”Seek first the Kingdom of God” Matthew 6:33
Seek: (verb) to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover. Seek is an action verb.
”Seek God in the darkness” may seem wrong, God is Light and all the is good, why would anyone seek God in the darkness? He wouldn’t even be in the darkness. Yes, it is true that God is the true and only real Light and that wherever God is, the dark is banished. “Even the darkness is not dark to You”
But, sometimes the darkness is permitted to descend upon a soul, that the soul may find God. Sometimes, the only way to get a soul to see the light is by exposing it to darkness. There are times in which a soul must walk alone into a dark night in order to recognize the darkness it is living within. One of the things I’ve recognized from this ‘dark night’ is the sensation of the lack of God’s presence. I know this sensation is what woke my soul, revived my soul.
I don’t believe God ever allows the soul to walk totally alone, His desire isn’t to destroy any soul but to show it the light and see its repentance. At times, a soul can become so hardened that the only way to get its attention and open its eyes is by showing the soul its direction and destination.
I owe a lot to my daughter. She has suffered a lot over the past decade. Many times, I’ve told her to ‘offer up’ her suffering for souls in the world and in purgatory. To take her suffering and turn it outward. Praying with her, I’ve told her that someday she will meet many people in Heaven who want to hug her and thank her for her suffering prayers. The suffering of one soul may be the prayer that frees another from bandage. I don’t know if she ever believed my words, until this past summer. She was in the hospital, dealing with issues from her lupus. She was hurting, both physically and spiritually. I was praying with and over her when a friend of ours knocked and walked into the room. He is a deacon who I work with and who often would visit her to give the Eucharist. We talked about suffering. He said how her smile and Spirit through what she was enduring was always very inspiring for him. He agreed with my words of her redemptive suffering when I said that there are many souls being affected through the ‘prayer of suffering’ that she offered. I looked at her and said, “someday you’ll meet some, in fact, one of those souls that you saved is right here…me.”
I was walking in a twilight for many years in my faith. I was very the person who looked the part and said the right things a Catholic man should. Even I didn’t see that it was all a mask. I had done a great job in my pride of building up an icon of myself. A great image for all to see, so well done that I had even had myself fooled.
Then came her illness and suffering. I saw a girl who saw others’ pain the hospital before her own. I saw a girl who endured so much, and mostly kept a smile and upbeat attitude. And, in one dark night, I saw all the lies of my soul. God gave me to see the darkness of my prideful lies. That night, my daughter lie in an ICU on a ventilator. She had just gone into respiratory failure and the prognosis was shaky if not just bad. And, that night, I faced my veiled faith, unmasked.
Despite knowing Jesus had appeared physically to my daughter and that God had spoken directly to me both in my heart and audibly, I fell. The faith that I should have leaned upon was not there.
God withdrew His graces from me and I was in darkness. Alone.
God allowed the darkness and let me walk that path alone, but never truly alone. He gave me my patroness Saint, St. Faustina, to be with me. He gave me the strength of a powerful woman of unquestioning faith to walk alongside. My wife was a stalwart of faith and trust. God gave me friends who carried me. All of these kept their light shining in my darkness so that the path I walked was never truly totally dark. I could sense the demons, like wolves in the surrounding dark. I know, if not for all these lights God placed around me, I would have been lost.
I had to walk through that dark night so God could make me see the scales I had over my eyes. That I could realize this blindness was of my own doing. And finally that I could cry out that beautiful prayer from Luke 18:41, “Lord, I want to see!”
If not for her suffering, I would have walked blindly into judgment. But, thanks to that darkness in which I sought and found God, I can see.
Trust God, trust that He is always present and that His only goal is to unite our souls within the Trinity. Try to run or hide, He is there. Even in the darkness.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139:1-12
So, I’ll end this singing, “I was blind and now I see”
*see the full true story in my book, “I knew His Voice” available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Link to Amazon through the catalog page on THEROADOFFAITH.net.