I'm not lying. Alright, shall we pray? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I direct, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in Thee, and by Thee be happily ended.

Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I wanted to talk to you guys about consolation and desolation in prayer.

But before I do that, I want to tell you about a friend of mine. He is single. He's in his mid-thirties.

And for a while, he had a girlfriend. And she recently broke up with him. In my conversations with this friend, in the weeks leading up to the breakup, he was telling me things like, Well, whenever we have a disagreement, she tells me she just really wishes that I believed all the same things that she did, and thought the way that she did, and cared about each thing that she cared about, precisely as much as she cared about it.

That's all she wanted in the relationship. That's literally all she wanted. Very simple.

To be matched beat for beat, impulse for impulse, in her boyfriend. When he had told me that in the weeks prior, I asked him, Why are you still dating her? Turns out she was cute. That helps.

But she ended up breaking up with him, in large part because he didn't think the same way, and believe the same things, and have the same opinions that she did. And, she said, that made her feel not safe. That was a lucky day for that guy.

I was like, this is a good thing for you. This is a good thing for you, sir. The Lord is looking out.

This is a good conversation for Ben to hear. This is a good conversation for everyone to hear. This is literally why I'm saying it.

It's good for everyone to hear. And I think we know this pretty instinctively, if we hear somebody say that's what they want, in a dating relationship, or in a marriage. We understand that doesn't make any sense.

That's an unrealistic expectation to have. That is not what dating and marriage are all about. But I think, there's this weird, pernicious little nugget of this kind of thinking that can creep into our spiritual life.

That we might not say, of course my wife doesn't need to think the same way that I do, or believe everything that I do in the same way that I believe it. It would be nice, but it doesn't have to be the way. But I think sometimes we get into this weird little thought that God should actually match us beat for beat.

That God is the one who should change. That God is the one who should always be on our side. That God should back us 100%.

This was a part of the language my friend used. She just wanted to be backed 100% on everything. And I think sometimes that's how we approach God.

We just want Him to back us 100% all the time. And to recognize the insanity of that, if we recognize the insanity of wanting that from just another person, hopefully we understand the insanity of that when we're talking about God. Because there's only two options where this makes sense.

To have this kind of idea that we want to be matched beat for beat. One is if we're perfect. Or if we think we're perfect.

If we're perfect, obviously someone should conform to us. Everyone grants the one person that we should conform to is the perfect person. Or if we don't want to ever change.

Either we think we're perfect, or we just don't want to change. So our relationship with God is not something that is always safe. It is not something that is always comfortable.

And it's certainly not something where we're always backed 100% in what we think and what we believe. It shouldn't be. This is part of the excitement of the Christian life.

This is part of the excitement of having an interior life. A life of prayer. We don't want to worship a God who always conforms to us.

In fact, the goal of the Christian life is to be totally conformed to, to be united in the will of God. For us, to want what he wants. To desire what he desires.

To think as he thinks. Beat for beat. With the same intensity.

With the same kind of forcefulness. That's what we actually want. Anything else would be insane.

He is the only being where this makes sense to have that kind of relationship. He's the only being where that kind of uniformity with someone else's will actually we can say, yeah, no, that makes sense. Everybody else, I don't want to be just like them.

But God, that's the one that I want to be just like. And I am not that way. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, he said, what is it? Something, oh, I didn't write down the quote.

This is a bad idea. Always write down quotes if you don't have them memorized. This is a Speaking 101 lesson.

Jonathan Larson is disapprovingly nodding. Just paraphrase. To improve is to change and to be perfect is to change constantly.

Is what St. John Henry Newman said. That we are invited to a life of change. In which case our spiritual life has a lot of change built into it.

It's supposed to. It's not a bug. It's actually a feature of the system of the spiritual life to experience ups and downs.

If we have a spiritual life where nothing ever happens interiorly, where never we are moved to great joy or to great sorrow, where we're never going through a time of great consolation or times of deep desolation, we're probably not doing actual spiritual work. We're probably not actually praying to God. Because God actually wants to lead us from where we are wherever that happens to be He knows where we are from there to Him.

And that path has ups and downs. So if you have this sheet of paper in front of you on one side there's a passage that we'll be looking at for prayer on the other side is the consolation and desolation the four rules from St. Ignatius of Loyola. So St. Ignatius of Loyola is a great 16th century saint.

He was the founder of the Jesuits. In his early life he wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be this great chivalric hero.

He fought in a war and he wanted to earn great glory. Instead he got a cannonball to his leg and it broke his leg and he was laid up in bed for months. And then they didn't set his bone right so he had them re-break his leg so that it could heal better which laid him up for additional months because he was kind of vain.

He didn't want an unsightly crooked leg. And in this time of recuperation he was just laying in bed. He didn't have a phone so he couldn't scroll social media or hop out to YouTube.

He didn't have a TV so he couldn't check out ESPN. He had a book of knightly stories of knightly daring do and then a book of the life of Christ. That's what he had.

And then he had silence. And so what he did, he would read these stories of these dashing knights saving these damsels in distress and you'd feel excitement and then he'd stop reading and then he would notice that afterward he felt sort of empty inside. There was something lacking in those stories.

Then he'd read the life of Christ and he'd be like there's something different going on here interiorly as I'm reading and then after. There's a kind of peace that comes from this. So all these months of just laying on his back, waiting for his leg to heal he started paying attention to what was going on inside.

He got curious about what was happening. He was asking why do I respond one way to these stories and another way to those stories? And this kind of attentiveness he brought into the whole of the spiritual life. He developed the spiritual exercises.

It's the only retreat that the Catholic Church as a whole has kind of put a stamp of approval on. Have any of you gone on either the 30 day or the 8 day or 3 day? Michael Philpott has. The most I've ever done was a 3 day.

I would love to do like an 8 day. Have you done an 8 day? Yeah. So silent retreat just starting from ground zero and working your way up.

Anyway, this intense desire to understand what is going on and how am I responding to it and why am I responding in this way. He brought this kind of attention into the spiritual life and so he came up with these rules. A few weeks back maybe a month or so ago we looked at the first two rules which is how we respond if we are trying to pursue God God is going to be cheering us on He's going to be backing us and if we're persistent in sin He is not backing us but Satan is trying to convince us to remain complacent, to be comfortable.

Well there are 14 rules so we're going to take a look at a few more of these rules right now. So everybody have a sheet? So we're going to take a look first about spiritual consolation the third rule of spiritual consolation I call it consolation when some interior movement in the soul is caused through which the soul comes to be inflamed with the love of its creator and lord and when it can in consequence love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself but in the creator of them all likewise when it sheds tears that move to love of its lord whether out of sorrow for one's sins or for the passion of Christ our lord or because of other things directly connected with his service and praise finally I call consolation every increase of hope faith and charity and all interior joy which calls and attracts to heavenly things and to the salvation of one's soul quieting it and giving it peace in its creator and lord gentlemen as we build a life of prayer it should be marked by periods of consolation there should be moments maybe lasting for a day or days or maybe longer who knows these moments of consolation of being like oh god loves me and I feel it I'm having an interior response to the love of god and it's a consoling presence if you've never experienced that this is something to look forward to as you build a life of prayer it's not too late for any of us to begin again but if you don't know if you've experienced it or not it's possible you've forgotten it is very easy to forget moments of consolation it's very easy to dismiss them after the fact of saying well that was just me in the past deluding myself so spiritual consolation we should all experience moments of spiritual consolation from time to time you'll hear stories of like mother Teresa experiencing decades without consolation you're not mother Teresa some people are surprised when I say that you're not mother Teresa alright desolation corresponding with consolation the fourth rule of spiritual desolation I call desolation all the contrary of the third rule such as disturbance in it movement to things low and earthly the unquiet of different agitations and temptations moving to want of confidence without hope without love when one finds oneself all lazy tepid sad and is as if separated from his creator and lord because as consolation is contrary to desolation in the same way the thoughts which come from consolation are contrary to the thoughts which come from desolation I think a lot of people resonate with desolation that this is something that we all experience if we ever try to persevere in prayer there are going to be points where it's just a cry where we pray a rosary and we feel nothing where we try to pray with scripture and it doesn't feel like we're actually having a real conversation with God where we're going to mass and there's no interior movement in fact we feel sort of tempted to give up on it we feel tempted to all sorts of lower or earthly or even sinful inclinations and we live in a lazy world we live in a culture that is just saturated with laziness with sloth and so I think we can all resonate with this idea of desolation but in the Christian life there should be moments punctuated by consolation and other moments punctuated by desolation these are two things that are not a bug they are a feature of the Christian life because God is drawing us from where we are comfortable to where he wants us to be he's not calling us to comfort, he's calling us to greatness he's calling us to glory which requires moments of growth and that growth is spurred on in these moments of desolation often there are times when desolation is just caused because we're being sinful that is one of the causes of desolation and there are other times when we are experiencing desolation because God is calling us to persevere I do want to go through the fifth and sixth rule real quick the fifth rule from St. Ignatius of Loyola in time of desolation never to make a change but to be firm and constant in the resolutions and determination in which one was the day preceding such desolation or in the determination in which he was in the preceding consolation because as in consolation it is rather the good spirit who guides and counsels us, so in desolation it is the bad with whose counsels we cannot take a course to decide rightly so what is he saying here, he's saying if we're in this dry spell in our prayer this is not the time to make a major life decision it's not a time to really change much of anything, it's a time to persevere if we said I'm going to pray a rosary everyday and then one day we don't feel like it this is the time to persevere it's not the time to say well my feelings are going to dictate what I'm going to do it's a time to say I'm experiencing this feeling, this is desolation, desolation doesn't mean stop desolation means continue as I've been doing to persevere it's definitely not time to make a big life decision it's not the time to say it's time to change careers because prayer is dry and maybe that will fix it it's not the time to say well if I just move then that will fix it or if I just end all of my friendships and start anew somewhere else that that will fix things desolation is the time to continue as we've been doing this is one of the things that God is trying to teach us he's trying to teach us constancy the sixth rule although in desolation we ought not to change our first resolutions like our commitments to prayer our commitments to good work it is very helpful intensely to change ourselves against the same desolation as by insisting more on prayer meditation on much examination and by giving ourselves more scope in some suitable way of doing penance so if anything we should lean more into the good that we've decided to do in times of consolation so we said I'm going to pray a holy hour every day and one day we don't feel like it to stay an extra few minutes to say well I prayed from 7am to 8am I really don't feel like it today so the answer is actually the counter intuitive not go with our feeling but to actually lean into it and say no I'm going to pray for an hour and five minutes I'm just going to persevere in this way the question might be asked why would God set up a world like this why wouldn't the Christian life just be from one kind of glory to another with no valley in between why would there be these dips why would there be these moments of desolation in part because there is a question being posed to all of us do we worship the God of consolation or do we worship the consolation of God if we worship the God of consolation when the consoling feelings aren't present we're still going to worship God because we know that he's the giver of all good things if we worship the consolation of God when the consolation is gone our worship is gone when we worship the God of comfort then when it's uncomfortable we realize he's still who he says he is when we worship the comfort of God when it's no longer comfortable we no longer worship I think this is where Lent comes very much into play because Lent is a time of discomfort of entering into the desert and to experience God not just in his consoling presence and I've spoken before during Lent about how this is all an imitation of Christ. Christ embraced a life of the desert he spent 40 days fasting in the desert but that was emblematic of his entire incarnation.

When he left heaven to be with us in the incarnation he joined a fallen world. He experienced the desert that we are all in and this is part of the reality that we're traveling through God wants us to experience reality and we are not our feelings we have feelings but we are not our feelings when we let our feelings dictate everything that we do then we are being guided by whatever kind of external stimulus is prompting us we are more than our feelings we are not less than and these moments of desolation can be moments of teaching us that they are also moments to humble us to remind us that we are not in control that we don't get to decide how we feel but we do get to decide what we do and we do get to decide whether or not we are going to persevere so if you think that the Christian life should be really really boring you're wrong and if you think that the Christian life should always be pleasant you're wrong there are moments of deep and incredible and moving you to tears moments of joy in the Christian life and if you've yet to experience those maybe take extra time during Holy Week to attend more of the services spend more time in the church spend more time in Scripture there are also moments of intense dryness I'm not going to get into the dark night of the senses or the dark night of the soul that I think is going to muddle things but to know it is not a bug to start a life of prayer and then to experience these depths that's not a bug that's a feature that is the education of God that's part of the pedagogy of God it's how he's leading us from where we are to him so I'd like to invite you to spend some time in prayer for at least five or six minutes which is not very long we're going to take a look at the second technically it's like the third reading for tomorrow for Palm Sunday because we have like the opening gospel reading as there's a procession in but it's the letter from Saint Paul to the Philippians and this is the famous passage about Christ's self-emptying love so we're going to spend a few minutes just meditating on his self-emptying love his embrace of a life that is a kind of desolation that we might be made more like him he's given us a path through humility to him so we're going to give some time to meditate on this this beautiful hymn of praise of Christ from the Philippians the letter to the Philippians in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come Holy Spirit teach us how to pray Christ Jesus though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God something to be grasped rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave coming in human likeness and found human in appearance he humbled himself becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross because of this God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father so we'll take about 5 minutes on that

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

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March 28, 2026 - Joseph Gruber, Consolation and Desolation in Prayer: Understanding the Spiritual Life

Consolation and Desolation in Prayer: Understanding the Spiritual Life

MC: Adam Hohn

Presenter: Joseph Gruber

Deacon: Rick Freedberg

Jackson Michigan & Surrounding Area Catholic Parishes

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