Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Deacon Robert Banet
My wife’s Aunt Clara is really upset.
Oh? What seems to be the trouble?
Well, last spring, she had a really great experience, a religious experience.
What’s to get upset about that?
It’s not that. It’s that now she feels really down. She find it hard to pray, she has doubts about whether what happened to her was real or not.
Ah, yes. I know what you mean. But probably it’s just a case of business as usual, in the spiritual order.
What do you mean?
God gives us times of consolation but He doesn’t let us stay in that state. Most often, He seem to withdraw His presence. He’s always there, of course, but He seems to hide Himself.
Why would He do that?
He wants us to love Him for Himself. He does not want us to love Him for just what we can get out of him.
That doesn’t make much sense to me.
Yes, it’s hard for us to see. But He gives examples of that in nature.
What do you mean?
We have day when everything is bright and then we have night. But we know that after night, days comes back. Same with the seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn. Even an atheist poet noticed that and gave us a ray of hope.
Oh?
Yes. He said, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? So, winter, summer, night, day,mountains, valleys—God gives us nature to remind us of the way He works.
Looking at it that way, I can say that God really is loving in they way He reminds us of that. And I just remembered something I read years ago.
Oh? What’s that?
I was reading in The Imitation of Christ something along that line. He said when you are in a time of consolation, you think you will never again be subjected to desolation. And when you’re in a time of desolation, you think you will never again known consolation.
That’s a good thought. I’m going to try to get a hold of Aunt Clara and tell her.