Remaining faithful when God feels absent

Mary DeTurris Poust (Courtesy photo of CINDY SCHULTZ)

Wildfires and wars, sickness and suffering of every kind. It can sometimes leave us crying out: “Where are you, God?” The silence can feel deafening at times. Prayers are whispered and screamed, written, sung and held in the quiet of the heart. We try everything and anything and may still feel only isolation and abandonment. The “dark night of the soul” is, of course, part and parcel of the spiritual journey and something experienced by some of our greatest saints, but that fact usually does little to ease our spiritual desperation when we find ourselves enveloped in the arid landscape of the spiritual desert.

One of my favorite Scripture quotes comes from Jeremiah: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future of hope … if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jer 29:11-14)

While I love this quote precisely because it reminds me that God is there, always, waiting for me to come around, sometimes it offers more questions than answers. If we are in the throes of suffering or we are watching others suffer, it can make us wonder what exactly God wants us to do to earn release from our “exile?” When we don’t get a response or a clue, it can leave us feeling ignored and abandoned.

As we look around our world, our country, our communities and our families, we witness suffering that can seem cruel, perhaps even beyond what humans can be expected to bear. It is in moments like these that God may feel distant, unreachable, maybe even absent. It can cause not only spiritual despair but a doubt so deep that we may begin to question the very foundation of faith that has always shored us up.

“Even a believer can sometimes falter when faced with the experience of pain,” Pope Francis has said. “It is a frightening reality that, when it barges in and attacks, can leave a person distraught, even to the point of shattering his or her faith. The person then is faced with a crossroads: he or she can allow suffering to lead to withdrawal into self-doubt to the point of despair and rebellion; or he or she can accept it as an opportunity for growth and discernment about what really matters in life until the time one encounters God.”

As is often the case, the pope’s wise words are difficult to live. Finding an “opportunity for growth” in the hardest moments of our lives or in the pain of those around us can feel like a pious platitude. So, what can we do if we feel ourselves faltering and cannot see our way clear to approach our suffering in such an enlightened way just yet? We can continue to show up in prayer. Daily. Even when it feels as though our spiritual life is a black hole devoid of God’s presence and our prayers’ words shouted into the wind.

Paulist Father Tom Ryan, leading a retreat I attended years ago at St. Mary’s on the Lake in Lake George, offered one “non-negotiable” when it comes to prayer. “Be faithful to the rendezvous,” he said, following up with a challenging question: “Can you love the God of consolations when the consolations aren’t there?”

Perhaps that is a question each one of us can ponder not just today but any time a prayer isn’t answered in the way we had hoped or isn’t answered at all (at least as far as we can tell). Can we continue to show up and sit in God’s presence anyway, knowing that if we do — through dark and light, joy and sorrow, abundance and scarcity — God will respond to our hungry hearts in God’s own time and release us from our exile?

Mary DeTurris Poust will be leading “Come Away and Rest Awhile,” a women’s weekend retreat at Dominican Retreat and Conference Center, Jan. 31-Feb. 2. Visit www.NotStrictlySpiritual.com/Events for more information.