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Wisdom Quote
This fine, pleasant weather will not always last. Sometimes you will find yourself deprived and destitute of all feelings of devotion and your soul will seem like barren, sterile desert where there is no path or road leading to God, nor any water of grace to refresh you because of the aridity that now seems to threaten it with complete and absolute desolation.
*Francis De Sales. Introduction to the Devout Life. Trans. J. K. Ryan.
Wisdom Story
A couple had two little boys, ages eight and ten. The boys were excessively mischievous. They were always getting in trouble, and the parents could be assured that if any mischief occurred in the town, their two sons were involved in some way.
Dad and mom were at their wits end as to what to do about their sons' behavior. The mother had heard that a pastor in town had been successful in disciplining children. So, she asked her husband if he thought they should send the boys to the pastor. The husband said, "We might as well. We need to do something before I really lose my temper!" The pastor agreed to speak with the boys. He asked to see them individually.
The eight year old went to meet the pastor first. The pastor sat the boy down. He asked him sternly, "Where is God?" The boy gave no response. So, the pastor repeated the question in a sterner tone, "Where is God?" Again, the boy gave no answer. Afterward, the pastor shouted loudly, shaking his finger in the boy's face, "Where is God?!"
The boy bolted from the room and ran directly home, slamming himself in the closet. His older brother followed him into the closet and asked what had happened. The younger brother said, with a trembling voice, "We are in big trouble this time. God is missing, and they think we did it."
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Wisdom Comments
The above tale brings to our attention a basic affirmation of the Christian Way: God is present, everywhere. This theologians speak of as the omnipresence of God: the Everywhere-Presence of God.
This raises a question, then, of fluctuation in our lives between a sense of the Divine Presence and a sense of absence of the Presence of God. Often what we feel with lack of sense of the Divine Presence is called desolation or spiritual aridity. Often what we feel with a sense of the Divine Presence is consolation.
We can always affirm the Presence of God even when we do not feel the Presence of God. Such affirmation is an act of pure faith, and it may be more faithful for it is made in the face of the felt-absence of God. Affirmation of the Divine Presence in the darkness of feeling establishes that faith is in the Divine Presence, not in our sense of the Divine Presence.
Likewise, we need to remain aware, in consolation and desolation, that the sense of Divine Nearness is secondary to the Presence of God. Thomas Merton writes, "We must remember that our experience of union with God, our feeling of His presence, is altogether accidental and secondary" (No Man is an Island). He continues, "It is only a side effect of His actual presence in our souls, and gives no more sure indication of that presence in any case."
This conclusion is based on spiritual theology. "For God Himself is above all apprehensions and ideas and sensations, however spiritual, that can ever be experienced by the spirit of man in this life," writes Merton. God, then, defines the nature of true faith, not our experience of God, an experience grounded in ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings. While God, then, is the Source of all divine activity within and among us, the activity at best is only evidence of God. Indeed, not all apparent Divine activity is divine, and this is where spiritual discernment is useful to us. For to assign anything to God, even that we sense God truly, itself is a matter of discernment.
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