20140726
SPIRITUAL
DESOLATION
Reading 1, Sirach 44:1, 10-15
1 Next let us praise illustrious men, our ancestors in
their successive generations.
11 In their descendants they find a rich inheritance,
their posterity.
12 Their descendants stand by the commandments and, thanks
to them, so do their children's children.
14 Their bodies have been buried in peace, and their name
lives on for all generations.
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 132:11, 13-14, 17-18
11 Yahweh has sworn to David, and will always
remain true to his word, 'I promise that I will set a son
of yours upon your throne.
14 'Here shall I rest for evermore, here shall I make my
home as I have wished.
17 'There I shall raise up a line of descendants for
David, light a lamp for my anointed;
18 I shall clothe his enemies with shame, while his own
crown shall flourish.'
Gospel, Matthew 13:16-17
16 'But blessed are your eyes because they see, your ears
because they hear!
17 In truth I tell
you, many prophets and upright people longed to see what you see, and never saw
it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.
SPIRITUAL DESOLATION
Do
you feel the absence of God in your life? Do you feel that God is so far away even when you pray,
so much so that after a few attempts, you give up praying altogether, since you
do not experience His presence? If you are spiritually dry and have lost
the taste for prayer, then you are going through spiritual desolation.
But more importantly you
must ask: what is the cause or the
source of this desolation? We must discern whether our desolation is
coming from the wheat or the weeds of our lives. The source of this
desolation is critical in the work of discernment. In itself, spiritual
desolation is useful in discerning the state of our spiritual life. When
the origin is from God, we know that the Lord wants us to take the leap of
faith and move to a mystical state of prayer life. But if the
origin is from evil spirits, it is a wakeup call to put our spiritual life in
order.
In most instances, we can
be sure that we experience desolation because of sin in our
lives. These are the sins that the Lord, through Jeremiah,
denounced in His people. He said, “Amend your behaviour and your actions
and I will stay with you here in this place. Put no trust in delusive
words like these: This is the sanctuary of the Lord, the sanctuary of the Lord,
the sanctuary of the Lord!” If our hearts can no longer feel the presence
of God, it is because we have lost the sanctifying grace given to us at our
baptism. Because of our sins, the Lord has hidden Himself from us, or conversely,
sin has darkened our mind and heart, so much so that we cannot see the Lord, or
feel Him anymore.
Truly, we all know that when we live a double life, a compromised
life that seeks to live partially a life of grace and a life of sin, we will eventually
enter into spiritual dryness. One does not become a great sinner
overnight, or become an atheist in just a matter of days or even months.
Rather, it is the gradual loss of relationship with the Lord as a consequence
of a serious sin, which then spawns a whole series of sins. As sin
increases, we find it more and more difficult to pray. When we pray, the
conscience will condemn us and the devil will remind us that we are hypocrites
and not worthy to come before God. In due course, we will give up on
ourselves and then we give up on God as well.
Sometimes, spiritual desolation is the outcome of hidden
sins, those sins which we are not ready to face for fear that we might
have to give them up. So we avoid thinking of those hidden sins, consciously
or unconsciously, in the hope that by not examining them, we would be able to
live without feeling guilty or sinful. Yet, deep in our hearts, the good
spirit will prick our conscience again and again. In order to find
apparent peace, we silence the good spirit and in the process, we lose the
ability to hear the voice of God or to feel His presence and His abiding love,
for the Spirit cannot dwell in a heart of sin.
In
the final analysis, spiritual desolation is the ultimate effect of a tepid and
perfunctory prayer life.
When our relationship with the Lord is no longer intimate and personal, God
becomes very distant from us.
Yet, there is hope and grace even in our spiritual
desolation. Instead of falling into despair, we should realize
that this is an instrument of God to draw us back to Him. The spiritual
aridity in our hearts will create a vacuum in us. If we attend to this
emptiness, then we will be able to feel with the psalmist, a yearning for
God. Conversely, ignoring this spiritual dryness can cause us great harm
and put our spiritual life in danger. If we fail to discern
carefully the cause, we either waste an opportunity to move further in our
mystical life, or allow our spiritual growth to stagnate and deteriorate
further.
Indeed how merciful and
gracious our God is. He allows us
to experience His absence, not to punish, but to awaken us and make us long for
Him in our emptiness. Like the psalmist we desire for the dwelling place
of God. “My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart
and my flesh cry out for the living God.” So the absence of God actually
creates in us a deep thirst for Him. This will give us the impetus to put
our house in order, for God promises us through Jeremiah, “But if you do amend
your behaviour and your actions, if you treat each other fairly, if you do not
shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow alien gods, to your
own ruin, then here in this place I will stay with you.” Truly, God will
make His home in us if we welcome Him by living a life of integrity and
justice.
How
can we arouse ourselves to make this leap of faith in Him and break free from
the bondage of sin? With
the psalmist, we pray that we will come to realize as he did, “I had rather one
day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I had rather lie at the threshold
of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” If
God were to dwell in us, then we must seek to purify the Temple of God, where
the Holy Spirit dwells. Otherwise, God cannot make His home in us.
But if we do, then we can rejoice with the psalmist, “How lovely is your
dwelling place, Lord, mighty God! Even the sparrow finds a home, and the
swallow a nest in which she puts her young - Your altars, O Lord of
hosts, my king and my God!”
So
the experience of the spiritual desert is to be taken positively as the channel
of God’s grace for us. It
reveals the patience and mercy of God for us. This explains why God is like the
farmer who instructed His servant not to weed out the darnel but “let them both
grow until the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers:
First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the
wheat into my barn.” We must allow such desert moments to prompt us to come to terms
with ourselves and the way we conduct our lives before God and before our
fellowmen. If we put away the sins of hypocrisy, idolatry and injustice,
then not only will we experience God in prayer and in worship in the Temple but
God will live in us because we become the dwelling place of God. And how
blessed we will be! Yes, “Blessed they who dwell in your house!
Continually they praise you. Blessed the men whose strength you are! They go
from strength to strength.”
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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