St. Therese

As predicted, today my spirits are back to their chipper selves!

I'm very excited today because this afternoon I will spend the rest of my day working in the parish Library. And when I finish my work, I plan to have dinner there with a friend and read :)I'm thinking something by Fr. Benedict Groeschel or St. Therese the Little Flower. I was reading one of his commentaries on her yesterday...I only read about three pages because I was feeling so sick, but those pages really painted a picture of faith that I have been experiencing for the last seven or eight years, and if I'm honest with myself, really my entire life. So, I want to explore that more. The theme is spiritual darkness or dryness/feeling the absence of God's presence. I had always known that Mother Theresa experienced this and also St. John of the Cross explains it in detail in "Dark Night of the Soul". But I never knew that the Little Flower experienced this also, I knew she suffered great physical pain with her tuberculosis, but I always pictured her as having been constantly comforted spiritually by God. I was wrong. In her journal she writes the following:

"I wish I could put down what I feel about it, but unfortunately that isn't possible; to appreciate the darkness of this tunnel, you have to have been through it. Perhaps, though, I might try to explain it by comparison. You must imagine that I have been born into a country entirely overspread with a thick mist; I have never seen nature in her smiling mood, all bathed and transfigured in the sunlight. But I've heard of these wonderful experiences, ever since I was a child; and I know that the country in which I live is not my native country; that lies elsewhere, and it must always be the centre of my longings. Mightn't that, you suggest, be simply a fable, invented by some dweller in the mist? Oh no, the fact is certain; the king of that sunlit country has come and lived in the darkness, lived there for thirty-three years.

Poor darkness, that could not recognize him for what he was, the King of Light! But here I am, Lord, one of your own children, to whom your divine light has made itself known.

Dear Mother, I seem to be writing just anyhow; here is my fairy-story about the country of darkness turning all of a sudden into a kind of prayer. I can't imagine how it can interest you, trying to master ideas so badly expressed and so confused as mine. But after all Mother, I am not writing for the sake of literary effect, I'm simply writing under obedience, and even if you find it tedious, you will at least realize that I've done my best. So I will make bold to take up my parable where I left off. What I was saying was that the sure prospect of escaping from this dark world of exile had been granted me from childhood upwards; and it wasn't simply that I accepted it on the authority of people who knew more of the matter than I did - I felt, in the very depths of my heart, aspirations which could only be satisfied by a world more beautiful than this. just as Christopher Columbus divined, by instinct, the existence of the New World which nobody hitherto dreamt of, so i had this feeling that a better country was to be, one day, my abiding home. And now, all of a sudden, the mists around me have become denser than ever; they sink deep into my soul and wrap around it so that I can't recover the dear image of my native country anymore - everything has disappeared.

I get tired of the darkness all around me, and try to refresh my jaded spirits with the thoughts of that bright country where my hopes lie; and what happens? it is worse torment than ever;the darkness itself seems to borrow, from the sinners who live in it, the gift of speech. I hear its mocking accents: 'its all a dream, this talk of a heavenly country, bathed in light, scented with delicious perfumes, and of a God who made it all, who is to be your possession in eternity! you really believe, do you, that the mist which hangs about you will clear away later on? All right, all right, go on longing for death! But death will make nonsense of your hopes; it will only mean a night darker than ever, the night of mere non-existence.'...

Dear Mother, does it sound as if I were exaggerating my symptoms? Of course, to judge by the sentiments I express in all the nice little poems I've made up during the last year, you might imagine that my soul was full of consolations as it could hold; that, for me, the veil which hides the unseen scarcely existed. And all the time it isn't just a veil, it's a great wall which reaches up to the sky and blots out the stars! No, when I write poems about the happiness of heaven and the eternal possession of God, it strikes no chord of happiness in my own heart - I'm simply talking about what I'd determined to believe. Sometimes, its true, a tiny ray of light passes through the darkness, and then, just for a moment, the ordeal is over; but immediately afterwards the memory of it brings me no happiness, it seems to make the darkness thicker than ever.'- St. Therese of Lisuex

Fr. Benedict's thoughts on this excerpt of her writings:
let me draw your attention to the fact that such an experience of isolation and loneliness is only possible because St. Therese believed that God was present, and thus on rare occasions during her time of trial she experienced the Divine Presence as a 'tiny ray of light.' In a paradoxical way, it is only faith in God's presence that makes it possible to experience his absence.

My feelings- I don't suppose that what I feel is of the magnitude of this great doctor of the church, cloistered nun and saint. But I do relate to her expression of the mist of the darkness. I have had just enough of an experience of God to be determined to believe. That belief is constant, complete and unwavering. It causes me to hope and live in a way to honor my God and teach his truth. But I exist in a lonely mist that breaks though the 'tiny rays of light' that I sometimes experience through mass, precious moments with family and dear friends and sometimes, when in adoration...but not often... in those moments I can occasionally get a glimpse of heavenly happiness or 'consolations', but it is never long lasting and never complete. Afterwards I often doubt those moments because I know I'm not holy enough to experience them. I have a constant unattainable yearning in my heart that I know will only be satisfied in heaven.
St Therese's words spoke to my soul so deeply I'm excited to read more of her writing sand maybe come to some greater thoughts and feelings on this in as time goes on and I develop more of an understanding of it all.

Anyway I hope to find a good book in the library tonight and thankfully my headache is gone today.