Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. Ps. 42:7
I have been thinking about the heart and the soul in this dark night.
Not as pretty church words.
Not as something embroidered on a pillow or preached about by someone whose life is behaving itself.
I mean the actual heart.
The bruised center.
The place in me that used to feel joy, safety, love, and the sense of being part of something bigger than myself.
And I mean the soul.
The deepest place.
The priest in me.
The child in me.
The place where communication with God used to feel constant, alive, and real.
That is where the dark night has gone.
Not just around me.
In me.
My heart feels heavy.
Bruised.
Numb to a degree.
Hollow.
And yet somehow still yearning for the spark again.
That is the strange cruelty of this season. If the heart were completely dead, maybe it would be easier. If I did not care, maybe the silence would not hurt so much. But I do care. I still yearn. I still remember what it felt like when God felt near.
My heart remembers joy.
It remembers safety.
It remembers love.
It remembers feeling gathered into something larger than my fear.
It remembers the warmth of God like a blanket around my shoulders. Like being held from the inside. Like the universe had not forgotten my name.
And now?
Now when I pray, my heart feels hollow.
Not empty like a clean room.
Empty like a house after someone moved out in the night.
The furniture is still there.
The rosary is still there.
The prayers are still there.
The collar is still there.
The memory of the Eucharist is still there.
But the warmth is missing.
The spark is missing.
The easy sense of Presence is missing.
So my heart has folded in on itself for protection.
That is the honest truth.
It has curled up like a wounded animal. Like a child hiding under a table. Like something that has been touched too roughly by life and is no longer sure whether even love is safe.
And when my heart speaks to God without being polite, it does not sound holy.
It says:
What is the deal?
What did I do?
That is the prayer under the prayer.
Not the prayer book version.
Not the priestly version.
The heart version.
What is the deal?
What did I do?
Why did You feel close and then feel far away?
Why call me if the road was going to disappear?
Why let me taste the fire and then leave me in the cold?
Why give me the ache for the Eucharist and then let the altar feel behind glass?
I know those are dangerous questions.
But they are mine.
And I would rather bring God my dangerous questions than offer Him a polished lie.
Scripture says:
“My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”
— Matthew 26:38
That sentence matters to me.
Christ said that.
Not a weak man.
Not a faithless man.
Christ.
His soul was sorrowful unto death.
So maybe there is no shame in admitting that the soul can suffer in ways the mind cannot explain. Maybe there is no shame in saying the dark has entered the sanctuary.
Because that is what this feels like.
My soul feels abandoned.
Tested.
Emptied.
Purified.
Punished.
Lost.
All of those words fit, and none of them are enough.
Some days I feel abandoned. Like heaven walked off and left me standing there.
Some days I feel tested. Like something is being asked of me, but no one gave me the instructions.
Some days I feel emptied. Like all the old certainties have been poured out, and no new wine has come.
Some days I feel purified, though I do not like that word much right now, because it sounds too neat for something this painful.
Some days I feel punished.
And some days I just feel lost.
Not romantically lost.
Not poetically wandering through a moonlit wood.
Lost like a child in a store who cannot find his mother.
Lost like a priest in a locked chapel.
Lost like a man standing in a ruined church while a storm moves over the water and no one answers when he calls out.
If my soul were a place right now, it would be three places at once.
A locked chapel.
A ruined church.
A storm over water.
The locked chapel is prayer.
I can see where I am supposed to go. I know the shape of the door. I know what should be inside. Candle. Altar. Presence. Peace. But the door will not open the way it used to.
The ruined church is faith.
Not gone.
Not erased.
Still standing in places.
Still beautiful in certain light.
But damaged. Weathered. Exposed. Full of echoes. A holy structure with parts of the roof missing.
And the storm over water is the soul itself.
Deep calling unto deep.
Waves, billows, thunder, distance.
The kind of water you do not cross casually.
The kind you stand before and know that if God is there, He is not small.
Where is Christ in that place?
Silent in the sanctuary.
And somehow also somewhere ahead.
That is what makes this confusing.
If I thought Christ were simply gone, maybe I could grieve Him like a death.
But I still sense Him.
Not the way I used to.
Not warmly.
Not constantly.
Not with that old clear communication that felt like family in the same room.
Now it feels more like knowing your family is in another state or another country. You know they exist. You know they love you. You may get occasional contact, a phone call, a brief visit, a small sign that the bond is still real.
But it is not the same as being held.
And right now I feel like a child who needs to be hugged and kissed and comforted.
Not given a lecture.
Not given a theological explanation.
Held.
That is what I miss.
God’s voice.
The warmth.
The certainty.
The Eucharist.
The feeling of being chosen.
The sense of purpose.
All of it.
I miss all of it.
And I am afraid.
I am afraid God is absent.
And I am afraid of something worse: that I am changing into someone who cannot hear Him anymore.
That fear is hard to write.
But there it is.
What if the silence is not just outside me?
What if something in me is closing?
What if the old place where God spoke has been damaged?
What if I am becoming deaf to the very Presence I gave my life to serve?
That thought scares me more than almost anything.
Because the soul, to me, is not some vague religious mist. The soul is the deepest part of me. The soul is the priest and the child. The soul is the place where God and I communicated. It is the place where calling lived. The place where the Mother of Sorrows could be heard. The place where Saint Michael stood with sword and fire. The place where Christ’s work felt not like an idea but like a command.
So when that place goes dark, everything trembles.
And yet, I still sense Him.
Faintly.
Far away.
But yes.
I still sense Him.
The Mother of Sorrows is still there too, though further away than before. I can still hear her, but quietly. I can still somewhat feel her, like a mother in the next room when the door is half closed.
Saint Michael is the same.
Not gone.
But distant.
Quieter.
As if the whole heavenly family has stepped back, and I am standing in the middle of the chapel asking why everyone is whispering from so far away.
I do not like this.
I will not pretend I do.
This dark night feels like it is destroying me.
It feels like it is stripping me of my hopes and dreams and even the feeling of love.
People sometimes talk about stripping as if it is automatically holy. Maybe it can be. Maybe the mystics are right. Maybe God removes certain comforts so the soul can know Him beyond comfort.
But from inside it, stripping does not feel noble.
It feels like loss.
It feels like standing there while life takes one more thing out of your hands.
It feels like being told, “Trust the process,” while the process is chewing through your heart.
If this is God teaching me a new way to know Him, then I need some kind of understanding.
But that is the problem.
This kind of thing cannot really be taught from the outside.
No one can explain the dark night to you in a way that makes it stop being dark.
No one can hand you a diagram and say, “Here is where God is hiding.”
No one can write a neat instruction manual called How to Survive When the God Who Called You Goes Silent.
The soul has to learn in the dark.
And I hate that.
I hate it because I am tired.
I hate it because I want the old warmth back.
I hate it because I do not want to become spiritually mature by losing everything that made me feel loved.
I want God.
Not just lessons about God.
God.
The living God.
The God my soul thirsts for.
“My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.”
— Psalm 42:2
That is still true.
Even now.
Even angry.
Even grieving.
Even afraid.
Even lonely.
Even exhausted.
My soul still thirsts.
My heart may be folded in on itself, but somewhere underneath the bruising there is still yearning.
That yearning may be the holiest thing I have left.
Not certainty.
Not sweetness.
Not confidence.
Yearning.
The ache that says: I still want You.
The ache that says: I remember.
The ache that says: this silence hurts because love was real.
So maybe the heart and the soul are not in the same place right now.
Maybe my heart is curled up in the corner, bruised and suspicious, asking, “What did I do?”
Maybe my soul is standing at the locked chapel door, still listening for movement inside.
Maybe the child in me is crying for a hug.
Maybe the priest in me is still holding the keys, even though he cannot find the right door.
Maybe faith right now is not a shining thing.
Maybe faith is the hollow place still yearning for the spark.
The only prayers I can still pray with any consistency are the Lord’s Prayer and prayers to the Holy Mother.
Maybe that says something.
When my own words fail, I return to the words Christ gave us.
Our Father.
Not my theory.
Not my argument.
Not my clean answer.
Our Father.
And when I cannot feel strong, I turn to the Mother.
Holy Mother.
Mother of Sorrows.
The one who knows what it is to stand near suffering and not be able to stop it.
The one who knows what it is to love the body of Christ when that body is wounded, bleeding, silent, and taken down from the cross.
Maybe that is where I am.
Somewhere between Our Father and Mother of Sorrows.
Somewhere between the prayer Christ taught and the mother who stayed.
Somewhere between the locked chapel and the storm over water.
Somewhere between the child needing comfort and the priest still trying to serve.
Scripture says:
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought.”
— Romans 8:26
That helps me.
Because I do not know what I should pray for as I ought.
I do not know how to pray this correctly.
I do not know how to make my heart brave.
I do not know how to make my soul stop aching.
I do not know how to hear God the way I used to.
But maybe the Spirit is praying deeper than my words.
Maybe beneath the Lord’s Prayer, beneath the Hail Marys, beneath the groaning, beneath the anger, beneath the hollow heart and the storm-soaked soul, there is still prayer happening.
Prayer beneath prayer.
Deep beneath deep.
The Spirit speaking in groans too deep for language.
So tonight, I do not have an answer.
I have a heart that is heavy, bruised, numb, and hollow.
I have a soul that feels abandoned, tested, emptied, purified, punished, and lost.
I have a child inside me who needs comfort.
I have a priest inside me who still wants to carry Christ’s light.
I have the Mother of Sorrows somewhere nearby, quiet but not gone.
I have Saint Michael somewhere in the distance, still standing guard though I cannot feel the sword as clearly.
I have Christ silent in the sanctuary and somehow ahead of me on the road.
And I have this yearning.
This damn yearning.
This holy, stubborn ache that will not die.
Maybe that is hope.
Maybe hope does not always feel like sunrise.
Maybe sometimes hope feels like hunger.
Like thirst.
Like a child still reaching for the parent he cannot see.
Like a priest still facing the altar behind glass.
Like a soul still whispering into the storm:
I miss You.
I need You.
I do not know what is happening to me.
But I am still listening.