Dear Friends,
Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him but found him not; I called him but he gave no answer. “I will rise now and go about the city in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.” I sought him but found him not. – Song of Songs 3:1-2
Those of us who have lived through days, weeks, perhaps even years, where our Lord seems to be completely silent read the above passage and remember exactly how it felt to search for God when he seems hidden. Maybe you are experiencing this now in your spiritual life.
There are no words to adequately express the longing in our souls, the desire to touch the Divine beyond what our faith assures us is always there. We live in a society of quick fixes that tell us “If you are asking for God’s blessings and you are not receiving them, the problem must be you”.
Mother Teresa may just be the saint for our times. Mother Teresa experienced a definitive change in her experience of God. In her early years as a Loreto nun to the moment she received her ‘call within a call’ to found the Missionaries of Charity, she felt God’s nearness in prayer. But once she began her work in the streets of Calcutta, God was silent within her. For nearly 40 years she sought God as she gave her life to the poor, treating each person as the God whom she sought. She spent countless hours in prayer and did remarkable things for the Lord while he remained silent. She relied on faith as her compass and her greatest consolation was the assurance that although she could not sense his presence within her, she knew without a doubt he was accomplishing great things through her. If you want to learn of her journey, check out the book Come Be My Light.
An unknown prisoner in WWll understood this phenomenon when he wrote on the wall of a concentration camp in Cologne, Germany. “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there. And I believe in God, even when he is silent.”
The psalms are full of desperate pleas for the Lord to intervene and answer prayer. They are also filled with beautiful testimonies of God’s nearness and fidelity even when we can’t see it. In times when God seems silent, reading scripture, especially the psalms, and reading from the lives of Saints can bring us comfort.
This Lent, RCSpirituality will be offering a Wednesday series on Navigating the Desert. I hope you will sign up to receive this weekly meditation for use personally, or with a group. Sign up HERE.
We are also excited to announce a new Meditation Novena entitled “When God Seems Hidden” written by Fr. Todd Arsenault, LC. This will be available beginning during Lent. Watch for it!
If God seems silent, consider asking for the intercession of Saint Teresa of Calcutta who said, “If I ever become a Saint–I will surely be one of ‘darkness’. I will continually be absent from Heaven to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
Yours in the Heart of Jesus,
Donna
