Praying More Than Usual Without Consolation

Divine Appeal Reflection - 157

Today, consider in Divine Appeal 157: "Pray more than usual. I do not always desire to console you in a sensible manner... I want you to remain quiet and prayerful."

There are moments when a soul kneels before Our Adorable Jesus and encounters a frightening silence: the Rosary ends, yet the heart remains heavy; Scripture is opened, yet the words seem distant; Mass is celebrated, yet consolation does not come;(cf. Ps 42:2–3; Mk 14:37–38) Eucharistic adoration becomes an hour of apparent emptiness . Nothing seems to change outwardly. Yet precisely here prayer can descend from seeking consolation to seeking God Himself. The soul learns to remain when it feels nothing, to trust when it cannot perceive, and to love without emotional reward . St. Teresa of Calcutta endured profound interior darkness while continuing faithfully in charity and prayer. Sometimes the deepest prayer is simply this hidden fidelity: “Jesus, I cannot feel You, but I will remain.” A mother can spend years praying for a child and still watch that child move further away. A priest can preach faithfully and wonder whether anyone is truly transformed. A religious can sacrifice comfort, family, and personal plans and still experience interior loneliness. A husband and wife can remain faithful while affection becomes difficult and wounds remain unresolved. A young person can sincerely seek God's will while receiving one disappointment after another. None of these experiences automatically means that faith has failed. Scripture itself knows the human experience of waiting in darkness: David cries out from distress while still turning toward God (cf. Ps 13:1–6); Job continues wrestling with God when explanations disappear (cf. Job 30:20–21); Jeremiah experiences anguish while remaining conscious of his prophetic calling (cf. Jer 20:7–13). Christian prayer therefore does not require us to pretend that everything is peaceful. It teaches us to bring our actual heart before God. Jesus Himself entered human anguish and allowed His prayer to pass through distress, loneliness, and surrender (cf. Mk 14:32–36). The remarkable thing is that He did not escape the darkness by abandoning the Father. He remained. That remaining can become one of the purest forms of love.

The deeper purification begins when the soul discovers a subtle attachment: loving God’s consolations more than God Himself (cf. Jn 6:26–27). Although it is a lovely gift, spiritual sweetness is not a gauge of holiness. Sometimes we serve because gratitude reassures us that our sacrifice matters, adore because adoration feels heavenly, or pray because prayer brings us calm. But Our Adorable Jesus gradually purifies this hidden self-seeking by teaching the soul to remain faithful when sweetness disappears (cf. Job 13:15). St. John of the Cross described this purification as a passage from spiritual enjoyment toward naked faith and deeper love. The mature soul eventually says: I will remain with You not because I feel Your presence, but because You are worthy of love even when I feel nothing . But what happens when none of these rewards comes? This is where the soul encounters the poverty of pure faith.  St Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi's mystical path likewise reveals a love willing to remain surrendered even when the soul cannot possess God through its own understanding. St Angela of Foligno discovered through profound interior purification that God could become the soul's treasure even when every other spiritual security was stripped away. St Elizabeth of the Trinity directed the soul toward the indwelling Trinity rather than toward continual emotional experiences of God. The same principle is found in Scripture: Abraham continues walking without possessing the complete vision of the promise (cf. Heb 11:8–10); Simeon waits patiently before seeing the fulfillment of God's promise (cf. Lk 2:25–32); Mary accepts a mystery she cannot immediately comprehend and carries it silently within herself . The Catechism recognizes that prayer can encounter dryness and that perseverance in such moments is an act of faith rather than evidence of failure (cf. CCC 2731). It also teaches that contemplative prayer is fundamentally a gaze of faith fixed upon Jesus rather than a search for spiritual sensations . The mature Christian therefore learns to ask a different question: not “What am I feeling?” but “Am I still giving myself to God?”

The call to remain quiet is profoundly radical in an age trained to escape every interior discomfort . The moment silence becomes unsettling, we reach for the phone; when loneliness surfaces, we open another application; when old wounds awaken, we cover them with entertainment and noise. Yet Our Adorable Jesus sometimes allows the silence precisely so the soul can discover what distraction has concealed. The discomfort need not be immediately silenced; it can become an invitation to remain, listen, and surrender (cf. Lam 3:26). St. Benedict of Nursia understood the spiritual power of disciplined silence and attentive listening, showing that a heart trained to be still becomes increasingly capable of hearing God . Even religious people can hide behind activity. A priest can attend meeting after meeting and avoid the chapel because silence brings his fatigue and disappointments into consciousness. A parent can remain permanently busy because stillness would force an honest confrontation with family wounds. A religious can become efficient in apostolic work while gradually losing the interior gaze that originally gave meaning to the work. A seminarian can read extensively about spirituality while avoiding the painful simplicity of sitting before Christ without intellectual activity. Yet Jesus repeatedly withdrew from crowds and activity into solitude . Before choosing the Twelve, (cf. Lk 6:12–13) He spent the night in prayer . Before His Passion, He sought the Father's presence in the garden (cf. Mt 26:36–46). Mary of Bethany discovered something that Martha's anxious activity had obscured: there are moments when the most important apostolate is simply to sit at the feet of Jesus and receive Him (cf. Lk 10:38–42). Silence therefore does not mean doing nothing. It means refusing to allow activity to become an escape from God. The Catechism describes contemplative prayer as gathering the whole person before Christ and reaching its deepest expression in silent love (cf. CCC 2711, 2717). This becomes profoundly practical: sit quietly with the Gospel before work (cf. Mk 1:35); after criticism, remain before Jesus before defending yourself; before answering an angry message, pray a decade of the Rosary; after painful news, kneel before speaking . These small pauses gradually transform the soul. Instinct becomes discernment, anxiety becomes surrender, woundedness becomes prayer, and reaction becomes charity (cf. Phil 4:6–7). Our Adorable Jesus teaches the heart to stop responding from its wounds and begin responding from communion with Him (cf. Jn 15:4–5).

There is also a hidden apostolic dimension to this experience. A person who prays without consolation may imagine that nothing is being accomplished because nothing visible is changing. Yet Christian prayer is not measured by immediate results. Moses intercedes for a rebellious people even when their behavior seems hopeless (cf. Ex 32:30–32). Samuel (cf. 1 Sam 12:19–23) continues praying for Israel despite its failures . Paul carries the Churches within his heart even when his apostolic mission involves imprisonment, rejection, and suffering (cf. 2 Cor 11:23–28). Most mysteriously, Christ's greatest act of salvation appears outwardly to be defeat: He hangs upon the Cross while His disciples scatter (cf. Mk 15:33–39). Yet beneath that apparent failure, the world's redemption is unfolding . This changes how we understand ordinary hidden prayer. The woman who quietly offers twenty years of prayer for her addicted son may never see the final fruit.  A priest may intercede for a parishioner who never knows that someone carried his name before the Eucharistic Lord. A contemplative religious may offer hours of prayer for missionaries whom she will never meet. A suffering person may unite physical weakness with Christ for the conversion of sinners (cf. Col 1:24). Such prayer is not useless simply because its effects remain invisible. The Catechism teaches that intercession conforms the person who prays to Christ's own prayer for others and becomes participation in His concern for humanity (cf. CCC 2634–2636). The hidden soul can therefore become an unseen sanctuary for other people. There are graces moving through the Church that will never have a photograph, statistic, applause, or public acknowledgment. Heaven alone knows how many temptations were resisted because someone prayed, how many despairing people received an invisible grace, how many vocations survived because an unknown person interceded. The quiet person before the tabernacle may be participating in battles whose battlefield cannot be seen.

At the deepest level, this spirituality asks whether we can remain with God when He does not make the situation easier . This question enters marriage, vocation, sickness, ministry, poverty, disappointment, aging, loneliness, and death. Faith becomes most luminous when it remains faithful without demanding immediate explanations. Mary reveals this highest fidelity. She stood beneath the Cross when nothing could be changed, no answer could be forced, and no suffering could be removed (cf. Jn 19:25–27). She could not take away the nails or hasten the Resurrection; she could only remain beside Her Son in obedient love. Our Adorable Jesus sometimes asks the same from us: not to understand everything, but to remain; not to control the mystery, but to trust within it . She simply remained. John (cf. Jn 19:26–27) remained too . This is one of the most powerful images of mature faith: presence without control. St Josephine Bakhita's life demonstrates another dimension: wounds inflicted by human beings do not have to become the final definition of the heart when forgiveness and belonging to Christ gradually transform suffering .  These witnesses reveal something profoundly consoling: God does not waste hidden fidelity. The Catechism (cf. CCC 2718–2719) teaches that contemplative prayer is a communion with Christ and that perseverance involves entering progressively into His mystery, including the passage through suffering toward Resurrection . The soul may therefore pray: “Jesus, I do not understand what You are doing, but I refuse to believe that You are absent. I cannot feel Your closeness, but I choose to trust Your love. I cannot see the fruit, but I will remain faithful.” Such prayer is not weakness. It is spiritual adulthood. It is the moment when faith becomes stronger than mood, love stronger than reward, and fidelity stronger than circumstances. Sometimes the deepest mystical prayer is not an extraordinary experience, (cf. Lk 9:23) but ordinary fidelity offered when the heart is exhausted . It is the mother whispering to God before sleep, the priest returning to the confessional after discouragement, the young person beginning again after failure, the elderly soul praying the Rosary through trembling hands, or the worker choosing honesty when no one is watching . Such souls may feel spiritually ordinary, yet Heaven sees something profound:(cf. Jn 15:4) a heart learning to remain with Christ when consolation is absent . Our Adorable Jesus is often most deeply loved not in moments of spiritual sweetness,(cf. Heb 10:36) but when the soul quietly chooses Him again through weariness, obscurity, temptation, and perseverance .

Prayer

O Adorable Jesus, when our hearts are tired and You seem silent, teach us to remain. Let our dryness become faith, our waiting become hope, our wounds become intercession, and our ordinary duties become love. Hide us deeply within Your Eucharistic Heart, until we seek not consolation, but You alone, and remain faithful when no one sees. Amen.

Sr. Anna Ali of the Most Holy Eucharist, intercede for us.