Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.’ Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked”.

(JOHN 5:8-9)

“We tend to think our faith is strongest at those times when we have emotional feelings attached to our imagination about God or when it’s bolstered and inflamed by feelings of fervor. 

Great spiritual writers will tell us that this is a good stage in our faith, but an initial one, commonly experienced when we are neophytes. In the earlier stages of a religious journey, it is common to possess strong images and feelings about God.  

They also tell us that, at certain moments of our spiritual journey, God “takes away” our certainty and deprives us of all warm feelings in faith. Saint John of the Cross calls this experience of seemingly losing our faith a ‘dark night of the soul’. This describes the experience where we used to feel God’s presence with a certain warmth and solidity, but now we feel like God is nonexistent and we are left in doubt. This is what Jesus experienced on the cross and what St. Teresa of Calcutta wrote of in her journals.
 

While that darkness can be confusing, it can also be maturing. It can help move us from being arrogant, judgmental, religious neophytes to being humble, emphatic men and women, living inside a cloud of unknowing, understanding more by not understanding than by understanding, lost in a darkness we cannot manipulate or control, so as to finally be pushed into genuine faith, hope, and love” (33).

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Instead, shout for joy and be glad forever
in what I am creating.
Indeed, I am creating Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight”.

(ISAIAH 65:18)

“The deep truth that God loves us unconditionally lies at the heart of our faith. We believe God looks down on our lives and says, “You are my beloved child. In you I take delight!” We do not doubt the truth of that, we just find it impossible to believe. 

Unless we are extraordinarily blessed, we rarely, if ever, experience unconditional love. Mostly we experience love with conditions: Our parents love us better when we do not mess up. Our teachers love us better when we behave and perform well. Our churches love us better when we do not sin. Friends love us better when we are attractive. Our spouses love us better when we do not disappoint them. Mostly, we have to measure up in some way to be loved.  

Many of us also have been wounded by supposed expressions of love that weren’t love but were expressions of self-serving manipulation, exploitation, or even abuse. We wither under that and become the walking wounded, unable to believe that we are loved and lovable. We know God loves us, so how can we make ourselves believe it? 
 

Deep down, below our wounded parts, the child of God who still inhabits the recesses of our soul knows that he or she is made in God’s image and likeness and is special, beautiful, and lovable” (32).   

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.”

(EPHESIANS 5:8)

“Imagine yourself lying in bed some night. You have just had a very good time of prayer and are flooded with feelings and images about God. You have strong, clear feelings that God exists. On that particular evening you have no faith doubts; you can feel the existence of God. 

Now, imagine another night, a darker one. You wake up from a fitful sleep and are overwhelmed by the sense that you don’t believe in God. You try to convince yourself that you still believe, but you cannot. Every attempt to imagine that God exists and to feel his presence comes up empty. You feel an overwhelming emptiness inside because of that feeling. Try as you might, you cannot shake the feeling that you no longer believe. Try as you might, you can no longer regain the solid ground on which you once stood. Try as you might, you can no longer make yourself feel the existence of God.    

Does this mean that on one of these nights you have a strong faith and on the other you have a weak one? Not necessarily. It can just as easily mean that on one night you have a strong imagination and on the other you have a weak one. On one night you can imagine the presence of God and on the other night you cannot. Imagination isn’t faith.

We all have had the experience of being inside of certain commitments (marriage, family, church) where, at times, our heads and our hearts are not there, but we are there! The head tells us this doesn’t make sense; the heart lacks the proper warm feelings to keep us there. But we remain there, held by something deeper, something beyond what we can explain or feel. This is where faith lives, and this is what faith means. 

For long periods, St. Teresa of Calcutta suffered anguish inside of her head and heart every time she tried to imagine the existence of God. Yet by every indication she lived her whole life in function of God’s existence. Her problem was with the limits and poverty of the human imagination. Simply put, she couldn’t picture how God exists. 

But nobody can because the finite can never picture the infinite, though it can sense it and know it in ways beyond what the head can imagine, and the heart can feel.  

Not being able to imagine God’s existence is not the same thing as not believing. Our actions are always a more accurate indication of faith than are any of our feelings about God” (31).