Austerity

I'm glad that it's Lent now. It's weird, I know. Most people don't like being forced to give something up, and sitting there while other people get to eat/do it, and for the most part neither do I. Last year I loved Lent because it allowed me to willingly cut something out of my life and suffer (inasmuch as foregoing caffeine and chocolate is really suffering) for Christ. This year, with my spiritual dryness, I think of Lent more as being a time for me to be able to cut out what is unnecessary, and try to focus my eyes on God. Because my spiritual life has been austere for a few months, I welcome the opportunity to make the rest of my life austere to match it.

Much like Liesl over at The Spiritual Workout, I have been going through many of the motions of the faith, but none of them feel like they used to. Prayer, Bible study, Mass, Adoration, none of them are remotely similar to last year, and though I have had moments of enlightenment lately (for which I am immensely grateful), I know the dryness has not left me yet. Liesl described the sensations magnificently in her last post, saying:

When I close my eyes to pray, it's not that it is dark, as if the light has been turned off. It's as if it is entirely empty, like there was never a light there in the first place. Where I once felt God's presence guiding my prayers, I now do not sense any presence at all. It is like there is a void that was once full and over-flowing. Where I used to be able to sit in tranquil silence, waiting to listen to God, the silence is now more noted by a lack of thoughts than a peaceful presence. I used to desire to go to Mass every day - like a girl giddy with love - but I no longer have that intense longing to be in His presence. Where I used to find rest before, the past year has felt as if I've been carrying a heavy burden. No matter how much I try to sit at Christ's feet, I still feel as if I'm begging to be recognized. Most significantly, it doesn't feel as if I have been carrying a cross with Christ, but all of this has felt as if I've been all alone.

As I'm sure you can imagine, these feelings make prayer feel like a tedious labor, rather than a conversation with God. Actually, it feels more like talking to a brick wall than anything. However, I'm glad to have Lent coming when it is, because now the spiritual dryness fits, so to speak. Now is a time when we're supposed to be austere, we're supposed to be giving up comforts and idle pleasures, and in so doing, bringing Christ's passion before ourselves always. I like this because with less clutter and distraction in the rest of my life, what is left but for me to contemplate spiritual things? What is left but for me to take an honest account of myself in this dryness, to accept it as gracefully as possible, and to soldier on?

Spiritual dryness is a very difficult thing to go through. I don't say this because I want pity, but because we were all raised in a world where God is not our fulfillment. Things and people and accomplishments are our fulfillment now, and those are easy to attain and collect. You can buy things and win awards and make friends, and those are supposed to make you happy, but when you enter into a deeper spirituality it is God who makes you happy. That's a good thing, but when you attempt to eschew the world, even in minor ways, and God pulls back from you, what do you have left? You still have things and awards and friends, sure, but where is your happiness? The trouble is when people see that you're not happy, they're at a loss to understand why. With all these things that the world has told you equal happiness, how can you be unhappy? Nothing comforts you because nothing can take God's place. You know where your happiness lies, and it is not in this world.

Lent, then, is the search for true happiness, and temporal austerity makes the heart long that much more for the Source of true happiness. When you take away the world's happiness there is one thing left, and that thing is God. I look forward to stripping my life bare in order to chase after what truly matters most to me- Jesus Christ. I hope that you will do the same. Have a blessed, fruitful Lent, everyone!