SISL10 – I Don’t Feel God’s Love – Struggles in the Spiritual Life with Fr. Timothy Gallagher – Discerning Hearts Podcasts

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Discerning hearts.com, in cooperation with the oblates of the Virgin Mary, presents struggles

in the spiritual life, their nature and their remedies, with Father Timothy Gallagher.

Father Gallagher is the author of many best-selling books on the theology and spirituality of St.

Ignatius of Loyola.

He holds the St. Ignatius chair of spiritual formation at St. John Theological Seminary

and Denver, Colorado.

Struggles in the spiritual life, their nature and their remedies, with Father Timothy Gallagher.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

Welcome back, Father Gallagher.

Well, thank you once again, Chris.

We are on the spiritual journey, and we're beginning to make some friends in the stories

that you've told us about Bob and Julie and Kathy and how several others, and what should

become apparent now to those who are with us on this journey, is that everybody is experiencing

something.

It's never where I'm over this hump, and I'll never have spiritual desolation again,

or I'll never have the struggles again.

In reality, you can almost count that some struggles will continue to pop up.

Sure.

Yeah, that's just part of what everything human, and certainly our spiritual experience

says, well, now the reason why we continue to speak about one struggle after another

is because that's the theme of this book, is to identify these various struggles.

But as I said, when we first began speaking, this is not primarily a book about struggles.

It is primarily a book about freedom from struggles, and that's why we're looking at them.

I just love the hope that Ignatius is teaching engenders, and in this part of the book, we're

following Ignatius' description of various experiences of spiritual desolations.

But let's look at another one.

And if I could just add something real quick, I'm sorry to interrupt Father Gallagher, but

if I could just on that note about hope, they are growing in every single case, the fact

that they are trying to work this through the richer and deeper the experiences.

It is so worth the journey, isn't it?

It is.

And that says that God's loving providence is working 100% of the time in our lives, not

only in the days of spiritual consolation, when we have spiritual energy and feel the Lord's

love and closeness, but also when the Lord is permitting spiritual desolation.

Because as these characters go through this, and they're just mirrors of all of us, we

actually do grow in some wonderful ways.

And normally, certain kinds of growth only come through the dealing with spiritual desolation.

Well, alright, this is Kathy.

Now, when we meet Kathy, she has just signed up for a six-week program of prayer in her

parish, and her pastor, Father Bauer, is inviting parishioners to come, and he's going to guide

them through a six-week experience.

So he'll be giving talks one evening a week through these six weeks explaining about

how to pray.

They'll supply them scriptures to pray with daily.

He's going to ask them if they can give maybe 15, 20 minutes a day to this kind of prayer.

And he asks them also to keep a journal after they pray, just note what's going on in their

prayer.

So this is all new to Kathy.

She's never prayed with the Bible, but she's very intrigued by it because she's always

wanted to be able to pray with the Bible.

So she goes to the first meeting, and she loves it.

The talk really is interesting.

They have small group sharing, and she enjoys meeting other people who are also interested

in the life of prayer.

And now, our first, we meet Kathy on Thursday of week one of these six weeks.

Today's passage was Bartimaeus from Mark 10.

I had no trouble praying with it for 20 minutes.

It makes a nice start to the day, like being fed spiritually.

As I began, I took a moment the way Father said to see Jesus' look of love upon me.

Then I read the passage slowly and saw myself there in the scene.

For a time, I just repeated Bartimaeus' prayer, Jesus' son of David, at pity on me.

As I did, peace entered my heart.

I felt that Jesus was near.

He heard my prayer, and that he would help me and heal me as he did Bartimaeus.

And so with reverence, as Kathy begins, she's experiencing warm spiritual consolation,

the work of the good spirit.

And you can just feel the strength that is in the growth that is coming into her spiritual

life because she is beginning to pray this way.

Four days later.

Today is the fifth day and it continues to go well.

Today's passage is Isaiah 43-1-7.

You are precious.

In my eyes and honored and I love you.

This message speaks to my heart and to a place that can feel too alone and afraid.

The time passed quickly.

I go now to the day with a sense of being loved and of God's closeness.

Again, a beautiful experience of prayer.

Full consolation and a strengthening for the day that lies ahead.

This is why we pray.

This is why daily prayer of this kind can make such a difference.

Four days later and Kathy is now in the second week.

I begin to understand why people pray daily with Scripture.

God's Word is really starting to feel like God's Word to me.

Not just a book to revere, but a word spoken by a person to me.

Today's passage is Psalm 139-1-18.

Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.

You knit me in my mother's womb.

I praise you that I am wonderfully made.

By very self, you know.

I have never realized that God is this close to me.

That He shaped me so personally and so lovingly.

I find that I want to praise Him.

Again, this morning I go to the day feeling loved and accompanied.

Again, a rich and beautiful experience of prayer and spiritual consolation.

From another journal entry in the following week.

As these weeks pass, I am beginning to sense something new in my relationship with Jesus.

The best way I can say it is that He is becoming real for me in a new way.

I am also finding it easier to reach out to others, to listen, to offer help, to be patient.

I don't want this to end when the six weeks finish.

So you can hear God's grace working very richly.

As she's taking a wonderful step forward in her spiritual life.

Her communion with Jesus is growing, and there's a desire for the future that this relationship

from this prayer continue past the six weeks.

Nine days later and we're in week four.

Today I pray with Jesus and counter with the Samaritan woman in John chapter four.

Maybe it was because I was tired, because this passage is much longer than the others,

or because there are things in John's gospel that I don't understand.

But I had a harder time getting into it this morning.

This was a disappointment, because I was looking forward to praying with this passage.

Father Bowers spoke beautifully of it on Wednesday.

I did my best, so everything's right here, but nothing really struck me.

Father told us to expect days like this, and I understand that this is part of any daily life of prayer.

It probably is a good thing that I experience it during these six weeks of learning.

If father read where they're listening to her, he would not have said absolutely.

Because this will be from time to time part of the life of prayer.

And to be prepared for it is very helpful, and Kathy does everything right here.

She doesn't stop praying because it's not as warm and consoled as the preceding times.

And she is exploring even a reason why the Lord might allow this.

Then six days later, she is praying, and this is where things take a new turn.

We prayed with Matthew 8, 23 through 27, the coming of the storm.

I settled in as usual to pray.

I was there in the boat with the disciples, that's that Ignatian way of imaginatively entering into and living the scene from within.

I was there in the boat with the disciples and Jesus, who slept while the storm arose.

But when I heard him ask, why are you terrified or you of little faith, everything changed?

Why are you terrified? Why? Because there's a storm raging.

We are in danger of death and you are sleeping.

Suddenly I was back ten years when I had the cancer that meant I'd never have children.

I was afraid then too, and you slept.

I grew angry in this prayer in a way I never have before.

Why were you terrified? Didn't I have reason to be terrified?

Why did you sleep? That's the real question.

So something just completely unforeseen has arisen, and obviously something very significant.

As arisen in Catholic prayer, a deep place has been touched with an emotion that she could not have foreseen, a sense of anger.

The next day now in Catholic prayer.

Yesterday's prayer and questions are still churning in me.

Today the passage was the multiplication of the loaves and fish in Matthew 14.

It's all about Jesus' compassion for the crowd, his healings, and his concern for their hunger.

None of this spoke to me.

As I sit here in my room, I don't feel his compassion.

I don't feel his closeness. I don't feel his love.

So with what great reverence because we're in a deep place in Catholic's experience here,

obviously she is now experiencing spiritual desolation.

There's no warmth of love here, you know, a warm feeling of being loved by God and a warm feeling of being able to love others.

All of that has gone, and now it's just the very different spiritual space.

He seems distant like I'm here and he is far away.

I don't rise from this prayer feeling ready to be patient and compassionate toward others.

Why should I pray on days like today?

I almost feel worse for having prayed with this passage.

Alright, the next day.

The scripture for prayer was the resurrection of Lazarus.

When Jesus hears that Lazarus is deathly ill, when his sisters plead with Jesus to come and remind him of his love for Lazarus,

the scripture says he remained for two days in the place where he was, and Lazarus dies.

Once more that place of pain and anger was touched in me.

Again, today I don't feel God's lover compassion.

All that warmth I felt in the first weeks, you are precious, I love you.

Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me, all of that is gone.

I wonder if it was even real.

I don't feel loved, I feel abandoned, I feel alone, I hurt.

I can't go on like this, I want a quick praying.

Why should I pray when this happens?

I need to speak with someone who can help me make sense out of this.

So again, with great sensitivity and reverence, we'll approach Kathy's experience

for the sake of the learning that we can find here.

So what happened, that her prayer was so consoled, she loved it, she felt a new closeness with the Lord.

She didn't want this to end when the six weeks were over.

And then with very good will, she sits down to pray with the coming of the storm,

and at Jesus' question, why are you terrified?

A deep place of pain and anger and hurt wells up within her,

and now she no longer as she continues faithfully to pray,

although she's beginning to ask herself, why should I?

And I just feel worse as I'm doing this.

A deep place of pain and anger contained for ten years is touched,

and all of that emotion wells up.

Kathy doesn't know how to understand this, she doesn't know what's going on here.

And wisely, she finds herself saying, I really need to speak with someone about this.

Kathy at this point in her prayer is experiencing yet another form of spiritual desolation,

which Ignatius describes as feeling without love, when the soul he says feels without love, without charity.

And that's very much for Kathy is at this point in her prayer.

Any feeling of God's love is completely gone,

and she feels even like I'm here, and God, you're very distant from me.

So no shame here, and nothing is going wrong here.

In fact, it is precisely because something is going so rightly,

and because Kathy is praying so faithfully and with such fruit,

that she has reached now a point in which, as she and the Lord get closer,

needed to be touched.

It was a place that because it hurt too much, she had sort of walled off in her heart.

But what's happening is as she is growing closer in communion with the Lord,

and he is becoming increasingly real for her, inevitably.

God loves her too much just to allow this place with pain to remain.

And so it's touched as she gets closer to the Lord in her prayer.

Now, if Kathy doesn't understand this, doesn't talk with anyone,

she couldn't conceive of it, just stop all of this prayer.

Wisely, she knows that she needs to speak with someone,

and there your heart lifts up because if she does,

now you can already see, and she's eventually going to speak with Father Reed about this.

And she understands what's going on.

She'll be not only not discouraged,

but greatly heartened to go forward.

Because what's happening, although it's painful, is really very beautiful.

It's the beginning of the possibility of a kind of healing

that has not been possible for 10 years.

And it is becoming possible because she's praying,

and because she's praying this way with the Word of God.

As you can imagine, we'll be coming back to this in future chapters in the book.

Now, I want to make a point here,

because we've watched Kathy go through joyful times of spiritual consolation,

and then times of spiritual desolation.

And Ignatius understands that this is normal in a well-lived spiritual life.

There will be times of spiritual consolation,

a day, part of a prayer, time, a week, months,

and there will be times of spiritual desolation,

which God will permit from time to time,

as He is lovingly doing for Kathy here.

Because now there is an opportunity for a healing that before this was not possible.

And what Ignatius counsels us to do is,

first of all, just to be serene about that.

Any of that sense that it's only me somehow that nobody else goes through this is every one of us.

And the more we grow in the spiritual life,

and the more attuned we are to our spiritual experience,

the more we'll be aware of it.

You can see Kathy is growing in that way.

The journaling is really helping her to get in touch with her spiritual experience.

That awareness is really growing in her.

But the more we grow in this, the more we realize it isn't just me, it's everyone.

And actually, if this were not happening,

that's when Ignatius would want to see what's going on.

So if any of us, part of this conversation,

recognize that I do go through times of spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation,

that is normal experience in a spiritual life lived in a fallen, yes, a loved and redeemed world.

What is important is in time of consolation,

to remain gratefully open, to receive the gift,

and to remain wisely humble.

The problems are not all over.

We'll be struggling again, but we'll be stronger and more prepared for it because of the grace given.

And in time of spiritual desolation, not to get hopelessly low,

as it were despairingly low somehow, that things are just going badly

and that's just the way they are and will be.

So joyfully humble in consolation, firmly trusting in time of spiritual desolation.

That's how we go forward in the spiritual life.

And the last thing I'll mention is you also see here,

at least, touched upon another quality of spiritual desolation.

It won't always appear in times of spiritual desolation, but sometimes it will.

And this is what I call the sense of irreparable disaster.

You know, sometimes in a day of desolation, you'll feel like everything's going badly.

My whole spiritual life is all getting undone, it's a mess, things are just going to keep going this way.

It's too late, you've made a mess of things.

That whole sense that a disaster that is irreparable and it's not going to change and emphatically know.

Emphatically know that's just one more of the discouraging lies of the enemy in time of spiritual desolation.

If you are going through that spiritual desolation, it may well be precisely because you're growing

because things are going well and God is inviting you to another kind of growth.

The thing about this particular type of desolation that feeling that you are not loved,

that there's a lack of love, it is acutely painful in some ways because there is...

It's like a form of grief almost.

A love that you thought was there or that you had, maybe you knew it was there, but now it's gone.

And you want it back, you want to be whole again because when you're loved,

you want to be with the other, there's a desire to be with them and that is taken away from you,

that desire, that ache for oneness once again.

It can be really difficult, like very much like grief, can it, Father Galator?

Sure, very much and that's the quality of sadness in time of spiritual desolation.

That will be turning toward very quickly as we continue with these reflections.

And probably more felt the closer we have grown to the Lord.

But again, if the Lord is permitting that it's always for reasons of growth,

there'll be some kind of purification there, there'll be a healing in one way or another,

there'll be a deepened understanding of the spiritual life or prayer,

and a deeper rootedness in that, as I say, that blessed humility,

that orgnacious is the space that opens us to all God's grace and growth in the spiritual life.

So certainly the sadness can be there and we'll watch Ignatius turn quite soon

in our reflections directly to that.

Any final thoughts for the soul that finds himself a being led in their prayer

to those very tender epiceners, the place that have deep, deep sources at their heart?

If at all possible, speak with a wise and competent spiritual person.

Probably spouses can accompany each other in a beautiful way.

You know, in this kind of thing or a good spiritual friend,

we've seen Julie has her friend Emily, who is very richly living the spiritual life.

If Emily would be the kind of person that a Julie could speak with about these things,

but don't be along with it.

And I'll just express, I hope that anyone who has been part of this conversation

will also be part of the sequel of this, when Kathy does meet Father Reed.

Thank you so much, Father Gallagher.

Thank you, Chris.

You've been listening to struggles in the spiritual life, their nature and their remedies,

who is Father Timothy Gallagher.

To hear and or to download this conversation,

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I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

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