Wildfires and wars, sickness and suffering of every kind. It can sometimes leave us crying out: \u201cWhere are you, God?\u201d The silence can feel deafening at times. Prayers are whispered and screamed, written, sung, and held in the quiet of the heart. We try everything and anything and may still feel only isolation and abandonment. The \u201cdark night of the soul\u201d is, of course, part and parcel of the spiritual journey and something experienced by some of our greatest saints, but that fact usually does little to ease our spiritual desperation when we find ourselves enveloped in the arid landscape of the spiritual desert.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite Scripture quotes comes from Jeremiah: \u201cFor surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future of hope\u2026if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.\u201d (Jer 29:11-14)<\/p>\n
While I love this quote precisely because it reminds me that God is there, always, waiting for me to come around, sometimes it offers more questions than answers. If we are in the throes of suffering or we are watching others suffer, it can make us wonder what exactly God wants us to do to earn release from our \u201cexile\u201d? When we don\u2019t get a response or a clue, it can leave us feeling ignored and abandoned.<\/p>\n
As we look around our world, our country, our communities, and our families, we witness suffering that can seem cruel, perhaps even beyond what humans can be expected to bear. It is in moments like these that God may feel distant, unreachable, maybe even absent. It can cause not only spiritual despair but a doubt so deep that we may begin to question the very foundation of faith that has always shored us up.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven a believer can sometimes falter when faced with the experience of pain,\u201d Pope Francis has said. \u201cIt is a frightening reality that, when it barges in and attacks, can leave a person distraught, even to the point of shattering his or her faith. The person then is faced with a crossroads: he or she can allow suffering to lead to withdrawal into self-doubt to the point of despair and rebellion; or he or she can accept it as an opportunity for growth and discernment about what really matters in life until the time one encounters God.\u201d<\/p>\n
As is often the case, the pope\u2019s wise words are difficult to live. Finding an \u201copportunity for growth\u201d in the hardest moments of our lives or in the pain of those around us can feel like a pious platitude. So, what can we do if we feel ourselves faltering and cannot see our way clear to approach our suffering in such an enlightened way just yet? We can continue to show up in prayer. Daily. Even when it feels as though our spiritual life is a black hole devoid of God\u2019s presence and our prayers words shouted into the wind.<\/p>\n
Paulist Father Tom Ryan, leading a retreat I attended years ago at St. Mary\u2019s on the Lake in Lake George, offered one \u201cnon-negotiable\u201d when it comes to prayer. \u201cBe faithful to the rendezvous,\u201d he said, following up with a challenging question: \u201cCan you love the God of consolations when the consolations aren\u2019t there?\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps that is a question each one of us can ponder not just today but any time a prayer isn\u2019t answered in the way we had hoped or isn\u2019t answered at all (at least as far as we can tell). Can we continue to show up and sit in God\u2019s presence anyway, knowing that if we do \u2014 through dark and light, joy and sorrow, abundance and scarcity \u2014 God will respond to our hungry hearts in God\u2019s own time and release us from our exile?<\/p>\n
This column originally appeared in the Jan. 23, 2025, issue of The Evangelist.<\/i><\/p>\n
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Wildfires and wars, sickness and suffering of every kind. It can sometimes leave us crying out: \u201cWhere are you, God?\u201d The silence can feel deafening at times. Prayers are whispered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[806,289,192,270,805,101,84],"class_list":["post-14132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-dark-night","tag-darkness","tag-desert","tag-doubt","tag-dryness","tag-life-lines","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n