From light to darkness

It's amazing how one well-intentioned sentence can pluck a man from the midst of Easter joy and plunge him back into the dryness of the desert.

"If you can believe this," Fr. Dave said about the resurrection, "and not everyone can, but if you can believe this," and I don't know if he was pleading with us to believe or, more likely, to grasp the implications of what we say we believe, "it makes all the difference."

A Lent full of reflecting on Christ on the cross had me no longer considering whether I believe or not.  My year had started off with a book - also well-intentioned but not working for me - that knocked me spiritually off balance.  A good friend shared another book that I've been reading and reflecting on ever since.  My eyes back on Christ at last, I'd so immersed in the Triduum that I'd finally forgotten the issue of whether I believe.  After an emotionally and spiritually challenging Lent, I was filled with the joy of Easter, the glorious music and the amazing empty tomb and the bright light of Christ banishing my darkness.

And it all seemed to extinguish in an instant.  I know that many saints have struggled with the silence of God in their lives for prolonged periods, with the darkness of not sensing his presence and having to rely on what they believe rather than what they feel, with questioning whether they truly believe.

I cannot feel my faith right now.  I'm going to try to trust that I will again, and to live what I do not feel.  I'm going to go do some dishes for my wife now.