Lectio
“Even so we say that the air is darkened around us by a deficiency and absence of the light; while yet the light itself is always light and illuminates the darkness.”
— Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names
Meditatio
The Holy Spirit guides us by both consolation and desolation. It leads us in the way of the Lord by both joy and suffering. Yet while the Spirit is the source of consolation and the fount of our joy, it is not the cause of our desolation or the maker of our suffering. God’s will for us is perfect union with His perfect love, and the Spirit, being of God and being God, is, therefore, the Spirit of and for love, and love — pure, perfect love — is pure consolation and perfect joy that knows neither sadness nor sorrow, nor lacking of any kind. For in God — in Love — there is only fullness, fulfillment, and abundance of all that is good and right and just.
The Holy Spirit is not given and taken away in the way that our finite and fragile love so often is. Rather, the Spirit is God’s gift of God’s very self always given, freely given, pouring itself out perpetually and eternally in all directions like the light from the sun for us to receive, to bask in, and to be warmed, comforted, and led by it to itself. And yet, our sinfulness creates shadows. By turning away from the light of the Lord, our own false selves cast shadows on our hearts from which we can neither see nor feel the Light of the Lord. And the shadow we cast is not ignorance — it is not simply not-knowing the light is there. It is the ache of a creature made for the sun, standing in its own shade, trying to be the source without the Source, god without God. This sinfulness — this turning into ourselves and away from God — is the cause of our desolation and the source of our suffering.
And so the Spirit does not lead us into desolation and it does not create suffering for or within us. Rather, the Spirit creates the contrast by which we know the darkness, the emptiness, and the wilderness we have chosen or fallen into, and creates within us the very longing for the light and warmth we have turned from — a longing that is itself the Spirit’s persistent grace drawing us to the Source, inviting us to repent, that is to turn around and face that which we can never really turn from in the first place. In this way, the Spirit guides us by both consolation and desolation by revealing the former to us by way of itself and the latter to us by way of its absence — an absence not in fact but in perception, for God’s love and light are never absent, but when we choose other-than-God, His light and love become the very pain of knowing that we have chosen not to receive it. The Spirit leads us in the way of the Lord by both joy and suffering because the Spirit is Joy and our rejection of Joy is our suffering.
Oratio
Proof Of Light
the shadows
do not disprove
God’s light
but in their darkness
clarify His light
that surrounds them
the light
that shines down on us
for in the shadows
we see what is not God
and in what is not God
we are pointed back to God
whose light
makes the shadows
possible
Contemplatio
Sit with this: the darkness you feel is not proof that the light has gone. It is proof that the light is real. Sit quietly with that reversal until it settles.
Related Scripture
“Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
— Hebrews 4:12 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Becoming Worship: Silence, Consent, and the Sacred Dance, which traces the same participatory logic from the opposite direction — not the shadow that reveals the light, but the graced silence in which the light’s presence becomes worship without beginning or end.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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