Assuaging Some Doubt

"The law of Divine concealment is inescapable in all deeper prayer. No contact with God in prayer, no spiritual experience or encounter, does not quickly hide Him again. He manages always to flee. Every spiritual taste and discovery becomes dissatisfying before very long. Every comfort received in prayer is impermanent, every light is temporary. But what is remarkable is that our soul's desire can remain firm and unyielding, waiting for God to show Himself, the shadows finally lifted. This may be the most unnoticed grace in prayer: we are drawn back constantly despite every difficulty and frustration.

Only partial understandings of God's love are ever given, and these are never stable. This can provoke spiritual confusion. The experience of God's hiding can entangle our soul in a morass of useless questioning. Indeed, if we commit ourselves to praying in a solitary silence for a sufficient period of our life, we may think sometimes that God's hiding is the most familiar mark of His Divine personality. But we ought to learn over time that a concealed presence is His manner of keeping companionship. His disguises are His way of manifesting fidelity and love.

God is more present in prayer than we may often think, turning toward us with a Father's solicitude to protect our soul in some manner, assuaging some doubt, removing some uncertainty. In this there may be no image, no emotion, no particular thought. Yet the effect within our soul is a certitude that God is very personal in His love. He asks us to trust this truth."

Father Donald Haggerty
Father Haggerty is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, and professor of moral theology at the Capuchin Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Ethiopia.