The Gift of Desolation

I think it’s safe to say that most of us wish that our spiritual lives were always filled with consolations.  We enjoy the experience of feeling God’s presence and the peace and joy it brings.  On the other hand, we instinctively dislike feeling interiorly desolate, like a desert.  We know from experience, however, that the spiritual life is filled with consolation and desolation, peaks and valleys, light and darkness.

It’s easy for us to see the gift of consolation.  If we’re having a spiritual conversation with a friend or our spiritual director, we might say: “The Lord has been so good to me.  I’ve had so much peace lately.  I feel His presence in a way that I haven’t felt in a while.”

It’s not so easy for us to see the gift of desolation.  Yes, the gift.  As much as we instinctively dislike the experience of spiritual desolation—or, put more bluntly, just feeling really crappy—it’s important for us to know that tremendous growth can take place during it.

Pain leads to growth in almost every other area of our lives: we experience physical growing pains as children; pain in our muscles when we begin to exercise or push to new fitness levels; intellectual pain when working through a difficult college course to obtain the knowledge needed for our field; we also work through tensions and difficulties in our relationships to come to a more purified love.  Why should we expect it to be any different in our relationship with the Lord?

God loves us.  So shouldn’t we believe that He always desires to deepen our friendship with Him?  If so, then we must trust that He allows desolation for our growth in holiness and virtue.

The question, then, is not what to do to avoid desolation.  The question is what to do when we’re in the midst of it.

Allow me to be a bit self-revelatory for a moment.  Recently, I was feeling a spiritual heaviness that I haven’t felt in awhile.  I knew what triggered it, but I couldn’t shake it.  Admittedly, I got into the “why” mode.  Lord, why are you allowing this?  Why are you doing this to me?  Why is this happening? I realized pretty quickly that this was driving me further into desolation, so I made an act of the will to change the way I was looking at the darkness.

I also began to pray differently: Lord, thank you for this heaviness; it reminds me that I am called to carry my cross with You.  Thank you for allowing this darkness; it is an opportunity for Your light to shine more brilliantly in my heart.  Thank you for this desolation; it is a reminder that I am called to seek deeper friendship with You, not just the good feelings that may accompany it.

As I prayed this way the darkness and heaviness began to lift.  I began to see the spiritual desolation as a grace, an invitation, an opportunity to grow.  I saw clearly that when we are in the midst of darkness, we must pray more not less; we must be more grateful, not less; we must ask how I can grow from this experience, not why is this happening to me.

Being grateful in the midst of desolation is not a guarantee that the darkness will immediately lift.  However, it is a way to fight against the heaviness; a way to see it as positive rather than negative; a way to see it as something the Lord is allowing for our growth in holiness rather than as a punishment for something we’ve done.

When I was a child I experienced terrible growing pains in my calves.  I would wake up in tremendous pain in the middle of the night.  The pain was so intense that I would cry.  One night I awoke and whimpered into my parent’s bedroom.  My father got up and took me to the family room where be began to rub my calves to try to alleviate the pain.  In the midst of my pain my father was not far away from me; he was very close to me, trying to help me, encourage me, and console me.

In the midst of spiritual pain, our Father in Heaven is not far from us; He’s very close.  He encourages us and offers us His consolation.  He says to us: My child, this pain is not a punishment.  I am allowing it so that you can grow in holiness, and so that you and I can have a deeper friendship.  Persevere.  A great reward awaits you.