Why Love Isn't Always Sweet

A Journal Entry About My Spiritual Desolation

In this post, I’d like to share with you a very personal account of the spiritual dryness I’ve felt since the last year. Some of you may have experienced it, too. Others may be able to relate more by recalling a time of personal crisis. But it’s something very important that deserves to be written in my personal journal, just like my post “Let Me Tell You When I Had a Glimpse of Heaven” (available for paid subscribers).

I don't know if this is spiritual desolation. But I can't feel God as I have felt Him before. When I pray, I can't concentrate. I can't wait until praying the rosary is over. But somehow I know I must do this, I must at least hold on to it. I must also hold on to going to mass and receiving the Eucharist every Sunday. I'm doing the bare minimum, but it feels such a heavy load. It used to feel so light, so easy. Praying used to be so sweet and full of peace and joy.

Why hold on when you feel nothing? Is heaven not happiness, after all? If God is there, why does He often hide?

Somewhere deep within my soul, however, I still believe in some meaning for all of it. It can't be that God isn't true. How could there even be a universe filled with His beauty and wisdom if there were no God and if God was not good?

If there is still a God and He is good and He loves me enough to suffer even death for me, then there must be some good reason for this desolation. I must hold on to that thought, even if I could no longer hold on to the feeling of faith.

A love story almost always starts out sweet. This is then followed by a moment of crisis before a happy ending finally arrives.

Many times, our spiritual walk follows a similar path. We may have a moment of conversion when we feel that we have finally found God. This stage is sweet and full of happiness.

What comes after though, is where we find much trouble. The joy we once felt seems to fade away and we wonder if we ever really found faith in the first place. But this stage is necessary for our love to mature. We need to pass moments of trial so we can reach that point when our love is so purified that it is proven to be true.

It is very difficult. But by God's grace, may I not be disheartened as desolation comes. I must be able to welcome it as a necessary part of my spiritual growth.

God loves me. He could have kept me always feeling happy and full of consolation. But that same love is a love that is giving me also the opportunity to love Him like I've never loved Him before. To love Him even when He seems so far away. To love Him when I can no more gaze at His face. If tribulations must come in stories of human romance, how can it not come in that most blessed story of God's infinite love?

When Love Is Unseen

Sometimes
love is silent
love is distant
love is unseen.

But it doesn’t mean
That love isn’t true
Or that love isn’t there.

Sometimes
love must wait
love must grow
love must endure.

Love must prove
That it is true
So it may never
be lost again.

You may also want to read “Let Me Tell You When I Had a Glimpse of Heaven” (click here) where I have shared some of my most personal spiritual experiences. In that article, the experience of love is sweet and lifts the heart toward heaven where incomparable joy resides. Do pray for me and may God bless you and draw you closer to His love!

Sincerely,
Jocelyn Soriano
catholicdiary.substack.com

0 supreme and inaccessible Light,
0 complete and blessed Truth,
how far You are from me,
even though I am so near to You!
How remote You are from my sight,
even though I am present to Yours!
You are everywhere in Your entirety,
and yet I do not see You;
in You I move and have my being,
and yet I cannot approach You;
You are within me and around me,
and yet I do not perceive You.
O God, let me know You and love You
so that I may find my joy in You;
and if I cannot do so fully in this life,
let me at least make some progress every day,
until at last that knowledge, love, and joy
come to me in all their plenitude.
– St. Anselm