The Holy Spirit renews us in baptism through His godhead, which He shares with the Father and the Son. Finding us in a state of deformity, the Spirit restores our original beauty and fills us with His grace, leaving no room for anything unworthy of our love. The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the Divine Glory, sons and heirs of God the Father– who bear a likeness to the Son and are His co-heirs and brothers, destined to reign with Him and to share His glory. In place of earth, the Spirit reopens heaven to us and gladly admits us into paradise, giving us even now greater honour than the angels, and by the holy waters of baptism extinguishing the unquenchable fires of hell.
We men are conceived twice: to the human body we owe our first conception, to the divine Spirit, our second. John says: “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God. These were born not by human generation, not by the desire of the flesh, not by the will of man, but of God.” All who believed in Christ, he says, received power to become children of God– that is, of the Holy Spirit, and to gain kinship with God. To show that their parent was God the Holy Spirit, he adds these words of Christ: “I give you this solemn warning, that without being born of water and the Spirit, no one can enter the kingdom of God.” [But through that same Spirit, He has given us both the power and means to accomplish this.]
Visibly, through the ministry of priests, the [water of the baptismal] font gives symbolic birth to our visible bodies. Invisibly, through the ministry of angels, the Spirit of God, whom even the mind’s eye cannot see, baptizes into Himself both our souls and bodies, giving them a new birth. Speaking quite literally, and also in harmony with the words of water and the Spirit, John the Baptist says of Christ: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Since we are only vessels of clay, we must first be cleansed in water and then hardened by spiritual fire – for God is a consuming fire. We need the Holy Spirit to perfect and renew us, for spiritual fire can cleanse us, and spiritual water can recast us as in a furnace, and make us into new men.
Trusting in God (in Hebrew, bittachon - בִּטָּחוֹן) does not mean that we are obligated to affirm that this is “the best of all possible worlds,” though it does mean we believe that eventually God will wipe away every tear and make all things right. Bittachon is a word for this world, which says, “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him…” Those who call upon the LORD can trust not only in concealed good behind ambiguous appearances (“all things work together for good”), but also in a future, real, substantive good that will one day be clearly manifest for us all. We fight the “good fight” of faith, which is a worthy struggle that eventually is realized for blessing. Meanwhile, may the LORD our God keep us from such depth of sorrow that leads to sickness, darkness and despair.
There are operations in the supernatural order in which we work with our Lord and cooperate with Him in them. But there are others of a very intimate nature in which the one thing He asks of us is that we do not hinder Him. And in order that we do not impede Him, He gives us a spiritual anesthetic — that is, desolation, since it is a kind of paralysis of the spirit which renders us helpless.
In time of spiritual dryness, souls often think as follows: “I go to prayer, and I do nothing, absolutely nothing.” The soul does nothing, but God does a great deal, although the soul may not be aware of His secret and mysterious operations. But when the period of trial passes, we find that we are different. Without our knowing how or when, a profound change was wrought in us: our love is more solid; our virtue has become stronger. According to the familiar expression, we have come out of the trial “as new.” What does it matter that those afflictions may endure for years on end, if finally the soul emerges as new, fit to be united with God and to realize fully the role it was destined to fill on earth?
Desolation, then, is the indispensable means whereby the soul attains its transformation in Jesus, the supreme goal and the perfection of holiness. We think, perhaps, that transformation in Jesus is something that we can achieve with God’s help. But no. Simply having God’s help is not sufficient. God alone can accomplish it, and the only help that we can give Him is to allow Him a free hand, not to impede Him.
We must make our choice: either we choose transformation, and then we also accept the desolation without which it cannot be arrived at; or we refuse desolation, and then we must also reject transformation and thus give ourselves over to dragging out our life in a common mediocrity.
Desolation is a cross, but one of the most precious, one of the most divine. It is not wrought by the hand of men, but by God Himself. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. The trial, therefore, is made in accordance with the measure of each soul, perfectly fitted to its circumstances, requirements, and mission, and to the degree of perfection to which God has destined it. Hence, trial possesses an eminently sanctifying power.
Let us open our arms to it, then, and salute it with the same cry as the Church uses: “Hail, O Cross, our only hope!” In this way, by reason of all that has been said concerning spiritual afflictions, this truth is once more established: God’s ways are not our ways.
Servant of God Archbishop Luiz Martinez
“Worshipping the Hidden God”
Spiritual desolation is terrifying; God feels utterly absent, distant, unreal; all memories of consolation become untranslatable or inaccessible. The heart becomes dry and hollow; prayer suffers, joy withers, peace disappears. How, then, can this profound numbing of the soul benefit us? How can such a chasm of emptiness possibly do us any good?
That’s what this quote clarifies. That’s the paradox. It doesn’t.
Desolation is the anaesthetic. That’s it’s true job. But God is the surgeon.
When we are desolate, we still know God is real; we still have faith burned into our being, even if we feel nothing, even if doubts and fears plague us nonstop. We hope against hope. We cling to what we cannot even sense anymore, and yet we cannot ever deny it outright. Even collapsed under the weight of our cross, we know Someone gave it to us for a Good Reason, and if that raw fact is ALL we have to go on as we hobble on to Calvary, then so be it; it is enough. It must be enough, if it is all we were given. God knows. We don’t. That’s the point.
We forget that we’re not the ones doing the work. When we are anesthetized, desolate, we cease striving after our own notions of success. We stop taking on more than our share, we abandon ambition, we no longer try to guess or even edit God’s plan for our life. We are like unruly yet beloved children, who genuinely want to help Him with the home repairs but keep losing the tools and touching all the wet paint… we don’t understand when He says “no,” even though He says it with love. We can’t quite grasp the truth of our “not knowing”– of our not even being able to know. We just want to help. Come on, Dad, let me plug in the wires. Let me hold the drill. It looks so easy! But pride is lurking, and ultimately the only way to humble our childish enthusiasm is to give us a time-out. Out of the room, away from Dad, unable to interfere. Out of love.
Soon enough, He will come and get us, and show us what beautiful work He has done… all for us! Allwithin us! So we must doggedly hold on to faith, and hope, and charity, even if just with our feeble will– no feelings, no fervor, just a weak but honest resolution to not give up on God. Wait one more day. One more. One more. Keep waiting. Keep trusting. He remembers you, of course! He is working on you, remember? You’re just under anaesthetic for a while. The numbness is not permanent. Be patient, beloved. Carry the cross with gratitude. It is, truly, our only hope, even in this.
Transformation requires desolation. Remember that. So it was with Christ; so it must be with us.
Re-read the Archbishop’s words and take them deeply to heart. You need this understanding, this acceptance. Sometimes, for the greatest good of our souls, all we can do is let ourselves be put aside so God can do His work. This takes immense trust, and love, and humility. Tell God you are willing. Pray fervently for the grace. Then… well, “count backwards from 100”, as they say. Let God decide when to work. Do not impede Him, even in good will. Surrender to that sanctified numbness. And wait on the Lord.
Live so as not to fear death. For those who live well in the world, death is not frightening but sweet and precious.
St. Rose of Viterbo
When we live well– with our desire & goal being heaven alone– then death is a fulfillment of a life lived for Him, and an ending only of all struggle & hindrances to holiness. To one who lives for God, death is but the doorway to unending joy.
[“Much has been written about Li’s older boyfriend, Magnus Hirschfeld. He was a closeted German doctor and sexologist who became famous in the 1930s as a defender of gay people. In books on Hirschfeld, Li is usually just a footnote.
But as I found in my research, Li was a sexologist and activist in his own right. And in my view, his ideas about sexuality speak to our moment better than his much more well-known boyfriend’s do.
When Li died in Vancouver in 1993, his unpublished manuscript about sexuality was thrown in the trash. Luckily, it was rescued by a curious neighbor and eventually ended up in an archive. Since then, only a handful of people, myself included, have read it.
(…)
Yet Li’s rediscovered manuscript shows he did become a sexologist, even though he never published his findings.
In his manuscript, Li tells how after Hirschfeld died, he spent decades traveling the world, carrying on the research and taking detailed notes while living in Zurich, Hong Kong and then Vancouver.
The data he gathered would have startled Hirschfeld. Forty percent of people were bisexual, he wrote, 20 percent were homosexual and only 30 percent percent were heterosexual. (The last 10 percent were “other.”) Being trans was an important, beneficial part of the human experience, he added.
Hirschfeld thought bisexuals were scarce and that even homosexuals were only a minor slice of the population—a “sexual minority.” To Li, bisexuals plus homosexuals were the majority. It was lifelong heterosexuals who were rare—so rare, he wrote, that they “should be classified as an endangered species.”]
