When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, do you panic and jump off? No, you sit still and trust the engineer.
“Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 86:10
In moments of darkness and desolation don’t panic, just continue to trust God, stay on track. Keep the faith.
We need to trust that even in times of distress and desolation, God has full control and places limits – see Job 1:12
Look at our Blessed Mother through the passion of her beloved Son and see her heart at the foot of the cross as she watched the death of her Son, the Son of God, at the hands of man. Her faith though kept her strong, her faith was such that she knew this horror was permitted by the will of the Father. Her mind would have grasped the deepest truth that her Son was fulfilling His divine mission. In this darkest of nights, the Blessed Mother maintained faith. She changed nothing from her life because of this one dark moment.
In times when we face little passions in our own lives and seem to be in a dark time, desolation or even a dark night of the soul, keep faith with our Mother that this is all permitted by the will of the Father.
St Ignatius’ fifth rule of discerning spirits says “In time of desolation never make a change; but to be firm and constant in the resolutions and determination in which one was the day preceding such desolation”
Hold true, stay the course and trust in Jesus, the Father’s Will is being accomplished.
My night of desolation (see my book “I knew His Voice”) drew about me a deep darkness and feeling of separation of God. In the darkest days of this desolation I began to lose trust in God’s words, His love and even His presence with me. I felt I was on auto-pilot, I was just going through motions out of habit. Holy Mass, prayers, reading scripture felt empty to me. I persevered not out of some grand faith or strong spirit within me, but because many around me, my wife foremost amongst them, kept me moving forward – doing the things that were right. This lasted months until I began to feel this desolate state of my soul, this sense of going through the motions. I then began to recognize a distance from God. Like a drowning man, I began to flail and grab onto anything I could to keep from drowning. I threw my hand out and through the darkness around me, I felt another hand grab hold and pull me from the depths of myself. I ‘opened my eyes’ and in the face of a priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I saw Jesus. He spoke words I will never forget that both pointed to the root of the desolation I had felt the past months and the resolution. Trust. The priest told me I didn’t trust God, I see now the seed was planted in that dark night of despair at my daughter’s ICU bedside. The cure for this time was framed in the cause of the fall. Simply trusting in Jesus. Jesus told me to hold onto His Crucifix and repeat over and over “Jesus I trust in You”.
While in my desolation I wasn’t formed enough to fight through, God did carry me and guide me, He set the boundaries on how far into the darkness I could wander and then when through my blindness, I started to see the darkness, He called me back to the light. Stronger in faith through this time of metamorphosis.