart of
every dark night experience. We do not choose it. It falls upon us, with all
its heaviness, its meaninglessness, its boredom. We do not see anymore, we do
not know anymore. We are no longer in control of the situation. We do have a
choice, however, which is either to let go in faith or to become more and more
frustrated. In a dark night experience, there is no way out. There is only a
way through and that is the way of “letting
go.” Yet that is the most difficult
thing to do. We find it hard to let go, we fight a great deal in order to
defend our possessions; we refuse to be stripped of our holdings and left alone
in the nakedness of our small and limited beings. But, nevertheless, we have
to! For it is in such situations that the Father in His tender love gives us an
opportunity to face our human condition and to discover on a level of deep
intimacy the mercifulness of His love.
As
we grow in wisdom and age before God and people, we also grow in the awareness
of our own limitations. We no longer have illusions of unlimited strength,
endurance or potential. Our world becomes smaller, but it also becomes more
real. Ideally speaking, we have a better awareness of who we are and what we
can do. Especially in the beginning phase, this awareness can be painful. We
feel a dull emptiness in the face of all the things we are not and all the
things we have not done. We may feel little or no consolation from spiritual
exercises, the Mass and Sacraments, meditation and spiritual reading. Our faith
and trust in God is all that we have and even this has become a kind of
darkness, lacking consolation. There is a chastening, a purification taking
place in our life of faith.
Trust
in God and patient endurance is the way through the dryness and emptiness of
the dark night. This night that we undergo is a normal part in spiritual
crisis. We need to know that or we may add guilt and self blame to the
difficulties that we are already experiencing. We must surrender ourselves to
God and His will for us, believing with all our strength that His grace will be
sufficient for us in the midst of the trials that we are enduring. We must
attempt to the best of our ability, to see the pain of emptiness not as
abandonment or loss but as a time of purification and growth. The faith to
which we cling in the midst of the darkness is itself God’s most gracious gift
to us. The words of St. Paul to the Corinthians come to mind in this regard, “The
trials that you have had to bear are no more than what people normally have.
You can trust God not to let you be tried beyond your strength and with any
trial He will give a way out of it and the strength to bear it.” (1
Corinthians 10:13)