When things are going well, and we are filled with joy, prayer is that perfect cherry on the most wonderful sundae. Prayers of thanksgiving and praise to Our Lord come as a welcome accompaniment when our lives are seemingly humming along at the perfect RPM. However, when spiritual desolation arises, the desire for prayer can wane. At times, we can even feel as if we shouldn’t pray, as we are clearly not in the perfect place in our spiritual lives to do so, and therefore our prayers will hold less gravity than when we “feel close” to the divine. In those moments of spiritual desolation, we might feel as though God does not want to hear from us, or that we have displeased Him in some way, and that is why He has allowed a distance between us. Why would we waste His time if He does not want to spend it with us?
It is in these moments that we ought to turn to prayer more fervently, even if it feels uncomfortable. One need only look to the words of Our Lord Himself while enduring the ultimate torment of His sacrifice on the cross when He exclaimed, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46 [NAB]). In that supreme moment of sacrificial love, fueled by pain and sorrow, Jesus still cries out to the Father, entering fully into the terrible human experience of abandonment and desolation, while refusing to cease His prayer. In fact, the night before He endured the pain of His passion, Luke tells us that “He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground” (Lk. 22:44). When the importance of His purpose weighed on Him, He repeatedly turned to the divine and placed all of His hope in the Father’s will.
When I have pointed that out to students and friends in the past, the response is almost always the same: “I am not Jesus.” This may seem like a gotcha that ends all debate and discussion on the topic; however, just because we are not Our Lord does not excuse us from attempting to live like Our Lord. St. Paul challenged the Church in Corinth to “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). At all times, we must, at the very least, pursue the image and example of Christ as a means by which we conduct ourselves and bear witness to our faith in an ever-darkening world.
As Catholics, we are blessed with a wealth of saints to turn to, in whom we can take comfort and find the wherewithal to move forward even when the path seems hopeless. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, at the end of her life, experienced an intense bout of spiritual dryness that is referred to as the “night of nothingness.” St. Faustina referred to her heart as being the same as a rock when she felt that the Divine had distanced Himself from her. Everyone, regardless of their level of faith, faces moments where it seems that they have been abandoned by the One who promised to never abandon them. The saints persevered. So can we.
The Church herself recognizes these unfortunate moments in our spiritual lives. The Catechism addresses them wonderfully, where it says:
Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness. Dryness belongs to contemplative prayer when the heart is separated from God, with no taste for thoughts, memories, and feelings, even spiritual ones. This is the moment of sheer faith clinging faithfully to Jesus in his agony and in his tomb. (CCC 2731)
The Church describes our perseverance in moments of desolation and dryness as an act of faith: a clinging to Christ as He endured the most human of experiences—namely, suffering and death. In those moments where we embrace Him in our suffering, we are binding our spiritual wounds to His physical wounds. It is in His sacrifice that our sufferings are made not only holy, but transformational, and spiritually beneficial.
Praying when enduring a spell of spiritual dryness or desolation does two distinct things. First, it reminds us that we need to do the work, even when we don’t feel like it. We spend hours poring over studies and research on medicines, workout routines, vaccines, therapies, vitamin regimens, diets, emotional health, mental health, and everything in between. We work out even when we don’t feel like it because deep down we know that it is the right thing to do. We pass on the pizza and dig into our kale and beet salads, and we deny ourselves the pleasure of sugar and instead endure the chemically bewildering flavors of diet soda. So, why then can’t we employ the same determination and attitude towards our spiritual lives?
Work isn’t always easy, nor is it supposed to be. But it is precisely in the moments that we do not want to put in the effort that we can find transformative power in our ability to do the right thing. We remind ourselves that we are not slaves to our feelings but custodians of our free will.
Secondly, we show Our Lord that we are most assuredly in this fight for the long haul. We are not bandwagon fans that buy the gear before the championship only to put it in the cedar chest in the attic when the season ends, either in triumph or despair. We let Him know that even when it seems as if He has chosen to pull His brightest and most intense flame from our hearts, a spark remains, and we will kindle it faithfully until it blazes once again. We bind ourselves to Christ when we pray in moments of desolation more profoundly than at any other time in our lives.
Death, taxes, and moments of spiritual desolation. Unlike the first two, we can overcome spiritual desolation by putting in effort beyond what we believe we are capable of in the moment. We won’t be so persuasive when it’s our time to go home or when we pick up the phone to deal with the IRS.
In the end, it is a matter of trust. Do we trust Our Lord? Do we trust ourselves? I submit that we ought to bind both trusts together, and rely on one or the other to do the heavy lifting from time to time. Above all, don’t give up. Ever.
Photo by Stefan Kunze on Unsplash
