How can I learn to trust?

Q:  Dear Father John, I have felt a great desire to enter religious life for a few years now, but keep hitting an invisible wall so-to-speak. After attempting the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the Lord helped me to see that I am not ‘indifferent’ and have to rebuild my foundation of a personal relationship with Him. In particular He helped me see my utter inability to surrender stemming from a lack of trust. Unfortunately, due to my lived experience of past hurts, I find myself unable to trust anyone, relying only on myself which is then projected onto God and I feel utterly stuck. I feel as though trust requires gratitude, but gratitude requires humility and being humble, seeing and accepting my weakness is utterly impossible when you have established a pattern of trusting only in yourself and so it is an endless cycle.

Where does one go from here? How does one learn to trust, to be grateful when you only see the failures and hurts in life, how does one surrender and become humble? Is it all a pure gift from God, or is there more I can do on
my end as I have been begging for these graces for years to no avail?

Thank you for your wonderful blog which has been very fruitful!

A: Reading this question gives me deep joy. The grace you have already received is so beautiful! I mean, the grace of understanding the core of the spiritual life (trust) and your need for deep, spiritual rehabilitation in that area. God has been speaking his wisdom to your soul!! You actually bring up at least three separate but related issues. I will comment briefly on them one by one.

Trust: The Heart of Holiness

First, and most importantly, you bring up the issue of trust. However much of the Spiritual Exercises you completed, you can be sure that it was fruitful. The Exercises allow us to confront in a powerfully intimate and personal way the fundamental, universal truths of the spiritual life. The universal truth that struck you the most is the very core of the Christian journey: the need for trust. Sin separates us and distances us from God. All sin – our own personal sins as well as the sins of others, both of which damage our souls – traces its origin back to the Fall of Adam and Eve (that’s why their sin is called “original sin”). What was the essence, the deepest core of their sin? We tend to think it was disobedience. Think again. You see, that disobedience was the trunk, but it grew out of an ever deeper root. Here’s how the Catechism puts it (#397):

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness [emphasis added].

So rehabilitating trust in God is not only YOUR primary project for growth in holiness, but it is EVERY CHRISTIAN’S primary project! That’s not to belittle your journey. Your experiences in life, good and bad, have damaged your capacity to trust in God in a personal, unique way. Your mission in life, your vocation, your way of knowing, loving and serving God is also personal and unique. And so, the path you take to rehabilitate your trust in God will have certain twists and turns, certain epiphanies and setbacks, that will be entirely your own. But, in the end, re-learning to trust God is for each one of us the central, defining spiritual project.

What To Do?

Now we are ready to face the second issue you bring up: “Where does one go from here?” I detect frustration in your question. That’s totally understandable – but it’s also an indicator that something is askew. I think it has to do with expectations. You are wondering how you can develop trust when you don’t have much. You are wondering how to develop gratitude when you don’t have humility. You are wondering how to develop humility when you have formed such a strong and deep pattern of self-reliance.

Let me answer your question with a question. Let’s pretend you don’t know how to play tennis, but you decide that you want to learn. How do you do it? How do you go from zero to beginner to intermediate to advanced? How do you develop the physical skills and coordination and muscle memory necessary for tennis, when you have none of those things? The answer, I think you will agree, is fairly simple. You learn to play tennis by playing tennis.

Holy Tennis

Growth in virtue (trust, confidence in God, surrender, humility, and gratitude) is similar.  Virtues are moral habits, just as like skills are physical habits. They are developed under two conditions. First, we need to have the raw material. Future tennis players have to have the normal use of all the major muscle groups (you can’t play tennis without arms). Future saints have to have the normal use of human nature: “heart, soul, mind, and strength” as our Lord put it (Luke 10:27). From your question, it is clear that you have the raw material. Now you just need to begin to put it into action. Virtues are not developed “once and for all.” We can never check a virtue off our “to-do” list. We grow in trust, little by little, by trusting. We grow in humility, little by little, by exercising self-denial. We grow in gratitude, little by little, by saying thank you, sincerely and intentionally, over and over again, especially when we don’t feel like it. The sacraments nourish these efforts; prayer and spiritual reading/study informs and enlightens these efforts; the Holy Spirit – directly, through a spiritual director or mentor, through faith-based friendships, and through God’s Providence – will coach you.

St. John of the Cross put it succinctly when writing about the virtue of love (which is the core of every virtue, so it applies equally to trust, humility, gratitude…): “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”

As long as you are patient, even the tiniest effort to trust God will give God’s grace a chance to touch your soul and strengthen the very trust that you are using. Remember, at Baptism you received sanctifying grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and at Confirmation you received a strengthening of them. God is already at work in your life.  He is drawing you closer to him. The journey will take your whole life, so don’t think that you have to make yourself perfect before God can do anything with you. On the contrary! God is already working in and through your life! Your desire to know and follow him better is already a clear sign that you are growing!

Two Time-Tested Trust Workouts

On a practical level, the saints all agree on two spiritual exercises that directly strengthen our capacity to trust God.

First, meditating on Christ’s Passion. As we gaze on Christ “loving us to the end” (John 13:1), our fears are quelled and we realize, gradually, that even though everyone else may have betrayed us and wounded us and lost their trustworthiness, Christ will never betray us. He is worthy of our trust. No matter what happens, he will keep on loving us. That’s one of the core messages of the Passion. On this point, I would greatly encourage you to watch The Passion of the Christ, and go through it gradually, using Inside the Passion as a kind of study guide, or guide for meditating on this central mystery of our faith.

Second, focus on discovering and embracing God’s will in the nitty-gritty of your daily life. We know what God’s will is through his Commandments, through the teachings of the Church, through the duties of our state in life, and through the circumstances of God’s Providence. Lord, what do you want me to do right now? That question, that prayer, is a powerful ally in your path of growing trust. Because every time we accept and embrace, and try to fulfill, God’s will, even with a fragile love and flimsy faith, we are actually exercising our trust in God. We are saying, “Okay Lord, I don’t really understand this completely, but I know that you want me to do it, so here goes…” That counts for simple tasks like washing the dishes. And it counts for more daunting tasks like talking about the faith or defending a Catholic position in a conversation at work. This is especially true when God’s will contradicts our natural preferences. That’s when we get to carry our own crosses, which is the privileged place for exercising, and therefore growing in, our trust in God.

We have done some related posts on these issues that you may want to read or re-read: a two-part post on trusting in God, and a two-part post on discerning God’s will.  If you keep those elements in play, you can be sure that you are making progress, regardless of how you may feel at any given moment.

Follow Your Call!!!

Finally, you mention at the beginning of your post that your trust issues have been “an invisible wall” in following what may be a vocation to the religious life. That may be a ruse of the devil. Being holy is not a requirement for entering religious life. In fact, a religious vocation, like any vocation, is actually, first and foremost, a specific path for growth in holiness. If your heart quickens at the thought of entering religious or consecrated life, you should act on it now. Visit religious congregations; speak with consecrated persons; keep taking whatever next step God puts in your mind until you discover your path. Don’t rush, but don’t delay! Maybe a good next step would be to finish the Spiritual Exercises retreat that you started (you mentioned that you “attempted” to do the Exercises – sounds like you didn’t finish!). If you like that idea, I can highly recommend my confreres’ who preach Spiritual Exercises Retreats here. In any case, if God has put that question in your heart, you can be sure that doing what you can to answer that question will help put you on the fast track to greater intimacy with him, and that’s what it’s all about.

God bless you!

Consolation and Desolation: What does it really mean?

Q: Dear Father John, I know you wrote before about consolation and desolation in the spiritual life.  But I have a follow-up question.  When we experience some kind of desolation, how do we know where it’s coming from?  I mean, how do we know whether it’s really from God or not?

A: This is a great question – and an important one, for Christians in today’s society.

Consolation and Desolation: Grasping the Terms

First, we have to have a quick review of what we mean by “consolation and desolation” in the spiritual life.  Usually, these terms refer to the felt presence of God in our soul (consolation), or the absence of that feeling (desolation).  By faith we know that God is always thinking of us, with us, interested in our lives, and loving us with a personal, determined love.  We know that by faith.  But we don’t always feel that in our emotional world.  In fact, sometimes we can feel an intense and painful emptiness inside.  Sometimes we can feel absolutely no excitement or pleasure at the thought of spiritual things.  Sometimes we can feel dry as a desert even when we are at prayer: emotionally, we don’t even want to keep praying.  We are like children with their homework: they know it is good for them to do it, and they know they should do it, but they just don’t feel like doing it.

This lack of the felt presence of God, a lack of emotional pleasure or resonance regarding God’s will for us, is usually referred to by spiritual writers as sensible desolation.  The contrary is sensible consolation.

Now we can get to your question.  If you are experiencing desolation, it can come from a variety of sources.  Simply knowing what those sources are can help us reflect on one’s personal situation and, usually, identify its source.

Our Own Fault

First, desolation can be caused by our own sin.  We may be inordinately attached to something: some habit, some relationship, some hope, some fear, even some hobby or pastime that may not be evil in itself… Or we may have committed some sin that we haven’t confessed or repented of yet.  Sooner or later, disordered attachments will interfere with our relationship with God.  God loves us too much to let us idolize anything for long.  If we are following him, when the time is right he will speak to our conscience about putting that disordered room in our soul back into order.  During the struggle to decide whether or not to obey what he is asking of us, we can experience desolation, because as we dilly-dally, our hearts are divided.  In this case, we are actually pushing God away, and the desolation is our own fault.  This happens frequently in the early stages of the spiritual life, but can return with a vengeance even after much growth, when the spiritualized capital sins attempt to re-conquer the soul.

At times, it is hard to identify disordered attachments.  If you are praying regularly (including at least an annual spiritual retreat), doing a regular examination of conscience, going to confession on a regular basis, and receiving some kind of spiritual direction (or at least you have a friend or small group of friends to whom you make yourself spiritually accountable), and following the commandments of God and the Church, you should be able to recognize these disordered attachments when the Holy Spirit points them out to you.  If you are not following those basic spiritual practices, your desolation may have this cause, and I would recommend renewing your commitment to these means for spiritual growth that all spiritual writers recommend.

Our Fallen Nature’s Fault

Second, desolation can flow from advancing self-knowledge.  As we grow in the spiritual life, God allows us to know ourselves better and better.  We begin to see just how deep our self-centered tendencies really go.  We begin to see just how vulnerable we are to temptations of vanity, pride, and sensuality.  We begin to see just how helpless we really are, when it comes to growth in holiness, without the constant aid of God’s grace.  This can create a disturbance in our relationship with God, because we no longer feel worthy of the great love he has for us.  We truly love God.  We truly want to follow him.  But when we resist approaching him because we have discovered that we actually don’t “deserve” to be loved so unconditionally we begin to stumble. It’s like the spouse who has been unfaithful and has difficulty accepting their spouse’s forgiveness, or the mother who has aborted her child and simply can’t seem to accept God’s mercy.  But in this stage of the spiritual life, the specific cause of the interior resistance is often less clear.  Here again, we end up separating ourselves from God.

This hurdle has to be faced and overcome, in order to become spiritually mature.  You have probably already detected the real source of the spiritual reluctance that comes from this situation.  It is a subtle form of pride.  And the enemy of our souls will often seize on this, stir it up, and try to exaggerate it.  The truly humble soul responds to its own unworthiness with peace and joy, throwing itself into God’s arms with total abandon, totally conscious of its absolute need for God’s grace, and contentedly aware of God’s delight in showing mercy to his needy children.

The deep interior resistance so many people experience when it comes to activating that kind of abandonment shows just how difficult developing the virtue of humility really is.  It is the bedrock of the spiritual life, and digging foundations is never fun.  But you can do it.  Read the lives of the saints (especially St. Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul and St. Faustina’s Diary).  Read the Psalms.  And get on your knees in front of the Eucharist, simply learning to trust more deeply in God’s goodness by exercising whatever level of trust you can as you gaze at Our Lord, who has chosen to be there for you, no matter what.

The Doctor at Work

Finally, desolation can flow from God’s direct action on the soul.  God can take away the consolation of his presence, without actually taking away his presence.  This is a method he uses to purify the soul and to increase the soul’s capacity for love.  If we can keep following God’s will in our lives even when we are passing through “a valley as dark as death” (Psalm 23:4), we will emerge with a much more mature faith, a more vibrant hope, and a deeper love.  These are the theological virtues that unite the soul to God – and union with God is what we were created for, and what God yearns us to achieve and deepen.

So when he takes away interior consolation in this way, we can rest assured that his wisdom and goodness will permit us, when emerged from the darkness, to undergo greater consolations than we ever imagined, because our soul’s capacity to experience God will have been increased by God directly.  These periods of purification initiated by God are often called the “dark night.”  We can have dark nights of the senses, of the spirit, of the intellect… It is when God, the doctor of our soul, lays us on the spiritual operating table and takes direct action.  Our job in this case is to trust and endure by continuing to seek and embrace God’s will in our lives (the commandments, the duties of our state in life, etc…).  The recent book on Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, chronicles a truly amazing journey through this kind of darkness.

I hope these reflections have helped you identify both where your current desolation is coming from, and how to react to it.  If not, I recommend taking up the prayer Jesus taught us through St. Faustina, and making it the constant refrain of your heart and mind throughout this season of your spiritual journey: “Jesus, I trust in you.”

How can I know the will of God in my life? – Part II of II

Q: Dear Father John, How can I know what the will of God is in my life? I have been suffering physically for almost a year. I have been praying for healing and others have been praying for me. How do I know if it is God’s will that I continue suffering? I don’t know whether to keep on praying for healing or to just accept this suffering as God’s will. I pray that I may know His will but so far can’t figure out what it is.

A: After covering the basic ideas regarding God’s will in our previous post, we can now answer your question specifically.

How Long Is Too Long?

Your first question, then, can be answered like this: You can know the will of God in your life through the commandments and the responsibilities of your calling (God’s indicative will), and through the circumstances outside of your control that God permits (God’s permissive will). The physical suffering you are facing is clearly a circumstance that seems out of your control; it would most likely fit into the category of God’s permissive will.

Your second question, though, is harder to answer. How long should you pray to be delivered from this suffering? A few reflections may help you have greater peace in this difficult dilemma.

Pray Freely

First, praying to be delivered from suffering is fine. It is one of the fruitful responses to suffering, because through that prayer we exercise our faith, hope, and love for God, along with the precious virtues of humility and perseverance. Jesus prayed for deliverance in Gethsemane. St Paul prayed to be delivered from the “thorn in his flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). But, this prayer of petition should always be offered with a condition: “Lord, let me be healed of this affliction, if it be your will.” We have to trust that if his answer to our prayer is “no” or “not yet,” that answer flows from his infinite love and wisdom, even if we don’t particularly like it.

Accepting God’s Current Answer

Second, as long as God has not healed you, either through a miracle or through the natural, prudent steps that you have taken (medical attention, for example), we know that he is still permitting your suffering. In that sense, it is his permissive will for you to continue bearing this cross. So, for now, this is part of God’s will for you.

I say “part” because God’s indicative will still applies. Even in the midst of our sufferings, we must strive to remember that by following the commandments and fulfilling the responsibilities of our state in life, we are glorifying God, building his Kingdom, and following Christ. We should try to avoid letting our crosses blind us to the integral picture of our Christian discipleship (which includes continued participation in the Sacraments, prayer, and loving others as God has loved us).

Learning to Live with Mystery

Third, on a very practical note, it is not always easy to know when to stop praying for a particular petition. In the Gospel, Jesus exhorts us to “pray continually and never lose heart” (Luke 18:1), and even tells us a couple of parables to illustrate the point (see Luke 18 and Luke 11). He also promises: “Ask and you shall receive” (Matthew 7:7). And yet, St. Paul had the experience of asking for the thorn in his flesh to be removed – repeatedly – and God did not give him what he asked for.

There is a mystery here. St Augustine explains that God sometimes refrains from giving us the specific thing we ask for, because he wants to give us something better; he wants to respond to a deeper desire from which the specific petition flows.

Learning From St Paul and A Practical Tip

Perhaps in your case St. Paul’s example can be helpful. He kept asking for the thorn in his flesh to be removed, until he received this answer from God: “My grace is enough for you; my power is at its best in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). With that answer, he no longer felt a need to ask for healing.

As long as you feel in your heart the desire to be healed of your affliction, continue to bring your petition to the Lord. But in order to avoid becoming obsessed with or confused by the painful situation and God’s mysterious response, perhaps it would be helpful to make your petition in the form of an established devotion. For example, you can make the Nine First Fridays devotion for this intention. Or you could do a novena to St. Pio Pietralcina or to Our Lady of Good Remedy during the first nine days of every month. By circumscribing your petition for healing within an established devotion of some kind, you can be at peace that you are doing your part (persevering and not losing heart), while not letting your struggle disturb or dominate all the other aspects of your Christian discipleship.

You can be assured that I will join my prayers to yours, that God’s will be done, and that you find the peace that comes from God’s embrace even as you share in the pain of his Cross.

How can I know the will of God in my life? – Part I of II

Q: Dear Father John, How can I know what the will of God is in my life? I have been suffering physically for almost a year. I have been praying for healing and others have been praying for me. How do I know if it is God’s will that I continue suffering? I don’t know whether to keep on praying for healing or to just accept this suffering as God’s will. I pray that I may know His will but so far can’t figure out what it is.

A: Clearly, you have a passionate desire to know and embrace God’s will in your life. You should be so grateful for this desire! You are “hungering and thirsting for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6), and so, you are blessed!

The spiritual life is, in its most basic elements, nothing less than a following of Christ, an imitation of him. And his very food – the thing that he hungered for and the thing that nourished and strengthened him – was “to do the will of the one who sent me” (John 4:34). The mere fact that you submitted this question is sure proof that the Holy Spirit is hard at work in your heart, and that you are making an effort to collaborate with him. On the other hand, the interior turbulence that the situation is causing you is most likely not from the Holy Spirit. I hope the following thoughts can help put you more at ease.

Before trying to answer the specific question about your physical suffering, we have to make a theological distinction. The phrase “God’s will” can cause confusion if we don’t identify two broad sub-categories, so to speak: From our perspective, God’s will can be either indicative or permissive.

God’s Indicative Will

God can indicate that he wants us to do certain things – this is his indicative will. In this category we find the Ten Commandments, the commandments of the New Testament (e.g., “love one another as I have loved you” [John 15:12], “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” [Matthew 28:19]), the commandments and teachings of the Church (e.g. fasting on Good Friday), the responsibilities of our state in life, and specific inspirations of the Holy Spirit (e.g. when Blessed Mother of Teresa was inspired to start a new religious order to serve the poorest of the poor).

The field of God’s indicative will is humongous. In touches all the normal activities and relationships of every day, which are woven into the tapestry of moral integrity and faithfulness to our life’s calling, plus the endless possibilities of the works of mercy (thus obeying the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:31]).

Yet it not only consists in what we do, but also in how we do it, which opens up the whole arena of growth in Christian virtue. We can wash the dishes (responsibilities of our state in life) with resentment and self-pity, or with love, care, and supernatural joy. We can attend Sunday Mass (Third Commandment and commandment of the Church) apathetically and reluctantly, or with conviction, faith, and attention. We can drive to work (responsibilities of our state in life) seething at the traffic jams, or exercising patience. When we ask ourselves, “What is God’s will for me?”, 88% of the time (more or less) God’s indicative will is crystal clear.

God’s Permissive Will

But the phrase “God’s will” also touches another category of life-experience: suffering. Suffering, of one type or another, is our constant companion as we journey through this fallen world. God has revealed that suffering was not part of his original plan, but rather was the offspring of original sin, which ripped apart the harmony of God’s creation. His indicative will to our first parents in the Garden of Eden was “do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). They disobeyed. Human nature fell; creation fell; evil attained a certain predominance in the human condition, giving rise to “the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death” (Catechism, 403).

Here is where the distinction between God’s indicative and permissive will comes in. God did not desire or command Adam and Eve to rebel against his plan, but he did permit them to do so. Likewise, throughout human history, God does not will evil to happen (and its consequence of suffering), but he does permit it. He certainly didn’t explicitly will the Holocaust, for example, but, on the other hand, he did permit it.

The question of why God permits some evil and the suffering that comes from it, even the suffering of innocents, is an extremely hard question to answer. Only the Christian faith as a whole gives a satisfactory response to it, a response that can only penetrate our hearts and minds through prayer, study, and the help of God’s grace (See Catechism #309). St Augustine’s short answer is worth mentioning, however. He wrote that if God permits evil to affect us, it is only because he knows that he can use it to bring about a greater good. We may not see that good right away; we may not see it at all during our earthly journey, in fact, but Christ’s Resurrection (Easter Sunday) is the promise that God’s omnipotence and wisdom are never trumped by the apparent triumphs of evil and suffering (Good Friday).

With these basic ideas in place, in our next post we will summarize these principals and then apply them specifically to your question.

I have been out of work and am struggling with discernment…

Q: Dear Father Edward, I have been out of work for a while. I know God is not in the employment business, nor is he that concerned with how we make a living. His concern is for our soul. That said, I’m told I will know God’s will … and that he is leading me to something just right for me. But how do we know the direction he’s leading us in? And how do we pray about this … and how do I keep from worrying? What if I just don’t feel anything as to what to do? Why is God silent? Is there a way to “hear better”?

A: I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties finding a job. Unemployment is never an easy situation, especially when there is a family to be supported. Moreover, people often peg their sense of self-esteem to a job. Work, in fact, has a spiritual dimension. Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens observes: “Work is a good thing for man — a good thing for his humanity — because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being.” Through our work we contribute to building society and helping our neighbors. The Catechism in No. 2427 notes, “  Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another.” In this sense, God is certainly concerned about how you make a living. Any work that truly improves the community and the individual is an activity worthy of respect. Even the humblest job can help a person grow in virtue if he undertakes it out of love for God and others. More than a few unsung saints have spent years toiling in disagreeable jobs in order to provide for their loved ones.

Now to your question about God’s will. That is often one of the biggest question marks hanging over us. Let’s say that it is good to remember who you are. You are a beloved son of a heavenly Father. You are made in his image and gifted with an immortal soul. That is the heart of your identity. God cares about you and your well-being. “Your Father knows what you need” (Matthew 6:8). Reminding ourselves of God’s providence can help to stave off worries and feelings of despair. Then too, we have to “pray always without becoming weary” (Luke 18:1). Prayer demands perseverance because God has his own timetable for responding to petitions. He often speaks in a whisper, so he wants us to make an effort to listen to him. If you have more time on your hands right now, consider dedicating longer periods to prayer and Bible reading. Attend daily Mass, if possible. Learn to guard the spirit of silence in your life by limiting the use of media and other distractions. In this way you give the Holy Spirit the space he needs to work in you. The Spirit also needs something to work with. That is why it is good to have a strategy for job hunting. Program your time well. Tap into your network of friends and business contacts. Keep an eye on helpful job-posting websites. Pursue every worthwhile lead. Be flexible. Also, consider doing volunteer work; it helps us put our own challenges in perspective when we attend to the needs of others.

Be alert, too, to how your next job could be integrated into your spiritual life. Downtime between jobs can help to teach us more humility, more patience, more gratitude. That means that we might re-enter the workforce as better people. At that point we can perhaps see better that our work is a way to give glory to God. For now, don’t lose hope. God has a plan for you, and he will reveal it in his time. I’ll keep you and your job search in my next Mass intentions. Best of God’s graces to you!

Yours in Christ, Father Edward McIlmail, LC

Father McIlmail is a theology instructor at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, RI.