Because we are a culture that aims to please our senses, we can often rely on our emotional state to inform us of how strong our relationship with God is. We can equate positive feelings about our life with God being close, and negative feelings meaning that God is far away. While this can be true in many cases, this evaluation can be detrimental to our growth in spiritual life. Good feelings do not always equate to a path of holiness. We only have to look at Jesus on the cross to realize that this is not always the case. In fact, the passion, suffering, and death of Jesus can reveal to us that we become perfect through obedient suffering. I offer a reflection on my spiritual life as one way that God has used desolations to increase my desire for holiness and ultimately Him.
When I grew up, I knew a lot about God thanks to my parents, but it would be hard to say that I had a relationship with Him besides doing the things I knew that I was supposed to do as a Catholic (like going to mass, confessing my sins, and avoiding mortal sin). My parents did teach my siblings and I how to pray, but for whatever reason I did not begin to understand how a relationship with God worked until my high school years. It was there that I encountered God in retreat experiences and youth group environments. I began to form an emotional attachment to God rather than just doing the things I was supposed to do. It was great! Yet, I slowly began to equate God’s presence to the good feelings that I had experienced on retreat or in prayer, and I stayed in this mindset through entering (and leaving) seminary and well into young adulthood.
It was here that my spiritual growth was stunted. I was continually in discernment and in liturgy, chasing an emotional high to know that God was speaking to me. While God blessed me in some moments, I was turning into the spiritual equivalent of a child continually asking for candy from their parents. In my ignorance and pride, I persisted for nearly a decade if not longer. Eventually, I began to realize that there was more to the spiritual life than doing the right thing and chasing spiritual highs.
What changed my heart was reading the Gospels/the Bible daily and taking them seriously. I had been teaching religion in the classroom for a couple of years and while I engaged the students and was teaching truth, I did not find many spiritual fruits from my labor. Like the Rich Young Man, I turned to the Word of God, and asked, “What more do I need to do?” One day while reading Matthew, the passages on humility began to stick out to me: Blessed are the poor in spirit….the first shall be last…take up your cross daily and follow me… and I was convicted. I had been willing to embrace the sweetness of the life of a Christian, but I had glossed over the bitterness. It was in that moment that I realized that I had crafted a life of obedience, but not a life in the Holy Spirit.
Confronted with the need to go deeper and experiencing a change in careers, God orchestrated my life to slow way down. I no longer had my normal securities, and He and I could examine my life together with no distractions. What He showed me is that I held onto too many pleasures that did not allow me to abandon everything for a life in the Spirit. These were not sinful pleasures. They were good pleasures or entertainment that I had begun to live for whenever my ministry was done for the day or work week. So I had to let them go – WILLINGLY. That was/is tough. Letting go of sin is one thing. You know you have to. But letting go of good things so that God can purify them or give you greater things is a whole new level of purification. Doubts creep in. I told myself time and time again that I was crazy, that I was losing my personality, or that I was becoming unrelatable as I begrudgingly gave up one entertainment after another. There were months of doubts, stresses, persecution from the outside, and even anger about the process. Yet, through the struggle, God gave me the grace to persevere, and when I got to the other side of the first round of purification, God gave me back many of the things I had previously enjoyed, but they were now ordered correctly. However, some other things never came back, and God gave me the grace to no longer desire them or to persevere when desire did/does arise.
My story is not unique for someone striving after holiness. Once we become comfortable with doing the right thing, or living the Catholic moral life, God desires to take us deeper. Doing the right thing is preparation for something greater in life by receiving the living Spirit of God. This is the transition from Judaism that lived under the Law to Christianity that lives in the New Covenant. But we have to be willing to give up good things to receive greater things from our Father. We have to go beyond cheery feelings to experience the desolation of the desert where Jesus fights the battle for us. It is in suffering and trial that we are purified, like silver that is seven times refined.
My spiritual journey is far from over, and I am still being purified of many other attachments. However, I am slowly learning to have complete abandonment to the will of the Father which is what Jesus came to this Earth to demonstrate for us. But one thing I have learned from the saints and my own personal experience is that your spiritual journey truly begins when you are willing to suffer for something greater, because that is what it means to take up our cross daily and follow Him.
